Read Online The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence - Free Book Online Page B

passionate fecundity
relaxed their sway. In the name of property, the widow and her slaves
would seek to be revenged on him for the bread he had eaten, and the
living touch he had established, the woman he had delighted in. But he
said: "Not twice! They shall not now profane the touch in me. My wits
against theirs."
    So he watched. And he knew they plotted. So he moved from the little cave
and found another shelter, a tiny cove of sand by the sea, dry and secret
under the rocks.
    He said to the woman:
    "I must go now soon. Trouble is coming to me from the slaves. But I am a
man, and the world is open. But what is between us is good, and is
established. Be at peace. And when the nightingale calls again from your
valley–bed, I shall come again, sure as spring."
    She said: "0, don't go! Stay with me on half the island, and I will build
a house for you and me under the pine trees by the temple, where we can
live apart."
    Yet she knew that he would go. And even she wanted the coolness of her
own air around her, and the release from anxiety.
    "If I stay," he said, "they will betray me to the Romans and to their
justice. But I will never be betrayed again. So when I am gone, live in
peace with the growing child. And I shall come again: all is good between
us, near or apart. The suns come back in their seasons: and I shall come
again."
    "Do not go yet," she said. "I have set a slave to watch at the neck of
the peninsula. Do not go yet, till the harm shows."
    But as he lay in his little cove, on a calm, still night, he heard the
soft knock of oars, and the bump of a boat against the rock. So he crept
out to listen. And he heard the Roman overseer say:
    "Lead softly to the goat's den. And Lysippus shall throw the net over the
malefactor while he sleeps, and we will bring him before justice, and the
Lady of Isis shall know nothing of it…"
    The man who had died caught a whiff of flesh from the oiled and naked
slaves as they crept up, then the faint perfume of the Roman. He crept
nearer to the sea. The slave who sat in the boat sat motionless, holding
the oars, for the sea was quite still. And the man who had died knew him.
    So out of the deep cleft of a rock he said, in a clear voice:
    "Art thou not that slave who possessed the maiden under the eyes of Isis?
Art thou not the youth? Speak!"
    The youth stood up in the boat in terror. His movement sent the boat
bumping against the rock. The slave sprang out in wild fear, and fled up
the rocks. The man who had died quickly seized the boat and stepped in,
and pushed off. The oars were yet warm with the unpleasant warmth of the
hands of the slaves. But the man pulled slowly out, to get into the
current which set down the coast, and would carry him in silence. The
high coast was utterly dark against the starry night. There was no
glimmer from the peninsula: the priestess came no more at night. The man
who had died rowed slowly on, with the current, and laughed to himself:
"I have sowed the seed of my life and my resurrection, and put my touch
forever upon the choice woman of this day, and I carry her perfume in my
flesh like essence of roses. She is dear to me in the middle of my being.
But the gold and flowing serpent is coiling up again, to sleep at the
root of my tree."
    "So let the boat carry me. To–morrow is another day."
    THE END