D. H. Lawrence

“ When you are REALLY worked up to the true pitch, and you come at last into range, you don’t then aim as you do when you are firing at a bottle. It is your own WILL which carries the bullet into the heart of your quarry. The bullet’s flight home is a sheer projection of your own fate into the fate of the deer. It happens like a supreme wish, a supreme act of volition, not as a dodge of cleverness.
He was a huntsman in spirit, not a farmer, and not a soldier stuck in a regiment. And it was as a young hunter that he wanted to bring down March as his quarry, to make her his wife. ”

“ Seeing her always in the hard-cloth breeches, wide on the hips, buttoned on the knee, strong as armour, and in the brown puttees and thick boots, it had never occurred to him that she had a woman’s legs and feet. Now it came upon him. She had a woman’s soft, skirted legs, and she was accessible. He blushed to the roots of his hair, shoved his nose in his tea-cup and drank his tea with a little noise that made Banford simply squirm: and strangely, suddenly he felt a man, no longer a youth. He felt a man, with all a man’s grave weight of responsibility. ”

“ It was a lovely dog-fox in its prime, with a handsome, thick, winter coat: a lovely golden-red colour, with grey as it passed to the belly, and belly all white, and a great full brush with a delicate black and grey and pure white tip.
‘Poor brute!’ said Banford. ‘If it wasn’t such a thieving wretch, you’d feel sorry for it.’
March said nothing, but stood with her foot trailing aside, one hip out; her face was pale and her eyes big and black, watching the dead animal that was suspended upside down. White and soft as snow his belly: white and soft as snow. ”

“ Poor March, she had set off so wonderfully towards the blue goal. And the farther and farther she had gone, the more fearful had become the realization of emptiness. An agony, an insanity at last.
She was glad it was over. She was glad to sit on the shore and look westwards over the sea, and know the great strain had ended. She would never strain for love and happiness any more. And Jill was safely dead. Poor Jill, poor Jill. It must be sweet to be dead.
For her own part, death was not her destiny. She would have to leave her destiny to the boy. ”

“ The youth suddenly laughed. Both women looked at him: March rather surprised-looking, as if she had hardly known he was there.
‘Why, do you ever pay up on these occasions?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Banford. ‘We always do. I’ve sometimes had to pass a shilling a week to Nellie, in the winter-time. It costs much less in summer.’
‘What, paying for each other’s thoughts?’ he laughed.
‘Yes, when we’ve absolutely come to the end of everything else.’
He laughed quickly, wrinkling his nose sharply like a puppy and laughing with quick pleasure, his eyes shining. ”

“ He knew society was on top of him, and he must scheme. So with his teeth bitten together, and his nose curiously slightly lifted, like some creature that is vicious, and his eyes fixed and staring, he went through the morning’s affairs drunk with anger and suppression. In his mind was one thing — Banford. He took no heed of all March’s outpouring: none. One thorn rankled, stuck in his mind. Banford. In his mind, in his soul, in his whole being, one thorn rankling to insanity. And he would have to get it out. He would have to get the thorn of Banford out of his life, if he died for it. ”

“ From under the edge of the lamp-light the boy sat with his face looking up, watching her silently, his eyes round and very clear and intent. Banford, biting her fingers irritably, was glancing at him under her hair. He sat there perfectly still, his ruddy face tilted up from the low level under the light, on the edge of the dimness, and watching with perfect abstract intentness. March suddenly lifted her great, dark eyes from her crocheting and saw him. ”

“ Her desire to be invisible was so strong that it quite baffled the youth. He felt he could not see her distinctly. She seemed like a shadow within the shadow. And ever his eyes came back to her, searching, unremitting, with unconscious fixed attention.
Meanwhile he was talking softly and smoothly to Banford, who loved nothing so much as gossip, and who was full of perky interest, like a bird. Also he ate largely and quickly and voraciously, so that March had to cut more chunks of bread and margarine, for the roughness of which Banford apologized. ”

“ Banford was offended. For all his suave courtesy and soft voice, the youth seemed to her impudent. She did not like to look at him. She did not like to meet his clear, watchful eyes, she did not like to see the strange glow in his face, his cheeks with their delicate fine hair, and his ruddy skin that was quite dull and yet which seemed to burn with a curious heat of life. It made her feel a little ill to look at him: the quality of his physical presence was too penetrating, too hot.
After tea the evening was very quiet. The youth rarely went into the village. ”

“ Though he was so young, he had saved some money.
‘You never have to be without SOME money at the back of you, if you can help it,’ he said.
So she saw him off in the train that was going West: his camp was on Salisbury Plain. And with big, dark eyes she watched him go, and it seemed as if everything real in life was retreating as the train retreated with his queer, chubby, ruddy face, that seemed so broad across the cheeks, and which never seemed to change its expression, save when a cloud of sulky anger hung on the brow, or the bright eyes fixed themselves in their stare. ”

“ There was a moment’s blank pause.
‘What do you say, Nellie?’ asked Banford.
‘I don’t mind,’ said March, in her distinct tone. ‘The village doesn’t matter to me, anyhow.’
‘No,’ said the youth, quick and soft. ‘Why should it? I mean, what should they say?’
‘Oh, well,’ came March’s plangent, laconic voice, ‘they’ll easily find something to say. But it makes no difference what they say. We can look after ourselves.’
‘Of course you can,’ said the youth. ”

“ Then came March’s robust and reckless:
‘Oh, I can manage. Don’t you bother about me. You’ve all you can do to get yourself over.’
‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ said Banford fretfully. ‘You say, Don’t you bother about me, and then all the while you feel injured because nobody thinks of you.’
‘When do I feel injured?’ said March.
‘Always. You always feel injured. Now you’re feeling injured because I won’t have that boy to come and live on the farm.’
‘I’m not feeling injured at all,’ said March. ‘I know you are. When he’s gone you’ll sulk over it. I know you will.’
‘Shall I?’ said March. ”

“ March had four-fifths of the work to do, and though she did not mind, there seemed no relief, and it made her eyes flash curiously sometimes. Then Banford, feeling more nerve-worn than ever, would become despondent, and March would speak sharply to her. They seemed to be losing ground, somehow, losing hope as the months went by. There alone in the fields by the wood, with the wide country stretching hollow and dim to the round hills of the White Horse, in the far distance, they seemed to have to live too much off themselves. ”

“ If he was not careful, she would turn round on him with her savage, sardonic ridicule, and dismiss him from the farm and from her own mind for ever. He would have to go gently. He would have to catch her as you catch a deer or a woodcock when you go out shooting. It’s no good walking out into the forest and saying to the deer: ‘Please fall to my gun.’ No, it is a slow, subtle battle. When you really go out to get a deer, you gather yourself together, you coil yourself inside yourself, and you advance secretly, before dawn, into the mountains. ”

“ She resented the big, raw, long-legged youth sticking his khaki knees out and sitting there with his soldier’s shirt-cuffs buttoned on his thick red wrists. From time to time he turned a page, and from time to time he gave a sharp look at the fire, settling the logs. Then he immersed himself again in the intense and isolated business of reading.
March, on the far side of the table, was spasmodically crocheting. Her mouth was pursed in an odd way, as when she had dreamed the fox’s brush burned it, her beautiful, crisp black hair strayed in wisps. ”

“ She was only fully at peace whilst he forgot her, talking to Banford. Hidden in the shadow of the corner, she need not any more be divided in herself, trying to keep up two planes of consciousness. She could at last lapse into the odour of the fox.
For the youth, sitting before the fire in his uniform, sent a faint but distinct odour into the room, indefinable, but something like a wild creature. March no longer tried to reserve herself from it. She was still and soft in her corner like a passive creature in its cave. ”

“ No matter how March made up the fences, the heifer was out, wild in the woods, or trespassing on the neighbouring pasture, and March and Banford were away, flying after her, with more haste than success. So this heifer they sold in despair. Then, just before the other beast was expecting her first calf, the old man died, and the girls, afraid of the coming event, sold her in a panic, and limited their attentions to fowls and ducks.
In spite of a little chagrin, it was a relief to have no more cattle on hand. Life was not made merely to be slaved away. ”

“ What were you doing out there?’
‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘we had to stop that hole in the barn to keeps the rats out.’
‘Why, I could see you standing there in the shed. I could see your shirt-sleeves,’ challenged Banford.
‘Yes, I was just putting the saw away.’
They went in to tea. March was quite mute. Her face was pale and strained and vague. The youth, who always had the same ruddy, self-contained look on his face, as though he were keeping himself to himself, had come to tea in his shirt-sleeves as if he were at home. He bent over his plate as he ate his food. ”

“ We shall hold on a bit longer yet,’ said March, with a plangent, half-sad, half-ironical indifference.
‘There wants a man about the place,’ said the youth softly.
Banford burst out laughing.
‘Take care what you say,’ she interrupted. ‘We consider ourselves quite efficient.’
‘Oh,’ came March’s slow plangent voice, ‘it isn’t a case of efficiency, I’m afraid. If you’re going to do farming you must be at it from morning till night, and you might as well be a beast yourself.’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the youth. ”

“ Banford’s voice:
‘No, I simply couldn’t stand it. I should be dead in a month. Which is just what he would be aiming at, of course. That would just be his game, to see me in the churchyard. No, Nellie, if you were to do such a thing as to marry him, you could never stop here. I couldn’t, I couldn’t live in the same house with him. Oh! — oh! I feel quite sick with the smell of his clothes. And his red face simply turns me over. I can’t eat my food when he’s at the table. What a fool I was ever to let him stop. One ought NEVER to try to do a kind action. ”

“ Away to the West, Canada, America. She WOULD know and she WOULD see what was ahead. And the boy, sitting beside her, staring down at the gulls, had a cloud between his brows and the strain of discontent in his eyes. He wanted her asleep, at peace in him. He wanted her at peace asleep in him. And THERE she was, dying with the strain of her own wakefulness. Yet she would not sleep: no, never. Sometimes he thought bitterly that he ought to have left her. He ought never to have killed Banford. He should have left Banford and March to kill one another. ”

“ The young man — or youth, for he would not be more than twenty — now advanced and stood in the inner doorway. March, already under the influence of his strange, soft, modulated voice, stared at him spellbound. He had a ruddy, roundish face, with fairish hair, rather long, flattened to his forehead with sweat. His eyes were blue, and very bright and sharp. On his cheeks, on the fresh ruddy skin were fine, fair hairs, like a down, but sharper. ”

“ And then in a last agonized failure she began to grizzle, to cry in a shivery little fashion of a child that doesn’t want to cry, but which is beaten from within, and gives that little first shudder of sobbing which is not yet weeping, dry and fearful.
He had won. She stood there absolutely helpless, shuddering her dry sobs and her mouth trembling rapidly. And then, as in a child, with a little crash came the tears and the blind agony of sightless weeping. She sank down on the grass, and sat there with her hands on her breast and her face lifted in sightless, convulsed weeping. ”

“ When I think of Jill, she is ten times more real to me. I know her and I’m awfully fond of her, and I hate myself for a beast if I ever hurt her little finger. We have a life together. And even if it can’t last for ever, it is a life while it does last. ”

“ The red sun was setting, the fowls were retiring towards their roost. She watched them, white creatures, black creatures, gathering to the barn. She watched them spellbound, without seeing them. But her automatic intelligence told her when it was time to shut the door.
She went indoors to supper, which Banford had set on the table. Banford chatted easily. March seemed to listen, in her distant, manly way. ”

“ Don’t make it any fixed engagement,’ said Banford. ‘Leave yourself free to go or not after he’s got back and found you a place, Nellie. Anything else is madness, madness.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said the youth, ‘we ought to get married before I go — and then go together, or separate, according to how it happens?’
‘I think it’s a terrible idea,’ cried Banford.
But the boy was watching March. ”

“ She stretched out her hand, but suddenly he bit her wrist, and at the same instant, as she drew back, the fox, turning round to bound away, whisked his brush across her face, and it seemed his brush was on fire, for it seared and burned her mouth with a great pain. She awoke with the pain of it, and lay trembling as if she were really seared.
In the morning, however, she only remembered it as a distant memory. She arose and was busy preparing the house and attending to the fowls. Banford flew into the village on her bicycle to try and buy food. She was a hospitable soul. ”

“ Banford became a little puzzled. She watched the steady, pellucid gaze of the youth’s eyes as he looked at March, with the invisible smile gleaming on his face. She did not know how he was smiling, for no feature moved. It seemed only in the gleam, almost the glitter of the fine hairs on his cheeks. Then he looked with quite a changed look at Banford.
‘I’m sure,’ he said in his soft, courteous voice, ‘you’re awfully good. You’re too good. You don’t want to be bothered with me, I’m sure.’
‘Cut a bit of bread, Nellie,’ said Banford uneasily, adding: ‘It’s no bother, if you like to stay. ”