tal as you like. And then  when she'd put me right off, and I didn't
want her,  she'd come all lovey-dovey, and get  me. And I always  went.  But
when I had her, she'd never come off when I did. Never! She'd  just wait. If
I kept back for half an hour,  she'd keep back longer. And when I'd come and
really  finished,  then she'd start on her own account,  and I had  to  stop
inside her  till she  brought  herself  off, wriggling  and  shouting, she'd
clutch clutch  with  herself  down there, an' then she'd come off,  fair  in
ecstasy. And then  she'd say: That  was lovely! Gradually  I got sick of it:
and she got worse. She sort of got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd
sort of tear at  me down there, as if it was a beak  tearing at me.  By God,
you think a woman's soft down  there, like  a fig. But  I tell you  the  old
rampers have  beaks between their  legs, and they tear at you  with it  till
you're  sick.  Self! Self!  Self! all self!  tearing and shouting! They talk
about  men's selfishness,  but I  doubt if it can ever touch a woman's blind
beakishness,  once she's gone that way. Like an  old trull! And she couldn't
help it. I told her about it, I told her how I hated it. And she'd even try.
She'd try to lie still and let me work the business. She'd  try.  But it was
no  good. She got no feeling  off it, from my working. She  had to work  the
thing herself, grind her own  coffee.  And it came back on her like a raving
necessity, she had to let herself go, and tear, tear, tear, as if she had no
sensation in her except in the  top of her beak, the very  outside  top tip,
that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores  used to be, so men used to say.
It was a low kind of self-will in her, a raving sort of self-will: like in a
woman who drinks.  Well  in the end I couldn't stand it. We slept apart. She
herself had started it, in her bouts when she wanted to be clear of me, when
she  said  I bossed her. She had  started having a room for herself. But the
time came when I wouldn't have her coming to my room. I wouldn't.
     `I hated it.  And  she hated me. My God,  how she hated me before  that
child  was born! I often think  she conceived it out of hate.  Anyhow, after
the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up.
And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate.
     He broke off, pale in the face.
     `And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?' asked Connie.
     `A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they
both drink.'
     `My word, if she came back!'
     `My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again.'
     There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash.
     `So when you did get a  woman who  wanted you,' said Connie, `you got a
bit too much of a good thing.'
     `Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than  the  never-never
ones: the  white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily,  and
the rest.'
     `What about the rest?' said Connie.
     `The rest?  There is no rest.  Only to my experience the mass of  women
are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put
up with  it, as part of the bargain.  The  more old-fashioned sort  just lie
there like nothing and let you  go ahead. They don't  mind afterwards:  then
they  like  you.  But the  actual thing  itself  is  nothing to them,  a bit
distasteful. Add most men  like it that way. I  hate it. But the sly sort of
women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate
and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up. Then there's the
ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off,
every  kind  except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're
not in the  only place  you  should  be, when you go off.---Then there's the
hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off,
like  my  wife. They want to  be the active party.---Then there's  the  sort
that's just dead  inside: but dead:  and they know it. Then there's the sort
that puts you  out before you really  "come", and go on writhing their loins
till they  bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly  the
Lesbian sort.  It's  astonishing  how  Lesbian  women  are,  consciously  or
unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian.'
     `And do you mind?' asked Connie.
     `I  could  kill  them. When I'm with a woman  who's  really Lesbian,  I
fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her.'
     `And what do you do?'
     `Just go away as fast as I can.'
     `But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?'
     `I do! Because I've suffered more  from them. In the  abstract, I've no
idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman, whether she knows she's one or not, I
see red. No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman any more.
I wanted to keep to myself: keep my privacy and my decency.'
     He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.
     `And were you sorry when I came along?' she asked.
     `I was sorry and I was glad.'
     `And what are you now?'
     `I'm  sorry, from the outside:  all the  complications and the ugliness
and recrimination that's bound  to  come,  sooner  or  later. That's when my
blood sinks, and I'm low. But  when my  blood comes  up, I'm glad.  I'm even
triumphant. I was really  getting  bitter. I  thought there  was no real sex
left:  never a woman who'd really "come" naturally with a man:  except black
women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit like mud.'
     `And now, are you glad of me?' she asked.
     `Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can't  forget the rest, I want
to get under the table and die.'
     `Why under the table?'
     `Why?' he laughed. `Hide, I suppose. Baby!'
     `You do seem to have had awful experiences of women,' she said.
     `You see,  I couldn't  fool myself. That's where most  men manage. They
take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I
wanted with a woman, and I could never say I'd got it when I hadn't.'
     `But have you got it now?'
     `Looks as if I might have.'
     `Then why are you so pale and gloomy?'
     `Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself.'
     She sat in silence. It was growing late.
     `And do you think it's important, a man and a woman?' she asked him.
     `For me it is.  For  me it's  the  core of my life:  if I  have a right
relation with a woman.'
     `And if you didn't get it?'
     `Then I'd have to do without.'
     Again she pondered, before she asked:
     `And do you think you've always been right with women?'
     `God,  no! I let my wife get to what she  was: my fault a  good deal. I
spoilt her. And I'm very mistrustful.  You'll have to expect  it. It takes a
lot  to make me  trust  anybody,  inwardly. So perhaps  I'm  a  fraud too. I
mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken.'
     She looked at him.
     `You don't  mistrust  with  your  body, when your  blood comes up,' she
said. `You don't mistrust then, do you?'
     `No, alas! That's how I've got into all the trouble. And  that's why my
mind mistrusts so thoroughly.'
     `Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!'
     The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash-clogged fire sank.
     `We are a couple of battered warriors,' said Connie.
     `Are  you battered too?' he laughed. `And here we  are returning to the
fray!'
     `Yes! I feel really frightened.'
     `Ay!'
     He got up, and  put her shoes  to dry, and wiped  his own and  set them
near the  fire.  In the morning  he would  grease them. He poked the  ash of
pasteboard as much as possible  out of the fire. `Even burnt, it's  filthy,'
he said. Then he brought sticks  and put  them  on the hob for the  morning.
Then he went out awhile with the dog.
     When he came back, Connie said:
     `I want to go out too, for a minute.'
     She went alone into the darkness. There were  stars overhead. She could
smell flowers on  the night air. And she could  feel  her  wet shoes getting
wetter again. But  she  felt  like  going away,  right  away  from  him  and
everybody.
     It was chilly. She shuddered, and returned to the house. He was sitting
in front of the low fire.
     `Ugh! Cold!' she shuddered.
     He put the sticks on the fire, and  fetched more, till they had a  good
crackling chimneyful  of blaze. The rippling running yellow flame made  them
both happy, warmed their faces and their souls.
     `Never mind!'  she said, taking his  hand as he sat silent  and remote.
`One does one's best.'
     `Ay!' He sighed, with a twist of a smile.
     She slipped over to him,  and into his arms, as he sat there before the
fire.
     `Forget then!' she whispered. `Forget!'
     He held her close, in the running warmth of the  fire. The flame itself
was like a  forgetting.  And her soft, warm, ripe  weight!  Slowly his blood
turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.
     `And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly,
only perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps it wasn't all their fault,' she said.
     `I know it. Do you think I don't know what a broken-backed snake that's
been trodden on I was myself!'
     She clung to  him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again.
Yet some perversity had made her.
     `But you're not now,'  she  said. `You're not that now: a broken-backed
snake that's been trodden on.'
     `I don't know what I am. There's black days ahead.'
     `No!' she protested, clinging to him. `Why? Why?'
     `There's black days coming for us  all and for everybody,' he  repeated
with a prophetic gloom.
     `No! You're not to say it!'
     He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair inside him.
That was the death of all desire, the death of all love:  this despair  that
was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.
     `And you talk so  coldly about sex,'  she said. `You talk as if you had
only wanted your own pleasure and satisfaction.'
     She was protesting nervously against him.
     `Nay!' he  said.  `I wanted  to have my  pleasure and satisfaction of a
woman,  and  I never  got  it: because I  could never get  my  pleasure  and
satisfaction of her unless she got hers of me at the same time. And it never
happened. It takes two.'
     `But you never believed in your women. You don't even believe really in
me,' she said.
     `I don't know what believing in a woman means.'
     `That's it, you see!'
     She still was curled on his lap. But his spirit was grey and absent, he
was not there for her. And everything she said drove him further.
     `But what do you believe in?' she insisted.
     `I don't know.'
     `Nothing, like all the men I've ever known,' she said.
     They were both silent. Then he roused himself and said:
     `Yes,  I  do believe in  something. I  believe in being  warmhearted. I
believe especially  in being  warm-hearted in love,  in  fucking with a warm
heart. I believe if  men could fuck  with warm hearts, and the women take it
warm-heartedly, everything would  come all right. It's all this cold-hearted
fucking that is death and idiocy.'
     `But you don't fuck me cold-heartedly,' she protested.
     `I don't want to fuck you at all.  My heart's as  cold as cold potatoes
just now.'
     `Oh!'  she said, kissing him mockingly. `Let's have them  sautčes.'  He
laughed, and sat erect.
     `It's  a fact!' he  said.  `Anything for a bit of warm-heartedness. But
the  women  don't like it.  Even you don't  really like it. You  like  good,
sharp, piercing  cold-hearted  fucking,  and then pretending it's all sugar.
Where's your tenderness for me? You're as  suspicious of me as a cat is of a
dog. I tell  you it  takes two even to be tender and warm-hearted.  You love
fucking  all  right:  but  you want  it to  be  called  something grand  and
mysterious,  just  to   flatter   your   own   self-importance.   Your   own
self-importance  is more to you,  fifty  times more, than  any man, or being
together with a man.'
     `But that's what I'd say of you. Your own self-importance is everything
to you.'
     `Ay! Very well then!' he  said, moving as if he wanted to  rise. `Let's
keep apart then. I'd rather die than do any more cold-hearted fucking.'
     She slid away from him, and he stood up.
     `And do you think I want it?' she said.
     `I  hope you  don't,' he replied. `But  anyhow, you go to bed  an' I'll
sleep down here.'
     She  looked  at him. He  was  pale,  his brows were sullen,  he  was as
distant in recoil as the cold pole. Men were all alike.
     `I can't go home till morning,' she said.
     `No! Go to bed. It's a quarter to one.'
     `I certainly won't,' she said.
     He went across and picked up his boots.
     `Then I'll go out!' he said.
     He began to put on his boots. She stared at him.
     `Wait!' she faltered. `Wait! What's come between us?'
     He  was bent  over, lacing  his boot,  and did  not  reply. The moments
passed. A dimness came over her,  like a swoon. All her  consciousness died,
and she stood there  wide-eyed,  looking at  him from  the  unknown, knowing
nothing any more.
     He looked up,  because of the silence, and  saw her wide-eyed and lost.
And as if a wind tossed him he got  up and hobbled over to her, one shoe off
and one shoe on, and took her in his  arms, pressing her  against  his body,
which somehow felt hurt right  through. And there he held her, and there she
remained.
     Till his hands reached blindly down and felt for  her, and  felt  under
the clothing to where she was smooth and warm.
     `Ma lass!' he murmured. `Ma little lass! Dunna let's light! Dunna let's
niver light! I love thee  an' th' touch on thee. Dunna argue wi'  me! Dunna!
Dunna! Dunna! Let's be together.'
     She lifted her face and looked at him.
     `Don't be upset,' she  said steadily. `It's no good being upset. Do you
really want to be together with me?'
     She  looked with wide, steady eyes into his face.  He stopped, and went
suddenly still,  turning his face aside. All his body  went perfectly still,
but did not withdraw.
     Then he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, with his odd, faintly
mocking grin, saying: `Ay-ay! Let's be together on oath.'
     `But  really?' she said, her eyes filling with tears. `Ay really! Heart
an' belly an' cock.'
     He still smiled  faintly down at her, with  the flicker of irony in his
eyes, and a touch of bitterness.
     She was silently weeping, and he lay with her and  went into her  there
on the hearthrug, and so they gained a measure  of equanimity. And then they
went quickly to bed, for it was growing chill, and they had tired each other
out. And she nestled up  to him, feeling small  and enfolded, and  they both
went to sleep at once, fast in one  sleep. And so they lay and  never moved,
till the sun rose over the wood and day was beginning.
     Then he woke up and  looked at the light. The  curtains were drawn.  He
listened to the loud wild calling of blackbirds and thrushes in the wood. It
would be a brilliant  morning, about half past five, his hour for rising. He
had slept so fast! It was such  a new day! The woman was still curled asleep
and tender. His hand moved on her, and she  opened her blue  wondering eyes,
smiling unconsciously into his face.
     `Are you awake?' she said to him.
     He was looking into her eyes.  He smiled, and kissed her. And  suddenly
she roused and sat up.
     `Fancy that I am here!' she said.
     She  looked  round the whitewashed  little  bedroom  with  its  sloping
ceiling and gable window where the white curtains were closed.  The room was
bare save for a little yellow-painted chest of drawers, and a chair: and the
smallish white bed in which she lay with him.
     `Fancy that we  are here!' she said, looking down at  him. He was lying
watching  her,  stroking her  breasts  with  his  fingers,  under  the  thin
nightdress. When he was warm and smoothed out, he looked young and handsome.
His eyes could look so warm. And she was fresh and young like a flower.
     `I  want to take  this  off!' she  said,  gathering  the  thin  batiste
nightdress  and pulling it over her head. She  sat there with bare shoulders
and  longish breasts  faintly  golden.  He  loved to  make her breasts swing
softly, like bells.
     `You must take off your pyjamas too,' she said.
     `Eh, nay!'
     `Yes! Yes!' she commanded.
     And  he  took  off  his old cotton  pyjama-jacket,  and pushed down the
trousers. Save for  his hands and wrists and face and neck  he  was white as
milk, with fine slender muscular flesh. To Connie he was suddenly piercingly
beautiful again, as when she had seen him that afternoon washing himself.
     Gold of sunshine  touched  the closed white curtain. She felt it wanted
to come in.
     `Oh, do let's draw the curtains!  The  birds are singing so! Do let the
sun in,' she said.
     He slipped out of bed with his back to  her, naked  and white and thin,
and went to the  window, stooping a little, drawing the curtains and looking
out for a moment. The back was white and fine, the small buttocks  beautiful
with an  exquisite,  delicate manliness,  the  back of  the neck  ruddy  and
delicate and yet strong.
     There was an inward, not an outward strength in the delicate fine body.
     `But  you are beautiful!' she said. `So pure  and fine! Come!' She held
her arms out.
     He was ashamed to turn to her, because of his aroused nakedness.
     He caught his shirt off the floor, and held it to him, coming to her.
     `No!' she  said still  holding  out  her beautiful slim  arms  from her
dropping breasts. `Let me see you!'
     He  dropped the shirt and  stood  still looking  towards  her.  The sun
through the low window sent in a beam that lit up his thighs and slim  belly
and  the erect phallos rising darkish and hot-looking from the  little cloud
of vivid gold-red hair. She was startled and afraid.
     `How strange!' she said slowly.  `How strange he  stands there! So big!
and so dark and cock-sure! Is he like that?'
     The man looked down the  front of his slender white body, and  laughed.
Between the slim breasts the hair was dark, almost black. But at the root of
the  belly, where the phallos rose thick and arching, it was gold-red, vivid
in a little cloud.
     `So  proud!' she murmured, uneasy.  `And so lordly!  Now I know why men
are  so overbearing! But he's  lovely,  really.  Like another  being!  A bit
terrifying! But lovely really! And he comes to  me!---' She caught her lower
lip between her teeth, in fear and excitement.
     The man  looked  down  in silence  at the tense phallos,  that  did not
change.---`Ay!' he said at last, in a little voice. `Ay ma lad! tha're theer
right enough. Yi, tha mun rear thy head! Theer on thy own, eh?  an' ta'es no
count O' nob'dy! Tha ma'es  nowt  O'  me, John  Thomas. Art boss?  of me? Eh
well, tha're more cocky than me, an'  tha says less. John  Thomas! Dost want
her? Dost want my lady Jane? Tha's dipped me in again, tha hast. Ay, an' tha
comes up smilin'.---Ax 'er then! Ax lady Jane! Say: Lift up your heads, O ye
gates, that  the king of glory may  come  in. Ay, th' cheek on  thee!  Cunt,
that's  what  tha're after. Tell lady Jane tha wants cunt.  John Thomas, an'
th' cunt O' lady Jane!---'
     `Oh, don't tease  him,' said Connie, crawling on her  knees on  the bed
towards him and putting her arms round  his white slender loins, and drawing
him  to her so that  her hanging, swinging  breasts touched the tip  of  the
stirring, erect phallos, and  caught  the drop of moisture. She held the man
fast.
     `Lie down!' he said. `Lie down! Let me come!' He was in a hurry now.
     And  afterwards,  when  they had  been quite  still,  the  woman had to
uncover the man again, to look at the mystery of the phallos.
     `And now  he's tiny,  and  soft like a little bud  of  life!' she said,
taking the soft small penis in her hand. `Isn't he somehow lovely! so on his
own, so  strange! And  so innocent! And  he comes so far  into  me! You must
never insult  him, you know. He's mine  too. He's not only yours. He's mine!
And so lovely and innocent!' And she held the penis soft in her hand.
     He laughed.
     `Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in kindred love,' he said.
     `Of course!' she said. `Even  when he's soft and little I feel my heart
simply  tied  to  him.  And  how lovely  your hair  is  here!  quite,  quite
different!'
     `That's John Thomas's hair, not mine!' he said.
     `John Thomas! John Thomas!' and she quickly kissed the soft penis, that
was beginning to stir again.
     `Ay!' said the man, stretching his body almost painfully. `He's got his
root in my soul, has  that gentleman! An' sometimes I don' know  what ter do
wi' him. Ay, he's got a will of  his own, an'  it's hard  to suit him. Yet I
wouldn't have him killed.'
     `No wonder men have always been  afraid of him!' she said. `He's rather
terrible.'
     The  quiver was  going  through  the  man's  body,  as  the  stream  of
consciousness again  changed  its  direction, turning downwards. And  he was
helpless, as the penis  in slow  soft undulations filled and surged and rose
up,  and  grew hard,  standing there hard and  overweening,  in  its curious
towering fashion. The woman too trembled a little as she watched.
     `There! Take him then! He's thine,' said the man.
     And she quivered,  and  her own mind melted  out. Sharp soft  waves  of
unspeakable  pleasure  washed over  her as he entered  her, and started  the
curious molten thrilling that spread and  spread  till she was carried  away
with the last, blind flush of extremity.
     He  heard the distant hooters of Stacks Gate for  seven o'clock. It was
Monday morning. He shivered a  little, and with his face between her breasts
pressed her soft breasts up over his ears, to deafen him.
     She  had  not even heard the hooters. She lay perfectly still, her soul
washed transparent.
     `You must get up, mustn't you?' he muttered.
     `What time?' came her colourless voice.
     `Seven-o'clock blowers a bit sin'.'
     `I suppose I must.'
     She was resenting as she always did, the compulsion from outside.
     He sat up and looked  blankly out of the window. `You do love me, don't
you?' she asked calmly. He looked down at her.
     `Tha  knows what  tha  knows. What  dost  ax for!'  he  said,  a little
fretfully.
     `I want you to keep me, not to let me go,' she said.
     His eyes seemed full of a warm, soft darkness that could not think.
     `When? Now?'
     `Now in your heart. Then  I want  to come  and  live with you,  always,
soon.'
     He sat naked on the bed, with his head dropped, unable to think.
     `Don't you want it?' she asked.
     `Ay!' he said.
     Then with the same  eyes darkened with another flame of  consciousness,
almost like sleep, he looked at her.
     `Dunna  ax  me nowt now,' he said. `Let me be.  I like thee. I luv thee
when tha lies theer. A  woman's a lovely thing when 'er's deep ter fuck, and
cunt's good. Ah luv thee, thy legs, an' th' shape on thee, an' th' womanness
on thee.  Ah  luv th' womanness on  thee. Ah luv thee wi' my bas an'  wi' my
heart. But  dunna ax  me nowt. Dunna ma'e me  say nowt. Let  me stop as I am
while I can. Tha can ax me iverything after. Now let me be, let me be!'
     And softly, he laid his hand over her mound of Venus, on the soft brown
maiden-hair, and himself-sat still and naked on the bed, his face motionless
in physical abstraction, almost like the face of Buddha. Motionless, and  in
the  invisible flame of another  consciousness, he sat with his hand on her,
and waited for the turn.
     After a while, he reached for his shirt and put it on,  dressed himself
swiftly in  silence, looked  at her  once as she still lay naked and faintly
golden like a Gloire de Dijon rose on the  bed, and was gone. She  heard him
downstairs opening the door.
     And still she lay musing, musing. It was  very hard to go: to go out of
his arms.  He  called  from the foot of  the stairs:  `Half past seven!' She
sighed, and got out of bed. The bare little room! Nothing  in it  at all but
the  small  chest of drawers and the smallish bed. But  the board  floor was
scrubbed clean. And in the corner by the window gable was  a shelf with some
books,  and  some from a circulating library.  She looked. There  were books
about Bolshevist Russia, books of  travel, a  volume about the atom  and the
electron, another about the composition of the earth's core, and the  causes
of earthquakes: then a  few  novels: then three books on India. So! He was a
reader after all.
     The sun fell on her naked  limbs through the gable  window. Outside she
saw the dog  Flossie roaming round. The hazel-brake  was misted  with green,
and  dark-green dogs-mercury  under. It was a clear clean morning with birds
flying  and  triumphantly  singing.  If only she  could stay!  If only there
weren't the other ghastly world of smoke and iron! If only he would make her
a world.
     She  came downstairs,  down the steep,  narrow wooden stairs. Still she
would be content with this little house, if only it were  in  a world of its
own.
     He  was  washed and fresh,  and  the  fire was burning.  `Will  you eat
anything?' he said.
     `No! Only lend me a comb.'
     She followed him  into the scullery, and  combed  her hair  before  the
handbreadth of mirror by the back door. Then she was ready to go.
     She stood in the little  front garden, looking at the dewy flowers, the
grey bed of pinks in bud already.
     `I  would like to have all the rest of the world disappear,'  she said,
`and live with you here.'
     `It won't disappear,' he said.
     They went almost in silence through the lovely dewy wood. But they were
together in a world of their own.
     It was bitter to her to go on to Wragby.
     `I want soon to come  and live with  you altogether,' she  said as  she
left him.
     He smiled, unanswering.
     She got home quietly and unremarked, and went up to her room.

        Chapter 15

     There was a letter  from Hilda on the breakfast-tray. `Father  is going
to London  this week, and I shall call  for you on Thursday week, June 17th.
You must be ready so that we can go at once. I don't want to  waste time  at
Wragby, it's an awful place. I shall probably stay the night at Retford with
the Colemans, so I should be with  you for lunch, Thursday.  Then  we  could
start at teatime, and sleep  perhaps in Grantham. It is no use our  spending
an evening with Clifford. If he hates your going, it would be no pleasure to
him.'
     So! She was being pushed round on the chess-board again.
     Clifford  hated her going,  but it was only because he didn't feel safe
in her absence. Her presence, for some reason,  made him feel safe, and free
to do the things he was occupied with. He was a great deal  at the pits, and
wrestling  in spirit  with the almost  hopeless problems of getting out  his
coal in  the most  economical  fashion and then  selling it when he'd got it
out. He knew he ought  to find some way  of using it, or  converting it,  so
that he needn't sell it, or needn't  have the chagrin of failing to sell it.
But if he made  electric power, could he sell that or use it? And to convert
into oil  was as yet too costly  and too elaborate. To keep  industry  alive
there must be more industry, like a madness.
     It was a madness, and it required a madman to  succeed  in it. Well, he
was a little mad. Connie thought  so. His very intensity  and acumen  in the
affairs of the pits seemed like a  manifestation of madness to her, his very
inspirations were the inspirations of insanity.
     He talked to her of all his serious schemes, and she listened in a kind
of  wonder, and let him talk. Then  the flow  ceased,  and  he turned on the
loudspeaker,  and  became a blank,  while  apparently  his schemes coiled on
inside him like a kind of dream.
     And every  night now he played pontoon, that game of  the Tommies, with
Mrs Bolton, gambling with sixpences. And again, in  the gambling he was gone
in  a  kind of unconsciousness,  or blank  intoxication, or  intoxication of
blankness, whatever it was. Connie could not  bear to see him. But  when she
had gone to bed, he and Mrs Bolton would gamble on till two and three in the
morning, safely, and with strange lust. Mrs Bolton was caught in the lust as
much as Clifford: the more so, as she nearly always lost.
     She told Connie one day: `I lost twenty-three shillings to Sir Clifford
last night.'
     `And did he take the money from you?' asked Connie aghast.
     `Why of course, my Lady! Debt of honour!'
     Connie  expostulated roundly,  and was  angry with  both of  them.  The
upshot was, Sir Clifford raised Mrs Bolton's wages a hundred a year, and she
could gamble  on that.  Meanwhile, it seemed to  Connie, Clifford was really
going deader.
     She told him at length she was leaving on the seventeenth.
     `Seventeenth!' he said. `And when will you be back?'
     `By the twentieth of July at the latest.'
     `Yes! the twentieth of July.'
     Strangely and blankly he looked at  her, with the vagueness of a child,
but with the queer blank cunning of an old man.
     `You won't let me down, now, will you?' he said.
     `How?'
     `While you're away, I mean, you're sure to come back?'
     `I'm as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back.'
     `Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!'
     He looked at her so strangely.
     Yet he really wanted her to go.  That was so curious.  He wanted her to
go,  positively,  to  have her  little  adventures  and  perhaps  come  home
pregnant, and all that. At the same time, he was afraid of her going.
     She was  quivering,  watching  her  real opportunity  for  leaving  him
altogether, waiting till the time, herself himself should be ripe.
     She sat and talked to the keeper of her going abroad.
     `And then  when I  come back,'  she said, `I can tell  Clifford I  must
leave him.  And you  and I can go away. They never need even know it is you.
We can go to another country, shall we? To Africa or Australia. Shall we?'
     She was quite thrilled by her plan.
     `You've never been to the Colonies, have you?' he asked her.
     `No! Have you?'
     `I've been in India, and South Africa, and Egypt.'
     `Why shouldn't we go to South Africa?'
     `We might!' he said slowly.
     `Or don't you want to?' she asked.
     `I don't care. I don't much care what I do.'
     `Doesn't  it make you  happy? Why not? We shan't  be poor. I have about
six hundred a year, I wrote and asked. It's not much, but it's enough, isn't
it?'
     `It's riches to me.'
     `Oh, how lovely it will be!'
     `But I ought to get divorced, and so ought you,  unless we're  going to
have complications.'
     There was plenty to think about.
     Another  day  she asked him  about himself. They  were in the  hut, and
there was a thunderstorm.
     `And weren't you happy, when you were a lieutenant and an officer and a
gentleman?'
     `Happy? All right. I liked my Colonel.'
     `Did you love him?'
     `Yes! I loved him.'
     `And did he love you?'
     `Yes! In a way, he loved me.'
     `Tell me about him.'
     `What is there to tell? He had risen from the ranks. He loved the army.
And he had  never married. He was twenty years older than  me. He was a very
intelligent man: and alone in  the army, as such a man is: a  passionate man
in his way:  and a very clever officer.  I lived under his spell while I was
with him. I sort of let him run my life. And I never regret it.'
     `And did you mind very much when he died?'
     `I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part of
me  was finished. But then I had always known it would finish  in death. All
things do, as far as that goes.'
     She sat  and ruminated. The thunder crashed outside. It was  like being
in a little ark in the Flood.
     `You seem to have such a lot behind you,' she said.
     `Do I? It seems to me I've died  once or twice already. Yet  here I am,
pegging on, and in for more trouble.'
     She was thinking hard, yet listening to the storm.
     `And weren't you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel
was dead?'
     `No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. `The Colonel  used to
say: Lad,  the  English  middle  classes have to chew every  mouthful thirty
times because  their guts are so  narrow, a bit as big  as a pea  would give
them a stoppage. They're the  mingiest set of ladylike  snipe ever invented:
full of conceit  of themselves, frightened even if  their boot-laces  aren't
correct, rotten as high game, and  always in the right. That's what finishes
me up.  Kow-tow,  kow-tow, arse-licking  till their tongues  are  tough: yet
they're always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation
of ladylike prigs with half a ball each---'
     Connie laughed. The rain was rushing down.
     `He hated them!'
     `No,' said  he. `He  didn't bother. He  just disliked  them.  There's a
difference. Because, as he said, the Tommies  are getting  just  as priggish
and half-balled  and  narrow-gutted. It's the fate of  mankind,  to go  that
way.'
     `The common people too, the working people?'
     `All the  lot.  Their  spunk is gone  dead. Motor-cars and cinemas  and
aeroplanes suck  that last bit  out  of them. I tell you,  every  generation
breeds a more  rabbity generation, with india rubber tubing for guts and tin
legs and tin faces. Tin  people! It's all  a  steady sort of bolshevism just
killing  off the human thing,  and worshipping the  mechanical thing. Money,
money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of  killing the old
human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam  and the old Eve.
They're  all alike.  The world is all alike:  kill off the  human reality, a
quid for every foreskin, two quid for each  pair of balls. What  is cunt but
machine-fucking!---It's  all  alike. Pay 'em  money to  cut off the  world's
cock.  Pay money, money, money to them that  will take spunk out of mankind,
and leave 'em all little twiddling machines.'
     He sat  there  in  the hut, his face pulled to  mocking irony. Yet even
then, he had one ear set backwards, listening to the storm over the wood. It
made him feel so alone.
     `But won't it ever come to an end?' she said.
     `Ay, it  will. It'll achieve its own salvation. When the  last real man
is  killed, and they're all tame:  white, black, yellow, all colours of tame
ones:  then they'll  all  be  insane. Because  the root of sanity  is in the
balls. Then they'll all be insane, and they'll make their grand ~auto da fe.
You  know auto da fe  means act of  faith? Ay, well, they'll make  their own
grand little act of faith. They'll offer one another up.'
     `You mean kill one another?'
     `I do, duckie! If we go on at our present rate then in a hundred years'
time there won't  be ten  thousand people  in this  island: there may not be
ten. They'll have  lovingly wiped each other  out.  The thunder was  rolling
further away.
     `How nice!' she said.
     `Quite  nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species and
the long pause that follows before some other species crops up, it calms you
more  than anything else. And  if  we go  on  in this  way, with  everybody,
intellectuals,   artists,   government,   industrialists  and  workers   all
frantically killing  off  the  last  human feeling,  the last  bit of  their
intuition,  the  last  healthy  instinct;  if  it  goes  on  in  algebraical
progression, as it is  going on: then ta-tah! to the human species! Goodbye!
darling! the serpent swallows itself and leaves a void,  considerably messed
up,  but not hopeless. Very nice! When savage wild dogs bark in Wragby,  and
savage wild pit-ponies stamp on Tevershall pit-bank! te deum laudamus!'
     Connie laughed, but not very happily.
     `Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists,' she said.
`You ought to be pleased that they hurry on towards the end.'
     `So I am. I don't stop 'em. Because I couldn't if I would.'
     `Then why are you so bitter?'
     `I'm not! If my cock gives its last crow, I don't mind.'
     `But if you have a child?' she said.
     He dropped his head.
     `Why,' he said at last. `It seems to me a wrong and bitter thing to do,
to bring a child into this world.'
     `No! Don't say it! Don't say it!'  she pleaded. `I  think I'm going  to
have one. Say you'll he pleased.' She laid her hand on his.
     `I'm  pleased for you to  be pleased,' he said. `But for me  it seems a
ghastly treachery to the unborn creature.
     `Ah no!' she said, shocked.  `Then you  can't ever  really want me! You
can't want me, if you feel that!'
     Again  he  was silent,  his  face sullen. Outside  there  was  only the
threshing of the rain.
     `It's not quite true!' she  whispered.  `It's  not  quite true! There's
another truth.' She  felt he was bitter now partly  because  she was leaving
him, deliberately going away to Venice. And this half pleased her.
     She  pulled open  his clothing  and uncovered his belly, and kissed his
navel.  Then  she laid her cheek on his belly  and pressed her arm round his
warm, silent loins. They were alone in the flood.
     `Tell me  you want a  child, in hope!' she murmured,  pressing her face
against his belly. `Tell me you do!'
     `Why!' he  said  at last: and  she  felt the curious quiver of changing
consciousness  and  relaxation going  through  his  body. `Why  I've thought
sometimes if  one but tried, here  among th' colliers  even! They're workin'
bad now, an'  not earnin' much. If a  man could  say to 'em: Dunna  think o'
nowt but th' money.  When it comes ter wants,  we want but little. Let's not
live for money---'
     She softly rubbed her cheek on his belly, and gathered his balls in her
hand.  The penis stirred softly, with strange life, but did not rise up. The
rain beat bruisingly outside.
     `Let's live for summat else. Let's not live ter make money, neither for
us-selves nor for anybody else. Now we're forced to.  We're forced to make a
bit for us-selves, an' a fair lot for th' bosses. Let's stop it! Bit by bit,
let's stop it. We needn't  rant an'  rave. Bit by bit,  let's drop the whole
industrial life an'  go back. The  least  little  bit o'  money'll  do.  For
everybody, me an'  you,  bosses an' masters, even th' king. The least little
bit o' money'll really  do. Just make up your mind to it, an' you've got out
o' th' mess.' He paused, then went on:
     `An'  I'd  tell  'em: Look! Look at Joe! He  moves  lovely! Look how he
moves, alive and aware. He's beautiful! An' look at Jonah! He's clumsy, he's
ugly, because he's niver willin' to rouse himself  I'd  tell 'em: Look! look
at yourselves! one shoulder  higher  than  t'other, legs twisted,  feet  all
lumps! What  have  yer  done  ter yerselves, wi'  the  blasted  work? Spoilt
yerselves. No  need to work  that  much. Take  yer  clothes off an' look  at
yourselves. Yer ought ter be alive  an'  beautiful, an'  yer  ugly  an' half
dead.  So I'd tell 'em. An'  I'd get my men to wear different clothes: appen
close red trousers,  bright red, an' little short white jackets. Why, if men
had red, fine legs, that alone would change them in a month. They'd begin to
be men again, to be men! An' the women could dress as they liked. Because if
once the men walked with legs close  bright scarlet,  and buttocks nice  and
showing scarlet under  a little white jacket: then the women 'ud begin to be
women. It's because th' men aren't men, that th'  women have to be.---An' in
time pull down Tevershall and build a few beautiful  buildings,  that  would
hold  us all.  An' clean the country up again. An'  not have  many children,
because the world is overcrowded.
     `But I  wouldn't preach  to the  men: only strip 'em an' say:  Look  at
yourselves! That's workin' for money!---Hark at yourselves!  That's  working
for money. You've been working for money! Look at Tevershall! It's horrible.
That's because  it was built  while  you was working for money. Look at your
girls!  They  don't care about you, you don't  care about them. It's because
you've spent your time working an' caring for money. You can't talk nor move
nor live, you  can't  properly  be with a woman. You're  not alive.  Look at
yourselves!'
     There fell a complete silence. Connie was half listening, and threading
in the  hair  at the  root of his belly a few  forget-me-nots that  she  had
gathered on the  way  to the hut. Outside, the world had gone  still,  and a
little icy.
     `You've got four  kinds of hair,'  she said to him. `On