Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 278
Gilbert shook hands with Childe Rolande, then with Fanny, whom he knew slightly, and then with Harold, to whom he was now introduced. Harold had gone rather stiff and solemn, like an actor in a play.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Well, how are we?” said Gilbert rather awkwardly to Emmie.
“Oh, just about in the pink, like,” she replied. She was cross, and showed it.
He was rather disconcerted.
“I saw your mother this afternoon,” he began.
“Where?” she snapped. “Sit down some of you, and make a bit of daylight. It’s like being in a wood.”
Fanny handed Gilbert a chair, Childe Rolande sat assertively on the bed, at the foot, and Harold went to the next bedroom and was heard bumping the legs of a chair as he carried it in, while Fanny looked agonies for baby.
“Where did you see mother?” asked Fanny pleasandy.
“At Lewie Goddard’s.”
“And she was all right?”
“Yes — seemed so. Worried, you know.”
“What, about Emmie?”
“Yes — and one of the children with measles: but getting better, I believe.”
“Tissie hasn’t got them then?” asked Fanny.
“I didn’t hear your mother say so.”
“Because when they start, they usually go through the house. I hope baby won’t catch them.”
“There’s no reason why she should, is there?”
“Oh, they’re very bad in Eakrast “
And Emmie, Walter George, and Harold sat like stuffed ducks while this conversation wound its way through all the circumstances of measles in the Warsop Vale region.
Emmie had not told Walter George about Gilbert and the fracas. She had warned the other two not to speak of it. And now she was in such a temper she could not, for her life, think of anything to say. She sat propped up in bed, looking very blooming, but with a frown between her little brows. She twisted and twisted her ring with its big ruby, round and round her finger, and grew more tense as she felt the Fanny-Gilbert conversation running down. She had asked Harold to bring Gilbert up because she always preferred to trust rather to her ready wit than to her powers for inventing a plausible lie in answer to troublesome questions. And now she was as stupid as a stuffed owl, and couldn’t say a word. The conversation died, there was an awful vacuum of a pause. Meanwhile Emmie sat in the bed with her head dropped, twisting and twisting her ring. In another minute she would be flying into tears: and Walter George sat near her feet worse than a monument.
Harold Hardraade lifted his head.
“You came on a motor-bike didn’t you, Mr Noon?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
“I thought I heard one come up the lane.”
“I lost my way the other side of Blidworth and got to Sutton before I knew where I was. And then coming through Huthwaite I had something wrong with my engine, and had to stop and have that seen to.”
“My word, you have had a journey. What time did you start?”
“Why I was coming down Woodhouse hill at a quarter to six.”
“My word, and it’s after ten. You’ve been out of your road some.”
“I have. I don’t know these roads round here, and it’s like riding in a puzzle.”
“Oh, the roads through the forest and round-about, they’re very misleading. You’d best have come through Thoresby, you know. It’s a bit longer, but it’s a better road. What made you go Blidworth way?”
Started an itinerary conversation between the motor-cyclist and the push-cyclist, whilst Emmie still turned her ring, and Childe Rolande stared inquiringly and rather mortified at the newcomer. He resented the intrusion deeply. Not only was he forced to smell a rat, but even he must have the rat thrust under his nostrils. He sat rather stiff on the bed, and turned the side of his rosy cheek unrelentingly towards the bothered Emmie.
The itinerary conversation slowed down, and Fanny felt she must get out of it. She couldn’t stand it.
“I’ll go and make the cocoa,” she said, rising. “You’ll have a cup of cocoa, won’t you, Mr Noon?”
“No thanks, I won’t trouble you.”
“Yes do. It’s no trouble. I’ll make you one then. Harold you’ll go to baby if he cries.”
“All right,” said Harold.
And when Fanny departed a hoar-frost of silence once more settled on the dislocated party. Harold began to get a resigned martyr-at-the-stake look, Walter George was becoming thoroughly sulky, and Emmie was breathing short. Gilbert sat looking rather vacant — a trick he had when he was ill at ease.
Suddenly came a thin wail from the unknown.
“There’s baby,” said Harold, and with all the alacrity of a young husband he quitted the room.
The frost now became a black frost. It seemed as if each of the three of them remaining in the bedroom would have been killed rather than utter a word to either of the others. A deadlock! Lips and hearts were padlocked. The trinity sat as if enchanted in a crystal pillar of dense and stupid silence. Emmie felt the pains coming on again, Gilbert felt how cold his feet were with the cycling, and Walter George felt that a can-opener would never open his heart or lips again. He was soldered down.
From the next bedroom they could hear all the soothing sounds of the young husband, sounds anything but soothing to one who is not a first-born and an infant in arms. From below they heard the clink of tea-spoons and smelled the steam of stirring cocoa. And suddenly Gilbert lifted his head.
“What ring is that?” he asked.
Emmie started, and stared defiantly.
“What, this? It’s my engagement ring.”
“Mine,” said Childe Rolande, with a sulky yelp. Whereupon he became nearly as red as the re-composed ruby.
And immediately the frost settled down again, the padlocks snapped shut, and the solder went hard in the burning lid- joints of Walter-George’s heart. For a few seconds, Gilbert went to sleep, the cold air having numbed him. Walter George sat on the edge of the bed and looked over blackly at his toe- tips. Emmie tried to scheme, and almost got hold of the tail of a solution, when it evaded her again.
A soft, very soft, fear-of-waking-baby voice floated like a vapour up the stairs.
“Cocoa’s ready.”
Gilbert woke and looked round at the door, but did not stir. Childe Rolande did not bend his gloomy looks, but stretched his neck downwards over the bed-edge and stubbornly contemplated his nice brown shoes as if he had heard no sound.
“Go and have your cocoa,” said Emmie, speaking to t’other- or-which, as the saying is. But she was completely ineffectual. Gilbert sat dreamily, vacandy on, and Childe Rolande sank his chin nearer and nearer his knees, as he perched on the edge of the bed like some ungraceful bird.
Emmie now gave way to resignation. Was she not the base of this obtuse-angled triangle, this immortal trinity, this framework of the universe? It was not for her to break the three-cornered tension. Let fate have its way. If Gilbert had not given himself to vacancy the problem might seriously have concerned him: how to resolve an obtuse-angled triangle into a square of the same dimensions. But he was glotzing, if we may borrow the word.
But eternity has rested long enough on this tripod footing, the universe has been framed quite long enough inside a triangle, and the doctrine of the trinity has had its day. Time now the sacred figure, which magicians declare to be malevolent, dissolved into its constituents, or disappeared in a resultant of forces.
Oh Deus ex machina, get up steam and come to our assistance, for this obtuse-angled triangle looks as if it would sit there stupidly forever in the spare bedroom at Eakrast. Which would be a serious misfortune to us, who have to make our bread and butter chronicling the happy marriage and the prize-taking cauliflowers of Emmie and Walter George, and the further lapses of Mr Noon.
So, Deus ex machina, come. Come, God in the Machine, Come! Be invoked! Puff thy blessed steam, or even run by electricity, but come, oh Machine-God, thou Wheel of Fate and Fortune, spin thy spokes of destiny and roll into the Eakrast bedroom, lest Time stand still and Eternity remain a deadlock.
Is our prayer in vain? We fear it is. The God in the machine is perhaps too busy elsewhere. Alas, no wheel will incline its axle in our direction, no petrol will vaporise into spirit for our sakes. Emmie, and Childe Rolande, and Mr Noon may sit forever in the Eakrast bedroom.
Well then, let them. Let them go to hell. We can at least be as manly as Walter George, in our heat of the moment.
Gentle reader, this is the end of Mr Noon and Emmie. If you really must know, Emmie married Walter George, who reared prize cauliflowers, whilst she reared dear little Georgian children, and all went happy ever after.
As for Mr Noon! Ah, Mr Noon! There is a second volume in store for you, dear reader. Pray heaven there may not be a third.
But the second volume is in pickle. The cow in this vol. having jumped over the moon, in the next the dish, dear reader, shall run away with the spoon. Scandalous the elopement, and a decree nisi for the fork. Which is something to look forward to.
PART II.
Chapter XIII.
High Germany.
The sun was shining brightly when Mr Noon awoke in his bedroom in the ancient and beer-brewing city of Munich, capital of Bavaria, queen of the lovely southern lands of Germany. Does not the Marienkirche lift her twin brown cupolas capped with green copper over roofs and palaces and look pleasandy round her this morning? For behold, the snow is melting, and is piled in heaps in the thawing streets. Behold, the sun is shining, and the time of the singing of the birds has almost come. Behold, the long, watchful line of the ice-pale Alps stands like a row of angels with flaming swords in the distance, barring us from the paradise of the South. Behold the land of the thawing snow stretches northward and westward to the lakes like chrysoprase this morning, and the foothills of more Alps, and the rolling plains of Germany, and the islands of the west. Yes, the islands of the west, meaning the British Isles. We will say Islands of the Blest, if you wish it, gentle reader.
Well then, here you are and the rolling plains of Germany, and the islands of the Blest. Yes, the islands of the Blest, meaning the British Isles. Now you’ve got it.
After which I hope I can say what I like. For if that sop doesn’t sweeten Cerberus, I hope it’ll choke him.
No, I’m not going to tell you how Mr Noon got out of the Eakrast bedroom; I am not. Eat the sop I’ve given you, and don’t ask for more till I’ve got up the steep incline of the next page and have declined like a diminished traveller over the brow of the third.
You’ll not hear another word about Emmie. In fact there is no Emmie. I saw someone coming down the street when I was in Woodhouse last Christmas, and I thought I knew her walk. She was in a pale-coloured fur coat and a cap of black- seal-fur, and she had a little girl by the hand, a little girl clad in a white curly-woolly coat and white woollen gaiters. “Dear me,” thought I, “what a lot of gentry crops up in Woodhouse nowadays.”
So I crossed the road, beaming becomingly.
“Why how are you E “
But the child raised its round blue eyes, and I saw a chorister hovering.
“Mrs Whiffen,” I concluded.
“Quite well thanks. How are you?”
How brisk, how sharp, how rapped out, how coined in the mint of the realm! If the head of King George had been embossed on every one of her words, as it is on pennies, it could not have given a sounder ring of respectability and genuine currency. I felt like a man who is caught trying to change a bad shilling, and hurriedly fished a few half-pence of well-worn small-talk out of my purse, and rushed the risky shilling back to cover. I wouldn’t have pronounced the name Emmie, not for worlds, in the presence of that fur coat and infant.
There! I said you wouldn’t hear another word about Emmie, and you haven’t. If I have mentioned Mrs Whiffen, as she sauntered down Knarborough Road in a pale-coloured fur coat and a black seal-coney cap, leading a little woolly-curly, gaitered girl by the hand, I have done so designedly, to prevent your thinking, gentle reader, that I have no presentable acquaintances at all.
And Mr Noon! You have heard that he awoke in his bedroom in the ancient, royal, and beer-brewing city of Munich. Well, and what by that? Is there anything wrong with it? I expect you are waiting for me to continue that the bedroom was a room in a brothel: or in a third-rate and shady hotel: or in a garret, or in a messy artistic-bohemian house where a lot of lousy painters and students worked their abominations. Oh, I know you, gentle reader. In your silent way you would like to browbeat me into it. But I’ve kicked over the traces at last, and I shall kick out the splashboard of this apple-cart if I have any more expectations to put up with.
Mr Noon awoke in none of these places. He awoke in a very nice bedroom with a parquet floor and very nice Biedermeier furniture of golden-coloured satin-wood or something of that sort, with a couple of handsome dark-red-and-dark-blue oriental rugs lying on the lustrous amber polish of the parquet floor. He awoke with his nose trying to emerge over the white cumulous cloud of his swollen but downy overbolster. He awoke with the sun coming through the double windows, with a handful of gentian looking very blue on his round Biedermeier table, and a servant in a dark-red cotton dress entering with a cup of eight-o’clock tea. He sat up quite comfortably in bed to take his tea, and said Guten Morgen to Julie. I say he sat up comfortably because the air in the room was dulcet and warm, for the house had central heating.
Now, gende reader, I had better give you time to readjust yourself. You had better go upstairs and change your dress and above all, your house shoes. You had better tell the maid to light the drawing-room fire, or light it yourself if there is nothing else for it. In the Isles of the Blest every house has its drawing-room, and the drawing-room fire is always lighted to receive company.
“Let your light so shine — ”
And while you are changing your dress let me explain that we stand upon another footing now. Not that we have lost a leg in Badajos’s breaches, but that we have gone up a peg or two. Man is mercurial, and goes up and down in the social scale like a barometer in the weather. This I hope you will allow, gentle reader, even if you be at the moment perched high upon Mount Batten, or on that Windsorial eminence which you share with nothing but soap.
What is man, his days are as grass. Though he rise today above the vulgar democratic leaves of grass as high as a towering stalk of fools-parsley, tomorrow the scythe of the mower will leave him as low as the dandelion. What is a social status nowadays? The wind passeth over it and it is gone, though the place thereof may see it again next summer, even the crown of the cow-parsnip soaring above the herd of green.
While you are changing your dress, gentle reader, don’t get in a stew because you have never heard of Biedermeier or because you don’t know what Bavaria is doing in connection with such a disreputable land as Germany. Bavaria can’t help it, and Biedermeier doesn’t matter. We can’t all be born in the Isles of the Blest; only a few of us fortunate ones: Te Deum laudamus.
Let me re-introduce you, by your leave, to Mr Noon. Kindly forget that it ever rhymed with spoon. In German a spoon is a Loffel, and Noon is now. It isn’t my fault that Noon is Now in German — but so it is. So pray cast out of your mind that spoon association, and be prepared for the reincarnation of Mr Now. Noon is Now. That is, he is at his zenith, and you, gentle reader, may even belong to the afternoon.
“Gentle reader, may I introduce you — Mr Noon.”
Bow, gentle reader, bow across space to Munich, ancient capital of ancient kings, known to the British youth on the beautiful postage-stamps. Beautiful postage-stamps of Bavaria, Bayern so beautifully lettered, do they now stamp black ink words of obliteration across you? Ah well, they didn’t in Mr Noon’s day. And therefore, gentle reader, be on your best behaviour at once, for the ancient and royal court is only just round the corner, and who knows what Kammerjunker or what Lady in Waiting may be casting a supercilious eye over your manners.
“The Herr Professor is already there,” said the maidservant, tapping and entering once more as Mr Noon tied his bow tie: the identical tie he had tied for Patty and for Emmie.
“Right,” said Mr Noon.
And in another moment he was striding across the amber flooring of the hall, to the breakfast room.
“Ha! There you are. Julie! Julie!” sang the Herr Professor, covering his fretful impatience with a certain jocularity. He was a smallish man with white hair and big white moustache and little white imperial and very blue eyes and a face not very old. In fact he was just over fifty, and restless and fidgetty. He had spent ten years in England, so spoke English well, if in the rather hard-breathing, German fashion. How Gilbert came to be living in his flat I shan’t tell you. I am sick of these explanations. Sufficient that the Herr Professor was called Alfred Kramer, and that he held a chair in the university.
He had brought various little English fads with him to Munich, and one of these was Quaker Oats. Julie appeared with the plates of Quaker Oats, and the two men sat down opposite one another. The professor — we will call him Alfred and so spite all titled Germany — seemed to be pondering. He tucked his napkin under his chin and ate his porridge without saying a word. Catching sight of a spot on the linen tablecloth, he poked it with a carefully-manicured finger-nail, like a child. His eyes had a petulant look.
Gilbert, who was not to be outmatched in a game of silence, contented himself with his own thoughts. He half-divined the petulance and fussiness of his host, and therefore withheld his attention. Though he lived with the professor house-free, he gave certain valuable assistance with a book his host was providing, and felt he earned his salt. He knew that Alfred at the bottom was glad of his presence. For the fretful, petulant professor was one of those Germans who find the presence of an Englishman soothing and reassuring, seem to derive a certain stability from it. And therefore Gilbert took no notice of moods, and Alfred was careful not to be really offensive.
