第56章

And this was his native place.There was even his mother,though she had never meant very much to him.And he could go on in life,existing from day to day,without connexion and without hope.For he did not know what to do with himself.

He did not know what to do with himself.Since he had been an officer for some years,and had mixed among the other officers and civil servants,with their wives and families,he had lost all ambition to 'get on'.There was a toughness,a curious rubbernecked toughness and unlivingness about the middle and upper classes,as he had known them,which just left him feeling cold and different from them.

So,he had come back to his own class.To find there,what he had forgotten during his absence of years,a pettiness and a vulgarity of manner extremely distasteful.He admitted now at last,how important manner was.He admitted,also,how important it was even to pretend not to care about the halfpence and the small things of life.But among the common people there was no pretence.A penny more or less on the bacon was worse than a change in the Gospel.He could not stand it.

And again,there was the wage-squabble.Having lived among the owning classes,he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the wage-squabble.

There was no solution,short of death.The only thing was not to care,not to care about the wages.

Yet,if you were poor and wretched you had to care.Anyhow,it was becoming the only thing they did care about.The care about money was like a great cancer,eating away the individuals of all classes.

He refused to care about money.

And what then?What did life offer apart from the care of money?Nothing.

Yet he could live alone,in the wan satisfaction of being alone,and raise pheasants to be shot ultimately by fat men after breakfast.It was futility,futility to the nth power.

But why care,why bother?And he had not cared nor bothered till now,when this woman had come into his life.He was nearly ten years older than she.And he was a thousand years older in experience,starting from the bottom.The connexion between them was growing closer.He could see the day when it would clinch up and they would have to make a life together.

'For the bonds of love are ill to loose!'

And what then?What then?Must he start again,with nothing to start on?Must he entangle this woman?Must he have the horrible broil with her lame husband?And also some sort of horrible broil with his own brutal wife,who hated him?Misery!Lots of misery!And he was no longer young and merely buoyant.Neither was he the insouciant sort.Every bitterness and every ugliness would hurt him:and the woman!

But even if they got clear of Sir Clifford and of his own wife,even if they got clear,what were they going to do?What was he,himself going to do?What was he going to do with his life?For he must do something.

He couldn't be a mere hanger-on,on her money and his own very small pension.

It was the insoluble.He could only think of going to America,to try a new air.He disbelieved in the dollar utterly.But perhaps,perhaps there was something else.

He could not rest nor even go to bed.After sitting in a stupor of bitter thoughts until midnight,he got suddenly from his chair and reached for his coat and gun.

'Come on,lass,'he said to the dog.'We're best outside.'

It was a starry night,but moonless.He went on a slow,scrupulous,soft-stepping and stealthy round.The only thing he had to contend with was the colliers setting snares for rabbits,particularly the Stacks Gate colliers,on the Marehay side.But it was breeding season,and even colliers respected it a little.Nevertheless the stealthy beating of the round in search of poachers soothed his nerves and took his mind off his thoughts.

But when he had done his slow,cautious beating of his bounds--it was nearly a five-mile walk--he was tired.He went to the top of the knoll and looked out.There was no sound save the noise,the faint shuffling noise from Stacks Gate colliery,that never ceased working:and there were hardly any lights,save the brilliant electric rows at the works.The world lay darkly and fumily sleeping.It was half past two.But even in its sleep it was an uneasy,cruel world,stirring with the noise of a train or some great lorry on the road,and flashing with some rosy lightning flash from the furnaces.It was a world of iron and coal,the cruelty of iron and the smoke of coal,and the endless,endless greed that drove it all.Only greed,greed stirring in its sleep.

It was cold,and he was coughing.A fine cold draught blew over the knoll.He thought of the woman.Now he would have given all he had or ever might have to hold her warm in his arms,both of them wrapped in one blanket,and sleep.All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there,to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket,and sleep,only sleep.It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.

He went to the hut,and wrapped himself in the blanket and lay on the floor to sleep.But he could not,he was cold.And besides,he felt cruelly his own unfinished nature.He felt his own unfinished condition of aloneness cruelly.He wanted her,to touch her,to hold her fast against him in one moment of completeness and sleep.