wife he didn't get on with, so he joined up in 1915 and was sent to India, I
believe. Anyhow he was blacksmith to the cavalry in Egypt for a time; always
was connected with horses, a clever fellow that way. Then some Indian
colonel took a fancy to him, and he was made a lieutenant. Yes, they gave
him a commission. I believe he went back to India with his colonel, and up
to the north-west frontier. He was ill; he was a pension. He didn't come out
of the army till last year, I believe, and then, naturally, it isn't easy
for a man like that to get back to his own level. He's bound to flounder.
But he does his duty all right, as far as I'm concerned. Only I'm not having
any of the Lieutenant Mellors touch.'
`How could they make him an officer when he speaks broad Derbyshire?'
`He doesn't...except by fits and starts. He can speak perfectly well,
for him. I suppose he has an idea if he's come down to the ranks again, he'd
better speak as the ranks speak.'
`Why didn't you tell me about him before?'
`Oh, I've no patience with these romances. They're the ruin of all
order. It's a thousand pities they ever happened.'
Connie was inclined to agree. What was the good of discontented people
who fitted in nowhere?
In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to the wood.
The wind was cold, but not so tiresome, and the sunshine was like life
itself, warm and full.
`It's amazing,' said Connie, `how different one feels when there's a
really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the very air is half dead. People
are killing the very air.'
`Do you think people are doing it?' he asked.
`I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of
all the people, just kills the vitality in the air. I'm sure of it.'
`Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vitality of the
people?' he said.
`No, it's man that poisons the universe,' she asserted.
`Fouls his own nest,' remarked Clifford.
The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were hanging pale gold,
and in sunny places the wood-anemones were wide open, as if exclaiming with
the joy of life, just as good as in past days, when people could exclaim
along with them. They had a faint scent of apple-blossom. Connie gathered a
few for Clifford.
He took them and looked at them curiously.
`Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' he quoted. `It seems to fit
flowers so much better than Greek vases.'
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