Beyond the First Draft by John Casey

Author:John Casey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

WHAT PRECEDES THE final scene is a steady setup. A horse farm has gone broke. The three brothers are watching the horses being trotted off.

The great draught-horses swung past. They were tied head to tail, four of them, and they heaved along to where a lane branched off from the high-road, planting their great hoofs floutingly in the fine black mud, swinging their great rounded haunches sumptuously, and trotting a few sudden steps as they were led into the lane.

LAWRENCE OFTEN BEGINS his stories with something physically impressive. A huge steam locomotive begins “Odor of Chrysanthemums”; a cavalry regiment on the move begins “The Prussian Officer.” These scenes of animal or mechanical energy are preludes to the stories of the equally powerful energy passing between two humans.

The horse dealers’ sister, who has been keeping house for them since the father died, is silent while her brothers brag and tease to cover their forlornness. A hint of what is inside her comes when a young doctor drops by.

“What are you going to do, then, Miss Pervin?” asked Fergusson. “Going to your sister’s, are you?”

Mabel looked at him with her steady, dangerous eyes, that always made him uncomfortable . . .

Everybody leaves.

Mabel goes to tend her mother’s grave. The doctor watches her from his neighboring property. “She seemed so intent and remote, it was like looking into another world.”

Some time later he watches her walk toward a deep pond, then into it. In the dusk he loses sight of her. He runs to the pond, wades in. Finds her under the water. He pulls her out—“He lifted her and staggered onto the bank, out of the horror of wet, grey clay.”

He takes her into the house, unconscious. He takes off her wet clothes, wraps her in a blanket. He drinks a shot of whisky and puts some in her mouth.

The effect was instantaneous. She looked full into his face, as if she had been seeing him for some time, and yet had only just become conscious of him.

“Dr. Fergusson?” she said.

“What?” he answered.

He was divesting himself of his coat, intending to find some dry clothing upstairs. He could not bear the smell of the dead, clayey water, and he was mortally afraid for his own health.

“What did I do?” she asked.

“Walked into the pond,” he replied. He had begun to shudder like one sick, and could hardly attend to her. Her eyes remained full on him, he seemed to be going dark in his mind, looking back at her helplessly. The shuddering became quieter in him, his life came back to him, dark and unknowing, but strong again.

Lawrence believed in something like Henri Bergson’s élan vital—élan means “impulse,” “surge,” “momentum”—and vital, as in English, means “living” and “essential.” Élan vital is often translated as “life force.” For Bergson, it was wonderful and positive. For Lawrence, it was wonderful but fearsome. It could shake a modern civilized man to pieces. It also, in Lawrence’s view, arises in a different form in women than in men.

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