He looked so quiet when he  was dead, as if he'd got
free. He was such  a nice-looking lad. It just broke my heart to see him, so
still and  pure looking, as if  he'd  wanted to die. Oh, it  broke my heart,
that did. But it was the pit.'
     She wept a few bitter tears, and Connie wept more. It was a warm spring
day, with a perfume of earth and  of yellow flowers,  many things rising  to
bud, and the garden still with the very sap of sunshine.
     `It must have been terrible for you!' said Connie.
     `Oh, my  Lady! I never  realized at first. I could only say: Oh my lad,
what did you want to leave me for!---That was all my cry. But somehow I felt
he'd come back.'
     `But he didn't want to leave you,' said Connie.
     `Oh no,  my Lady! That was only my silly cry. And  I kept expecting him
back. Especially  at nights. I  kept waking up thinking: Why he's not in bed
with me!---It was as if  my feelings wouldn't believe he'd gone. I just felt
he'd have to come back and lie against me, so I could feel him with me. That
was all I wanted, to feel him there with me, warm. And it took me a thousand
shocks before I knew he wouldn't come back, it took me years.'
     `The touch of him,' said Connie.
     `That's it, my Lady, the  touch of him! I've never got over  it to this
day, and  never shall.  And if there's a heaven above,  he'll be  there, and
will lie up against me so I can sleep.'
     Connie  glanced  at  the  handsome,  brooding  face  in  fear.  Another
passionate one  out of Tevershall! The touch of  him! For the bonds of  love
are ill to loose!
     `It's terrible, once you've got  a man into your blood!' she said. `Oh,
my Lady! And that's what makes you feel so bitter. You feel folks wanted him
killed.  You feel  the pit fair wanted to kill him. Oh, I felt, if it hadn't
been for the pit, an' them as runs the pit, there'd have been no leaving me.
But they all want to separate a woman and a man, if they're together.'
     `If they're physically together,' said Connie.
     `That's  right, my Lady! There's  a  lot  of hard-hearted folks  in the
world. And every morning when he got  up and went to  th' pit, I felt it was
wrong, wrong. But what else could he do? What can a man do?'
     A queer hate flared in the woman.
     `But can a touch last so long?'  Connie asked suddenly. `That you could
feel him so long?'
     `Oh my Lady, what else is there  to last? Children grows away from you.
But  the man,  well! But  even  that they'd  like to kill in you,  the  very
thought of the touch of him. Even your  own children! Ah well! We might have
drifted apart, who knows. But the feeling's something different. It's 'appen
better never  to care.  But there,  when I look at  women who's never really
been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me poor doolowls after all,
no matter how they may dress up and  gad. No, I'll abide by my own. I've not
much respect for people.'

        Chapter 12

     Connie went  to the wood  directly after lunch. It was  really a lovely
day, the first dandelions making suns, the first daisies so white. The hazel
thicket  was  a   lace-work,  of  half-open  leaves,  and   the  last  dusty
perpendicular  of  the catkins. Yellow celandines now were  in  crowds, flat
open, pressed  back in urgency, and the yellow glitter of themselves. It was
the yellow, the powerful yellow of early  summer. And primroses were  broad,
and full of pale abandon, thick-clustered primroses no longer shy. The lush,
dark green of hyacinths was a sea, with buds rising like pale corn, while in
the  riding  the  forget-me-nots  were  fluffing  up,  and  columbines  were
unfolding their  ink-purple  ruches,  and  there were  bits of  blue  bird's
eggshell under a bush. Everywhere the bud-knots and the leap of life!
     The  keeper  was not at the hut.  Everything was serene, brown chickens
running lustily. Connie walked on towards the cottage, because she wanted to
find him.
     The cottage stood in the sun, off the wood's edge. In the little garden
the  double daffodils rose in tufts, near the wide-open door, and red double
daisies made a border to the path. There was  the bark of a dog, and Flossie
came running.
     The wide-open door! so he was at home.  And the sunlight falling on the
red-brick  floor!  As she went up the path, she saw him  through the window,
sitting  at the table in his shirt-sleeves, eating.  The dog  wuffed softly,
slowly wagging her tail.
     He rose, and came to the door, wiping his mouth with a red handkerchief
still chewing.
     `May I come in?' she said.
     `Come in!'
     The sun shone into the bare room, which still smelled of a mutton chop,
done in  a dutch oven before the fire, because the dutch oven still stood on
the fender, with the black potato-saucepan on a piece of paper, beside it on
the white hearth. The  fire was red, rather low, the bar dropped, the kettle
singing.
     On the table  was his plate, with potatoes and the remains of the chop;
also bread in  a basket, salt, and a blue mug with beer. The table-cloth was
white oil-cloth, he stood in the shade.
     `You are very late,' she said. `Do go on eating!'
     She sat down on a wooden chair, in the sunlight by the door.
     `I had  to go to  Uthwaite,' he said, sitting down at the table but not
eating.
     `Do eat,' she said. But he did not touch the food.
     `Shall y'ave something?' he  asked  her.  `Shall y'ave a cup of tea? t'
kettle's on t' boil'---he half rose again from his chair.
     `If you'll let me make it myself,' she said, rising. He seemed sad, and
she felt she was bothering him.
     `Well,  tea-pot's  in there'---he  pointed  to  a  little,  drab corner
cupboard; 'an' cups. An' tea's on t' mantel ower yer 'ead,'
     She got  the black  tea-pot, and the tin of tea  from the mantel-shelf.
She rinsed the tea-pot with hot water, and stood a moment wondering where to
empty it.
     `Throw it out,' he said, aware of her. `It's clean.'
     She went to the  door and threw the drop  of  water down  the path. How
lovely it  was here, so still, so really woodland. The oaks were putting out
ochre  yellow leaves: in  the garden  the red daisies were  like  red  plush
buttons. She glanced at the big, hollow sandstone slab of the threshold, now
crossed by so few feet.
     `But  it's  lovely  here,'  she  said.  `Such  a  beautiful  stillness,
everything alive and still.'
     He was eating again, rather slowly and unwillingly, and she  could feel
he was discouraged. She made the tea in  silence, and set the tea-pot on the
hob, as she knew the people did.  He pushed his  plate aside and went to the
back place; she heard a  latch click, then he came back  with  cheese  on  a
plate, and butter.
     She set the two cups on the table;  there were only two. `Will you have
a cup of tea?' she said.
     `If you like. Sugar's  in th' cupboard, an' there's a little cream jug.
Milk's in a jug in th' pantry.'
     `Shall I take your plate away?' she asked him. He looked up at her with
a faint ironical smile.
     `Why...if you like,' he said, slowly eating bread and cheese.  She went
to  the back, into the pent-house scullery, where the pump was.  On the left
was a door, no doubt the pantry door. She unlatched it, and almost smiled at
the place he called a pantry; a long narrow white-washed slip of a cupboard.
But it managed to  contain a little barrel of beer, as  well as a few dishes
and bits of food. She took a little milk from the yellow jug.
     `How  do you get your milk?' she asked him, when  she came  back to the
table.
     `Flints! They leave me  a bottle at the  warren  end. You know, where I
met you!'
     But he was discouraged. She poured out the tea, poising the cream-jug.
     `No milk,' he said;  then  he seemed to hear a noise, and looked keenly
through the doorway.
     `'Appen we'd better shut,' he said.
     `It seems a pity,' she replied. `Nobody will come, will they?'
     `Not unless it's one time in a thousand, but you never know.'
     `And even then it's no matter,' she said. `It's only a cup of tea.'
     `Where are the spoons?'
     He reached over, and pulled open  the table  drawer.  Connie sat at the
table in the sunshine of the doorway.
     `Flossie!'  he said to the dog,  who was  lying on a little mat  at the
stair foot. `Go an' hark, hark!'
     He lifted his finger, and his  `hark!' was very vivid. The  dog trotted
out to reconnoitre.
     `Are you sad today?' she asked him.
     He turned his blue eyes quickly, and gazed direct on her.
     `Sad! no, bored!  I  had to  go getting summonses  for  two poachers  I
caught, and, oh well, I don't like people.'
     He spoke cold, good English, and there was anger  in his voice. `Do you
hate being a game-keeper?' she asked.
     `Being a game-keeper, no! So long as I'm left alone. But when I have to
go  messing  around at the  police-station,  and  various other places,  and
waiting  for a lot of  fools to attend to me...oh well, I get mad...' and he
smiled, with a certain faint humour.
     `Couldn't you be really independent?' she asked.
     `Me? I suppose I  could, if you mean manage  to  exist on my pension. I
could!  But I've  got  to  work, or I should  die. That is, I've got to have
something that  keeps  me occupied.  And I'm not in a  good enough temper to
work for myself. It's got to be a sort of job for somebody else, or I should
throw it up in a month,  out of bad temper. So altogether I'm very  well off
here, especially lately...'
     He laughed at her again, with mocking humour.
     `But why are you in a  bad  temper?'  she asked. `Do you mean  you  are
always in a bad temper?'
     `Pretty well,' he said, laughing. `I don't quite digest my bile.'
     `But what bile?' she said.
     `Bile!'  he said. `Don't  you know what that is?' She  was silent,  and
disappointed. He was taking no notice of her.
     `I'm going away for a while next month,' she said.
     `You are! Where to?'
     `Venice! With Sir Clifford? For how long?'
     `For a month or so,' she replied. `Clifford won't go.'
     `He'll stay here?' he asked.
     `Yes! He hates to travel as he is.'
     `Ay, poor devil!' he said, with sympathy. There was a pause.
     `You  won't  forget me  when I'm gone,  will you?' she  asked. Again he
lifted his eyes and looked full at her.
     `Forget?'  he  said. `You know nobody forgets.  It's not a question  of
memory;'
     She wanted to say: `When then?' but  she didn't. Instead, she said in a
mute kind of voice: `I told Clifford I might have a child.'
     Now he really looked at her, intense and searching.
     `You did?' he said at last. `And what did he say?'
     `Oh, he wouldn't mind. He'd be glad, really, so long as it seemed to be
his.' She dared not look up at him.
     He was silent a long time, then he gazed again on her face.
     `No mention of me, of course?' he said.
     `No. No mention of you,' she said.
     `No, he'd hardly swallow me as a substitute breeder. Then where are you
supposed to be getting the child?'
     `I might have a love-affair in Venice,' she said.
     `You might,' he replied slowly. `So that's why you're going?'
     `Not to have the love-affair,' she said, looking up at him, pleading.
     `Just the appearance of one,' he said.
     There was  silence. He sat  staring out the  window, with a faint grin,
half mockery, half bitterness, on his face. She hated his grin.
     `You've  not  taken any  precautions against having  a  child then?' he
asked her suddenly. `Because I haven't.'
     `No,' she said faintly. `I should hate that.'
     He looked at  her, then again with the peculiar subtle grin out of  the
window. There was a tense silence.
     At last he turned his head and said satirically:
     `That was why you wanted me, then, to get a child?'
     She hung her head.
     `No.  Not  really,'  she  said.  `What then, really?'  he  asked rather
bitingly.
     She looked up at him reproachfully, saying: `I don't know.'
     He broke into a laugh.
     `Then I'm damned if I do,' he said.
     There was a long pause of silence, a cold silence.
     `Well,' he said at  last. `It's  as your Ladyship likes. If you get the
baby, Sir Clifford's  welcome to  it.  I shan't have  lost  anything. On the
contrary,  I've had  a  very nice  experience, very  nice indeed!'---and  he
stretched in a half-suppressed sort of  yawn. `If you've made use of me,' he
said, `it's not the first  time I've  been made use of; and I don't  suppose
it's ever  been as pleasant as this  time; though  of  course one can't feel
tremendously  dignified  about  it.'---He  stretched  again, curiously,  his
muscles quivering, and his jaw oddly set.
     `But I didn't make use of you,' she said, pleading.
     `At your Ladyship's service,' he replied.
     `No,' she said. `I liked your body.'
     `Did  you?' he  replied, and  he laughed.  `Well,  then,  we're  quits,
because I liked yours.'
     He looked at her with queer darkened eyes.
     `Would you like to go upstairs  now?' he asked her, in a strangled sort
of voice.
     `No, not here. Not  now!' she  said heavily, though  if he had used any
power over her, she would have gone, for she had no strength against him.
     He turned his face  away  again, and seemed to  forget  her. `I want to
touch you  like you touch  me,' she said.  `I've  never  really touched your
body.'
     He looked at  her, and smiled again. `Now?' he said. `No! No! Not here!
At the hut. Would you mind?'
     `How do I touch you?' he asked.
     `When you feel me.'
     He looked at her, and met her heavy, anxious eyes.
     `And do you like it when I feel you?' he asked, laughing at her still.
     `Yes, do you?' she said.
     `Oh, me!' Then he  changed  his tone. `Yes,' he said. `You know without
asking.' Which was true.
     She rose and picked up her hat. `I must go,' she said.
     `Will you go?' he replied politely.
     She  wanted  him to touch her,  to say  something to  her, but he  said
nothing, only waited politely.
     `Thank you for the tea,' she said.
     `I  haven't thanked your  Ladyship for  doing  me  the  honours  of  my
tea-pot,' he said.
     She went down the path, and he stood in the doorway, faintly  grinning.
Flossie came running with  her tail  lifted.  And  Connie had to plod dumbly
across into the wood, knowing  he was standing there watching her, with that
incomprehensible grin on his face.
     She walked home very much downcast and  annoyed. She didn't at all like
his saying he had been made use of because, in a sense, it was  true. But he
oughtn't to  have  said it. Therefore,  again, she was divided  between  two
feelings: resentment against him, and a desire to make it up with him.
     She passed a very uneasy and irritated tea-time, and at once went up to
her room. But when she was there it was no  good; she could neither sit  nor
stand. She would have to do something about it. She would have to go back to
the hut; if he was not there, well and good.
     She slipped out  of the side door, and took her way direct and a little
sullen. When she came to the  clearing she was terribly uneasy. But there he
was  again, in  his  shirt-sleeves, stooping,  letting  the  hens out of the
coops, among the chicks that were now growing a little gawky, but were  much
more trim than hen-chickens.
     She went straight across to him. `You see I've come!' she said.
     `Ay, I  see it!' he  said, straightening his  back, and looking at  her
with a faint amusement.
     `Do you let the hens out now?' she asked.
     `Yes, they've  sat  themselves to skin  and  bone,' he said.  `An'  now
they're not all  that  anxious to  come out an' feed. There's  no self in  a
sitting hen; she's all in the eggs or the chicks.'
     The  poor mother-hens; such blind devotion! even to eggs not their own!
Connie looked at them in compassion. A helpless silence fell between the man
and the woman.
     `Shall us go i' th' 'ut?' he asked.
     `Do you want me?' she asked, in a sort of mistrust.
     `Ay, if you want to come.'
     She was silent.
     `Come then!' he said.
     And  she went with him to  the hut. It was quite dark when he had  shut
the door, so he made a small light in the lantern, as before.
     `Have you left your underthings off?' he asked her.
     `Yes!'
     `Ay, well, then I'll take my things off too.'
     He  spread the  blankets,  putting one at the side for a coverlet.  She
took off her hat, and shook her hair. He sat down,  taking off his shoes and
gaiters, and undoing his cord breeches.
     `Lie down  then!' he said,  when he stood in his shirt.  She obeyed  in
silence, and he lay beside her, and pulled the blanket over them both.
     `There!' he said.
     And he lifted her dress right  back,  till he came even to her breasts.
He kissed them softly, taking the nipples in his lips in tiny caresses.
     `Eh, but tha'rt nice,  tha'rt nice!' he said, suddenly rubbing his face
with a snuggling movement against her warm belly.
     And  she put her  arms round him under his  shirt, but  she was afraid,
afraid of his thin,  smooth, naked body, that seemed so powerful, afraid  of
the violent muscles. She shrank, afraid.
     And  when  he  said, with  a  sort of little  sigh: `Eh,  tha'rt nice!'
something  in  her  quivered,  and  something  in her  spirit  stiffened  in
resistance:  stiffened  from  the terribly physical  intimacy, and  from the
peculiar haste of his possession. And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own
passion  did not overcome  her; she lay with her ends inert on his  striving
body, and do what  she might, her spirit seemed to  look on from the  top of
her head, and  the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the
sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little  evacuating crisis seemed
farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of  the buttocks, and
the  wilting  of the poor, insignificant, moist little penis. This  was  the
divine love! After all, the  moderns were right when  they felt contempt for
the performance; for it was a performance. It was quite true, as some  poets
said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humour,
creating him  a reasonable  being, yet  forcing him to  take this ridiculous
posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.
Even a Maupassant  found  it a  humiliating  anti-climax.  Men despised  the
intercourse act, and yet did it.
     Cold and derisive her queer female mind stood apart, and though she lay
perfectly still, her impulse was to  heave her loins, and throw the man out,
escape his  ugly grip,  and the butting over-riding  of his absurd haunches.
His body was a  foolish, impudent, imperfect thing,  a  little disgusting in
its unfinished clumsiness. For  surely a complete evolution  would eliminate
this performance, this `function'.
     And  yet  when  he had  finished,  soon over, and  lay very very still,
receding into silence, and a strange  motionless distance, far, farther than
the  horizon of her awareness, her heart began to  weep. She  could feel him
ebbing away, ebbing away, leaving her there like a  stone on a shore. He was
withdrawing, his spirit was leaving her. He knew.
     And in  real  grief,  tormented  by her  own  double  consciousness and
reaction, she  began  to weep. He  took no notice, or did not even know. The
storm of weeping swelled and shook her, and shook him.
     `Ay!'  he said. `It  was no good that time. You  wasn't there.'---So he
knew! Her sobs became violent.
     `But what's amiss?' he said. `It's once in a while that way.'
     `I...I  can't  love  you,'  she  sobbed,  suddenly  feeling  her  heart
breaking.
     `Canna ter? Well, dunna fret! There's no law says as tha's got to. Ta'e
it for what it is.'
     He still lay with his hand on her breast. But  she had  drawn  both her
hands from him.
     His words were small comfort. She sobbed aloud.
     `Nay, nay!'  he  said.  `Ta'e the thick wi' th' thin. This wor a bit o'
thin for once.'
     She  wept bitterly,  sobbing. `But I want to love you, and I  can't. It
only seems horrid.'
     He laughed a little, half bitter, half amused.
     `It isna horrid,' he  said,  `even if  tha thinks it is. An'  tha canna
ma'e it horrid. Dunna fret thysen about lovin' me. Tha'lt niver force thysen
to `t. There's sure to  be a bad nut in a  basketful. Tha mun ta'e th' rough
wi' th' smooth.'
     He took his  hand away from her breast,  not touching her.  And now she
was untouched she took an almost  perverse satisfaction in it. She hated the
dialect: the thee and the  tha  and the thysen. He could get up if he liked,
and stand there,  above her, buttoning down those  absurd corduroy breeches,
straight in front of her. After  all, Michaelis had had the decency to  turn
away. This  man was so assured in himself he didn't know  what a clown other
people found him, a half-bred fellow.
     Yet, as he  was drawing away, to rise silently and leave her, she clung
to him in terror.
     `Don't! Don't go! Don't leave me! Don't be cross with me! Hold me! Hold
me fast!' she whispered in blind frenzy, not even knowing what she said, and
clinging to  him with uncanny force. It was from  herself she wanted  to  be
saved, from her  own inward anger  and resistance. Yet how powerful was that
inward resistance that possessed her!
     He took  her  in  his arms again  and drew her to him, and suddenly she
became small in  his arms,  small and nestling. It was gone, the  resistance
was gone,  and  she began  to melt in a marvellous peace. And as she  melted
small and wonderful in his arms, she became infinitely desirable to him, all
his blood-vessels seemed to scald with  intense yet tender desire, for  her,
for her  softness,  for  the penetrating beauty of her  in his arms, passing
into his blood.  And softly, with  that marvellous swoon-like caress of  his
hand  in pure soft desire, softly he  stroked  the silky slope of her loins,
down, down between her soft warm buttocks, coming nearer  and nearer  to the
very quick of her. And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender,  and
she felt herself  melting in the flame. She  let  herself go.  She felt  his
penis  risen against her with silent amazing force and assertion and she let
herself go to  him She yielded with a  quiver  that was like death, she went
all open to him. And oh, if he were not  tender to  her now,  how cruel, for
she was all open to him and helpless!
     She  quivered  again  at the  potent inexorable  entry  inside her,  so
strange  and terrible. It  might come  with  the thrust of a  sword  in  her
softly-opened body, and that would be  death. She clung in a sudden  anguish
of terror. But it came with a strange  slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust
of peace and a ponderous, primordial  tenderness, such  as made the world in
the beginning. And her terror subsided in her breast, her breast dared to be
gone in peace, she held nothing. She dared to let go everything, all herself
and be gone in the flood.
     And  it seemed she was  like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and
heaving, heaving with a great swell, so  that slowly her  whole darkness was
in motion, and she was Ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass. Oh,  and far  down
inside her the  deeps parted and rolled asunder,  in  long,  fair-travelling
billows,  and  ever,  at  the quick  of her, the  depths  parted and  rolled
asunder, from the centre of  soft plunging,  as the plunger went deeper  and
deeper, touching lower, and she was deeper and deeper and  deeper disclosed,
the  heavier  the billows of  her rolled away to some shore, uncovering her,
and closer and closer plunged the palpable  unknown, and further and further
rolled the waves of herself away from herself leaving her, till suddenly, in
a soft, shuddering convulsion, the  quick of all her plasm  was touched, she
knew herself touched, the consummation was  upon  her, and she was gone. She
was gone, she was not, and she was born: a woman.
     Ah,  too  lovely, too  lovely! In  the  ebbing  she  realized  all  the
loveliness. Now all her body  clung with tender love to the unknown man, and
blindly to  the  wilting  penis,  as it  so  tenderly, frailly,  unknowingly
withdrew,  after the fierce thrust  of its potency. As it drew out and  left
her body, the secret, sensitive thing, she gave  an unconscious cry of  pure
loss, and she tried to put it back. It had been so perfect! And she loved it
so!
     And  only  now  she became  aware of  the small, bud-like reticence and
tenderness  of the penis, and a little cry of wonder and  poignancy  escaped
her  again,  her woman's heart  crying  out over the tender  frailty of that
which had been the power.
     `It  was  so  lovely!' she  moaned. `It was  so  lovely!'  But he  said
nothing, only softly  kissed her, lying still above her. And she moaned with
a sort Of bliss, as a sacrifice, and a newborn thing.
     And now in her heart the queer wonder of him was awakened.
     A man! The  strange potency of manhood upon her! Her hands strayed over
him, still  a  little  afraid.  Afraid  of that strange,  hostile,  slightly
repulsive thing that he had been to her, a man. And now she touched him, and
it was the sons of god with the daughters of men. How beautiful he felt, how
pure in tissue! How lovely, how lovely, strong, and yet  pure  and delicate,
such  stillness of  the sensitive body! Such utter stillness of  potency and
delicate flesh. How beautiful! How beautiful! Her hands came timorously down
his back, to the soft, smallish globes of the buttocks. Beauty! What beauty!
a  sudden  little flame  of new awareness  went  through  her.  How  was  it
possible, this beauty here, where she had previously only been repelled? The
unspeakable  beauty  to  the touch  of the warm,  living buttocks!  The life
within life, the  sheer  warm, potent loveliness. And the  strange weight of
the balls  between his legs! What a mystery! What a strange  heavy weight of
mystery, that could lie soft and heavy in one's hand! The roots, root of all
that is lovely, the primeval root of all full beauty.
     She clung to him, with a hiss of wonder that was almost awe, terror. He
held her close, but he said nothing. He  would never say anything. She crept
nearer to him, nearer, only to be near to the sensual wonder of him. And out
of his utter, incomprehensible stillness, she felt again the slow momentous,
surging rise of the phallus again, the other power. And her heart melted out
with a kind of awe.
     And this time his being within  her was all soft and iridescent, purely
soft and iridescent, such as no consciousness  could  seize. Her whole  self
quivered unconscious and alive, like plasm. She could not  know what it was.
She could not remember what it had been. Only that it had  been  more lovely
than anything  ever could  be.  Only that. And afterwards  she  was  utterly
still, utterly unknowing, she was not aware for  how long. And he  was still
with her, in an unfathomable silence along with her. And of this, they would
never speak.
     When  awareness of the  outside began to  come back, she  clung to  his
breast, murmuring `My love!  My love!'  And he held  her silently.  And  she
curled on his breast, perfect.
     But his  silence  was  fathomless.  His hands held her like flowers, so
still aid strange. `Where are you?' she whispered to him.
     `Where are you? Speak to me! Say something to me!'
     He kissed her softly, murmuring: `Ay, my lass!'
     But she  did not know what he meant, she did not  know where he was. In
his silence he seemed lost to her.
     `You love me, don't you?' she murmured.
     `Ay, tha knows!' he said. `But tell me!' she pleaded.
     `Ay! Ay! 'asn't ter felt it?' he said dimly, but softly and surely. And
she clung close to him, closer. He was  so much  more  peaceful in love than
she was, and she wanted him to reassure her.
     `You do love me!' she whispered, assertive. And  his hands stroked  her
softly, as if  she were  a flower,  without  the  quiver of desire, but with
delicate nearness. And still there haunted her a restless necessity to get a
grip on love.
     `Say you'll always love me!' she pleaded.
     `Ay!' he  said, abstractedly. And she  felt her questions  driving  him
away from her.
     `Mustn't we get up?' he said at last.
     `No!' she said.
     But she could feel his  consciousness straying, listening to the noises
outside.
     `It'll  be nearly  dark,'  he  said.  And  she  heard  the  pressure of
circumstances in his voice. She kissed him, with a woman's grief at yielding
up her hour.
     He rose, and  turned up the lantern, then began to pull on his clothes,
quickly disappearing inside them. Then he  stood there, above her, fastening
his breeches and looking down at her with dark, wide-eyes, his face a little
flushed and his  hair ruffled, curiously warm and still and beautiful in the
dim  light  of the  lantern, so  beautiful,  she would  never  tell  him how
beautiful. It made her want to cling fast to him, to hold him, for there was
a warm, half-sleepy remoteness in his beauty  that made her want to  cry out
and clutch him,  to have him. She would never have him. So  she  lay  on the
blanket with curved, soft naked  haunches, and he had  no idea  what she was
thinking, but  to him too she was  beautiful, the soft,  marvellous thing he
could go into, beyond everything.
     `I love thee that I call go into thee,' he said.
     `Do you like me?' she said, her heart beating.
     `It heals it  all up, that I  can  go into thee. I  love thee  that tha
opened to me. I love thee that I came into thee like that.'
     He bent  down and  kissed  her soft flank, rubbed his cheek against it,
then covered it up.
     `And will you never leave me?' she said.
     `Dunna ask them things,' he said.
     `But you do believe I love you?' she said.
     `Tha loved  me just now, wider than iver tha  thout tha would.  But who
knows what'll 'appen, once tha starts thinkin' about it!'
     `No, don't say those things!---And you don't really think that I wanted
to make use of you, do you?'
     `How?'
     `To have a child---?'
     `Now anybody can 'ave any childt i' th' world,' he said, as he sat down
fastening on his leggings.
     `Ah no!' she cried. `You don't mean it?'
     `Eh well!' he said, looking at her under his brows. `This wor t' best.'
     She lay still. He  softly opened the door. The sky was dark  blue, with
crystalline,  turquoise rim. He  went  out, to  shut up  the  hens, speaking
softly to his dog. And she lay and wondered at  the  wonder of life,  and of
being.
     When he came back she was still  lying there, glowing like  a gipsy. He
sat on the stool by her.
     `Tha mun come one naight ter  th' cottage, afore tha goos; sholl  ter?'
he asked,  lifting  his eyebrows  as  he looked at her,  his hands  dangling
between his knees.
     `Sholl ter?' she echoed, teasing.
     He smiled. `Ay, sholl ter?' he repeated.
     `Ay!' she said, imitating the dialect sound.
     `Yi!' he said.
     `Yi!' she repeated.
     `An' slaip wi' me,' he said. `It needs that. When sholt come?'
     `When sholl I?' she said.
     `Nay,' he said, `tha canna do't. When sholt come then?'
     `'Appen Sunday,' she said.
     `'Appen a' Sunday! Ay!'
     He laughed at her quickly.
     `Nay, tha canna,' he protested.

        Chapter 13

     On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning,
the pear-blossom and plum had  suddenly appeared in the world in a wonder of
white here and there.
     It  was cruel  for Clifford, while  the  world bloomed, to  have to  be
helped  from  chair to bath-chair.  But he had forgotten, and even seemed to
have a certain conceit of himself  in his lameness.  Connie still  suffered,
having to lift his inert legs into place. Mrs Bolton did it now, or Field.
     She waited for him at the  top of the drive, at the  edge of the screen
of beeches. His chair came puffing along  with a sort of valetudinarian slow
importance. As he joined his wife he said:
     `Sir Clifford on his roaming steed!'
     `Snorting, at least!' she laughed.
     He stopped and  looked round at the facade of the long,  low  old brown
house.
     `Wragby doesn't wink an eyelid!'  he said.  `But then why should it!  I
ride upon the achievements of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.'
     `I suppose  it does. And  the souls in Plato riding up  to heaven  in a
two-horse chariot would go in a Ford car now,' she said.
     `Or a Rolls-Royce: Plato was an aristocrat!'
     `Quite! No more black horse to thrash and maltreat. Plato never thought
we'd go one better  than his black  steed and his white  steed, and have  no
steeds at all, only an engine!'
     `Only an engine and gas!' said Clifford.
     `I hope I  can  have some repairs done to the  old  place next  year. I
think I shall  have about a thousand to spare for  that:  but work costs  so
much!' he added.
     `Oh, good!' said Connie. `If only there aren't more strikes!'
     `What  would  be the  use  of  their striking  again!  Merely  ruin the
industry, what's left of it: and surely the owls are beginning to see it!'
     `Perhaps they don't mind ruining the industry,' said Connie.
     `Ah, don't talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if
it  can't keep their pockets quite so flush,' he said, using turns of speech
that oddly had a twang of Mrs Bolton.
     `But   didn't   you   say   the   other    day   that    you   were   a
conservative-anarchist,' she asked innocently.
     `And did you  understand  what I meant?' he  retorted. `All I meant is,
people can be what they like and feel what they like and do what they  like,
strictly privately,  so long as they  keep  the form of life intact, and the
apparatus.'
     Connie walked on in silence a few paces. Then she said, obstinately:
     `It sounds like saying an egg may go as  addled as it likes, so long as
it keeps its shell on whole. But addled eggs do break of themselves.'
     `I don't think people are eggs,'  he  said. `Not even angels'  eggs, my
dear little evangelist.'
     He was  in  rather high feather  this  bright morning. The  larks  were
trilling away over the park, the distant pit in the hollow was fuming silent
steam. It was  almost like  old  days,  before the war. Connie didn't really
want to  argue. But then  she  did not really want to  go  to  the wood with
Clifford either. So she walked beside his  chair in a  certain  obstinacy of
spirit.
     `No,' he  said. `There  will  be  no  more  strikes, it.  The  thing is
properly managed.'
     `Why not?'
     `Because strikes will be made as good as impossible.'
     `But will the men let you?' she asked.
     `We  shan't  ask  them. We shall do  it while they aren't  looking: for
their own good, to save the industry.'
     `For your own good too,' she said.
     `Naturally! For the  good  of everybody. But  for  their good even more
than mine. I can live without the pits. They can't. They'll starve if  there
are no pits. I've got other provision.'
     They looked  up the shallow valley at  the mine, and beyond it,  at the
black-lidded  houses  of Tevershall crawling like some serpent  up the hill.
From the old brown church the bells were ringing: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
     `But will the men let you dictate terms?' she said. `My dear, they will
have to: if one does it gently.'
     `But mightn't there be a mutual understanding?'
     `Absolutely: when  they  realize that  the  industry  comes before  the
individual.'
     `But must you own the industry?' she said.
     `I don't.  But to the extent  I do  own  it, yes,  most decidedly.  The
ownership of  property has now become a religious  question: as  it has been
since Jesus and St Francis. The point is not: take all thou hast and give to
the poor, but use all thou  hast to encourage the  industry and give work to
the poor.  It's the only  way to feed  all  the  mouths and clothe  all  the
bodies.  Giving  away all we have to the poor spells starvation for the poor
just  as much as  for us. And  universal  starvation  is no  high aim.  Even
general poverty is no lovely thing. Poverty is ugly.'
     `But the disparity?'
     `That is  fate. Why is the star Jupiter bigger than  the star  Neptune?
You can't start altering the make-up of things!'
     `But when this envy and  jealousy and discontent has once started,' she
began.
     `Do, your best to stop it. Somebody's got to be boss of the show.'
     `But who is boss of the show?' she asked.
     `The men who own and run the industries.'
     There was a long silence.
     `It seems to me they're a bad boss,' she said.
     `Then you suggest what they should do.'
     `They don't take their boss-ship seriously enough,' she said.
     `They take it far more seriously than you take your ladyship,' he said.
     `That's thrust  upon me. I don't really want it,'  she  blurted out. He
stopped the chair and looked at her.
     `Who's shirking their responsibility now!' he said.  `Who  is trying to
get away now  from the  responsibility of  their  own boss-ship, as you call
it?'
     `But I don't want any boss-ship,' she protested.
     `Ah! But that is funk. You've got it: fated to it. And  you should live
up to it. Who has given the colliers  all they have that's worth having: all
their  political  liberty,  and  their  education,  such  as  it  is,  their
sanitation,  their health-conditions, their books,  their music, everything.
Who  has  given  it them? Have colliers  given  it to colliers? No! All  the
Wragbys  and  Shipleys  in  England  have  given their part, and must  go on
giving. There's your responsibility.'
     Connie listened, and flushed very red.
     `I'd  like  to  give  something,'  she  said.  `But  I'm  not  allowed.
Everything is to be sold  and paid  for now; and all the things you  mention
now, Wragby  and Shipley  sells  them  to the people,  at  a  good  prof it.
Everything  is sold. You don't  give one  heart-beat  of real sympathy.  And
besides, who has taken away  from the people their natural life and manhood,
and given them this industrial horror? Who has done that?'
     `And what must I do?' he  asked,  green. `Ask them to come and  pillage
me?'
     `Why  is  Tevershall  so ugly,  so  hideous?  Why  are  their  lives so
hopeless?'
     `They  built  their  own  Tevershall, that's part of  their display  of
freedom. They built themselves their pretty Tevershall, and they live  their
own pretty lives. I can't live their lives for them. Every  beetle must live
its own life.'
     `But you make them work for you. They live the life of your coal-mine.'
     `Not at  all. Every beetle finds its own food. Not one man is forced to
work for me.
     `Their lives are  industrialized  and  hopeless, and  so are ours,' she
cried.
     `I don't think  they are. That's just  a romantic  figure  of speech, a
relic  of the swooning and die-away  romanticism.  You don't look  at all  a
hopeless figure standing there, Connie my dear.'
     Which  was true.  For her dark-blue eyes were flashing, her  colour was
hot  in her  cheeks, she  looked full of a  rebellious passion far from  the
dejection  of  hopelessness.  She noticed,  ill the  tussocky  places of the
grass,  cottony young cowslips standing up still bleared  in their down. And
she wondered with rage, why it was  she felt Clifford was so wrong,  yet she
couldn't say it to him, she could not say exactly where he was wrong.
     `No wonder the men hate you,' she said.
     `They don't!' he replied. `And don't fall into errors: in your sense of
the word, they are not men. They are animals you don't understand, and never
could. Don't thrust your illusions on other people.  The masses  were always
the same, and will always be the  same. Nero's slaves were  extremely little
different  from our colliers or the Ford motor-car  workmen.  I mean  Nero's
mine  slaves  and  his  field  slaves.  It  is  the  masses:  they  are  the
unchangeable. An  individual  may emerge from the masses. But the  emergence
doesn't alter the  mass. The masses are  unalterable. It  is one of the most
momentous  facts of social science. Panem et circenses! Only today education
is  one of  the bad substitutes  for a circus.  What  is wrong today is that
we've  made a profound hash  of  the  circuses  part  of  the programme, and
poisoned our masses with a little education.'
     When Clifford became really  roused  in  his feelings about  the common
people,  Connie was frightened.  There  was something  devastatingly true in
what he said. But it was a truth that killed.
     Seeing her pale  and silent, Clifford started  the chair  again, and no
more was said till he halted again at the wood gate, which she opened.
     `And what we need to take up now,' he sa