“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 circumstance 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 can 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 gypsy. 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.
“Why canna I?” she said.
He laughed. Her attempts at the dialect were so ludicrous, somehow.
“Coom then, tha mun goo!” he said.
“Mun I?” she said.
“Maun Ah!” he corrected.
“Why should I say maun when you said mun,” she protested. “You’re not playing fair.”
“Arena Ah!” he said, leaning forward and softly stroking her face.
“Tha’rt good cunt, though, aren’t ter? Best bit o’ cunt left on earth. When ter likes! When tha’rt willin’!”
“What is cunt?” she said.
“An’ doesn’t ter know? Cunt! It’s thee down theer; an’ what I get when I’m i’side thee, and what tha gets when I’m i’side thee; it’s a’ as it is, all on’t.”
“All on’t,” she teased. “Cunt! It’s like fuck then.”
“Nay nay! Fuck’s only what you do. Animals fuck. But cunt’s a lot more than that. It’s thee, dost see: an’ tha’rt a lot beside an animal, aren’t ter? even ter fuck! Cunt! Eh, that’s the beauty o’ thee, lass!”
She got up and kissed him between the eyes, that looked at her so dark and soft and unspeakably warm, so unbearably beautiful.
“Is it?” she said. “And do you care for me?”
He kissed her without answering.
“Tha mun goo, let me dust thee,” he said.
His hand passed over the curves of her body, firmly, without desire, but with soft, intimate knowledge.
As she ran home in the twilight the world seemed a dream; the trees in the park seemed bulging and surging at anchor on a tide, and the heave of the slope to the house was alive.
XIII
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 foaming steed!”
“Snorting, at least!” she laughed.
He stopped and looked round at the façade 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
