In D.H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," Mabel
seems to href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/enthrall">enthrall Ferguson,
but not as the story begins.
When
Mabel and her brothers receive the news of their shattered futures around the breakfast
table—due to their late father's debts— Ferguson arrives, but he and Mabel do not
initially speak. Later Ferguson asks her, as her brothers have, what she will do—will
she go to her sister Lucy to stay? She has not told her brothers, but she finally
answers Ferguson. She says no, but refuses to say more, much to the aggravation of her
brother Fred Henry:
"What are you going to do,
then, Miss Pervin?" asked Ferguson. "Going to your sister's, are
you?"
Mabel looked at him with her steady, dangerous eyes,
that always made him uncomfortable, unsettling his superficial
ease.
The young doctor must
feel something—Mabel's eyes seem
dangerous—perhaps they seem
hypnotic.
Soon after, as Ferguson hurries about on his
rounds, he notices Mabel walking into the churchyard, where she trims the grass and
arranges flowers around her mother's gravestone, even washing the
marble.
When Ferguson spots Mabel at her mother's
grave...
She
seemed so intent and remote, it was like looking into another world. Some mystical
element was touched in him. He slowed down as he walked, watching her as if
spellbound....her face. It seemed to mesmerize him. There
was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole
being...
Their eyes meet, but
they both look away. However, at the end of Ferguson's day, something happens that
changes both of them enormously.
...the doctor's quick eye detected a figure in
black passing through the gate of the field, down towards the pond...It would be Mabel
Pervin. His mind suddenly became alive and
attentive.
As he watches, she
approaches the pond:
There she stood on the bank for a moment. She
never raised her head. Then she waded slowly into the water...slowly and deliberately
towards the center of the
pond...
Ferguson gets closer
and Mabel, unaware of his presence, moves deeper into the water until she is covered to
her shoulders...and then her head moves beneath the water. Ferguson cannot swim, has
been ill recently, and is extremely fearful of drowning himself. This may be symbolic of
his fear to open his heart to Mabel; however, he gives himself fully to saving her and
does fall in. He carries Mabel back to her house and sets her
before the fire. Soon, she comes back to herself; she is surprised to see Ferguson and
to learn what she has done.
Here, then, the relationship
alters dramatically: Ferguson, a doctor, has undressed her, covered her with blankets
and given her some whiskey to revive her. Suddenly, she asks him if he loves her. For
several terrible moments, he fights the feeling—resists giving in. Repeatedly he thinks
"...he had, really, no intention of loving her." However, when he touches her skin, his
hand burns. He feels his heart is being ripped open, and as he did when saving her from
drowning, he finally lets himself go. He commits himself to loving her, and speaks of
marriage—even while he fears his own vulnerability in taking these steps. And as much as
Mabel seems to desire his reassuring words of love, something about
the way he says it "frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should
not want her."
Lawrence seems to think
that love can sometimes be a terrible thing, while impossible to
resist.
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