Mr Noon by D. H. Lawrence (Illustrated)

D. H. Lawrence, Delphi Classics

• Publisher: Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786569257
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Classici

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'Mr Noon' from the bestselling edition of 'The Complete Works of D. H. Lawrence'.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Lawrence includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of 'Mr Noon'
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Lawrence's works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the text
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Chapter I.

Attack on Mr Noon.

Her very stillness, as she sat bent upon her book, gradually made him uncomfortable. He twisted over, sprawling in his arm-chair, and pretended to go on with his perusal of the New Age. But neither Mr Orage nor Miss Tina could carry him on the wings of the spirit this afternoon. He kept glancing at his wife, whose intensified stillness would have told a ‘cuter man that she knew he was fidgetting, and then glancing at the window, and round the room. It was a rainy, dark Sunday afternoon. He ought to be very cosy, in the quiet by the roasting fire. But he was bored, and he wanted to be amused.

He perched his pince-nez on his nose and looked with an intellectual eye on his paper once more. Perhaps the light was fading. He twisted to look at the window. The aspidistras and ferns were not inspiring: it was still far from nightfall. He twisted the other way, to look at the little round clock on the mantel-piece. No use suggesting a meal, yet. He gave a heavy sigh, and rattled the leaves of the New Age.

But no response: no response. The little red metal devils frisked as ever on the mantel-piece, his own pet devils. Having gone back on the Lord, he signified his revolt by establishing a little company of scarlet, tail-flourishing gentry on his sitting-room mantel-piece. But it was only half-past three, and there was nothing to be done. He would not insult himself by nodding off to sleep. So again he perched his pince-nez on his nose, and began to have a grudge against his wife. After all, what was she so absorbed in!

She was a woman of about forty, stoutish, with very dark, glossy brown hair coiled on her head. She sat sunk deep in a chair, with her feet on a little footstool, and her spectacles right away on the tip of her nose. He, of course, did not observe that she never turned the page of her absorbing book.

His blue eye strayed petulantly to the fire. Ah-ha! Here he was in demand. In the well of the grate a mass of fire glowed scarlet like his devils, with a dark, half-burnt coal resting above. He crouched before the curb and took the poker with satisfaction. Biff! A well-aimed blow, he could congratulate himself on it. The excellent coal burst like magic into a bunch of flames.

“That’s better!” he said heartily.

And he remained crouching before the fire, in his loose homespun clothes. He was handsome, with a high forehead and a small beard, a socialist, something like Shakspeare’s bust to look at, but more refined. He had an attractive, boyish nape of the neck, for a man of forty-five, no longer thin.

So he crouched gazing into the hot, spurting, glowing fire. He was a pure idealist, something of a Christ, but with an intruding touch of the goat. His eyelids dropped oddly, goatlike, as he remained abstracted before the fire.

His wife roused, and cleared her throat.

“Were you sleeping, Missis?” he asked her in a jocular manner of accusation, screwing round to look at her. She had a full, soft, ivory-pale face, and dark eyes with heavy shadows under them. She took her spectacles off her nose-tip.

“No,” she said, in the same sparring humour. “I was not.”

“May I ask you what was the last sentence you read?”

“You may ask. But you mayn’t expect me to answer.”

“I’ll bet not,” he laughed. “It would be the tail-end of a dream, if you did.”

“No, it would not,” she said. “Not even a day-dream.”

“What, were you as sound as all that?” he said.

But she began rustling her book, rather ostentatiously. He crouched watching her. The coil of hair was rust-brown, on her dark, glossy head. Her hair became reddish towards the ends. It piqued him still, after twenty years of marriage. But since the top of her head was all she showed him, he went back to his big chair, and screwed himself in with his legs underneath him, though he was a biggish man, and once again settled his pince-nez. In a man who doesn’t smoke or drink, an eyeglass or a pair of pince-nez can become a vice.

“Ay-y-y!” he sighed to himself, as he tried to find excitement in the well-filled pages of the New Statesman. He kept his quick ears attentive to the outside. The church clock sounded four. Some people passed, voices chattering. He got up to look. Girls going by. He would have liked a chat, a bit of fun with them. With a longing, half-leering eye he looked down from the window.

“It’s about lighting-up time Mrs Goddard, isn’t it?” he said to his wife.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” she said abstractedly.

He bustled round with the matches, lit three gas-jets, drew the curtains, and rocked on his heels with his hands in his pockets and his back to the fire. This was the precious Sunday afternoon. Every week-day he was at the office. Sunday was a treasure-day to the two of them. They were socialists and vegetarians. So, in fine weather they tramped off into the country. In bad weather they got up late, had a substantial meal towards the end of the morning, and another in the early evening. None of the horrors of Sunday joints.

Lewie rocked on his heels on the hearth, with his back to the fire and his hands in his pockets, whistling faintly.

“You might chop some wood,” said Patty.

“I was just thinking so,” he said, with rather a resentful cheerfulness in his acquiescence.

However, off he went to the back yard, and Patty could hear him letting off some of his steam on the wood, whilst he kept up all the time a brilliant whistling. It wouldn’t be Lewie if he didn’t make himself heard wherever he was.

She mused on, in the brilliantly-lighted, hot room. She seemed very still, like a cat. Yet the dark lines under her eyes were marked. Her skin was of that peculiar transparency often noticed in vegetarians and idealists. Her husband’s was the same: as if the blood were lighter, more limpid, nearer to acid in the veins. All the time, she heard her husband so plainly. He always sounded in her universe: always. And she was tired: just tired. They were an ideal married couple, she and he. But something was getting on her nerves.

He appeared after a time.

“Can’t see any more,” he said. “Beastly rain still. The Unco Guid will want their just umbrellas tonight. I’m afraid there’ll be a fair amount of pew-timber showing beneath the reverend eyes, moreover. There’s nothing parsons hate more than the sight of bare pew-timber. They don’t mind a bare bread-board half as much. — That reminds me, Mrs Goddard, what about tea?”

“What about it?” she answered, screwing up her face at him slightly, in a sort of smile. He looked down at her from under his eyelids.

“Is that intended as a piece of cheek?” he asked.

“Yes, it might be,” she said.

“I won’t stand it.”

“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. No man ever does,” she quizzed.

“When a woman begins to give her husband cheek—”

“Go and put the kettle on.”

“I’ve got to go and get the tea, have I?” he asked.

“Yes, if you want it so early, you have. It’s only five o’clock.”

“The wiles and circumventions of a woman’s heart, not to mention her tongue, would cheat ten Esaus out of ten birthrights a day.”

“All right then put the kettle on.”

“You have any more of your impudence, Patty Goddard, and I won’t, so I tell you straight.”

“I’m dumb,” she said.

“My word, then I’ll make haste and clear out, while the victory is yet mine.”

So he retreated to the kitchen, and his brilliant whistling kept her fully informed of his existence down the long length of the passage. Nay, even if he went out of actual earshot, he seemed to be ringing her up all the time on some viewless telephone. The man was marvellous. His voice could speak to her across a hundred miles of space; if he went to America, verily, she would hear him invisibly as if he was in the back kitchen. The connection between a mother and her infant was as nothing compared to the organic or telepathic connection between her and Lewie. It was a connection which simply was never broken. And not a peaceful, quiet unison. But unquiet, as if he was always talking, always slightly forcing her attention, as now by his whistling in the kitchen. When he was right away from her, he still could make some sort of soundless noise which she was forced to hear and attend to. Lewie, Lewie, her soul sounded with the noise of him as a shell with the sea. It excited her, it pleased her, it saved her from ever feeling lonely. She loved it, she felt immensely pleased and flattered. But the dark lines came under her eyes, and she felt sometimes as if she would go mad with irritation.

He was fumbling at the door, and she knew he was balancing the full tray on his knee whilst he...