D. H.Lawrence
Adolf
The Dial, September 1920
**************
Adolf
The Dial
D. H. Lawrence Editor Scofield Thayer
Volume LXIX, Number 3
269-276
The Dial Publishing Company, Inc.
New York
September 1920
Published: 1920
****************
ADOLF
BY D. H. LAWRENCE
WHEN we were children our father often worked on the night-shift. Once it was
spring-time, and he used to arrive home, black and tired, just as we were
downstairs in our night-dresses. Then night met morning face to face, and the
contact was not always happy. Perhaps it was painful to my father to see us
gaily entering upon the day into which he dragged himself soiled and weary. He
didn't like going to bed in the spring morning sunshine.
But sometimes he was happy, because of his long walk through the dewy fields
in the first daybreak. He loved the open morning, the crystal and the space,
after a night down pit. He watched every bird, every stir in the trembling
grass, answered the whinneying of the pee-wits and tweeted to the wrens. If he
could, he also would have whinnied and tweeted and whistled, in a native
language that was not human. He liked non-human things best.
One sunny morning we were all sitting at table when we heard his heavy
slurring walk up the entry. We became uneasy. His was always a disturbing
presence, trammeling. He passed the window darkly, and we heard him go into the
scullery and put down his tin bottle. But directly he came into the kitchen. We
felt at once that he had something to communicate. No one spoke. We watched his
black face for a second.
"Give me a drink," he said.
My mother hastily poured out his tea. He went to pour it out into the
saucer. But instead of drinking, he suddenly put something on the table, among
the tea-cups. A tiny brown rabbit! A small rabbit, a mere morsel, sitting
against the bread as still as if it were a made thing.
"A rabbit! A young one! Who gave it you, father?"
But he laughed enigmatically, with a sliding motion of his yellow-grey eyes,
and went to take off his coat. We pounced on the rabbit.
"Is it alive? Can you feel its heart beat?"
My father came back and sat down heavily in his arm-chair. He dragged his saucer to him, and blew his tea, pushing out his red lips under his
black moustache.
"Where did you get it, father?"
"I picked it up," he said, wiping his naked forearm over his mouth and
beard.
"Where?"
"Is it a wild one?" came my mother's quick voice.
"Yes, it is."
"Then why did you bring it?" cried my mother.
"Oh, we wanted it," came our cry.
"Yes, I've no doubt you did -- " retorted my mother. But she was drowned in
our clamour of questions.
On the field path, my father had found a dead mother rabbit and three dead
little ones -- this one alive, but unmoving.
"But what had killed them, Daddy?"
"I couldn't say, my child. I s'd think she'd eaten something."
"Why did you bring it!" again my mother's voice of condemnation. "You know
what it will be."
My father made no answer, but we were loud in protest.
"He must bring it. It's not big enough to live by itself. It would die," we
shouted.
"Yes, and it will die now. And then there'll be another outcry."
My mother set her face against the tragedy of dead pets. Our hearts sank.
"It won't die, father, will it? Why will it? It won't."
"I s'd think not," said my father.
"You know well enough it will. Haven't we had it all before -- !" said my
mother.
"They dunna always pine," replied my father testily.
But my mother reminded him of other little wild animals he had brought,
which had sulked and refused to live, and brought storms of tears and trouble in
our house of lunatics.
Trouble fell on us. The little rabbit sat on our lap, unmoving, its eye wide
and dark. We brought it milk, warm milk, and held it to its nose. It sat as
still as if it was far away, retreated down some deep burrow, hidden, oblivious.
We wetted its mouth and whiskers with drops of milk. It gave no sign, did not
even shake off the wet white drops. Somebody began to shed a few secret tears.
"What did I say?" cried my mother. "Take it and put it down the field."
Her command was in vain. We were driven to get dressed for school. There sat
the rabbit. It was like a tiny obscure cloud. Watching it, the emotions died out
of our breast. Useless to love it, to yearn over it. Its little feelings were
all ambushed. They must be circumvented. Love and affection were a trespass upon
it. A little wild thing, it became more mute and asphyxiated still in its own
arrest, when we approached with love. We must not love it. We must circumvent
it, for its own existence.
So I passed the order to my sister and my mother. The rabbit was not to be
spoken to, nor even looked at. Wrapping it in a piece of flannel, I put it in an
obscure corner of the cold parlour, and put a saucer of milk before its nose. My
mother was forbidden to enter the parlour whilst we were at school.
"As if I should take any notice of your nonsense," she cried, affronted. Yet
I doubt if she ventured into that parlour.
At midday, after school, creeping into the front room, there we saw the
rabbit still and unmoving in the piece of flannel. Strange grey-brown
neutralization of life, still living! It was a sore problem to us.
"Why won't it drink its milk, mother?" we whispered. Our father was asleep.
"It prefers to sulk its life away, silly little thing." A profound problem.
Prefers to sulk its life away! We put young dandelion leaves to its nose. The
sphinx was not more oblivious.
At tea-time, however, it had hopped a few inches, out of its flannel, and
there it sat again, uncovered, a little solid cloud of muteness, brown, with
unmoving whiskers. Only its side palpitated slightly with life.
Darkness came, my father set off to work. The rabbit was still unmoving.
Dumb despair was coming over the sisters, a threat of tears before bedtime.
Clouds of my mother's anger gathered, as she muttered against my father's
wantonness.
Once more the rabbit was wrapped in the old pit-singlet. But now it was
carried into the scullery and put under the copper fire- place, that it might
think itself inside a burrow. The saucers were placed about, four or five, here
and there on the floor, so that if the little creature should chance to hop
abroad, it could not fail to come upon some food. After this my mother was allowed to take from the scullery what she wanted and then she was forbidden to open the door.
When morning came, and it was light, I went downstairs. Opening the scullery
door I heard a slight scuffle. Then I saw dabbles of milk all over the floor and
tiny rabbit-droppings in the saucers. And there the miscreant, the tips of his
ears showing behind a pair of boots. I peeped at him. He sat bright-eyed and
askance, twitching his nose and looking at me while not looking at me.
He was alive -- very much alive. But still we were afraid to trespass much
on his confidence.
"Father!" My father was arrested at the door. "Father, the rabbit's alive."
"Back your life it is," said my father.
"Mind how you go in."
By evening, however, the little creature was tame, quite tame. He was
christened Adolf. We were enchanted by him. We couldn't really love him, because
he was wild and loveless to the end. But he was an unmixed delight.
We decided he was too small to live in a hutch -- he must live at large in
the house. My mother protested, but in vain. He was so tiny. So we had him
upstairs, and he dropped his tiny pills on the bed and we were enchanted.
Adolf made himself instantly at home. He had the run of the house, and was
perfectly happy, with his tunnels and his holes behind the furniture.
We loved him to take meals with us. He would sit on the table humping his
back, sipping his milk, shaking his whiskers and his tender ears, hopping off
and hobbling back to his saucer, with an air of supreme unconcern. Suddenly he
was alert. He hobbled a few tiny paces, and reared himself up inquisitively at
the sugar-basin. He fluttered his tiny fore-paws, and then reached and ...
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