Page 359 - sons-and-lovers

with Clara and her for a walk. They set off down to Strelley
Mill Farm. As they were going beside the brook, on the Wil-
ley Water side, looking through the brake at the edge of the
wood, where pink campions glowed under a few sunbeams,
they saw, beyond the tree-trunks and the thin hazel bushes,
a man leading a great bay horse through the gullies. The
big red beast seemed to dance romantically through that
dimness of green hazel drift, away there where the air was
shadowy, as if it were in the past, among the fading bluebells
that might have bloomed for Deidre or Iseult.
The three stood charmed.
‘What a treat to be a knight,’ he said, ‘and to have a pa-
vilion here.’
‘And to have us shut up safely?’ replied Clara.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘singing with your maids at your
broidery. I would carry your banner of white and green
and heliotrope. I would have ‘W.S.P.U.’ emblazoned on my
shield, beneath a woman rampant.’
‘I have no doubt,’ said Clara, ‘that you would much rath-
er fight for a woman than let her fight for herself.’
‘I would. When she fights for herself she seems like a dog
before a looking-glass, gone into a mad fury with its own
shadow.’
‘And YOU are the looking-glass?’ she asked, with a curl
of the lip.
‘Or the shadow,’ he replied.
‘I am afraid,’ she said, ‘that you are too clever.’
‘Well, I leave it to you to be GOOD,’ he retorted, laugh-
ing. ‘Be good, sweet maid, and just let ME be clever.’

Sons and Lovers