PART TWO
CHAPTER VII
LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE
PAUL had been many times up to Willey Farm during the
autumn. He was friends with the two youngest boys. Edgar the
eldest, would not condescend at first. And Miriam also
refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at
nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her
soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by
men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself
was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her
own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who,
nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who
could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant,
and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might
consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive
the princess beneath; so she held aloof.
Her great companion was her mother. They were both
brown-eyed, and inclined to be mystical, such women as
treasure religion inside them, breathe it in their nostrils,
and see the whole of life in a mist thereof. So to Miriam,
Christ and God made one great figure, which she loved
tremblingly and passionately when a tremendous sunset burned
out the western sky, and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas,
Brian de Bois Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings,
rustled the sunny leaves in the morning, or sat in her
bedroom aloft, alone, when it snowed. That was life to her.
For the rest, she drudged in the house, which work she would
not have minded had not her clean red floor been mucked up
immediately by the trampling farm-boots of her brothers. She
madly wanted her little brother of four to let her swathe
him and stifle him in her love; she went to church
reverently, with bowed head, and quivered in anguish from
the vulgarity of the other choir-girls and from the
common-sounding voice of the curate; she fought with her
brothers, whom she considered brutal louts; and she held not
her father in too high esteem because he did not carry any
mystical ideals cherished in his heart, but only wanted to
have as easy a time as he could, and his meals when he was
ready for them.
She hated her position as swine-girl. She wanted to be
considered. She wanted to learn, thinking that if she could
read, as Paul said he could read, "Colomba", or the "Voyage
autour de ma Chambre", the world would have a different face
for her and a deepened respect. She could not be princess by
wealth or standing. So she was mad to have learning whereon
to pride herself. For she was different from other folk, and
must not be scooped up among the common fry. Learning was
the only distinction to which she thought to aspire.
Her beauty—that of a shy, wild, quiveringly sensitive
thing—seemed nothing to her. Even her soul, so strong for
rhapsody, was not enough. She must have something to
reinforce her pride, because she felt different from other
people. Paul she eyed rather wistfully. On the whole, she
scorned the male sex. But here was a new specimen, quick,
light, graceful, who could be gentle and who could be sad,
and who was clever, and who knew a lot, and who had a death
in the family. The boy's poor morsel of learning exalted him
almost sky-high in her esteem. Yet she tried hard to scorn
him, because he would not see in her the princess but only
the swine-girl. And he scarcely observed her.
Then he was so ill, and she felt he would be weak. Then
she would be stronger than he. Then she could love him. If
she could be mistress of him in his weakness, take care of
him, if he could depend on her, if she could, as it were,
have him in her arms, how she would love him!
As soon as the skies brightened and plum-blossom was out,
Paul drove off in the milkman's heavy float up to Willey
Farm. Mr. Leivers shouted in a kindly fashion at the boy,
then clicked to the horse as they climbed the hill slowly,
in the freshness of the morning. White clouds went on their
way, crowding to the back of the hills that were rousing in
the springtime. The water of Nethermere lay below, very blue
against the seared meadows and the thorn-trees.
It was four and a half miles' drive. Tiny buds on the
hedges, vivid as copper-green, were opening into rosettes;
and thrushes called, and blackbirds shrieked and scolded. It
was a new, glamorous world.
Miriam, peeping through the kitchen window, saw the horse
walk through the big white gate into the farmyard that was
backed by the oak-wood, still bare. Then a youth in a heavy
overcoat climbed down. He put up his hands for the whip and
the rug that the good-looking, ruddy farmer handed down to
him.
Miriam appeared in the doorway. She was nearly sixteen,
very beautiful, with her warm colouring, her gravity, her
eyes dilating suddenly like an ecstasy.
"I say," said Paul, turning shyly aside, "your daffodils
are nearly out. Isn't it early? But don't they look cold?"
"Cold!" said Miriam, in her musical, caressing voice.
"The green on their buds—" and he faltered into silence
timidly.
"Let me take the rug," said Miriam over-gently.
"I can carry it," he answered, rather injured. But he
yielded it to her.
Then Mrs. Leivers appeared.
"I'm sure you're tired and cold," she said. "Let me take
your coat. It IS heavy. You mustn't walk far in it."
She helped him off with his coat. He was quite unused to
such attention. She was almost smothered under its weight.
"Why, mother," laughed the farmer as he passed through
the kitchen, swinging the great milk-churns, "you've got
almost more than you can manage there."
She beat up the sofa cushions for the youth.
The kitchen was very small and irregular. The farm had
been originally a labourer's cottage. And the furniture was
old and battered. But Paul loved it—loved the sack-bag that
formed the hearthrug, and the funny little corner under the
stairs, and the small window deep in the corner, through
which, bending a little, he could see the plum trees in the
back garden and the lovely round hills beyond.
"Won't you lie down?" said Mrs. Leivers.
"Oh no; I'm not tired," he said. "Isn't it lovely coming
out, don't you think? I saw a sloe-bush in blossom and a lot
of celandines. I'm glad it's sunny."
"Can I give you anything to eat or to drink?"
"No, thank you."
"How's your mother?"
"I think she's tired now. I think she's had too much to
do. Perhaps in a little while she'll go to Skegness with me.
Then she'll be able to rest. I s'll be glad if she can."
"Yes," replied Mrs. Leivers. "It's a wonder she isn't ill
herself."
Miriam was moving about preparing dinner. Paul watched
everything that happened. His face was pale and thin, but
his eyes were quick and bright with life as ever. He watched
the strange, almost rhapsodic way in which the girl moved
about, carrying a great stew-jar to the oven, or looking in
the saucepan. The atmosphere was different from that of his
own home, where everything seemed so ordinary. When Mr.
Leivers called loudly outside to the horse, that was
reaching over to feed on the rose-bushes in the garden, the
girl started, looked round with dark eyes, as if something
had come breaking in on her world. There was a sense of
silence inside the house and out. Miriam seemed as in some
dreamy tale, a maiden in bondage, her spirit dreaming in a
land far away and magical. And her discoloured, old blue
frock and her broken boots seemed only like the romantic
rags of King Cophetua's beggar-maid.
She suddenly became aware of his keen blue eyes upon her,
taking her all in. Instantly her broken boots and her frayed
old frock hurt her. She resented his seeing everything. Even
he knew that her stocking was not pulled up. She went into
the scullery, blushing deeply. And afterwards her hands
trembled slightly at her work. She nearly dropped all she
handled. When her inside dream was shaken, her body quivered
with trepidation. She resented that he saw so much.
Mrs. Leivers sat for some time talking to the boy,
although she was needed at her work. She was too polite to
leave him. Presently she excused herself and rose. After a
while she looked into the tin saucepan.
"Oh DEAR, Miriam," she cried, "these potatoes have boiled
dry!"
Miriam started as if she had been stung.
"HAVE they, mother?" she cried.
"I shouldn't care, Miriam," said the mother, "if I hadn't
trusted them to you." She peered into the pan.
The girl stiffened as if from a blow. Her dark eyes
dilated; she remained standing in the same spot.
"Well," she answered, gripped tight in self-conscious
shame, "I'm sure I looked at them five minutes since."
"Yes," said the mother, "I know it's easily done."
"They're not much burned," said Paul. "It doesn't matter,
does it?"
Mrs. Leivers looked at the youth with her brown, hurt
eyes.
"It wouldn't matter but for the boys," she said to him.
"Only Miriam knows what a trouble they make if the potatoes
are 'caught'."
"Then," thought Paul to himself, "you shouldn't let them
make a trouble."
After a while Edgar came in. He wore leggings, and his
boots were covered with earth. He was rather small, rather
formal, for a farmer. He glanced at Paul, nodded to him
distantly, and said:
"Dinner ready?"
"Nearly, Edgar," replied the mother apologetically.
"I'm ready for mine," said the young man, taking up the
newspaper and reading. Presently the rest of the family
trooped in. Dinner was served. The meal went rather
brutally. The over-gentleness and apologetic tone of the
mother brought out all the brutality of manners in the sons.
Edgar tasted the potatoes, moved his mouth quickly like a
rabbit, looked indignantly at his mother, and said:
"These potatoes are burnt, mother."
"Yes, Edgar. I forgot them for a minute. Perhaps you'll
have bread if you can't eat them."
Edgar looked in anger across at Miriam.
"What was Miriam doing that she couldn't attend to them?"
he said.
Miriam looked up. Her mouth opened, her dark eyes blazed
and winced, but she said nothing. She swallowed her anger
and her shame, bowing her dark head.
"I'm sure she was trying hard," said the mother.
"She hasn't got sense even to boil the potatoes," said
Edgar. "What is she kept at home for?"
"On'y for eating everything that's left in th' pantry,"
said Maurice.
"They don't forget that potato-pie against our Miriam,"
laughed the father.
She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence,
suffering, like some saint out of place at the brutal board.
It puzzled Paul. He wondered vaguely why all this intense
feeling went running because of a few burnt potatoes. The
mother exalted everything—even a bit of housework—to the
plane of a religious trust. The sons resented this; they
felt themselves cut away underneath, and they answered with
brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness.
Paul was just opening out from childhood into manhood.
This atmosphere, where everything took a religious value,
came with a subtle fascination to him. There was something
in the air. His own mother was logical. Here there was
something different, something he loved, something that at
times he hated.
Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely. Later in
the afternoon, when they had gone away again, her mother
said:
"You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam."
The girl dropped her head.
"They are such BRUTES!" she suddenly cried, looking up
with flashing eyes.
"But hadn't you promised not to answer them?" said the
mother. "And I believed in you. I CAN'T stand it when you
wrangle."
"But they're so hateful!" cried Miriam, "and—and LOW."
"Yes, dear. But how often have I asked you not to answer
Edgar back? Can't you let him say what he likes?"
"But why should he say what he likes?"
"Aren't you strong enough to bear it, Miriam, if even for
my sake? Are you so weak that you must wrangle with them?"
Mrs. Leivers stuck unflinchingly to this doctrine of "the
other cheek". She could not instil it at all into the boys.
With the girls she succeeded better, and Miriam was the
child of her heart. The boys loathed the other cheek when it
was presented to them. Miriam was often sufficiently lofty
to turn it. Then they spat on her and hated her. But she
walked in her proud humility, living within herself.
There was always this feeling of jangle and discord in
the Leivers family. Although the boys resented so bitterly
this eternal appeal to their deeper feelings of resignation
and proud humility, yet it had its effect on them. They
could not establish between themselves and an outsider just
the ordinary human feeling and unexaggerated friendship;
they were always restless for the something deeper. Ordinary
folk seemed shallow to them, trivial and inconsiderable. And
so they were unaccustomed, painfully uncouth in the simplest
social intercourse, suffering, and yet insolent in their
superiority. Then beneath was the yearning for the
soul-intimacy to which they could not attain because they
were too dumb, and every approach to close connection was
blocked by their clumsy contempt of other people. They
wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even
normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the
first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common
human intercourse.
Paul fell under Mrs. Leivers's spell. Everything had a
religious and intensified meaning when he was with her. His
soul, hurt, highly developed, sought her as if for
nourishment. Together they seemed to sift the vital fact
from an experience.
Miriam was her mother's daughter. In the sunshine of the
afternoon mother and daughter went down the fields with him.
They looked for nests. There was a jenny wren's in the hedge
by the orchard.
"I DO want you to see this," said Mrs. Leivers.
He crouched down and carefully put his finger through the
thorns into the round door of the nest.
"It's almost as if you were feeling inside the live body
of the bird," he said, "it's so warm. They say a bird makes
its nest round like a cup with pressing its breast on it.
Then how did it make the ceiling round, I wonder?"
The nest seemed to start into life for the two women.
After that, Miriam came to see it every day. It seemed so
close to her. Again, going down the hedgeside with the girl,
he noticed the celandines, scalloped splashes of gold, on
the side of the ditch.
"I like them," he said, "when their petals go flat back
with the sunshine. They seemed to be pressing themselves at
the sun."
And then the celandines ever after drew her with a little
spell. Anthropomorphic as she was, she stimulated him into
appreciating things thus, and then they lived for her. She
seemed to need things kindling in her imagination or in her
soul before she felt she had them. And she was cut off from
ordinary life by her religious intensity which made the
world for her either a nunnery garden or a paradise, where
sin and knowledge were not, or else an ugly, cruel thing.
So it was in this atmosphere of subtle intimacy, this
meeting in their common feeling for something in Nature,
that their love started.
Personally, he was a long time before he realized her.
For ten months he had to stay at home after his illness. For
a while he went to Skegness with his mother, and was
perfectly happy. But even from the seaside he wrote long
letters to Mrs. Leivers about the shore and the sea. And he
brought back his beloved sketches of the flat Lincoln coast,
anxious for them to see. Almost they would interest the
Leivers more than they interested his mother. It was not his
art Mrs. Morel cared about; it was himself and his
achievement. But Mrs. Leivers and her children were almost
his disciples. They kindled him and made him glow to his
work, whereas his mother's influence was to make him quietly
determined, patient, dogged, unwearied.
He soon was friends with the boys, whose rudeness was
only superficial. They had all, when they could trust
themselves, a strange gentleness and lovableness.
"Will you come with me on to the fallow?" asked Edgar,
rather hesitatingly.
Paul went joyfully, and spent the afternoon helping to
hoe or to single turnips with his friend. He used to lie
with the three brothers in the hay piled up in the barn and
tell them about Nottingham and about Jordan's. In return,
they taught him to milk, and let him do little jobs—chopping
hay or pulping turnips—just as much as he liked. At
midsummer he worked all through hay-harvest with them, and
then he loved them. The family was so cut off from the world
actually. They seemed, somehow, like "les derniers fils
d'une race epuisee". Though the lads were strong and
healthy, yet they had all that over-sensitiveness and
hanging-back which made them so lonely, yet also such close,
delicate friends once their intimacy was won. Paul loved
them dearly, and they him.
Miriam came later. But he had come into her life before
she made any mark on his. One dull afternoon, when the men
were on the land and the rest at school, only Miriam and her
mother at home, the girl said to him, after having hesitated
for some time:
"Have you seen the swing?"
"No," he answered. "Where?"
"In the cowshed," she replied.
She always hesitated to offer or to show him anything.
Men have such different standards of worth from women, and
her dear things—the valuable things to her—her brothers had
so often mocked or flouted.
"Come on, then," he replied, jumping up.
There were two cowsheds, one on either side of the barn.
In the lower, darker shed there was standing for four cows.
Hens flew scolding over the manger-wall as the youth and
girl went forward for the great thick rope which hung from
the beam in the darkness overhead, and was pushed back over
a peg in the wall.
"It's something like a rope!" he exclaimed
appreciatively; and he sat down on it, anxious to try it.
Then immediately he rose.
"Come on, then, and have first go," he said to the girl.
"See," she answered, going into the barn, "we put some
bags on the seat"; and she made the swing comfortable for
him. That gave her pleasure. He held the rope.
"Come on, then," he said to her.
"No, I won't go first," she answered.
She stood aside in her still, aloof fashion.
"Why?"
"You go," she pleaded.
Almost for the first time in her life she had the
pleasure of giving up to a man, of spoiling him. Paul looked
at her.
"All right," he said, sitting down. "Mind out!"
He set off with a spring, and in a moment was flying
through the air, almost out of the door of the shed, the
upper half of which was open, showing outside the drizzling
rain, the filthy yard, the cattle standing disconsolate
against the black cartshed, and at the back of all the
grey-green wall of the wood. She stood below in her crimson
tam-o'-shanter and watched. He looked down at her, and she
saw his blue eyes sparkling.
"It's a treat of a swing," he said.
"Yes."
He was swinging through the air, every bit of him
swinging, like a bird that swoops for joy of movement. And
he looked down at her. Her crimson cap hung over her dark
curls, her beautiful warm face, so still in a kind of
brooding, was lifted towards him. It was dark and rather
cold in the shed. Suddenly a swallow came down from the high
roof and darted out of the door.
"I didn't know a bird was watching," he called.
He swung negligently. She could feel him falling and
lifting through the air, as if he were lying on some force.
"Now I'll die," he said, in a detached, dreamy voice, as
though he were the dying motion of the swing. She watched
him, fascinated. Suddenly he put on the brake and jumped
out.
"I've had a long turn," he said. "But it's a treat of a
swing—it's a real treat of a swing!"
Miriam was amused that he took a swing so seriously and
felt so warmly over it.
"No; you go on," she said.
"Why, don't you want one?" he asked, astonished.
"Well, not much. I'll have just a little."
She sat down, whilst he kept the bags in place for her.
"It's so ripping!" he said, setting her in motion. "Keep
your heels up, or they'll bang the manger wall."
She felt the accuracy with which he caught her, exactly
at the right moment, and the exactly proportionate strength
of his thrust, and she was afraid. Down to her bowels went
the hot wave of fear. She was in his hands. Again, firm and
inevitable came the thrust at the right moment. She gripped
the rope, almost swooning.
"Ha!" she laughed in fear. "No higher!"
"But you're not a BIT high," he remonstrated.
"But no higher."
He heard the fear in her voice, and desisted. Her heart
melted in hot pain when the moment came for him to thrust
her forward again. But he left her alone. She began to
breathe.
"Won't you really go any farther?" he asked. "Should I
keep you there?"
"No; let me go by myself," she answered.
He moved aside and watched her.
"Why, you're scarcely moving," he said.
She laughed slightly with shame, and in a moment got
down.
"They say if you can swing you won't be sea-sick," he
said, as he mounted again. "I don't believe I should ever be
sea-sick."
Away he went. There was something fascinating to her in
him. For the moment he was nothing but a piece of swinging
stuff; not a particle of him that did not swing. She could
never lose herself so, nor could her brothers. It roused a
warmth in her. It was almost as if he were a flame that had
lit a warmth in her whilst he swung in the middle air.
And gradually the intimacy with the family concentrated
for Paul on three persons—the mother, Edgar, and Miriam. To
the mother he went for that sympathy and that appeal which
seemed to draw him out. Edgar was his very close friend. And
to Miriam he more or less condescended, because she seemed
so humble.
But the girl gradually sought him out. If he brought up
his sketch-book, it was she who pondered longest over the
last picture. Then she would look up at him. Suddenly, her
dark eyes alight like water that shakes with a stream of
gold in the dark, she would ask:
"Why do I like this so?"
Always something in his breast shrank from these close,
intimate, dazzled looks of hers.
"Why DO you?" he asked.
"I don't know. It seems so true."
"It's because—it's because there is scarcely any shadow
in it; it's more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering
protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the
stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this
shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust.
The shimmer is inside really."
And she, with her little finger in her mouth, would
ponder these sayings. They gave her a feeling of life again,
and vivified things which had meant nothing to her. She
managed to find some meaning in his struggling, abstract
speeches. And they were the medium through which she came
distinctly at her beloved objects.
Another day she sat at sunset whilst he was painting some
pine-trees which caught the red glare from the west. He had
been quiet.
"There you are!" he said suddenly. "I wanted that. Now,
look at them and tell me, are they pine trunks or are they
red coals, standing-up pieces of fire in that darkness?
There's God's burning bush for you, that burned not away."
Miriam looked, and was frightened. But the pine trunks
were wonderful to her, and distinct. He packed his box and
rose. Suddenly he looked at her.
"Why are you always sad?" he asked her.
"Sad!" she exclaimed, looking up at him with startled,
wonderful brown eyes.
"Yes," he replied. "You are always sad."
"I am not—oh, not a bit!" she cried.
"But even your joy is like a flame coming off of
sadness," he persisted. "You're never jolly, or even just
all right."
"No," she pondered. "I wonder—why?"
"Because you're not; because you're different inside,
like a pine-tree, and then you flare up; but you're not just
like an ordinary tree, with fidgety leaves and jolly—"
He got tangled up in his own speech; but she brooded on
it, and he had a strange, roused sensation, as if his
feelings were new. She got so near him. It was a strange
stimulant.
Then sometimes he hated her. Her youngest brother was
only five. He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in
his quaint fragile face—one of Reynolds's "Choir of Angels",
with a touch of elf. Often Miriam kneeled to the child and
drew him to her.
"Eh, my Hubert!" she sang, in a voice heavy and
surcharged with love. "Eh, my Hubert!"
And, folding him in her arms, she swayed slightly from
side to side with love, her face half lifted, her eyes half
closed, her voice drenched with love.
"Don't!" said the child, uneasy—"don't, Miriam!"
"Yes; you love me, don't you?" she murmured deep in her
throat, almost as if she were in a trance, and swaying also
as if she were swooned in an ecstasy of love.
"Don't!" repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow.
"You love me, don't you?" she murmured.
"What do you make such a FUSS for?" cried Paul, all in
suffering because of her extreme emotion. "Why can't you be
ordinary with him?"
She let the child go, and rose, and said nothing. Her
intensity, which would leave no emotion on a normal plane,
irritated the youth into a frenzy. And this fearful, naked
contact of her on small occasions shocked him. He was used
to his mother's reserve. And on such occasions he was
thankful in his heart and soul that he had his mother, so
sane and wholesome.
All the life of Miriam's body was in her eyes, which were
usually dark as a dark church, but could flame with light
like a conflagration. Her face scarcely ever altered from
its look of brooding. She might have been one of the women
who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body was not
flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather
heavily, her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not
clumsy, and yet none of her movements seemed quite THE
movement. Often, when wiping the dishes, she would stand in
bewilderment and chagrin because she had pulled in two
halves a cup or a tumbler. It was as if, in her fear and
self-mistrust, she put too much strength into the effort.
There was no looseness or abandon about her. Everything was
gripped stiff with intensity, and her effort, overcharged,
closed in on itself.
She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense
walk. Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields. Then
her eyes blazed naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened
him. But she was physically afraid. If she were getting over
a stile, she gripped his hands in a little hard anguish, and
began to lose her presence of mind. And he could not
persuade her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes
dilated, became exposed and palpitating.
"No!" she cried, half laughing in terror—"no!"
"You shall!" he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he
brought her falling from the fence. But her wild "Ah!" of
pain, as if she were losing consciousness, cut him. She
landed on her feet safely, and afterwards had courage in
this respect.
She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.
"Don't you like being at home?" Paul asked her,
surprised.
"Who would?" she answered, low and intense. "What is it?
I'm all day cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five
minutes. I don't WANT to be at home."
"What do you want, then?"
"I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody
else. Why should I, because I'm a girl, be kept at home and
not allowed to be anything? What chance HAVE I?"
"Chance of what?"
"Of knowing anything—of learning, of doing anything. It's
not fair, because I'm a woman."
She seemed very bitter. Paul wondered. In his own home
Annie was almost glad to be a girl. She had not so much
responsibility; things were lighter for her. She never
wanted to be other than a girl. But Miriam almost fiercely
wished she were a man. And yet she hated men at the same
time.
"But it's as well to be a woman as a man," he said,
frowning.
"Ha! Is it? Men have everything."
"I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as
men are to be men," he answered.
"No!"—she shook her head—"no! Everything the men have."
"But what do you want?" he asked.
"I want to learn. Why SHOULD it be that I know nothing?"
"What! such as mathematics and French?"
"Why SHOULDN'T I know mathematics? Yes!" she cried, her
eye expanding in a kind of defiance.
"Well, you can learn as much as I know," he said. "I'll
teach you, if you like."
Her eyes dilated. She mistrusted him as teacher.
"Would you?" he asked.
Her head had dropped, and she was sucking her finger
broodingly.
"Yes," she said hesitatingly.
He used to tell his mother all these things.
"I'm going to teach Miriam algebra," he said.
"Well," replied Mrs. Morel, "I hope she'll get fat on
it."
When he went up to the farm on the Monday evening, it was
drawing twilight. Miriam was just sweeping up the kitchen,
and was kneeling at the hearth when he entered. Everyone was
out but her. She looked round at him, flushed, her dark eyes
shining, her fine hair falling about her face.
"Hello!" she said, soft and musical. "I knew it was you."
"How?"
"I knew your step. Nobody treads so quick and firm."
He sat down, sighing.
"Ready to do some algebra?" he asked, drawing a little
book from his pocket.
"But—"
He could feel her backing away.
"You said you wanted," he insisted.
"To-night, though?" she faltered.
"But I came on purpose. And if you want to learn it, you
must begin."
She took up her ashes in the dustpan and looked at him,
half tremulously, laughing.
"Yes, but to-night! You see, I haven't thought of it."
"Well, my goodness! Take the ashes and come."
He went and sat on the stone bench in the back-yard,
where the big milk-cans were standing, tipped up, to air.
The men were in the cowsheds. He could hear the little
sing-song of the milk spurting into the pails. Presently she
came, bringing some big greenish apples.
"You know you like them," she said.
He took a bite.
"Sit down," he said, with his mouth full.
She was short-sighted, and peered over his shoulder. It
irritated him. He gave her the book quickly.
"Here," he said. "It's only letters for figures. You put
down 'a' instead of '2' or '6'."
They worked, he talking, she with her head down on the
book. He was quick and hasty. She never answered.
Occasionally, when he demanded of her, "Do you see?" she
looked up at him, her eyes wide with the half-laugh that
comes of fear. "Don't you?" he cried.
He had been too fast. But she said nothing. He questioned
her more, then got hot. It made his blood rouse to see her
there, as it were, at his mercy, her mouth open, her eyes
dilated with laughter that was afraid, apologetic, ashamed.
Then Edgar came along with two buckets of milk.
"Hello!" he said. "What are you doing?"
"Algebra," replied Paul.
"Algebra!" repeated Edgar curiously. Then he passed on
with a laugh. Paul took a bite at his forgotten apple,
looked at the miserable cabbages in the garden, pecked into
lace by the fowls, and he wanted to pull them up. Then he
glanced at Miriam. She was poring over the book, seemed
absorbed in it, yet trembling lest she could not get at it.
It made him cross. She was ruddy and beautiful. Yet her soul
seemed to be intensely supplicating. The algebra-book she
closed, shrinking, knowing he was angered; and at the same
instant he grew gentle, seeing her hurt because she did not
understand.
But things came slowly to her. And when she held herself
in a grip, seemed so utterly humble before the lesson, it
made his blood rouse. He stormed at her, got ashamed,
continued the lesson, and grew furious again, abusing her.
She listened in silence. Occasionally, very rarely, she
defended herself. Her liquid dark eyes blazed at him.
"You don't give me time to learn it," she said.
"All right," he answered, throwing the book on the table
and lighting a cigarette. Then, after a while, he went back
to her repentant. So the lessons went. He was always either
in a rage or very gentle.
"What do you tremble your SOUL before it for?" he cried.
"You don't learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can't you
look at it with your clear simple wits?"
Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers
would look at him reproachfully, saying:
"Paul, don't be so hard on Miriam. She may not be quick,
but I'm sure she tries."
"I can't help it," he said rather pitiably. "I go off
like it."
"You don't mind me, Miriam, do you?" he asked of the girl
later.
"No," she reassured him in her beautiful deep tones—"no,
I don't mind."
"Don't mind me; it's my fault."
But, in spite of himself, his blood began to boil with
her. It was strange that no one else made him in such fury.
He flared against her. Once he threw the pencil in her face.
There was a silence. She turned her face slightly aside.
"I didn't—" he began, but got no farther, feeling weak in
all his bones. She never reproached him or was angry with
him. He was often cruelly ashamed. But still again his anger
burst like a bubble surcharged; and still, when he saw her
eager, silent, as it were, blind face, he felt he wanted to
throw the pencil in it; and still, when he saw her hand
trembling and her mouth parted with suffering, his heart was
scalded with pain for her. And because of the intensity to
which she roused him, he sought her.
Then he often avoided her and went with Edgar. Miriam and
her brother were naturally antagonistic. Edgar was a
rationalist, who was curious, and had a sort of scientific
interest in life. It was a great bitterness to Miriam to see
herself deserted by Paul for Edgar, who seemed so much
lower. But the youth was very happy with her elder brother.
The two men spent afternoons together on the land or in the
loft doing carpentry, when it rained. And they talked
together, or Paul taught Edgar the songs he himself had
learned from Annie at the piano. And often all the men, Mr.
Leivers as well, had bitter debates on the nationalizing of
the land and similar problems. Paul had already heard his
mother's views, and as these were as yet his own, he argued
for her. Miriam attended and took part, but was all the time
waiting until it should be over and a personal communication
might begin.
"After all," she said within herself, "if the land were
nationalized, Edgar and Paul and I would be just the same."
So she waited for the youth to come back to her.
He was studying for his painting. He loved to sit at
home, alone with his mother, at night, working and working.
She sewed or read. Then, looking up from his task, he would
rest his eyes for a moment on her face, that was bright with
living warmth, and he returned gladly to his work.
"I can do my best things when you sit there in your
rocking-chair, mother," he said.
"I'm sure!" she exclaimed, sniffing with mock scepticism.
But she felt it was so, and her heart quivered with
brightness. For many hours she sat still, slightly conscious
of him labouring away, whilst she worked or read her book.
And he, with all his soul's intensity directing his pencil,
could feel her warmth inside him like strength. They were
both very happy so, and both unconscious of it. These times,
that meant so much, and which were real living, they almost
ignored.
He was conscious only when stimulated. A sketch finished,
he always wanted to take it to Miriam. Then he was
stimulated into knowledge of the work he had produced
unconsciously. In contact with Miriam he gained insight; his
vision went deeper. From his mother he drew the life-warmth,
the strength to produce; Miriam urged this warmth into
intensity like a white light.
When he returned to the factory the conditions of work
were better. He had Wednesday afternoon off to go to the Art
School—Miss Jordan's provision—returning in the evening.
Then the factory closed at six instead of eight on Thursday
and Friday evenings.
One evening in the summer Miriam and he went over the
fields by Herod's Farm on their way from the library home.
So it was only three miles to Willey Farm. There was a
yellow glow over the mowing-grass, and the sorrel-heads
burned crimson. Gradually, as they walked along the high
land, the gold in the west sank down to red, the red to
crimson, and then the chill blue crept up against the glow.
They came out upon the high road to Alfreton, which ran
white between the darkening fields. There Paul hesitated. It
was two miles home for him, one mile forward for Miriam.
They both looked up the road that ran in shadow right under
the glow of the north-west sky. On the crest of the hill,
Selby, with its stark houses and the up-pricked headstocks
of the pit, stood in black silhouette small against the sky.
He looked at his watch.
"Nine o'clock!" he said.
The pair stood, loth to part, hugging their books.
"The wood is so lovely now," she said. "I wanted you to
see it."
He followed her slowly across the road to the white gate.
"They grumble so if I'm late," he said.
"But you're not doing anything wrong," she answered
impatiently.
He followed her across the nibbled pasture in the dusk.
There was a coolness in the wood, a scent of leaves, of
honeysuckle, and a twilight. The two walked in silence.
Night came wonderfully there, among the throng of dark
tree-trunks. He looked round, expectant.
She wanted to show him a certain wild-rose bush she had
discovered. She knew it was wonderful. And yet, till he had
seen it, she felt it had not come into her soul. Only he
could make it her own, immortal. She was dissatisfied.
Dew was already on the paths. In the old oak-wood a mist
was rising, and he hesitated, wondering whether one
whiteness were a strand of fog or only campion-flowers
pallid in a cloud.
By the time they came to the pine-trees Miriam was
getting very eager and very tense. Her bush might be gone.
She might not be able to find it; and she wanted it so much.
Almost passionately she wanted to be with him when he stood
before the flowers. They were going to have a communion
together—something that thrilled her, something holy. He was
walking beside her in silence. They were very near to each
other. She trembled, and he listened, vaguely anxious.
Coming to the edge of the wood, they saw the sky in
front, like mother-of-pearl, and the earth growing dark.
Somewhere on the outermost branches of the pine-wood the
honeysuckle was streaming scent.
"Where?" he asked.
"Down the middle path," she murmured, quivering.
When they turned the corner of the path she stood still.
In the wide walk between the pines, gazing rather
frightened, she could distinguish nothing for some moments;
the greying light robbed things of their colour. Then she
saw her bush.
"Ah!" she cried, hastening forward.
It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It
had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long
streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing
the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white.
In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses
gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul
and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point
after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to
kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke
around, and still did not put out the roses.
Paul looked into Miriam's eyes. She was pale and
expectant with wonder, her lips were parted, and her dark
eyes lay open to him. His look seemed to travel down into
her. Her soul quivered. It was the communion she wanted. He
turned aside, as if pained. He turned to the bush.
"They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake
themselves," he said.
She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved
and holy, others expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark
as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers;
she went forward and touched them in worship.
"Let us go," he said.
There was a cool scent of ivory roses—a white, virgin
scent. Something made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The
two walked in silence.
"Till Sunday," he said quietly, and left her; and she
walked home slowly, feeling her soul satisfied with the
holiness of the night. He stumbled down the path. And as
soon as he was out of the wood, in the free open meadow,
where he could breathe, he started to run as fast as he
could. It was like a delicious delirium in his veins.
Always when he went with Miriam, and it grew rather late,
he knew his mother was fretting and getting angry about
him—why, he could not understand. As he went into the house,
flinging down his cap, his mother looked up at the clock.
She had been sitting thinking, because a chill to her eyes
prevented her reading. She could feel Paul being drawn away
by this girl. And she did not care for Miriam. "She is one
of those who will want to suck a man's soul out till he has
none of his own left," she said to herself; "and he is just
such a gaby as to let himself be absorbed. She will never
let him become a man; she never will." So, while he was away
with Miriam, Mrs. Morel grew more and more worked up.
She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather
tired:
"You have been far enough to-night."
His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl,
shrank.
"You must have been right home with her," his mother
continued.
He would not answer. Mrs. Morel, looking at him quickly,
saw his hair was damp on his forehead with haste, saw him
frowning in his heavy fashion, resentfully.
"She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can't get
away from her, but must go trailing eight miles at this time
of night."
He was hurt between the past glamour with Miriam and the
knowledge that his mother fretted. He had meant not to say
anything, to refuse to answer. But he could not harden his
heart to ignore his mother.
"I DO like to talk to her," he answered irritably.
"Is there nobody else to talk to?"
"You wouldn't say anything if I went with Edgar."
"You know I should. You know, whoever you went with, I
should say it was too far for you to go trailing, late at
night, when you've been to Nottingham. Besides"—her voice
suddenly flashed into anger and contempt—"it is
disgusting—bits of lads and girls courting."
"It is NOT courting," he cried.
"I don't know what else you call it."
"It's not! Do you think we SPOON and do? We only talk."
"Till goodness knows what time and distance," was the
sarcastic rejoinder.
Paul snapped at the laces of his boots angrily.
"What are you so mad about?" he asked. "Because you don't
like her."
"I don't say I don't like her. But I don't hold with
children keeping company, and never did."
"But you don't mind our Annie going out with Jim Inger."
"They've more sense than you two."
"Why?"
"Our Annie's not one of the deep sort."
He failed to see the meaning of this remark. But his
mother looked tired. She was never so strong after William's
death; and her eyes hurt her.
"Well," he said, "it's so pretty in the country. Mr.
Sleath asked about you. He said he'd missed you. Are you a
bit better?"
"I ought to have been in bed a long time ago," she
replied.
"Why, mother, you know you wouldn't have gone before
quarter-past ten."
"Oh, yes, I should!"
"Oh, little woman, you'd say anything now you're
disagreeable with me, wouldn't you?"
He kissed her forehead that he knew so well: the deep
marks between the brows, the rising of the fine hair,
greying now, and the proud setting of the temples. His hand
lingered on her shoulder after his kiss. Then he went slowly
to bed. He had forgotten Miriam; he only saw how his
mother's hair was lifted back from her warm, broad brow. And
somehow, she was hurt.
Then the next time he saw Miriam he said to her:
"Don't let me be late to-night—not later than ten
o'clock. My mother gets so upset."
Miriam dropped her bead, brooding.
"Why does she get upset?" she asked.
"Because she says I oughtn't to be out late when I have
to get up early."
"Very well!" said Miriam, rather quietly, with just a
touch of a sneer.
He resented that. And he was usually late again.
That there was any love growing between him and Miriam
neither of them would have acknowledged. He thought he was
too sane for such sentimentality, and she thought herself
too lofty. They both were late in coming to maturity, and
psychical ripeness was much behind even the physical. Miriam
was exceedingly sensitive, as her mother had always been.
The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish.
Her brothers were brutal, but never coarse in speech. The
men did all the discussing of farm matters outside. But,
perhaps, because of the continual business of birth and of
begetting which goes on upon every farm, Miriam was the more
hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood was chastened
almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such
intercourse. Paul took his pitch from her, and their
intimacy went on in an utterly blanched and chaste fashion.
It could never be mentioned that the mare was in foal.
When he was nineteen, he was earning only twenty
shillings a week, but he was happy. His painting went well,
and life went well enough. On the Good Friday he organised a
walk to the Hemlock Stone. There were three lads of his own
age, then Annie and Arthur, Miriam and Geoffrey. Arthur,
apprenticed as an electrician in Nottingham, was home for
the holiday. Morel, as usual, was up early, whistling and
sawing in the yard. At seven o'clock the family heard him
buy threepennyworth of hot-cross buns; he talked with gusto
to the little girl who brought them, calling her "my
darling". He turned away several boys who came with more
buns, telling them they had been "kested" by a little lass.
Then Mrs. Morel got up, and the family straggled down. It
was an immense luxury to everybody, this lying in bed just
beyond the ordinary time on a weekday. And Paul and Arthur
read before breakfast, and had the meal unwashed, sitting in
their shirt-sleeves. This was another holiday luxury. The
room was warm. Everything felt free of care and anxiety.
There was a sense of plenty in the house.
While the boys were reading, Mrs. Morel went into the
garden. They were now in another house, an old one, near the
Scargill Street home, which had been left soon after William
had died. Directly came an excited cry from the garden:
"Paul! Paul! come and look!"
It was his mother's voice. He threw down his book and
went out. There was a long garden that ran to a field. It
was a grey, cold day, with a sharp wind blowing out of
Derbyshire. Two fields away Bestwood began, with a jumble of
roofs and red house-ends, out of which rose the church tower
and the spire of the Congregational Chapel. And beyond went
woods and hills, right away to the pale grey heights of the
Pennine Chain.
Paul looked down the garden for his mother. Her head
appeared among the young currant-bushes.
"Come here!" she cried.
"What for?" he answered.
"Come and see."
She had been looking at the buds on the currant trees.
Paul went up.
"To think," she said, "that here I might never have seen
them!"
Her son went to her side. Under the fence, in a little
bed, was a ravel of poor grassy leaves, such as come from
very immature bulbs, and three scyllas in bloom. Mrs. Morel
pointed to the deep blue flowers.
"Now, just see those!" she exclaimed. "I was looking at
the currant bushes, when, thinks I to myself, 'There's
something very blue; is it a bit of sugar-bag?' and there,
behold you! Sugar-bag! Three glories of the snow, and such
beauties! But where on earth did they come from?"
"I don't know," said Paul.
"Well, that's a marvel, now! I THOUGHT I knew every weed
and blade in this garden. But HAVEN'T they done well? You
see, that gooseberry-bush just shelters them. Not nipped,
not touched!"
He crouched down and turned up the bells of the little
blue flowers.
"They're a glorious colour!" he said.
"Aren't they!" she cried. "I guess they come from
Switzerland, where they say they have such lovely things.
Fancy them against the snow! But where have they come from?
They can't have BLOWN here, can they?"
Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash
of bulbs to mature.
"And you never told me," she said.
"No! I thought I'd leave it till they might flower."
"And now, you see! I might have missed them. And I've
never had a glory of the snow in my garden in my life."
She was full of excitement and elation. The garden was an
endless joy to her. Paul was thankful for her sake at last
to be in a house with a long garden that went down to a
field. Every morning after breakfast she went out and was
happy pottering about in it. And it was true, she knew every
weed and blade.
Everybody turned up for the walk. Food was packed, and
they set off, a merry, delighted party. They hung over the
wall of the mill-race, dropped paper in the water on one
side of the tunnel and watched it shoot out on the other.
They stood on the foot-bridge over Boathouse Station and
looked at the metals gleaming coldly.
"You should see the Flying Scotsman come through at
half-past six!" said Leonard, whose father was a signalman.
"Lad, but she doesn't half buzz!" and the little party
looked up the lines one way, to London, and the other way,
to Scotland, and they felt the touch of these two magical
places.
In Ilkeston the colliers were waiting in gangs for the
public-houses to open. It was a town of idleness and
lounging. At Stanton Gate the iron foundry blazed. Over
everything there were great discussions. At Trowell they
crossed again from Derbyshire into Nottinghamshire. They
came to the Hemlock Stone at dinner-time. Its field was
crowded with folk from Nottingham and Ilkeston.
They had expected a venerable and dignified monument.
They found a little, gnarled, twisted stump of rock,
something like a decayed mushroom, standing out pathetically
on the side of a field. Leonard and Dick immediately
proceeded to carve their initials, "L. W." and "R. P.", in
the old red sandstone; but Paul desisted, because he had
read in the newspaper satirical remarks about
initial-carvers, who could find no other road to
immortality. Then all the lads climbed to the top of the
rock to look round.
Everywhere in the field below, factory girls and lads
were eating lunch or sporting about. Beyond was the garden
of an old manor. It had yew-hedges and thick clumps and
borders of yellow crocuses round the lawn.
"See," said Paul to Miriam, "what a quiet garden!"
She saw the dark yews and the golden crocuses, then she
looked gratefully. He had not seemed to belong to her among
all these others; he was different then—not her Paul, who
understood the slightest quiver of her innermost soul, but
something else, speaking another language than hers. How it
hurt her, and deadened her very perceptions. Only when he
came right back to her, leaving his other, his lesser self,
as she thought, would she feel alive again. And now he asked
her to look at this garden, wanting the contact with her
again. Impatient of the set in the field, she turned to the
quiet lawn, surrounded by sheaves of shut-up crocuses. A
feeling of stillness, almost of ecstasy, came over her. It
felt almost as if she were alone with him in this garden.
Then he left her again and joined the others. Soon they
started home. Miriam loitered behind, alone. She did not fit
in with the others; she could very rarely get into human
relations with anyone: so her friend, her companion, her
lover, was Nature. She saw the sun declining wanly. In the
dusky, cold hedgerows were some red leaves. She lingered to
gather them, tenderly, passionately. The love in her
finger-tips caressed the leaves; the passion in her heart
came to a glow upon the leaves.
Suddenly she realised she was alone in a strange road,
and she hurried forward. Turning a corner in the lane, she
came upon Paul, who stood bent over something, his mind
fixed on it, working away steadily, patiently, a little
hopelessly. She hesitated in her approach, to watch.
He remained concentrated in the middle of the road.
Beyond, one rift of rich gold in that colourless grey
evening seemed to make him stand out in dark relief. She saw
him, slender and firm, as if the setting sun had given him
to her. A deep pain took hold of her, and she knew she must
love him. And she had discovered him, discovered in him a
rare potentiality, discovered his loneliness. Quivering as
at some "annunciation", she went slowly forward.
At last he looked up.
"Why," he exclaimed gratefully, "have you waited for me!"
She saw a deep shadow in his eyes.
"What is it?" she asked.
"The spring broken here;" and he showed her where his
umbrella was injured.
Instantly, with some shame, she knew he had not done the
damage himself, but that Geoffrey was responsible.
"It is only an old umbrella, isn't it?" she asked.
She wondered why he, who did not usually trouble over
trifles, made such a mountain of this molehill.
"But it was William's an' my mother can't help but know,"
he said quietly, still patiently working at the umbrella.
The words went through Miriam like a blade. This, then,
was the confirmation of her vision of him! She looked at
him. But there was about him a certain reserve, and she
dared not comfort him, not even speak softly to him.
"Come on," he said. "I can't do it;" and they went in
silence along the road.
That same evening they were walking along under the trees
by Nether Green. He was talking to her fretfully, seemed to
be struggling to convince himself.
"You know," he said, with an effort, "if one person
loves, the other does."
"Ah!" she answered. "Like mother said to me when I was
little, 'Love begets love.'"
"Yes, something like that, I think it MUST be."
"I hope so, because, if it were not, love might be a very
terrible thing," she said.
"Yes, but it IS—at least with most people," he answered.
And Miriam, thinking he had assured himself, felt strong
in herself. She always regarded that sudden coming upon him
in the lane as a revelation. And this conversation remained
graven in her mind as one of the letters of the law.
Now she stood with him and for him. When, about this
time, he outraged the family feeling at Willey Farm by some
overbearing insult, she stuck to him, and believed he was
right. And at this time she dreamed dreams of him, vivid,
unforgettable. These dreams came again later on, developed
to a more subtle psychological stage.
On the Easter Monday the same party took an excursion to
Wingfield Manor. It was great excitement to Miriam to catch
a train at Sethley Bridge, amid all the bustle of the Bank
Holiday crowd. They left the train at Alfreton. Paul was
interested in the street and in the colliers with their
dogs. Here was a new race of miners. Miriam did not live
till they came to the church. They were all rather timid of
entering, with their bags of food, for fear of being turned
out. Leonard, a comic, thin fellow, went first; Paul, who
would have died rather than be sent back, went last. The
place was decorated for Easter. In the font hundreds of
white narcissi seemed to be growing. The air was dim and
coloured from the windows and thrilled with a subtle scent
of lilies and narcissi. In that atmosphere Miriam's soul
came into a glow. Paul was afraid of the things he mustn't
do; and he was sensitive to the feel of the place. Miriam
turned to him. He answered. They were together. He would not
go beyond the Communion-rail. She loved him for that. Her
soul expanded into prayer beside him. He felt the strange
fascination of shadowy religious places. All his latent
mysticism quivered into life. She was drawn to him. He was a
prayer along with her.
Miriam very rarely talked to the other lads. They at once
became awkward in conversation with her. So usually she was
silent.
It was past midday when they climbed the steep path to
the manor. All things shone softly in the sun, which was
wonderfully warm and enlivening. Celandines and violets were
out. Everybody was tip-top full with happiness. The glitter
of the ivy, the soft, atmospheric grey of the castle walls,
the gentleness of everything near the ruin, was perfect.
The manor is of hard, pale grey stone, and the other
walls are blank and calm. The young folk were in raptures.
They went in trepidation, almost afraid that the delight of
exploring this ruin might be denied them. In the first
courtyard, within the high broken walls, were farm-carts,
with their shafts lying idle on the ground, the tyres of the
wheels brilliant with gold-red rust. It was very still.
All eagerly paid their sixpences, and went timidly
through the fine clean arch of the inner courtyard. They
were shy. Here on the pavement, where the hall had been, an
old thorn tree was budding. All kinds of strange openings
and broken rooms were in the shadow around them.
After lunch they set off once more to explore the ruin.
This time the girls went with the boys, who could act as
guides and expositors. There was one tall tower in a corner,
rather tottering, where they say Mary Queen of Scots was
imprisoned.
"Think of the Queen going up here!" said Miriam in a low
voice, as she climbed the hollow stairs.
"If she could get up," said Paul, "for she had rheumatism
like anything. I reckon they treated her rottenly."
"You don't think she deserved it?" asked Miriam.
"No, I don't. She was only lively."
They continued to mount the winding staircase. A high
wind, blowing through the loopholes, went rushing up the
shaft, and filled the girl's skirts like a balloon, so that
she was ashamed, until he took the hem of her dress and held
it down for her. He did it perfectly simply, as he would
have picked up her glove. She remembered this always.
Round the broken top of the tower the ivy bushed out, old
and handsome. Also, there were a few chill gillivers, in
pale cold bud. Miriam wanted to lean over for some ivy, but
he would not let her. Instead, she had to wait behind him,
and take from him each spray as he gathered it and held it
to her, each one separately, in the purest manner of
chivalry. The tower seemed to rock in the wind. They looked
over miles and miles of wooded country, and country with
gleams of pasture.
The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful, and in
perfect preservation. Paul made a drawing: Miriam stayed
with him. She was thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking
with her strained, hopeless eyes, that could not understand
misery, over the hills whence no help came, or sitting in
this crypt, being told of a God as cold as the place she sat
in.
They set off again gaily, looking round on their beloved
manor that stood so clean and big on its hill.
"Supposing you could have THAT farm," said Paul to
Miriam.
"Yes!"
"Wouldn't it be lovely to come and see you!"
They were now in the bare country of stone walls, which
he loved, and which, though only ten miles from home, seemed
so foreign to Miriam. The party was straggling. As they were
crossing a large meadow that sloped away from the sun, along
a path embedded with innumerable tiny glittering points,
Paul, walking alongside, laced his fingers in the strings of
the bag Miriam was carrying, and instantly she felt Annie
behind, watchful and jealous. But the meadow was bathed in a
glory of sunshine, and the path was jewelled, and it was
seldom that he gave her any sign. She held her fingers very
still among the strings of the bag, his fingers touching;
and the place was golden as a vision.
At last they came into the straggling grey village of
Crich, that lies high. Beyond the village was the famous
Crich Stand that Paul could see from the garden at home. The
party pushed on. Great expanse of country spread around and
below. The lads were eager to get to the top of the hill. It
was capped by a round knoll, half of which was by now cut
away, and on the top of which stood an ancient monument,
sturdy and squat, for signalling in old days far down into
the level lands of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire.
It was blowing so hard, high up there in the exposed
place, that the only way to be safe was to stand nailed by
the wind to the wan of the tower. At their feet fell the
precipice where the limestone was quarried away. Below was a
jumble of hills and tiny villages—Mattock, Ambergate, Stoney
Middleton. The lads were eager to spy out the church of
Bestwood, far away among the rather crowded country on the
left. They were disgusted that it seemed to stand on a
plain. They saw the hills of Derbyshire fall into the
monotony of the Midlands that swept away South.
Miriam was somewhat scared by the wind, but the lads
enjoyed it. They went on, miles and miles, to Whatstandwell.
All the food was eaten, everybody was hungry, and there was
very little money to get home with. But they managed to
procure a loaf and a currant-loaf, which they hacked to
pieces with shut-knives, and ate sitting on the wall near
the bridge, watching the bright Derwent rushing by, and the
brakes from Matlock pulling up at the inn.
Paul was now pale with weariness. He had been responsible
for the party all day, and now he was done. Miriam
understood, and kept close to him, and he left himself in
her hands.
They had an hour to wait at Ambergate Station. Trains
came, crowded with excursionists returning to Manchester,
Birmingham, and London.
"We might be going there—folk easily might think we're
going that far," said Paul.
They got back rather late. Miriam, walking home with
Geoffrey, watched the moon rise big and red and misty. She
felt something was fulfilled in her.
She had an elder sister, Agatha, who was a
school-teacher. Between the two girls was a feud. Miriam
considered Agatha worldly. And she wanted herself to be a
school-teacher.
One Saturday afternoon Agatha and Miriam were upstairs
dressing. Their bedroom was over the stable. It was a low
room, not very large, and bare. Miriam had nailed on the
wall a reproduction of Veronese's "St. Catherine". She loved
the woman who sat in the window, dreaming. Her own windows
were too small to sit in. But the front one was dripped over
with honeysuckle and virginia creeper, and looked upon the
tree-tops of the oak-wood across the yard, while the little
back window, no bigger than a handkerchief, was a loophole
to the east, to the dawn beating up against the beloved
round hills.
The two sisters did not talk much to each other. Agatha,
who was fair and small and determined, had rebelled against
the home atmosphere, against the doctrine of "the other
cheek". She was out in the world now, in a fair way to be
independent. And she insisted on worldly values, on
appearance, on manners, on position, which Miriam would fain
have ignored.
Both girls liked to be upstairs, out of the way, when
Paul came. They preferred to come running down, open the
stair-foot door, and see him watching, expectant of them.
Miriam stood painfully pulling over her head a rosary he had
given her. It caught in the fine mesh of her hair. But at
last she had it on, and the red-brown wooden beads looked
well against her cool brown neck. She was a well-developed
girl, and very handsome. But in the little looking-glass
nailed against the whitewashed wall she could only see a
fragment of herself at a time. Agatha had bought a little
mirror of her own, which she propped up to suit herself.
Miriam was near the window. Suddenly she heard the
well-known click of the chain, and she saw Paul fling open
the gate, push his bicycle into the yard. She saw him look
at the house, and she shrank away. He walked in a nonchalant
fashion, and his bicycle went with him as if it were a live
thing.
"Paul's come!" she exclaimed.
"Aren't you glad?" said Agatha cuttingly.
Miriam stood still in amazement and bewilderment.
"Well, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes, but I'm not going to let him see it, and think I
wanted him."
Miriam was startled. She heard him putting his bicycle in
the stable underneath, and talking to Jimmy, who had been a
pit-horse, and who was seedy.
"Well, Jimmy my lad, how are ter? Nobbut sick an' sadly,
like? Why, then, it's a shame, my owd lad."
She heard the rope run through the hole as the horse
lifted its head from the lad's caress. How she loved to
listen when he thought only the horse could hear. But there
was a serpent in her Eden. She searched earnestly in herself
to see if she wanted Paul Morel. She felt there would be
some disgrace in it. Full of twisted feeling, she was afraid
she did want him. She stood self-convicted. Then came an
agony of new shame. She shrank within herself in a coil of
torture. Did she want Paul Morel, and did he know she wanted
him? What a subtle infamy upon her. She felt as if her whole
soul coiled into knots of shame.
Agatha was dressed first, and ran downstairs. Miriam
heard her greet the lad gaily, knew exactly how brilliant
her grey eyes became with that tone. She herself would have
felt it bold to have greeted him in such wise. Yet there she
stood under the self-accusation of wanting him, tied to that
stake of torture. In bitter perplexity she kneeled down and
prayed:
"O Lord, let me not love Paul Morel. Keep me from loving
him, if I ought not to love him."
Something anomalous in the prayer arrested her. She
lifted her head and pondered. How could it be wrong to love
him? Love was God's gift. And yet it caused her shame. That
was because of him, Paul Morel. But, then, it was not his
affair, it was her own, between herself and God. She was to
be a sacrifice. But it was God's sacrifice, not Paul Morel's
or her own. After a few minutes she hid her face in the
pillow again, and said:
"But, Lord, if it is Thy will that I should love him,
make me love him—as Christ would, who died for the souls of
men. Make me love him splendidly, because he is Thy son."
She remained kneeling for some time, quite still, and
deeply moved, her black hair against the red squares and the
lavender-sprigged squares of the patchwork quilt. Prayer was
almost essential to her. Then she fell into that rapture of
self-sacrifice, identifying herself with a God who was
sacrificed, which gives to so many human souls their deepest
bliss.
When she went downstairs Paul was lying back in an
armchair, holding forth with much vehemence to Agatha, who
was scorning a little painting he had brought to show her.
Miriam glanced at the two, and avoided their levity. She
went into the parlour to be alone.
It was tea-time before she was able to speak to Paul, and
then her manner was so distant he thought he had offended
her.
Miriam discontinued her practice of going each Thursday
evening to the library in Bestwood. After calling for Paul
regularly during the whole spring, a number of trifling
incidents and tiny insults from his family awakened her to
their attitude towards her, and she decided to go no more.
So she announced to Paul one evening she would not call at
his house again for him on Thursday nights.
"Why?" he asked, very short.
"Nothing. Only I'd rather not."
"Very well."
"But," she faltered, "if you'd care to meet me, we could
still go together."
"Meet you where?"
"Somewhere—where you like."
"I shan't meet you anywhere. I don't see why you
shouldn't keep calling for me. But if you won't, I don't
want to meet you."
So the Thursday evenings which had been so precious to
her, and to him, were dropped. He worked instead. Mrs. Morel
sniffed with satisfaction at this arrangement.
He would not have it that they were lovers. The intimacy
between them had been kept so abstract, such a matter of the
soul, all thought and weary struggle into consciousness,
that he saw it only as a platonic friendship. He stoutly
denied there was anything else between them. Miriam was
silent, or else she very quietly agreed. He was a fool who
did not know what was happening to himself. By tacit
agreement they ignored the remarks and insinuations of their
acquaintances.
"We aren't lovers, we are friends," he said to her. "WE
know it. Let them talk. What does it matter what they say."
Sometimes, as they were walking together, she slipped her
arm timidly into his. But he always resented it, and she
knew it. It caused a violent conflict in him. With Miriam he
was always on the high plane of abstraction, when his
natural fire of love was transmitted into the fine stream of
thought. She would have it so. If he were jolly and, as she
put it, flippant, she waited till he came back to her, till
the change had taken place in him again, and he was
wrestling with his own soul, frowning, passionate in his
desire for understanding. And in this passion for
understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to
herself. But he must be made abstract first.
Then, if she put her arm in his, it caused him almost
torture. His consciousness seemed to split. The place where
she was touching him ran hot with friction. He was one
internecine battle, and he became cruel to her because of
it.
One evening in midsummer Miriam called at the house, warm
from climbing. Paul was alone in the kitchen; his mother
could be heard moving about upstairs.
"Come and look at the sweet-peas," he said to the girl.
They went into the garden. The sky behind the townlet and
the church was orange-red; the flower-garden was flooded
with a strange warm light that lifted every leaf into
significance. Paul passed along a fine row of sweet-peas,
gathering a blossom here and there, all cream and pale blue.
Miriam followed, breathing the fragrance. To her, flowers
appealed with such strength she felt she must make them part
of herself. When she bent and breathed a flower, it was as
if she and the flower were loving each other. Paul hated her
for it. There seemed a sort of exposure about the action,
something too intimate.
When he had got a fair bunch, they returned to the house.
He listened for a moment to his mother's quiet movement
upstairs, then he said:
"Come here, and let me pin them in for you." He arranged
them two or three at a time in the bosom of her dress,
stepping back now and then to see the effect. "You know," he
said, taking the pin out of his mouth, "a woman ought always
to arrange her flowers before her glass."
Miriam laughed. She thought flowers ought to be pinned in
one's dress without any care. That Paul should take pains to
fix her flowers for her was his whim.
He was rather offended at her laughter.
"Some women do—those who look decent," he said.
Miriam laughed again, but mirthlessly, to hear him thus
mix her up with women in a general way. From most men she
would have ignored it. But from him it hurt her.
He had nearly finished arranging the flowers when he
heard his mother's footstep on the stairs. Hurriedly he
pushed in the last pin and turned away.
"Don't let mater know," he said.
Miriam picked up her books and stood in the doorway
looking with chagrin at the beautiful sunset. She would call
for Paul no more, she said.
"Good-evening, Mrs. Morel," she said, in a deferential
way. She sounded as if she felt she had no right to be
there.
"Oh, is it you, Miriam?" replied Mrs. Morel coolly.
But Paul insisted on everybody's accepting his friendship
with the girl, and Mrs. Morel was too wise to have any open
rupture.
It was not till he was twenty years old that the family
could ever afford to go away for a holiday. Mrs. Morel had
never been away for a holiday, except to see her sister,
since she had been married. Now at last Paul had saved
enough money, and they were all going. There was to be a
party: some of Annie's friends, one friend of Paul's, a
young man in the same office where William had previously
been, and Miriam.
It was great excitement writing for rooms. Paul and his
mother debated it endlessly between them. They wanted a
furnished cottage for two weeks. She thought one week would
be enough, but he insisted on two.
At last they got an answer from Mablethorpe, a cottage
such as they wished for thirty shillings a week. There was
immense jubilation. Paul was wild with joy for his mother's
sake. She would have a real holiday now. He and she sat at
evening picturing what it would be like. Annie came in, and
Leonard, and Alice, and Kitty. There was wild rejoicing and
anticipation. Paul told Miriam. She seemed to brood with joy
over it. But the Morel's house rang with excitement.
They were to go on Saturday morning by the seven train.
Paul suggested that Miriam should sleep at his house,
because it was so far for her to walk. She came down for
supper. Everybody was so excited that even Miriam was
accepted with warmth. But almost as soon as she entered the
feeling in the family became close and tight. He had
discovered a poem by Jean Ingelow which mentioned
Mablethorpe, and so he must read it to Miriam. He would
never have got so far in the direction of sentimentality as
to read poetry to his own family. But now they condescended
to listen. Miriam sat on the sofa absorbed in him. She
always seemed absorbed in him, and by him, when he was
present. Mrs. Morel sat jealously in her own chair. She was
going to hear also. And even Annie and the father attended,
Morel with his head cocked on one side, like somebody
listening to a sermon and feeling conscious of the fact.
Paul ducked his head over the book. He had got now all the
audience he cared for. And Mrs. Morel and Annie almost
contested with Miriam who should listen best and win his
favour. He was in very high feather.
"But," interrupted Mrs. Morel, "what IS the 'Bride of
Enderby' that the bells are supposed to ring?"
"It's an old tune they used to play on the bells for a
warning against water. I suppose the Bride of Enderby was
drowned in a flood," he replied. He had not the faintest
knowledge what it really was, but he would never have sunk
so low as to confess that to his womenfolk. They listened
and believed him. He believed himself.
"And the people knew what that tune meant?" said his
mother.
"Yes—just like the Scotch when they heard 'The Flowers o'
the Forest'—and when they used to ring the bells backward
for alarm."
"How?" said Annie. "A bell sounds the same whether it's
rung backwards or forwards."
"But," he said, "if you start with the deep bell and ring
up to the high one—der—der—der—der—der—der—der—der!"
He ran up the scale. Everybody thought it clever. He
thought so too. Then, waiting a minute, he continued the
poem.
"Hm!" said Mrs. Morel curiously, when he finished. "But I
wish everything that's written weren't so sad."
"I canna see what they want drownin' theirselves for,"
said Morel.
There was a pause. Annie got up to clear the table.
Miriam rose to help with the pots.
"Let ME help to wash up," she said.
"Certainly not," cried Annie. "You sit down again. There
aren't many."
And Miriam, who could not be familiar and insist, sat
down again to look at the book with Paul.
He was master of the party; his father was no good. And
great tortures he suffered lest the tin box should be put
out at Firsby instead of at Mablethorpe. And he wasn't equal
to getting a carriage. His bold little mother did that.
"Here!" she cried to a man. "Here!"
Paul and Annie got behind the rest, convulsed with shamed
laughter.
"How much will it be to drive to Brook Cottage?" said
Mrs. Morel.
"Two shillings."
"Why, how far is it?"
"A good way."
"I don't believe it," she said.
But she scrambled in. There were eight crowded in one old
seaside carriage.
"You see," said Mrs. Morel, "it's only threepence each,
and if it were a tramcar—"
They drove along. Each cottage they came to, Mrs. Morel
cried:
"Is it this? Now, this is it!"
Everybody sat breathless. They drove past. There was a
universal sigh.
"I'm thankful it wasn't that brute," said Mrs. Morel. "I
WAS frightened." They drove on and on.
At last they descended at a house that stood alone over
the dyke by the highroad. There was wild excitement because
they had to cross a little bridge to get into the front
garden. But they loved the house that lay so solitary, with
a sea-meadow on one side, and immense expanse of land
patched in white barley, yellow oats, red wheat, and green
root-crops, flat and stretching level to the sky.
Paul kept accounts. He and his mother ran the show. The
total expenses—lodging, food, everything—was sixteen
shillings a week per person. He and Leonard went bathing in
the mornings. Morel was wandering abroad quite early.
"You, Paul," his mother called from the bedroom, "eat a
piece of bread-and-butter."
"All right," he answered.
And when he got back he saw his mother presiding in state
at the breakfast-table. The woman of the house was young.
Her husband was blind, and she did laundry work. So Mrs.
Morel always washed the pots in the kitchen and made the
beds.
"But you said you'd have a real holiday," said Paul, "and
now you work."
"Work!" she exclaimed. "What are you talking about!"
He loved to go with her across the fields to the village
and the sea. She was afraid of the plank bridge, and he
abused her for being a baby. On the whole he stuck to her as
if he were HER man.
Miriam did not get much of him, except, perhaps, when all
the others went to the "Coons". Coons were insufferably
stupid to Miriam, so he thought they were to himself also,
and he preached priggishly to Annie about the fatuity of
listening to them. Yet he, too, knew all their songs, and
sang them along the roads roisterously. And if he found
himself listening, the stupidity pleased him very much. Yet
to Annie he said:
"Such rot! there isn't a grain of intelligence in it.
Nobody with more gumption than a grasshopper could go and
sit and listen." And to Miriam he said, with much scorn of
Annie and the others: "I suppose they're at the 'Coons'."
It was queer to see Miriam singing coon songs. She had a
straight chin that went in a perpendicular line from the
lower lip to the turn. She always reminded Paul of some sad
Botticelli angel when she sang, even when it was:
"Come down lover's lane
For a walk with me, talk with me."
Only when he sketched, or at evening when the others were
at the "Coons", she had him to herself. He talked to her
endlessly about his love of horizontals: how they, the great
levels of sky and land in Lincolnshire, meant to him the
eternality of the will, just as the bowed Norman arches of
the church, repeating themselves, meant the dogged leaping
forward of the persistent human soul, on and on, nobody
knows where; in contradiction to the perpendicular lines and
to the Gothic arch, which, he said, leapt up at heaven and
touched the ecstasy and lost itself in the divine. Himself,
he said, was Norman, Miriam was Gothic. She bowed in consent
even to that.
One evening he and she went up the great sweeping shore
of sand towards Theddlethorpe. The long breakers plunged and
ran in a hiss of foam along the coast. It was a warm
evening. There was not a figure but themselves on the far
reaches of sand, no noise but the sound of the sea. Paul
loved to see it clanging at the land. He loved to feel
himself between the noise of it and the silence of the sandy
shore. Miriam was with him. Everything grew very intense. It
was quite dark when they turned again. The way home was
through a gap in the sandhills, and then along a raised
grass road between two dykes. The country was black and
still. From behind the sandhills came the whisper of the
sea. Paul and Miriam walked in silence. Suddenly he started.
The whole of his blood seemed to burst into flame, and he
could scarcely breathe. An enormous orange moon was staring
at them from the rim of the sandhills. He stood still,
looking at it.
"Ah!" cried Miriam, when she saw it.
He remained perfectly still, staring at the immense and
ruddy moon, the only thing in the far-reaching darkness of
the level. His heart beat heavily, the muscles of his arms
contracted.
"What is it?" murmured Miriam, waiting for him.
He turned and looked at her. She stood beside him, for
ever in shadow. Her face, covered with the darkness of her
hat, was watching him unseen. But she was brooding. She was
slightly afraid—deeply moved and religious. That was her
best state. He was impotent against it. His blood was
concentrated like a flame in his chest. But he could not get
across to her. There were flashes in his blood. But somehow
she ignored them. She was expecting some religious state in
him. Still yearning, she was half aware of his passion, and
gazed at him, troubled.
"What is it?" she murmured again.
"It's the moon," he answered, frowning.
"Yes," she assented. "Isn't it wonderful?" She was
curious about him. The crisis was past.
He did not know himself what was the matter. He was
naturally so young, and their intimacy was so abstract, he
did not know he wanted to crush her on to his breast to ease
the ache there. He was afraid of her. The fact that he might
want her as a man wants a woman had in him been suppressed
into a shame. When she shrank in her convulsed, coiled
torture from the thought of such a thing, he had winced to
the depths of his soul. And now this "purity" prevented even
their first love-kiss. It was as if she could scarcely stand
the shock of physical love, even a passionate kiss, and then
he was too shrinking and sensitive to give it.
As they walked along the dark fen-meadow he watched the
moon and did not speak. She plodded beside him. He hated
her, for she seemed in some way to make him despise himself.
Looking ahead—he saw the one light in the darkness, the
window of their lamp-lit cottage.
He loved to think of his mother, and the other jolly
people.
"Well, everybody else has been in long ago!" said his
mother as they entered.
"What does that matter!" he cried irritably. "I can go a
walk if I like, can't I?"
"And I should have thought you could get in to supper
with the rest," said Mrs. Morel.
"I shall please myself," he retorted. "It's not LATE. I
shall do as I like."
"Very well," said his mother cuttingly, "then DO as you
like." And she took no further notice of him that evening.
Which he pretended neither to notice nor to care about, but
sat reading. Miriam read also, obliterating herself. Mrs.
Morel hated her for making her son like this. She watched
Paul growing irritable, priggish, and melancholic. For this
she put the blame on Miriam. Annie and all her friends
joined against the girl. Miriam had no friend of her own,
only Paul. But she did not suffer so much, because she
despised the triviality of these other people.
And Paul hated her because, somehow, she spoilt his ease
and naturalness. And he writhed himself with a feeling of
humiliation.
CHAPTER VIII
STRIFE IN LOVE
ARTHUR finished his apprenticeship, and got a job on the
electrical plant at Minton Pit. He earned very little, but
had a good chance of getting on. But he was wild and
restless. He did not drink nor gamble. Yet he somehow
contrived to get into endless scrapes, always through some
hot-headed thoughtlessness. Either he went rabbiting in the
woods, like a poacher, or he stayed in Nottingham all night
instead of coming home, or he miscalculated his dive into
the canal at Bestwood, and scored his chest into one mass of
wounds on the raw stones and tins at the bottom.
He had not been at his work many months when again he did
not come home one night.
"Do you know where Arthur is?" asked Paul at breakfast.
"I do not," replied his mother.
"He is a fool," said Paul. "And if he DID anything I
shouldn't mind. But no, he simply can't come away from a
game of whist, or else he must see a girl home from the
skating-rink—quite proprietously—and so can't get home. He's
a fool."
"I don't know that it would make it any better if he did
something to make us all ashamed," said Mrs. Morel.
"Well, I should respect him more," said Paul.
"I very much doubt it," said his mother coldly.
They went on with breakfast.
"Are you fearfully fond of him?" Paul asked his mother.
"What do you ask that for?"
"Because they say a woman always like the youngest best."
"She may do—but I don't. No, he wearies me."
"And you'd actually rather he was good?"
"I'd rather he showed some of a man's common sense."
Paul was raw and irritable. He also wearied his mother
very often. She saw the sunshine going out of him, and she
resented it.
As they were finishing breakfast came the postman with a
letter from Derby. Mrs. Morel screwed up her eyes to look at
the address.
"Give it here, blind eye!" exclaimed her son, snatching
it away from her.
She started, and almost boxed his ears.
"It's from your son, Arthur," he said.
"What now—!" cried Mrs. Morel.
"'My dearest Mother,'" Paul read, "'I don't know what
made me such a fool. I want you to come and fetch me back
from here. I came with Jack Bredon yesterday, instead of
going to work, and enlisted. He said he was sick of wearing
the seat of a stool out, and, like the idiot you know I am,
I came away with him.
"'I have taken the King's shilling, but perhaps if you
came for me they would let me go back with you. I was a fool
when I did it. I don't want to be in the army. My dear
mother, I am nothing but a trouble to you. But if you get me
out of this, I promise I will have more sense and
consideration. . . .'"
Mrs. Morel sat down in her rocking-chair.
"Well, NOW," she cried, "let him stop!"
"Yes," said Paul, "let him stop."
There was silence. The mother sat with her hands folded
in her apron, her face set, thinking.
"If I'm not SICK!" she cried suddenly. "Sick!"
"Now," said Paul, beginning to frown, "you're not going
to worry your soul out about this, do you hear."
"I suppose I'm to take it as a blessing," she flashed,
turning on her son.
"You're not going to mount it up to a tragedy, so there,"
he retorted.
"The FOOL!—the young fool!" she cried.
"He'll look well in uniform," said Paul irritatingly.
His mother turned on him like a fury.
"Oh, will he!" she cried. "Not in my eyes!"
"He should get in a cavalry regiment; he'll have the time
of his life, and will look an awful swell."
"Swell!—SWELL!—a mighty swell idea indeed!—a common
soldier!"
"Well," said Paul, "what am I but a common clerk?"
"A good deal, my boy!" cried his mother, stung.
"What?"
"At any rate, a MAN, and not a thing in a red coat."
"I shouldn't mind being in a red coat—or dark blue, that
would suit me better—if they didn't boss me about too much."
But his mother had ceased to listen.
"Just as he was getting on, or might have been getting
on, at his job—a young nuisance—here he goes and ruins
himself for life. What good will he be, do you think, after
THIS?"
"It may lick him into shape beautifully," said Paul.
"Lick him into shape!—lick what marrow there WAS out of
his bones. A SOLDIER!—a common SOLDIER!—nothing but a body
that makes movements when it hears a shout! It's a fine
thing!"
"I can't understand why it upsets you," said Paul.
"No, perhaps you can't. But I understand"; and she sat
back in her chair, her chin in one hand, holding her elbow
with the other, brimmed up with wrath and chagrin.
"And shall you go to Derby?" asked Paul.
"Yes."
"It's no good."
"I'll see for myself."
"And why on earth don't you let him stop. It's just what
he wants."
"Of course," cried the mother, "YOU know what he wants!"
She got ready and went by the first train to Derby, where
she saw her son and the sergeant. It was, however, no good.
When Morel was having his dinner in the evening, she said
suddenly:
"I've had to go to Derby to-day."
The miner turned up his eyes, showing the whites in his
black face.
"Has ter, lass. What took thee there?"
"That Arthur!"
"Oh—an' what's agate now?"
"He's only enlisted."
Morel put down his knife and leaned back in his chair.
"Nay," he said, "that he niver 'as!"
"And is going down to Aldershot tomorrow."
"Well!" exclaimed the miner. "That's a winder." He
considered it a moment, said "H'm!" and proceeded with his
dinner. Suddenly his face contracted with wrath. "I hope he
may never set foot i' my house again," he said.
"The idea!" cried Mrs. Morel. "Saying such a thing!"
"I do," repeated Morel. "A fool as runs away for a
soldier, let 'im look after 'issen; I s'll do no more for
'im."
"A fat sight you have done as it is," she said.
And Morel was almost ashamed to go to his public-house
that evening.
"Well, did you go?" said Paul to his mother when he came
home.
"I did."
"And could you see him?"
"Yes."
"And what did he say?"
"He blubbered when I came away."
"H'm!"
"And so did I, so you needn't 'h'm'!"
Mrs. Morel fretted after her son. She knew he would not
like the army. He did not. The discipline was intolerable to
him.
"But the doctor," she said with some pride to Paul, "said
he was perfectly proportioned—almost exactly; all his
measurements were correct. He IS good-looking, you know."
"He's awfully nice-looking. But he doesn't fetch the
girls like William, does he?"
"No; it's a different character. He's a good deal like
his father, irresponsible."
To console his mother, Paul did not go much to Willey
Farm at this time. And in the autumn exhibition of students'
work in the Castle he had two studies, a landscape in
water-colour and a still life in oil, both of which had
first-prize awards. He was highly excited.
"What do you think I've got for my pictures, mother?" he
asked, coming home one evening. She saw by his eyes he was
glad. Her face flushed.
"Now, how should I know, my boy!"
"A first prize for those glass jars—"
"H'm!"
"And a first prize for that sketch up at Willey Farm."
"Both first?"
"Yes."
"H'm!"
There was a rosy, bright look about her, though she said
nothing.
"It's nice," he said, "isn't it?"
"It is."
"Why don't you praise me up to the skies?"
She laughed.
"I should have the trouble of dragging you down again,"
she said.
But she was full of joy, nevertheless. William had
brought her his sporting trophies. She kept them still, and
she did not forgive his death. Arthur was handsome—at least,
a good specimen—and warm and generous, and probably would do
well in the end. But Paul was going to distinguish himself.
She had a great belief in him, the more because he was
unaware of his own powers. There was so much to come out of
him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see
herself fulfilled. Not for nothing had been her struggle.
Several times during the exhibition Mrs. Morel went to
the Castle unknown to Paul. She wandered down the long room
looking at the other exhibits. Yes, they were good. But they
had not in them a certain something which she demanded for
her satisfaction. Some made her jealous, they were so good.
She looked at them a long time trying to find fault with
them. Then suddenly she had a shock that made her heart
beat. There hung Paul's picture! She knew it as if it were
printed on her heart.
"Name—Paul Morel—First Prize."
It looked so strange, there in public, on the walls of
the Castle gallery, where in her lifetime she had seen so
many pictures. And she glanced round to see if anyone had
noticed her again in front of the same sketch.
But she felt a proud woman. When she met well-dressed
ladies going home to the Park, she thought to herself:
"Yes, you look very well—but I wonder if YOUR son has two
first prizes in the Castle."
And she walked on, as proud a little woman as any in
Nottingham. And Paul felt he had done something for her, if
only a trifle. All his work was hers.
One day, as he was going up Castle Gate, he met Miriam.
He had seen her on the Sunday, and had not expected to meet
her in town. She was walking with a rather striking woman,
blonde, with a sullen expression, and a defiant carriage. It
was strange how Miriam, in her bowed, meditative bearing,
looked dwarfed beside this woman with the handsome
shoulders. Miriam watched Paul searchingly. His gaze was on
the stranger, who ignored him. The girl saw his masculine
spirit rear its head.
"Hello!" he said, "you didn't tell me you were coming to
town."
"No," replied Miriam, half apologetically. "I drove in to
Cattle Market with father."
He looked at her companion.
"I've told you about Mrs. Dawes," said Miriam huskily;
she was nervous. "Clara, do you know Paul?"
"I think I've seen him before," replied Mrs. Dawes
indifferently, as she shook hands with him. She had scornful
grey eyes, a skin like white honey, and a full mouth, with a
slightly lifted upper lip that did not know whether it was
raised in scorn of all men or out of eagerness to be kissed,
but which believed the former. She carried her head back, as
if she had drawn away in contempt, perhaps from men also.
She wore a large, dowdy hat of black beaver, and a sort of
slightly affected simple dress that made her look rather
sack-like. She was evidently poor, and had not much taste.
Miriam usually looked nice.
"Where have you seen me?" Paul asked of the woman.
She looked at him as if she would not trouble to answer.
Then:
"Walking with Louie Travers," she said.
Louie was one of the "Spiral" girls.
"Why, do you know her?" he asked.
She did not answer. He turned to Miriam.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To the Castle."
"What train are you going home by?"
"I am driving with father. I wish you could come too.
What time are you free?"
"You know not till eight to-night, damn it!"
And directly the two women moved on.
Paul remembered that Clara Dawes was the daughter of an
old friend of Mrs. Leivers. Miriam had sought her out
because she had once been Spiral overseer at Jordan's, and
because her husband, Baxter Dawes, was smith for the
factory, making the irons for cripple instruments, and so
on. Through her Miriam felt she got into direct contact with
Jordan's, and could estimate better Paul's position. But
Mrs. Dawes was separated from her husband, and had taken up
Women's Rights. She was supposed to be clever. It interested
Paul.
Baxter Dawes he knew and disliked. The smith was a man of
thirty-one or thirty-two. He came occasionally through
Paul's corner—a big, well-set man, also striking to look at,
and handsome. There was a peculiar similarity between
himself and his wife. He had the same white skin, with a
clear, golden tinge. His hair was of soft brown, his
moustache was golden. And he had a similar defiance in his
bearing and manner. But then came the difference. His eyes,
dark brown and quick-shifting, were dissolute. They
protruded very slightly, and his eyelids hung over them in a
way that was half hate. His mouth, too, was sensual. His
whole manner was of cowed defiance, as if he were ready to
knock anybody down who disapproved of him—perhaps because he
really disapproved of himself.
From the first day he had hated Paul. Finding the lad's
impersonal, deliberate gaze of an artist on his face, he got
into a fury.
"What are yer lookin' at?" he sneered, bullying.
The boy glanced away. But the smith used to stand behind
the counter and talk to Mr. Pappleworth. His speech was
dirty, with a kind of rottenness. Again he found the youth
with his cool, critical gaze fixed on his face. The smith
started round as if he had been stung.
"What'r yer lookin' at, three hap'orth o' pap?" he
snarled.
The boy shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"Why yer—!" shouted Dawes.
"Leave him alone," said Mr. Pappleworth, in that
insinuating voice which means, "He's only one of your good
little sops who can't help it."
Since that time the boy used to look at the man every
time he came through with the same curious criticism,
glancing away before he met the smith's eye. It made Dawes
furious. They hated each other in silence.
Clara Dawes had no children. When she had left her
husband the home had been broken up, and she had gone to
live with her mother. Dawes lodged with his sister. In the
same house was a sister-in-law, and somehow Paul knew that
this girl, Louie Travers, was now Dawes's woman. She was a
handsome, insolent hussy, who mocked at the youth, and yet
flushed if he walked along to the station with her as she
went home.
The next time he went to see Miriam it was Saturday
evening. She had a fire in the parlour, and was waiting for
him. The others, except her father and mother and the young
children, had gone out, so the two had the parlour together.
It was a long, low, warm room. There were three of Paul's
small sketches on the wall, and his photo was on the
mantelpiece. On the table and on the high old rosewood piano
were bowls of coloured leaves. He sat in the armchair, she
crouched on the hearthrug near his feet. The glow was warm
on her handsome, pensive face as she kneeled there like a
devotee.
"What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?" she asked quietly.
"She doesn't look very amiable," he replied.
"No, but don't you think she's a fine woman?" she said,
in a deep tone,
"Yes—in stature. But without a grain of taste. I like her
for some things. IS she disagreeable?"
"I don't think so. I think she's dissatisfied."
"What with?"
"Well—how would you like to be tied for life to a man
like that?"
"Why did she marry him, then, if she was to have
revulsions so soon?"
"Ay, why did she!" repeated Miriam bitterly.
"And I should have thought she had enough fight in her to
match him," he said.
Miriam bowed her head.
"Ay?" she queried satirically. "What makes you think so?"
"Look at her mouth—made for passion—and the very setback
of her throat—" He threw his head back in Clara's defiant
manner.
Miriam bowed a little lower.
"Yes," she said.
There was a silence for some moments, while he thought of
Clara.
"And what were the things you liked about her?" she
asked.
"I don't know—her skin and the texture of her—and her—I
don't know—there's a sort of fierceness somewhere in her. I
appreciate her as an artist, that's all."
"Yes."
He wondered why Miriam crouched there brooding in that
strange way. It irritated him.
"You don't really like her, do you?" he asked the girl.
She looked at him with her great, dazzled dark eyes.
"I do," she said.
"You don't—you can't—not really."
"Then what?" she asked slowly.
"Eh, I don't know—perhaps you like her because she's got
a grudge against men."
That was more probably one of his own reasons for liking
Mrs. Dawes, but this did not occur to him. They were silent.
There had come into his forehead a knitting of the brows
which was becoming habitual with him, particularly when he
was with Miriam. She longed to smooth it away, and she was
afraid of it. It seemed the stamp of a man who was not her
man in Paul Morel.
There were some crimson berries among the leaves in the
bowl. He reached over and pulled out a bunch.
"If you put red berries in your hair," he said, "why
would you look like some witch or priestess, and never like
a reveller?"
She laughed with a naked, painful sound.
"I don't know," she said.
His vigorous warm hands were playing excitedly with the
berries.
"Why can't you laugh?" he said. "You never laugh
laughter. You only laugh when something is odd or
incongruous, and then it almost seems to hurt you."
She bowed her head as if he were scolding her.
"I wish you could laugh at me just for one minute—just
for one minute. I feel as if it would set something free."
"But"—and she looked up at him with eyes frightened and
struggling—"I do laugh at you—I DO."
"Never! There's always a kind of intensity. When you
laugh I could always cry; it seems as if it shows up your
suffering. Oh, you make me knit the brows of my very soul
and cogitate."
Slowly she shook her head despairingly.
"I'm sure I don't want to," she said.
"I'm so damned spiritual with YOU always!" he cried.
She remained silent, thinking, "Then why don't you be
otherwise." But he saw her crouching, brooding figure, and
it seemed to tear him in two.
"But, there, it's autumn," he said, "and everybody feels
like a disembodied spirit then."
There was still another silence. This peculiar sadness
between them thrilled her soul. He seemed so beautiful with
his eyes gone dark, and looking as if they were deep as the
deepest well.
"You make me so spiritual!" he lamented. "And I don't
want to be spiritual."
She took her finger from her mouth with a little pop, and
looked up at him almost challenging. But still her soul was
naked in her great dark eyes, and there was the same
yearning appeal upon her. If he could have kissed her in
abstract purity he would have done so. But he could not kiss
her thus—and she seemed to leave no other way. And she
yearned to him.
He gave a brief laugh.
"Well," he said, "get that French and we'll do some—some
Verlaine."
"Yes," she said in a deep tone, almost of resignation.
And she rose and got the books. And her rather red, nervous
hands looked so pitiful, he was mad to comfort her and kiss
her. But then be dared not—or could not. There was something
prevented him. His kisses were wrong for her. They continued
the reading till ten o'clock, when they went into the
kitchen, and Paul was natural and jolly again with the
father and mother. His eyes were dark and shining; there was
a kind of fascination about him.
When he went into the barn for his bicycle he found the
front wheel punctured.
"Fetch me a drop of water in a bowl," he said to her. "I
shall be late, and then I s'll catch it."
He lighted the hurricane lamp, took off his coat, turned
up the bicycle, and set speedily to work. Miriam came with
the bowl of water and stood close to him, watching. She
loved to see his hands doing things. He was slim and
vigorous, with a kind of easiness even in his most hasty
movements. And busy at his work he seemed to forget her. She
loved him absorbedly. She wanted to run her hands down his
sides. She always wanted to embrace him, so long as he did
not want her.
"There!" he said, rising suddenly. "Now, could you have
done it quicker?"
"No!" she laughed.
He straightened himself. His back was towards her. She
put her two hands on his sides, and ran them quickly down.
"You are so FINE!" she said.
He laughed, hating her voice, but his blood roused to a
wave of flame by her hands. She did not seem to realise HIM
in all this. He might have been an object. She never
realised the male he was.
He lighted his bicycle-lamp, bounced the machine on the
barn floor to see that the tyres were sound, and buttoned
his coat.
"That's all right!" he said.
She was trying the brakes, that she knew were broken.
"Did you have them mended?" she asked.
"No!"
"But why didn't you?"
"The back one goes on a bit."
"But it's not safe."
"I can use my toe."
"I wish you'd had them mended," she murmured.
"Don't worry—come to tea tomorrow, with Edgar."
"Shall we?"
"Do—about four. I'll come to meet you."
"Very well."
She was pleased. They went across the dark yard to the
gate. Looking across, he saw through the uncurtained window
of the kitchen the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Leivers in the warm
glow. It looked very cosy. The road, with pine trees, was
quite black in front.
"Till tomorrow," he said, jumping on his bicycle.
"You'll take care, won't you?" she pleaded.
"Yes."
His voice already came out of the darkness. She stood a
moment watching the light from his lamp race into obscurity
along the ground. She turned very slowly indoors. Orion was
wheeling up over the wood, his dog twinkling after him, half
smothered. For the rest the world was full of darkness, and
silent, save for the breathing of cattle in their stalls.
She prayed earnestly for his safety that night. When he left
her, she often lay in anxiety, wondering if he had got home
safely.
He dropped down the hills on his bicycle. The roads were
greasy, so he had to let it go. He felt a pleasure as the
machine plunged over the second, steeper drop in the hill.
"Here goes!" he said. It was risky, because of the curve in
the darkness at the bottom, and because of the brewers'
waggons with drunken waggoners asleep. His bicycle seemed to
fall beneath him, and he loved it. Recklessness is almost a
man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he
will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.
The stars on the lake seemed to leap like grasshoppers,
silver upon the blackness, as he spun past. Then there was
the long climb home.
"See, mother!" he said, as he threw her the berries and
leaves on to the table.
"H'm!" she said, glancing at them, then away again. She
sat reading, alone, as she always did.
"Aren't they pretty?"
"Yes."
He knew she was cross with him. After a few minutes he
said:
"Edgar and Miriam are coming to tea tomorrow."
She did not answer.
"You don't mind?"
Still she did not answer.
"Do you?" he asked.
"You know whether I mind or not."
"I don't see why you should. I have plenty of meals
there."
"You do."
"Then why do you begrudge them tea?"
"I begrudge whom tea?"
"What are you so horrid for?"
"Oh, say no more! You've asked her to tea, it's quite
sufficient. She'll come."
He was very angry with his mother. He knew it was merely
Miriam she objected to. He flung off his boots and went to
bed.
Paul went to meet his friends the next afternoon. He was
glad to see them coming. They arrived home at about four
o'clock. Everywhere was clean and still for Sunday
afternoon. Mrs. Morel sat in her black dress and black
apron. She rose to meet the visitors. With Edgar she was
cordial, but with Miriam cold and rather grudging. Yet Paul
thought the girl looked so nice in her brown cashmere frock.
He helped his mother to get the tea ready. Miriam would
have gladly proffered, but was afraid. He was rather proud
of his home. There was about it now, he thought, a certain
distinction. The chairs were only wooden, and the sofa was
old. But the hearthrug and cushions were cosy; the pictures
were prints in good taste; there was a simplicity in
everything, and plenty of books. He was never ashamed in the
least of his home, nor was Miriam of hers, because both were
what they should be, and warm. And then he was proud of the
table; the china was pretty, the cloth was fine. It did not
matter that the spoons were not silver nor the knives
ivory-handled; everything looked nice. Mrs. Morel had
managed wonderfully while her children were growing up, so
that nothing was out of place.
Miriam talked books a little. That was her unfailing
topic. But Mrs. Morel was not cordial, and turned soon to
Edgar.
At first Edgar and Miriam used to go into Mrs. Morel's
pew. Morel never went to chapel, preferring the
public-house. Mrs. Morel, like a little champion, sat at the
head of her pew, Paul at the other end; and at first Miriam
sat next to him. Then the chapel was like home. It was a
pretty place, with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars, and
flowers. And the same people had sat in the same places ever
since he was a boy. It was wonderfully sweet and soothing to
sit there for an hour and a half, next to Miriam, and near
to his mother, uniting his two loves under the spell of the
place of worship. Then he felt warm and happy and religious
at once. And after chapel he walked home with Miriam, whilst
Mrs. Morel spent the rest of the evening with her old
friend, Mrs. Burns. He was keenly alive on his walks on
Sunday nights with Edgar and Miriam. He never went past the
pits at night, by the lighted lamp-house, the tall black
headstocks and lines of trucks, past the fans spinning
slowly like shadows, without the feeling of Miriam returning
to him, keen and almost unbearable.
She did not very long occupy the Morels' pew. Her father
took one for themselves once more. It was under the little
gallery, opposite the Morels'. When Paul and his mother came
in the chapel the Leivers's pew was always empty. He was
anxious for fear she would not come: it was so far, and
there were so many rainy Sundays. Then, often very late
indeed, she came in, with her long stride, her head bowed,
her face hidden under her bat of dark green velvet. Her
face, as she sat opposite, was always in shadow. But it gave
him a very keen feeling, as if all his soul stirred within
him, to see her there. It was not the same glow, happiness,
and pride, that he felt in having his mother in charge:
something more wonderful, less human, and tinged to
intensity by a pain, as if there were something he could not
get to.
At this time he was beginning to question the orthodox
creed. He was twenty-one, and she was twenty. She was
beginning to dread the spring: he became so wild, and hurt
her so much. All the way he went cruelly smashing her
beliefs. Edgar enjoyed it. He was by nature critical and
rather dispassionate. But Miriam suffered exquisite pain,
as, with an intellect like a knife, the man she loved
examined her religion in which she lived and moved and had
her being. But he did not spare her. He was cruel. And when
they went alone he was even more fierce, as if he would kill
her soul. He bled her beliefs till she almost lost
consciousness.
"She exults—she exults as she carries him off from me,"
Mrs. Morel cried in her heart when Paul had gone. "She's not
like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him.
She wants to absorb him. She wants to draw him out and
absorb him till there is nothing left of him, even for
himself. He will never be a man on his own feet—she will
suck him up." So the mother sat, and battled and brooded
bitterly.
And he, coming home from his walks with Miriam, was wild
with torture. He walked biting his lips and with clenched
fists, going at a great rate. Then, brought up against a
stile, he stood for some minutes, and did not move. There
was a great hollow of darkness fronting him, and on the
black upslopes patches of tiny lights, and in the lowest
trough of the night, a flare of the pit. It was all weird
and dreadful. Why was he torn so, almost bewildered, and
unable to move? Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?
He knew she suffered badly. But why should she? And why did
he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the
thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother
suffering, then he hated her—and he easily hated her. Why
did she make him feel as if he were uncertain of himself,
insecure, an indefinite thing, as if he had not sufficient
sheathing to prevent the night and the space breaking into
him? How he hated her! And then, what a rush of tenderness
and humility!
Suddenly he plunged on again, running home. His mother
saw on him the marks of some agony, and she said nothing.
But he had to make her talk to him. Then she was angry with
him for going so far with Miriam.
"Why don't you like her, mother?" he cried in despair.
"I don't know, my boy," she replied piteously. "I'm sure
I've tried to like her. I've tried and tried, but I can't—I
can't!"
And he felt dreary and hopeless between the two.
Spring was the worst time. He was changeable, and intense
and cruel. So he decided to stay away from her. Then came
the hours when he knew Miriam was expecting him. His mother
watched him growing restless. He could not go on with his
work. He could do nothing. It was as if something were
drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then he put on his
hat and went, saying nothing. And his mother knew he was
gone. And as soon as he was on the way he sighed with
relief. And when he was with her he was cruel again.
One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere, with
Miriam sitting beside him. It was a glistening,
white-and-blue day. Big clouds, so brilliant, went by
overhead, while shadows stole along on the water. The clear
spaces in the sky were of clean, cold blue. Paul lay on his
back in the old grass, looking up. He could not bear to look
at Miriam. She seemed to want him, and he resisted. He
resisted all the time. He wanted now to give her passion and
tenderness, and he could not. He felt that she wanted the
soul out of his body, and not him. All his strength and
energy she drew into herself through some channel which
united them. She did not want to meet him, so that there
were two of them, man and woman together. She wanted to draw
all of him into her. It urged him to an intensity like
madness, which fascinated him, as drug-taking might.
He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if
she were fingering the very quivering tissue, the very
protoplasm of life, as she heard him. It gave her deepest
satisfaction. And in the end it frightened her. There he lay
in the white intensity of his search, and his voice
gradually filled her with fear, so level it was, almost
inhuman, as if in a trance.
"Don't talk any more," she pleaded softly, laying her
hand on his forehead.
He lay quite still, almost unable to move. His body was
somewhere discarded.
"Why not? Are you tired?"
"Yes, and it wears you out."
He laughed shortly, realising.
"Yet you always make me like it," he said.
"I don't wish to," she said, very low.
"Not when you've gone too far, and you feel you can't
bear it. But your unconscious self always asks it of me. And
I suppose I want it."
He went on, in his dead fashion:
"If only you could want ME, and not want what I can reel
off for you!"
"I!" she cried bitterly—"I! Why, when would you let me
take you?"
"Then it's my fault," he said, and, gathering himself
together, he got up and began to talk trivialities. He felt
insubstantial. In a vague way he hated her for it. And he
knew he was as much to blame himself. This, however, did not
prevent his hating her.
One evening about this time he had walked along the home
road with her. They stood by the pasture leading down to the
wood, unable to part. As the stars came out the clouds
closed. They had glimpses of their own constellation, Orion,
towards the west. His jewels glimmered for a moment, his dog
ran low, struggling with difficulty through the spume of
cloud.
Orion was for them chief in significance among the
constellations. They had gazed at him in their strange,
surcharged hours of feeling, until they seemed themselves to
live in every one of his stars. This evening Paul had been
moody and perverse. Orion had seemed just an ordinary
constellation to him. He had fought against his glamour and
fascination. Miriam was watching her lover's mood carefully.
But he said nothing that gave him away, till the moment came
to part, when he stood frowning gloomily at the gathered
clouds, behind which the great constellation must be
striding still.
There was to be a little party at his house the next day,
at which she was to attend.
"I shan't come and meet you," he said.
"Oh, very well; it's not very nice out," she replied
slowly.
"It's not that—only they don't like me to. They say I
care more for you than for them. And you understand, don't
you? You know it's only friendship."
Miriam was astonished and hurt for him. It had cost him
an effort. She left him, wanting to spare him any further
humiliation. A fine rain blew in her face as she walked
along the road. She was hurt deep down; and she despised him
for being blown about by any wind of authority. And in her
heart of hearts, unconsciously, she felt that he was trying
to get away from her. This she would never have
acknowledged. She pitied him.
At this time Paul became an important factor in Jordan's
warehouse. Mr. Pappleworth left to set up a business of his
own, and Paul remained with Mr. Jordan as Spiral overseer.
His wages were to be raised to thirty shillings at the
year-end, if things went well.
Still on Friday night Miriam often came down for her
French lesson. Paul did not go so frequently to Willey Farm,
and she grieved at the thought of her education's coming to
end; moreover, they both loved to be together, in spite of
discords. So they read Balzac, and did compositions, and
felt highly cultured.
Friday night was reckoning night for the miners. Morel
"reckoned"—shared up the money of the stall—either in the
New Inn at Bretty or in his own house, according as his
fellow-butties wished. Barker had turned a non-drinker, so
now the men reckoned at Morel's house.
Annie, who had been teaching away, was at home again. She
was still a tomboy; and she was engaged to be married. Paul
was studying design.
Morel was always in good spirits on Friday evening,
unless the week's earnings were small. He bustled
immediately after his dinner, prepared to get washed. It was
decorum for the women to absent themselves while the men
reckoned. Women were not supposed to spy into such a
masculine privacy as the butties' reckoning, nor were they
to know the exact amount of the week's earnings. So, whilst
her father was spluttering in the scullery, Annie went out
to spend an hour with a neighbour. Mrs. Morel attended to
her baking.
"Shut that doo-er!" bawled Morel furiously.
Annie banged it behind her, and was gone.
"If tha oppens it again while I'm weshin' me, I'll ma'e
thy jaw rattle," he threatened from the midst of his
soap-suds. Paul and the mother frowned to hear him.
Presently he came running out of the scullery, with the
soapy water dripping from him, dithering with cold.
"Oh, my sirs!" he said. "Wheer's my towel?"
It was hung on a chair to warm before the fire, otherwise
he would have bullied and blustered. He squatted on his
heels before the hot baking-fire to dry himself.
"F-ff-f!" he went, pretending to shudder with cold.
"Goodness, man, don't be such a kid!" said Mrs. Morel.
"It's NOT cold."
"Thee strip thysen stark nak'd to wesh thy flesh i' that
scullery," said the miner, as he rubbed his hair; "nowt b'r
a ice-'ouse!"
"And I shouldn't make that fuss," replied his wife.
"No, tha'd drop down stiff, as dead as a door-knob, wi'
thy nesh sides."
"Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?" asked
Paul, curious.
"Eh, I dunno; that's what they say," replied his father.
"But there's that much draught i' yon scullery, as it blows
through your ribs like through a five-barred gate."
"It would have some difficulty in blowing through yours,"
said Mrs. Morel.
Morel looked down ruefully at his sides.
"Me!" he exclaimed. "I'm nowt b'r a skinned rabbit. My
bones fair juts out on me."
"I should like to know where," retorted his wife.
"Iv'ry-wheer! I'm nobbut a sack o' faggots."
Mrs. Morel laughed. He had still a wonderfully young
body, muscular, without any fat. His skin was smooth and
clear. It might have been the body of a man of twenty-eight,
except that there were, perhaps, too many blue scars, like
tattoo-marks, where the coal-dust remained under the skin,
and that his chest was too hairy. But he put his hand on his
side ruefully. It was his fixed belief that, because he did
not get fat, he was as thin as a starved rat. Paul looked at
his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred, with broken
nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the
incongruity struck him. It seemed strange they were the same
flesh.
"I suppose," he said to his father, "you had a good
figure once."
"Eh!" exclaimed the miner, glancing round, startled and
timid, like a child.
"He had," exclaimed Mrs. Morel, "if he didn't hurtle
himself up as if he was trying to get in the smallest space
he could."
"Me!" exclaimed Morel—"me a good figure! I wor niver much
more n'r a skeleton."
"Man!" cried his wife, "don't be such a pulamiter!"
"'Strewth!" he said. "Tha's niver knowed me but what I
looked as if I wor goin' off in a rapid decline."
She sat and laughed.
"You've had a constitution like iron," she said; "and
never a man had a better start, if it was body that counted.
You should have seen him as a young man," she cried suddenly
to Paul, drawing herself up to imitate her husband's once
handsome bearing.
Morel watched her shyly. He saw again the passion she had
had for him. It blazed upon her for a moment. He was shy,
rather scared, and humble. Yet again he felt his old glow.
And then immediately he felt the ruin he had made during
these years. He wanted to bustle about, to run away from it.
"Gi'e my back a bit of a wesh," he asked her.
His wife brought a well-soaped flannel and clapped it on
his shoulders. He gave a jump.
"Eh, tha mucky little 'ussy!" he cried. "Cowd as death!"
"You ought to have been a salamander," she laughed,
washing his back. It was very rarely she would do anything
so personal for him. The children did those things.
"The next world won't be half hot enough for you," she
added.
"No," he said; "tha'lt see as it's draughty for me."
But she had finished. She wiped him in a desultory
fashion, and went upstairs, returning immediately with his
shifting-trousers. When he was dried he struggled into his
shirt. Then, ruddy and shiny, with hair on end, and his
flannelette shirt hanging over his pit-trousers, he stood
warming the garments he was going to put on. He turned them,
he pulled them inside out, he scorched them.
"Goodness, man!" cried Mrs. Morel, "get dressed!"
"Should thee like to clap thysen into britches as cowd as
a tub o' water?" he said.
At last he took off his pit-trousers and donned decent
black. He did all this on the hearthrug, as he would have
done if Annie and her familiar friends had been present.
Mrs. Morel turned the bread in the oven. Then from the
red earthenware panchion of dough that stood in a corner she
took another handful of paste, worked it to the proper
shape, and dropped it into a tin. As she was doing so Barker
knocked and entered. He was a quiet, compact little man, who
looked as if he would go through a stone wall. His black
hair was cropped short, his head was bony. Like most miners,
he was pale, but healthy and taut.
"Evenin', missis," he nodded to Mrs. Morel, and he seated
himself with a sigh.
"Good-evening," she replied cordially.
"Tha's made thy heels crack," said Morel.
"I dunno as I have," said Barker.
He sat, as the men always did in Morel's kitchen,
effacing himself rather.
"How's missis?" she asked of him.
He had told her some time back:
"We're expectin' us third just now, you see."
"Well," he answered, rubbing his head, "she keeps pretty
middlin', I think."
"Let's see—when?" asked Mrs. Morel.
"Well, I shouldn't be surprised any time now."
"Ah! And she's kept fairly?"
"Yes, tidy."
"That's a blessing, for she's none too strong."
"No. An' I've done another silly trick."
"What's that?"
Mrs. Morel knew Barker wouldn't do anything very silly.
"I'm come be-out th' market-bag."
"You can have mine."
"Nay, you'll be wantin' that yourself."
"I shan't. I take a string bag always."
She saw the determined little collier buying in the
week's groceries and meat on the Friday nights, and she
admired him. "Barker's little, but he's ten times the man
you are," she said to her husband.
Just then Wesson entered. He was thin, rather
frail-looking, with a boyish ingenuousness and a slightly
foolish smile, despite his seven children. But his wife was
a passionate woman.
"I see you've kested me," he said, smiling rather
vapidly.
"Yes," replied Barker.
The newcomer took off his cap and his big woollen
muffler. His nose was pointed and red.
"I'm afraid you're cold, Mr. Wesson," said Mrs. Morel.
"It's a bit nippy," he replied.
"Then come to the fire."
"Nay, I s'll do where I am."
Both colliers sat away back. They could not be induced to
come on to the hearth. The hearth is sacred to the family.
"Go thy ways i' th' armchair," cried Morel cheerily.
"Nay, thank yer; I'm very nicely here."
"Yes, come, of course," insisted Mrs. Morel.
He rose and went awkwardly. He sat in Morel's armchair
awkwardly. It was too great a familiarity. But the fire made
him blissfully happy.
"And how's that chest of yours?" demanded Mrs. Morel.
He smiled again, with his blue eyes rather sunny.
"Oh, it's very middlin'," he said.
"Wi' a rattle in it like a kettle-drum," said Barker
shortly.
"T-t-t-t!" went Mrs. Morel rapidly with her tongue. "Did
you have that flannel singlet made?"
"Not yet," he smiled.
"Then, why didn't you?" she cried.
"It'll come," he smiled.
"Ah, an' Doomsday!" exclaimed Barker.
Barker and Morel were both impatient of Wesson. But,
then, they were both as hard as nails, physically.
When Morel was nearly ready he pushed the bag of money to
Paul.
"Count it, boy," he asked humbly.
Paul impatiently turned from his books and pencil, tipped
the bag upside down on the table. There was a five-pound bag
of silver, sovereigns and loose money. He counted quickly,
referred to the checks—the written papers giving amount of
coal—put the money in order. Then Barker glanced at the
checks.
Mrs. Morel went upstairs, and the three men came to
table. Morel, as master of the house, sat in his armchair,
with his back to the hot fire. The two butties had cooler
seats. None of them counted the money.
"What did we say Simpson's was?" asked Morel; and the
butties cavilled for a minute over the dayman's earnings.
Then the amount was put aside.
"An' Bill Naylor's?"
This money also was taken from the pack.
Then, because Wesson lived in one of the company's
houses, and his rent had been deducted, Morel and Barker
took four-and-six each. And because Morel's coals had come,
and the leading was stopped, Barker and Wesson took four
shillings each. Then it was plain sailing. Morel gave each
of them a sovereign till there were no more sovereigns; each
half a crown till there were no more half-crowns; each a
shilling till there were no more shillings. If there was
anything at the end that wouldn't split, Morel took it and
stood drinks.
Then the three men rose and went. Morel scuttled out of
the house before his wife came down. She heard the door
close, and descended. She looked hastily at the bread in the
oven. Then, glancing on the table, she saw her money lying.
Paul had been working all the time. But now he felt his
mother counting the week's money, and her wrath rising,
"T-t-t-t-t!" went her tongue.
He frowned. He could not work when she was cross. She
counted again.
"A measly twenty-five shillings!" she exclaimed. "How
much was the cheque?"
"Ten pounds eleven," said Paul irritably. He dreaded what
was coming.
"And he gives me a scrattlin' twenty-five, an' his club
this week! But I know him. He thinks because YOU'RE earning
he needn't keep the house any longer. No, all he has to do
with his money is to guttle it. But I'll show him!"
"Oh, mother, don't!" cried Paul.
"Don't what, I should like to know?" she exclaimed.
"Don't carry on again. I can't work."
She went very quiet.
"Yes, it's all very well," she said; "but how do you
think I'm going to manage?"
"Well, it won't make it any better to whittle about it."
"I should like to know what you'd do if you had it to put
up with."
"It won't be long. You can have my money. Let him go to
hell."
He went back to his work, and she tied her bonnet-strings
grimly. When she was fretted he could not bear it. But now
he began to insist on her recognizing him.
"The two loaves at the top," she said, "will be done in
twenty minutes. Don't forget them."
"All right," he answered; and she went to market.
He remained alone working. But his usual intense
concentration became unsettled. He listened for the
yard-gate. At a quarter-past seven came a low knock, and
Miriam entered.
"All alone?" she said.
"Yes."
As if at home, she took off her tam-o'-shanter and her
long coat, hanging them up. It gave him a thrill. This might
be their own house, his and hers. Then she came back and
peered over his work.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Still design, for decorating stuffs, and for
embroidery."
She bent short-sightedly over the drawings.
It irritated him that she peered so into everything that
was his, searching him out. He went into the parlour and
returned with a bundle of brownish linen. Carefully
unfolding it, he spread it on the floor. It proved to be a
curtain or portiere, beautifully stencilled with a design on
roses.
"Ah, how beautiful!" she cried.
The spread cloth, with its wonderful reddish roses and
dark green stems, all so simple, and somehow so
wicked-looking, lay at her feet. She went on her knees
before it, her dark curls dropping. He saw her crouched
voluptuously before his work, and his heart beat quickly.
Suddenly she looked up at him.
"Why does it seem cruel?" she asked.
"What?"
"There seems a feeling of cruelty about it," she said.
"It's jolly good, whether or not," he replied, folding up
his work with a lover's hands.
She rose slowly, pondering.
"And what will you do with it?" she asked.
"Send it to Liberty's. I did it for my mother, but I
think she'd rather have the money."
"Yes," said Miriam. He had spoken with a touch of
bitterness, and Miriam sympathised. Money would have been
nothing to HER.
He took the cloth back into the parlour. When he returned
he threw to Miriam a smaller piece. It was a cushion-cover
with the same design.
"I did that for you," he said.
She fingered the work with trembling hands, and did not
speak. He became embarrassed.
"By Jove, the bread!" he cried.
He took the top loaves out, tapped them vigorously. They
were done. He put them on the hearth to cool. Then he went
to the scullery, wetted his hands, scooped the last white
dough out of the punchion, and dropped it in a baking-tin.
Miriam was still bent over her painted cloth. He stood
rubbing the bits of dough from his hands.
"You do like it?" he asked.
She looked up at him, with her dark eyes one flame of
love. He laughed uncomfortably. Then he began to talk about
the design. There was for him the most intense pleasure in
talking about his work to Miriam. All his passion, all his
wild blood, went into this intercourse with her, when he
talked and conceived his work. She brought forth to him his
imaginations. She did not understand, any more than a woman
understands when she conceives a child in her womb. But this
was life for her and for him.
While they were talking, a young woman of about
twenty-two, small and pale, hollow-eyed, yet with a
relentless look about her, entered the room. She was a
friend at the Morel's.
"Take your things off," said Paul.
"No, I'm not stopping."
She sat down in the armchair opposite Paul and Miriam,
who were on the sofa. Miriam moved a little farther from
him. The room was hot, with a scent of new bread. Brown,
crisp loaves stood on the hearth.
"I shouldn't have expected to see you here to-night,
Miriam Leivers," said Beatrice wickedly.
"Why not?" murmured Miriam huskily.
"Why, let's look at your shoes."
Miriam remained uncomfortably still.
"If tha doesna tha durs'na," laughed Beatrice.
Miriam put her feet from under her dress. Her boots had
that queer, irresolute, rather pathetic look about them,
which showed how self-conscious and self-mistrustful she
was. And they were covered with mud.
"Glory! You're a positive muck-heap," exclaimed Beatrice.
"Who cleans your boots?"
"I clean them myself."
"Then you wanted a job," said Beatrice. "It would ha'
taken a lot of men to ha' brought me down here to-night. But
love laughs at sludge, doesn't it, 'Postle my duck?"
"Inter alia," he said.
"Oh, Lord! are you going to spout foreign languages? What
does it mean, Miriam?"
There was a fine sarcasm in the last question, but Miriam
did not see it.
"'Among other things,' I believe," she said humbly.
Beatrice put her tongue between her teeth and laughed
wickedly.
"'Among other things,' 'Postle?" she repeated. "Do you
mean love laughs at mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and
brothers, and men friends, and lady friends, and even at the
b'loved himself?"
She affected a great innocence.
"In fact, it's one big smile," he replied.
"Up its sleeve, 'Postle Morel—you believe me," she said;
and she went off into another burst of wicked, silent
laughter.
Miriam sat silent, withdrawn into herself. Every one of
Paul's friends delighted in taking sides against her, and he
left her in the lurch—seemed almost to have a sort of
revenge upon her then.
"Are you still at school?" asked Miriam of Beatrice.
"Yes."
"You've not had your notice, then?"
"I expect it at Easter."
"Isn't it an awful shame, to turn you off merely because
you didn't pass the exam?"
"I don't know," said Beatrice coldly.
"Agatha says you're as good as any teacher anywhere. It
seems to me ridiculous. I wonder why you didn't pass."
"Short of brains, eh, 'Postle?" said Beatrice briefly.
"Only brains to bite with," replied Paul, laughing.
"Nuisance!" she cried; and, springing from her seat, she
rushed and boxed his ears. She had beautiful small hands. He
held her wrists while she wrestled with him. At last she
broke free, and seized two handfuls of his thick, dark brown
hair, which she shook.
"Beat!" he said, as he pulled his hair straight with his
fingers. "I hate you!"
She laughed with glee.
"Mind!" she said. "I want to sit next to you."
"I'd as lief be neighbours with a vixen," he said,
nevertheless making place for her between him and Miriam.
"Did it ruffle his pretty hair, then!" she cried; and,
with her hair-comb, she combed him straight. "And his nice
little moustache!" she exclaimed. She tilted his head back
and combed his young moustache. "It's a wicked moustache,
'Postle," she said. "It's a red for danger. Have you got any
of those cigarettes?"
He pulled his cigarette-case from his pocket. Beatrice
looked inside it.
"And fancy me having Connie's last cig.," said Beatrice,
putting the thing between her teeth. He held a lit match to
her, and she puffed daintily.
"Thanks so much, darling," she said mockingly.
It gave her a wicked delight.
"Don't you think he does it nicely, Miriam?" she asked.
"Oh, very!" said Miriam.
He took a cigarette for himself.
"Light, old boy?" said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at
him.
He bent forward to her to light his cigarette at hers.
She was winking at him as he did so. Miriam saw his eyes
trembling with mischief, and his full, almost sensual, mouth
quivering. He was not himself, and she could not bear it. As
he was now, she had no connection with him; she might as
well not have existed. She saw the cigarette dancing on his
full red lips. She hated his thick hair for being tumbled
loose on his forehead.
"Sweet boy!" said Beatrice, tipping up his chin and
giving him a little kiss on the cheek.
"I s'll kiss thee back, Beat," he said.
"Tha wunna!" she giggled, jumping up and going away.
"Isn't he shameless, Miriam?"
"Quite," said Miriam. "By the way, aren't you forgetting
the bread?"
"By Jove!" he cried, flinging open the oven door.
Out puffed the bluish smoke and a smell of burned bread.
"Oh, golly!" cried Beatrice, coming to his side. He
crouched before the oven, she peered over his shoulder.
"This is what comes of the oblivion of love, my boy."
Paul was ruefully removing the loaves. One was burnt
black on the hot side; another was hard as a brick.
"Poor mater!" said Paul.
"You want to grate it," said Beatrice. "Fetch me the
nutmeg-grater."
She arranged the bread in the oven. He brought the
grater, and she grated the bread on to a newspaper on the
table. He set the doors open to blow away the smell of
burned bread. Beatrice grated away, puffing her cigarette,
knocking the charcoal off the poor loaf.
"My word, Miriam! you're in for it this time," said
Beatrice.
"I!" exclaimed Miriam in amazement.
"You'd better be gone when his mother comes in. I know
why King Alfred burned the cakes. Now I see it! 'Postle
would fix up a tale about his work making him forget, if he
thought it would wash. If that old woman had come in a bit
sooner, she'd have boxed the brazen thing's ears who made
the oblivion, instead of poor Alfred's."
She giggled as she scraped the loaf. Even Miriam laughed
in spite of herself. Paul mended the fire ruefully.
The garden gate was heard to bang.
"Quick!" cried Beatrice, giving Paul the scraped loaf.
"Wrap it up in a damp towel."
Paul disappeared into the scullery. Beatrice hastily blew
her scrapings into the fire, and sat down innocently. Annie
came bursting in. She was an abrupt, quite smart young
woman. She blinked in the strong light.
"Smell of burning!" she exclaimed.
"It's the cigarettes," replied Beatrice demurely.
"Where's Paul?"
Leonard had followed Annie. He had a long comic face and
blue eyes, very sad.
"I suppose he's left you to settle it between you," he
said. He nodded sympathetically to Miriam, and became gently
sarcastic to Beatrice.
"No," said Beatrice, "he's gone off with number nine."
"I just met number five inquiring for him," said Leonard.
"Yes—we're going to share him up like Solomon's baby,"
said Beatrice.
Annie laughed.
"Oh, ay," said Leonard. "And which bit should you have?"
"I don't know," said Beatrice. "I'll let all the others
pick first."
"An' you'd have the leavings, like?" said Leonard,
twisting up a comic face.
Annie was looking in the oven. Miriam sat ignored. Paul
entered.
"This bread's a fine sight, our Paul," said Annie.
"Then you should stop an' look after it," said Paul.
"You mean YOU should do what you're reckoning to do,"
replied Annie.
"He should, shouldn't he!" cried Beatrice.
"I s'd think he'd got plenty on hand," said Leonard.
"You had a nasty walk, didn't you, Miriam?" said Annie.
"Yes—but I'd been in all week—"
"And you wanted a bit of a change, like," insinuated
Leonard kindly.
"Well, you can't be stuck in the house for ever," Annie
agreed. She was quite amiable. Beatrice pulled on her coat,
and went out with Leonard and Annie. She would meet her own
boy.
"Don't forget that bread, our Paul," cried Annie.
"Good-night, Miriam. I don't think it will rain."
When they had all gone, Paul fetched the swathed loaf,
unwrapped it, and surveyed it sadly.
"It's a mess!" he said.
"But," answered Miriam impatiently, "what is it, after
all—twopence, ha'penny."
"Yes, but—it's the mater's precious baking, and she'll
take it to heart. However, it's no good bothering."
He took the loaf back into the scullery. There was a
little distance between him and Miriam. He stood balanced
opposite her for some moments considering, thinking of his
behaviour with Beatrice. He felt guilty inside himself, and
yet glad. For some inscrutable reason it served Miriam
right. He was not going to repent. She wondered what he was
thinking of as he stood suspended. His thick hair was
tumbled over his forehead. Why might she not push it back
for him, and remove the marks of Beatrice's comb? Why might
she not press his body with her two hands. It looked so
firm, and every whit living. And he would let other girls,
why not her?
Suddenly he started into life. It made her quiver almost
with terror as he quickly pushed the hair off his forehead
and came towards her.
"Half-past eight!" he said. "We'd better buck up. Where's
your French?"
Miriam shyly and rather bitterly produced her
exercise-book. Every week she wrote for him a sort of diary
of her inner life, in her own French. He had found this was
the only way to get her to do compositions. And her diary
was mostly a love-letter. He would read it now; she felt as
if her soul's history were going to be desecrated by him in
his present mood. He sat beside her. She watched his hand,
firm and warm, rigorously scoring her work. He was reading
only the French, ignoring her soul that was there. But
gradually his hand forgot its work. He read in silence,
motionless. She quivered.
"'Ce matin les oiseaux m'ont eveille,'" he read. "'Il
faisait encore un crepuscule. Mais la petite fenetre de ma
chambre etait bleme, et puis, jaune, et tous les oiseaux du
bois eclaterent dans un chanson vif et resonnant. Toute
l'aube tressaillit. J'avais reve de vous. Est-ce que vous
voyez aussi l'aube? Les oiseaux m'eveillent presque tous les
matins, et toujours il y a quelque chose de terreur dans le
cri des grives. Il est si clair—'"
Miriam sat tremulous, half ashamed. He remained quite
still, trying to understand. He only knew she loved him. He
was afraid of her love for him. It was too good for him, and
he was inadequate. His own love was at fault, not hers.
Ashamed, he corrected her work, humbly writing above her
words.
"Look," he said quietly, "the past participle conjugated
with avoir agrees with the direct object when it
precedes."
She bent forward, trying to see and to understand. Her
free, fine curls tickled his face. He started as if they had
been red hot, shuddering. He saw her peering forward at the
page, her red lips parted piteously, the black hair
springing in fine strands across her tawny, ruddy cheek. She
was coloured like a pomegranate for richness. His breath
came short as he watched her. Suddenly she looked up at him.
Her dark eyes were naked with their love, afraid, and
yearning. His eyes, too, were dark, and they hurt her. They
seemed to master her. She lost all her self-control, was
exposed in fear. And he knew, before he could kiss her, he
must drive something out of himself. And a touch of hate for
her crept back again into his heart. He returned to her
exercise.
Suddenly he flung down the pencil, and was at the oven in
a leap, turning the bread. For Miriam he was too quick. She
started violently, and it hurt her with real pain. Even the
way he crouched before the oven hurt her. There seemed to be
something cruel in it, something cruel in the swift way he
pitched the bread out of the tins, caught it up again. If
only he had been gentle in his movements she would have felt
so rich and warm. As it was, she was hurt.
He returned and finished the exercise.
"You've done well this week," he said.
She saw he was flattered by her diary. It did not repay
her entirely.
"You really do blossom out sometimes," he said. "You
ought to write poetry."
She lifted her head with joy, then she shook it
mistrustfully.
"I don't trust myself," she said.
"You should try!"
Again she shook her head.
"Shall we read, or is it too late?" he asked.
"It is late—but we can read just a little," she pleaded.
She was really getting now the food for her life during
the next week. He made her copy Baudelaire's "Le Balcon".
Then he read it for her. His voice was soft and caressing,
but growing almost brutal. He had a way of lifting his lips
and showing his teeth, passionately and bitterly, when he
was much moved. This he did now. It made Miriam feel as if
he were trampling on her. She dared not look at him, but sat
with her head bowed. She could not understand why he got
into such a tumult and fury. It made her wretched. She did
not like Baudelaire, on the whole—nor Verlaine.
"Behold her singing in the field
Yon solitary highland lass."
That nourished her heart. So did "Fair Ines". And—
"It was a beauteous evening, calm and pure,
And breathing holy quiet like a nun."
These were like herself. And there was he, saying in his
throat bitterly:
"Tu te rappelleras la beaute des caresses."
The poem was finished; he took the bread out of the oven,
arranging the burnt loaves at the bottom of the panchion,
the good ones at the top. The desiccated loaf remained
swathed up in the scullery.
"Mater needn't know till morning," he said. "It won't
upset her so much then as at night."
Miriam looked in the bookcase, saw what postcards and
letters he had received, saw what books were there. She took
one that had interested him. Then he turned down the gas and
they set off. He did not trouble to lock the door.
He was not home again until a quarter to eleven. His
mother was seated in the rocking-chair. Annie, with a rope
of hair hanging down her back, remained sitting on a low
stool before the fire, her elbows on her knees, gloomily. On
the table stood the offending loaf unswathed. Paul entered
rather breathless. No one spoke. His mother was reading the
little local newspaper. He took off his coat, and went to
sit down on the sofa. His mother moved curtly aside to let
him pass. No one spoke. He was very uncomfortable. For some
minutes he sat pretending to read a piece of paper he found
on the table. Then—
"I forgot that bread, mother," he said.
There was no answer from either woman.
"Well," he said, "it's only twopence ha'penny. I can pay
you for that."
Being angry, he put three pennies on the table and slid
them towards his mother. She turned away her head. Her mouth
was shut tightly.
"Yes," said Annie, "you don't know how badly my mother
is!"
The girl sat staring glumly into the fire.
"Why is she badly?" asked Paul, in his overbearing way.
"Well!" said Annie. "She could scarcely get home."
He looked closely at his mother. She looked ill.
"WHY could you scarcely get home?" he asked her, still
sharply. She would not answer.
"I found her as white as a sheet sitting here," said
Annie, with a suggestion of tears in her voice.
"Well, WHY?" insisted Paul. His brows were knitting, his
eyes dilating passionately.
"It was enough to upset anybody," said Mrs. Morel,
"hugging those parcels—meat, and green-groceries, and a pair
of curtains—"
"Well, why DID you hug them; you needn't have done."
"Then who would?"
"Let Annie fetch the meat."
"Yes, and I WOULD fetch the meat, but how was I to know.
You were off with Miriam, instead of being in when my mother
came."
"And what was the matter with you?" asked Paul of his
mother.
"I suppose it's my heart," she replied. Certainly she
looked bluish round the mouth.
"And have you felt it before?"
"Yes—often enough."
"Then why haven't you told me?—and why haven't you seen a
doctor?"
Mrs. Morel shifted in her chair, angry with him for his
hectoring.
"You'd never notice anything," said Annie. "You're too
eager to be off with Miriam."
"Oh, am I—and any worse than you with Leonard?"
"I was in at a quarter to ten."
There was silence in the room for a time.
"I should have thought," said Mrs. Morel bitterly, "that
she wouldn't have occupied you so entirely as to burn a
whole ovenful of bread."
"Beatrice was here as well as she."
"Very likely. But we know why the bread is spoilt."
"Why?" he flashed.
"Because you were engrossed with Miriam," replied Mrs.
Morel hotly.
"Oh, very well—then it was NOT!" he replied angrily.
He was distressed and wretched. Seizing a paper, he began
to read. Annie, her blouse unfastened, her long ropes of
hair twisted into a plait, went up to bed, bidding him a
very curt good-night.
Paul sat pretending to read. He knew his mother wanted to
upbraid him. He also wanted to know what had made her ill,
for he was troubled. So, instead of running away to bed, as
he would have liked to do, he sat and waited. There was a
tense silence. The clock ticked loudly.
"You'd better go to bed before your father comes in,"
said the mother harshly. "And if you're going to have
anything to eat, you'd better get it."
"I don't want anything."
It was his mother's custom to bring him some trifle for
supper on Friday night, the night of luxury for the
colliers. He was too angry to go and find it in the pantry
this night. This insulted her.
"If I WANTED you to go to Selby on Friday night, I can
imagine the scene," said Mrs. Morel. "But you're never too
tired to go if SHE will come for you. Nay, you neither want
to eat nor drink then."
"I can't let her go alone."
"Can't you? And why does she come?"
"Not because I ask her."
"She doesn't come without you want her—"
"Well, what if I DO want her—" he replied.
"Why, nothing, if it was sensible or reasonable. But to
go trapseing up there miles and miles in the mud, coming
home at midnight, and got to go to Nottingham in the
morning—"
"If I hadn't, you'd be just the same."
"Yes, I should, because there's no sense in it. Is she so
fascinating that you must follow her all that way?" Mrs.
Morel was bitterly sarcastic. She sat still, with averted
face, stroking with a rhythmic, jerked movement, the black
sateen of her apron. It was a movement that hurt Paul to
see.
"I do like her," he said, "but—"
"LIKE her!" said Mrs. Morel, in the same biting tones.
"It seems to me you like nothing and nobody else. There's
neither Annie, nor me, nor anyone now for you."
"What nonsense, mother—you know I don't love her—I—I tell
you I DON'T love her—she doesn't even walk with my arm,
because I don't want her to."
"Then why do you fly to her so often?"
"I DO like to talk to her—I never said I didn't. But I
DON'T love her."
"Is there nobody else to talk to?"
"Not about the things we talk of. There's a lot of things
that you're not interested in, that—"
"What things?"
Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant.
"Why—painting—and books. YOU don't care about Herbert
Spencer."
"No," was the sad reply. "And YOU won't at my age."
"Well, but I do now—and Miriam does—"
"And how do you know," Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly,
"that I shouldn't. Do you ever try me!"
"But you don't, mother, you know you don't care whether a
picture's decorative or not; you don't care what MANNER it
is in."
"How do you know I don't care? Do you ever try me? Do you
ever talk to me about these things, to try?"
"But it's not that that matters to you, mother, you know
t's not."
"What is it, then—what is it, then, that matters to me?"
she flashed. He knitted his brows with pain.
"You're old, mother, and we're young."
He only meant that the interests of HER age were not the
interests of his. But he realised the moment he had spoken
that he had said the wrong thing.
"Yes, I know it well—I am old. And therefore I may stand
aside; I have nothing more to do with you. You only want me
to wait on you—the rest is for Miriam."
He could not bear it. Instinctively he realised that he
was life to her. And, after all, she was the chief thing to
him, the only supreme thing.
"You know it isn't, mother, you know it isn't!"
She was moved to pity by his cry.
"It looks a great deal like it," she said, half putting
aside her despair.
"No, mother—I really DON'T love her. I talk to her, but I
want to come home to you."
He had taken off his collar and tie, and rose,
bare-throated, to go to bed. As he stooped to kiss his
mother, she threw her arms round his neck, hid her face on
his shoulder, and cried, in a whimpering voice, so unlike
her own that he writhed in agony:
"I can't bear it. I could let another woman—but not her.
She'd leave me no room, not a bit of room—"
And immediately he hated Miriam bitterly.
"And I've never—you know, Paul—I've never had a
husband—not really—"
He stroked his mother's hair, and his mouth was on her
throat.
"And she exults so in taking you from me—she's not like
ordinary girls."
"Well, I don't love her, mother," he murmured, bowing his
head and hiding his eyes on her shoulder in misery. His
mother kissed him a long, fervent kiss.
"My boy!" she said, in a voice trembling with passionate
love.
Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.
"There," said his mother, "now go to bed. You'll be so
tired in the morning." As she was speaking she heard her
husband coming. "There's your father—now go." Suddenly she
looked at him almost as if in fear. "Perhaps I'm selfish. If
you want her, take her, my boy."
His mother looked so strange, Paul kissed her, trembling.
"Ha—mother!" he said softly.
Morel came in, walking unevenly. His hat was over one
corner of his eye. He balanced in the doorway.
"At your mischief again?" he said venomously.
Mrs. Morel's emotion turned into sudden hate of the
drunkard who had come in thus upon her.
"At any rate, it is sober," she said.
"H'm—h'm! h'm—h'm!" he sneered. He went into the passage,
hung up his hat and coat. Then they heard him go down three
steps to the pantry. He returned with a piece of pork-pie in
his fist. It was what Mrs. Morel had bought for her son.
"Nor was that bought for you. If you can give me no more
than twenty-five shillings, I'm sure I'm not going to buy
you pork-pie to stuff, after you've swilled a bellyful of
beer."
"Wha-at—wha-at!" snarled Morel, toppling in his balance.
"Wha-at—not for me?" He looked at the piece of meat and
crust, and suddenly, in a vicious spurt of temper, flung it
into the fire.
Paul started to his feet.
"Waste your own stuff!" he cried.
"What—what!" suddenly shouted Morel, jumping up and
clenching his fist. "I'll show yer, yer young jockey!"
"All right!" said Paul viciously, putting his head on one
side. "Show me!"
He would at that moment dearly have loved to have a smack
at something. Morel was half crouching, fists up, ready to
spring. The young man stood, smiling with his lips.
"Ussha!" hissed the father, swiping round with a great
stroke just past his son's face. He dared not, even though
so close, really touch the young man, but swerved an inch
away.
"Right!" said Paul, his eyes upon the side of his
father's mouth, where in another instant his fist would have
hit. He ached for that stroke. But he heard a faint moan
from behind. His mother was deadly pale and dark at the
mouth. Morel was dancing up to deliver another blow.
"Father!" said Paul, so that the word rang.
Morel started, and stood at attention.
"Mother!" moaned the boy. "Mother!"
She began to struggle with herself. Her open eyes watched
him, although she could not move. Gradually she was coming
to herself. He laid her down on the sofa, and ran upstairs
for a little whisky, which at last she could sip. The tears
were hopping down his face. As he kneeled in front of her he
did not cry, but the tears ran down his face quickly. Morel,
on the opposite side of the room, sat with his elbows on his
knees glaring across.
"What's a-matter with 'er?" he asked.
"Faint!" replied Paul.
"H'm!"
The elderly man began to unlace his boots. He stumbled
off to bed. His last fight was fought in that home.
Paul kneeled there, stroking his mother's hand.
"Don't be poorly, mother—don't be poorly!" he said time
after time.
"It's nothing, my boy," she murmured.
At last he rose, fetched in a large piece of coal, and
raked the fire. Then he cleared the room, put everything
straight, laid the things for breakfast, and brought his
mother's candle.
"Can you go to bed, mother?"
"Yes, I'll come."
"Sleep with Annie, mother, not with him."
"No. I'll sleep in my own bed."
"Don't sleep with him, mother."
"I'll sleep in my own bed."
She rose, and he turned out the gas, then followed her
closely upstairs, carrying her candle. On the landing he
kissed her close.
"Good-night, mother."
"Good-night!" she said.
He pressed his face upon the pillow in a fury of misery.
And yet, somewhere in his soul, he was at peace because he
still loved his mother best. It was the bitter peace of
resignation.
The efforts of his father to conciliate him next day were
a great humiliation to him.
Everybody tried to forget the scene.
CHAPTER IX
DEFEAT OF MIRIAM
PAUL was dissatisfied with himself and with everything.
The deepest of his love belonged to his mother. When he felt
he had hurt her, or wounded his love for her, he could not
bear it. Now it was spring, and there was battle between him
and Miriam. This year he had a good deal against her. She
was vaguely aware of it. The old feeling that she was to be
a sacrifice to this love, which she had had when she prayed,
was mingled in all her emotions. She did not at the bottom
believe she ever would have him. She did not believe in
herself primarily: doubted whether she could ever be what he
would demand of her. Certainly she never saw herself living
happily through a lifetime with him. She saw tragedy,
sorrow, and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she was proud,
in renunciation she was strong, for she did not trust
herself to support everyday life. She was prepared for the
big things and the deep things, like tragedy. It was the
sufficiency of the small day-life she could not trust.
The Easter holidays began happily. Paul was his own frank
self. Yet she felt it would go wrong. On the Sunday
afternoon she stood at her bedroom window, looking across at
the oak-trees of the wood, in whose branches a twilight was
tangled, below the bright sky of the afternoon. Grey-green
rosettes of honeysuckle leaves hung before the window, some
already, she fancied, showing bud. It was spring, which she
loved and dreaded.
Hearing the clack of the gate she stood in suspense. It
was a bright grey day. Paul came into the yard with his
bicycle, which glittered as he walked. Usually he rang his
bell and laughed towards the house. To-day he walked with
shut lips and cold, cruel bearing, that had something of a
slouch and a sneer in it. She knew him well by now, and
could tell from that keen-looking, aloof young body of his
what was happening inside him. There was a cold correctness
in the way he put his bicycle in its place, that made her
heart sink.
She came downstairs nervously. She was wearing a new net
blouse that she thought became her. It had a high collar
with a tiny ruff, reminding her of Mary, Queen of Scots, and
making her, she thought, look wonderfully a woman, and
dignified. At twenty she was full-breasted and luxuriously
formed. Her face was still like a soft rich mask,
unchangeable. But her eyes, once lifted, were wonderful. She
was afraid of him. He would notice her new blouse.
He, being in a hard, ironical mood, was entertaining the
family to a description of a service given in the Primitive
Methodist Chapel, conducted by one of the well-known
preachers of the sect. He sat at the head of the table, his
mobile face, with the eyes that could be so beautiful,
shining with tenderness or dancing with laughter, now taking
on one expression and then another, in imitation of various
people he was mocking. His mockery always hurt her; it was
too near the reality. He was too clever and cruel. She felt
that when his eyes were like this, hard with mocking hate,
he would spare neither himself nor anybody else. But Mrs.
Leivers was wiping her eyes with laughter, and Mr. Leivers,
just awake from his Sunday nap, was rubbing his head in
amusement. The three brothers sat with ruffled, sleepy
appearance in their shirt-sleeves, giving a guffaw from time
to time. The whole family loved a "take-off" more than
anything.
He took no notice of Miriam. Later, she saw him remark
her new blouse, saw that the artist approved, but it won
from him not a spark of warmth. She was nervous, could
hardly reach the teacups from the shelves.
When the men went out to milk, she ventured to address
him personally.
"You were late," she said.
"Was I?" he answered.
There was silence for a while.
"Was it rough riding?" she asked.
"I didn't notice it." She continued quickly to lay the
table. When she had finished—
"Tea won't be for a few minutes. Will you come and look
at the daffodils?" she said.
He rose without answering. They went out into the back
garden under the budding damson-trees. The hills and the sky
were clean and cold. Everything looked washed, rather hard.
Miriam glanced at Paul. He was pale and impassive. It seemed
cruel to her that his eyes and brows, which she loved, could
look so hurting.
"Has the wind made you tired?" she asked. She detected an
underneath feeling of weariness about him.
"No, I think not," he answered.
"It must be rough on the road—the wood moans so."
"You can see by the clouds it's a south-west wind; that
helps me here."
"You see, I don't cycle, so I don't understand," she
murmured.
"Is there need to cycle to know that!" he said.
She thought his sarcasms were unnecessary. They went
forward in silence. Round the wild, tussocky lawn at the
back of the house was a thorn hedge, under which daffodils
were craning forward from among their sheaves of grey-green
blades. The cheeks of the flowers were greenish with cold.
But still some had burst, and their gold ruffled and glowed.
Miriam went on her knees before one cluster, took a
wild-looking daffodil between her hands, turned up its face
of gold to her, and bowed down, caressing it with her mouth
and cheeks and brow. He stood aside, with his hands in his
pockets, watching her. One after another she turned up to
him the faces of the yellow, bursten flowers appealingly,
fondling them lavishly all the while.
"Aren't they magnificent?" she murmured.
"Magnificent! It's a bit thick—they're pretty!"
She bowed again to her flowers at his censure of her
praise. He watched her crouching, sipping the flowers with
fervid kisses.
"Why must you always be fondling things?" he said
irritably.
"But I love to touch them," she replied, hurt.
"Can you never like things without clutching them as if
you wanted to pull the heart out of them? Why don't you have
a bit more restraint, or reserve, or something?"
She looked up at him full of pain, then continued slowly
to stroke her lips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as
she smelled it, was so much kinder than he; it almost made
her cry.
"You wheedle the soul out of things," he said. "I would
never wheedle—at any rate, I'd go straight."
He scarcely knew what he was saying. These things came
from him mechanically. She looked at him. His body seemed
one weapon, firm and hard against her.
"You're always begging things to love you," he said, "as
if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to
fawn on them—"
Rhythmically, Miriam was swaying and stroking the flower
with her mouth, inhaling the scent which ever after made her
shudder as it came to her nostrils.
"You don't want to love—your eternal and abnormal craving
is to be loved. You aren't positive, you're negative. You
absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love,
because you've got a shortage somewhere."
She was stunned by his cruelty, and did not hear. He had
not the faintest notion of what he was saying. It was as if
his fretted, tortured soul, run hot by thwarted passion,
jetted off these sayings like sparks from electricity. She
did not grasp anything he said. She only sat crouched
beneath his cruelty and his hatred of her. She never
realised in a flash. Over everything she brooded and
brooded.
After tea he stayed with Edgar and the brothers, taking
no notice of Miriam. She, extremely unhappy on this
looked-for holiday, waited for him. And at last he yielded
and came to her. She was determined to track this mood of
his to its origin. She counted it not much more than a mood.
"Shall we go through the wood a little way?" she asked
him, knowing he never refused a direct request.
They went down to the warren. On the middle path they
passed a trap, a narrow horseshoe hedge of small fir-boughs,
baited with the guts of a rabbit. Paul glanced at it
frowning. She caught his eye.
"Isn't it dreadful?" she asked.
"I don't know! Is it worse than a weasel with its teeth
in a rabbit's throat? One weasel or many rabbits? One or the
other must go!"
He was taking the bitterness of life badly. She was
rather sorry for him.
"We will go back to the house," he said. "I don't want to
walk out."
They went past the lilac-tree, whose bronze leaf-buds
were coming unfastened. Just a fragment remained of the
haystack, a monument squared and brown, like a pillar of
stone. There was a little bed of hay from the last cutting.
"Let us sit here a minute," said Miriam.
He sat down against his will, resting his back against
the hard wall of hay. They faced the amphitheatre of round
hills that glowed with sunset, tiny white farms standing
out, the meadows golden, the woods dark and yet luminous,
tree-tops folded over tree-tops, distinct in the distance.
The evening had cleared, and the east was tender with a
magenta flush under which the land lay still and rich.
"Isn't it beautiful?" she pleaded.
But he only scowled. He would rather have had it ugly
just then.
At that moment a big bull-terrier came rushing up,
open-mouthed, pranced his two paws on the youth's shoulders,
licking his face. Paul drew back, laughing. Bill was a great
relief to him. He pushed the dog aside, but it came leaping
back.
"Get out," said the lad, "or I'll dot thee one."
But the dog was not to be pushed away. So Paul had a
little battle with the creature, pitching poor Bill away
from him, who, however, only floundered tumultuously back
again, wild with joy. The two fought together, the man
laughing grudgingly, the dog grinning all over. Miriam
watched them. There was something pathetic about the man. He
wanted so badly to love, to be tender. The rough way he
bowled the dog over was really loving. Bill got up, panting
with happiness, his brown eyes rolling in his white face,
and lumbered back again. He adored Paul. The lad frowned.
"Bill, I've had enough o' thee," he said.
But the dog only stood with two heavy paws, that quivered
with love, upon his thigh, and flickered a red tongue at
him. He drew back.
"No," he said—"no—I've had enough."
And in a minute the dog trotted off happily, to vary the
fun.
He remained staring miserably across at the hills, whose
still beauty he begrudged. He wanted to go and cycle with
Edgar. Yet he had not the courage to leave Miriam.
"Why are you sad?" she asked humbly.
"I'm not sad; why should I be," he answered. "I'm only
normal."
She wondered why he always claimed to be normal when he
was disagreeable.
"But what is the matter?" she pleaded, coaxing him
soothingly.
"Nothing!"
"Nay!" she murmured.
He picked up a stick and began to stab the earth with it.
"You'd far better not talk," he said.
"But I wish to know—" she replied.
He laughed resentfully.
"You always do," he said.
"It's not fair to me," she murmured.
He thrust, thrust, thrust at the ground with the pointed
stick, digging up little clods of earth as if he were in a
fever of irritation. She gently and firmly laid her band on
his wrist.
"Don't!" she said. "Put it away."
He flung the stick into the currant-bushes, and leaned
back. Now he was bottled up.
"What is it?" she pleaded softly.
He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they
full of torment.
"You know," he said at length, rather wearily—"you
know—we'd better break off."
It was what she dreaded. Swiftly everything seemed to
darken before her eyes.
"Why!" she murmured. "What has happened?"
"Nothing has happened. We only realise where we are. It's
no good—"
She waited in silence, sadly, patiently. It was no good
being impatient with him. At any rate, he would tell her now
what ailed him.
"We agreed on friendship," he went on in a dull,
monotonous voice. "How often HAVE we agreed for friendship!
And yet—it neither stops there, nor gets anywhere else."
He was silent again. She brooded. What did he mean? He
was so wearying. There was something he would not yield. Yet
she must be patient with him.
"I can only give friendship—it's all I'm capable of—it's
a flaw in my make-up. The thing overbalances to one side—I
hate a toppling balance. Let us have done."
There was warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant
she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love
her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It
was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It
was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge.
Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame,
it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without
him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely
see.
"But what has happened?" she said.
"Nothing—it's all in myself—it only comes out just now.
We're always like this towards Easter-time."
He grovelled so helplessly, she pitied him. At least she
never floundered in such a pitiable way. After all, it was
he who was chiefly humiliated.
"What do you want?" she asked him.
"Why—I mustn't come often—that's all. Why should I
monopolise you when I'm not—You see, I'm deficient in
something with regard to you—"
He was telling her he did not love her, and so ought to
leave her a chance with another man. How foolish and blind
and shamefully clumsy he was! What were other men to her!
What were men to her at all! But he, ah! she loved his soul.
Was HE deficient in something? Perhaps he was.
"But I don't understand," she said huskily. "Yesterday—"
The night was turning jangled and hateful to him as the
twilight faded. And she bowed under her suffering.
"I know," he cried, "you never will! You'll never believe
that I can't—can't physically, any more than I can fly up
like a skylark—"
"What?" she murmured. Now she dreaded.
"Love you."
He hated her bitterly at that moment because he made her
suffer. Love her! She knew he loved her. He really belonged
to her. This about not loving her, physically, bodily, was a
mere perversity on his part, because he knew she loved him.
He was stupid like a child. He belonged to her. His soul
wanted her. She guessed somebody had been influencing him.
She felt upon him the hardness, the foreignness of another
influence.
"What have they been saying at home?" she asked.
"It's not that," he answered.
And then she knew it was. She despised them for their
commonness, his people. They did not know what things were
really worth.
He and she talked very little more that night. After all
he left her to cycle with Edgar.
He had come back to his mother. Hers was the strongest
tie in his life. When he thought round, Miriam shrank away.
There was a vague, unreal feel about her. And nobody else
mattered. There was one place in the world that stood solid
and did not melt into unreality: the place where his mother
was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent
to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole
of his life, from which he could not escape, was his mother.
And in the same way she waited for him. In him was
established her life now. After all, the life beyond offered
very little to Mrs. Morel. She saw that our chance for DOING
is here, and doing counted with her. Paul was going to prove
that she had been right; he was going to make a man whom
nothing should shift off his feet; he was going to alter the
face of the earth in some way which mattered. Wherever he
went she felt her soul went with him. Whatever he did she
felt her soul stood by him, ready, as it were, to hand him
his tools. She could not bear it when he was with Miriam.
William was dead. She would fight to keep Paul.
And he came back to her. And in his soul was a feeling of
the satisfaction of self-sacrifice because he was faithful
to her. She loved him first; he loved her first. And yet it
was not enough. His new young life, so strong and imperious,
was urged towards something else. It made him mad with
restlessness. She saw this, and wished bitterly that Miriam
had been a woman who could take this new life of his, and
leave her the roots. He fought against his mother almost as
he fought against Miriam.
It was a week before he went again to Willey Farm. Miriam
had suffered a great deal, and was afraid to see him again.
Was she now to endure the ignominy of his abandoning her?
That would only be superficial and temporary. He would come
back. She held the keys to his soul. But meanwhile, how he
would torture her with his battle against her. She shrank
from it.
However, the Sunday after Easter he came to tea. Mrs.
Leivers was glad to see him. She gathered something was
fretting him, that he found things hard. He seemed to drift
to her for comfort. And she was good to him. She did him
that great kindness of treating him almost with reverence.
He met her with the young children in the front garden.
"I'm glad you've come," said the mother, looking at him
with her great appealing brown eyes. "It is such a sunny
day. I was just going down the fields for the first time
this year."
He felt she would like him to come. That soothed him.
They went, talking simply, he gentle and humble. He could
have wept with gratitude that she was deferential to him. He
was feeling humiliated.
At the bottom of the Mow Close they found a thrush's
nest.
"Shall I show you the eggs?" he said.
"Do!" replied Mrs. Leivers. "They seem SUCH a sign of
spring, and so hopeful."
He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding
them in the palm of his hand.
"They are quite hot—I think we frightened her off them,"
he said.
"Ay, poor thing!" said Mrs. Leivers.
Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand
which, it seemed to her, cradled them so well.
"Isn't it a strange warmth!" she murmured, to get near
him.
"Blood heat," he answered.
She watched him putting them back, his body pressed
against the hedge, his arm reaching slowly through the
thorns, his hand folded carefully over the eggs. He was
concentrated on the act. Seeing him so, she loved him; he
seemed so simple and sufficient to himself. And she could
not get to him.
After tea she stood hesitating at the bookshelf. He took
"Tartarin de Tarascon". Again they sat on the bank of hay at
the foot of the stack. He read a couple of pages, but
without any heart for it. Again the dog came racing up to
repeat the fun of the other day. He shoved his muzzle in the
man's chest. Paul fingered his ear for a moment. Then he
pushed him away.
"Go away, Bill," he said. "I don't want you."
Bill slunk off, and Miriam wondered and dreaded what was
coming. There was a silence about the youth that made her
still with apprehension. It was not his furies, but his
quiet resolutions that she feared.
Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could
not see him, he began, speaking slowly and painfully:
"Do you think—if I didn't come up so much—you might get
to like somebody else—another man?"
So this was what he was still harping on.
"But I don't know any other men. Why do you ask?" she
replied, in a low tone that should have been a reproach to
him.
"Why," he blurted, "because they say I've no right to
come up like this—without we mean to marry—"
Miriam was indignant at anybody's forcing the issues
between them. She had been furious with her own father for
suggesting to Paul, laughingly, that he knew why he came so
much.
"Who says?" she asked, wondering if her people had
anything to do with it. They had not.
"Mother—and the others. They say at this rate everybody
will consider me engaged, and I ought to consider myself so,
because it's not fair to you. And I've tried to find out—and
I don't think I love you as a man ought to love his wife.
What do you think about it?"
Miriam bowed her head moodily. She was angry at having
this struggle. People should leave him and her alone.
"I don't know," she murmured.
"Do you think we love each other enough to marry?" he
asked definitely. It made her tremble.
"No," she answered truthfully. "I don't think so—we're
too young."
"I thought perhaps," he went on miserably, "that you,
with your intensity in things, might have given me more—than
I could ever make up to you. And even now—if you think it
better—we'll be engaged."
Now Miriam wanted to cry. And she was angry, too. He was
always such a child for people to do as they liked with.
"No, I don't think so," she said firmly.
He pondered a minute.
"You see," he said, "with me—I don't think one person
would ever monopolize me—be everything to me—I think never."
This she did not consider.
"No," she murmured. Then, after a pause, she looked at
him, and her dark eyes flashed.
"This is your mother," she said. "I know she never liked
me."
"No, no, it isn't," he said hastily. "It was for your
sake she spoke this time. She only said, if I was going on,
I ought to consider myself engaged." There was a silence.
"And if I ask you to come down any time, you won't stop
away, will you?"
She did not answer. By this time she was very angry.
"Well, what shall we do?" she said shortly. "I suppose
I'd better drop French. I was just beginning to get on with
it. But I suppose I can go on alone."
"I don't see that we need," he said. "I can give you a
French lesson, surely."
"Well—and there are Sunday nights. I shan't stop coming
to chapel, because I enjoy it, and it's all the social life
I get. But you've no need to come home with me. I can go
alone."
"All right," he answered, rather taken aback. "But if I
ask Edgar, he'll always come with us, and then they can say
nothing."
There was silence. After all, then, she would not lose
much. For all their talk down at his home there would not be
much difference. She wished they would mind their own
business.
"And you won't think about it, and let it trouble you,
will you?" he asked.
"Oh no," replied Miriam, without looking at him.
He was silent. She thought him unstable. He had no fixity
of purpose, no anchor of righteousness that held him.
"Because," he continued, "a man gets across his
bicycle—and goes to work—and does all sorts of things. But a
woman broods."
"No, I shan't bother," said Miriam. And she meant it.
It had gone rather chilly. They went indoors.
"How white Paul looks!" Mrs. Leivers exclaimed. "Miriam,
you shouldn't have let him sit out of doors. Do you think
you've taken cold, Paul?"
"Oh, no!" he laughed.
But he felt done up. It wore him out, the conflict in
himself. Miriam pitied him now. But quite early, before nine
o'clock, he rose to go.
"You're not going home, are you?" asked Mrs. Leivers
anxiously.
"Yes," he replied. "I said I'd be early." He was very
awkward.
"But this IS early," said Mrs. Leivers.
Miriam sat in the rocking-chair, and did not speak. He
hesitated, expecting her to rise and go with him to the barn
as usual for his bicycle. She remained as she was. He was at
a loss.
"Well—good-night, all!" he faltered.
She spoke her good-night along with all the others. But
as he went past the window he looked in. She saw him pale,
his brows knit slightly in a way that had become constant
with him, his eyes dark with pain.
She rose and went to the doorway to wave good-bye to him
as he passed through the gate. He rode slowly under the
pine-trees, feeling a cur and a miserable wretch. His
bicycle went tilting down the hills at random. He thought it
would be a relief to break one's neck.
Two days later he sent her up a book and a little note,
urging her to read and be busy.
At this time he gave all his friendship to Edgar. He
loved the family so much, he loved the farm so much; it was
the dearest place on earth to him. His home was not so
lovable. It was his mother. But then he would have been just
as happy with his mother anywhere. Whereas Willey Farm he
loved passionately. He loved the little pokey kitchen, where
men's boots tramped, and the dog slept with one eye open for
fear of being trodden on; where the lamp hung over the table
at night, and everything was so silent. He loved Miriam's
long, low parlour, with its atmosphere of romance, its
flowers, its books, its high rosewood piano. He loved the
gardens and the buildings that stood with their scarlet
roofs on the naked edges of the fields, crept towards the
wood as if for cosiness, the wild country scooping down a
valley and up the uncultured hills of the other side. Only
to be there was an exhilaration and a joy to him. He loved
Mrs. Leivers, with her unworldliness and her quaint
cynicism; he loved Mr. Leivers, so warm and young and
lovable; he loved Edgar, who lit up when he came, and the
boys and the children and Bill—even the sow Circe and the
Indian game-cock called Tippoo. All this besides Miriam. He
could not give it up.
So he went as often, but he was usually with Edgar. Only
all the family, including the father, joined in charades and
games at evening. And later, Miriam drew them together, and
they read Macbeth out of penny books, taking parts. It was
great excitement. Miriam was glad, and Mrs. Leivers was
glad, and Mr. Leivers enjoyed it. Then they all learned
songs together from tonic sol-fa, singing in a circle round
the fire. But now Paul was very rarely alone with Miriam.
She waited. When she and Edgar and he walked home together
from chapel or from the literary society in Bestwood, she
knew his talk, so passionate and so unorthodox nowadays, was
for her. She did envy Edgar, however, his cycling with Paul,
his Friday nights, his days working in the fields. For her
Friday nights and her French lessons were gone. She was
nearly always alone, walking, pondering in the wood,
reading, studying, dreaming, waiting. And he wrote to her
frequently.
One Sunday evening they attained to their old rare
harmony. Edgar had stayed to Communion—he wondered what it
was like—with Mrs. Morel. So Paul came on alone with Miriam
to his home. He was more or less under her spell again. As
usual, they were discussing the sermon. He was setting now
full sail towards Agnosticism, but such a religious
Agnosticism that Miriam did not suffer so badly. They were
at the Renan Vie de Jesus stage. Miriam was the
threshing-floor on which he threshed out all his beliefs.
While he trampled his ideas upon her soul, the truth came
out for him. She alone was his threshing-floor. She alone
helped him towards realization. Almost impassive, she
submitted to his argument and expounding. And somehow,
because of her, he gradually realized where he was wrong.
And what he realized, she realized. She felt he could not do
without her.
They came to the silent house. He took the key out of the
scullery window, and they entered. All the time he went on
with his discussion. He lit the gas, mended the fire, and
brought her some cakes from the pantry. She sat on the sofa,
quietly, with a plate on her knee. She wore a large white
hat with some pinkish flowers. It was a cheap hat, but he
liked it. Her face beneath was still and pensive,
golden-brown and ruddy. Always her ears were hid in her
short curls. She watched him.
She liked him on Sundays. Then he wore a dark suit that
showed the lithe movement of his body. There was a clean,
clear-cut look about him. He went on with his thinking to
her. Suddenly he reached for a Bible. Miriam liked the way
he reached up—so sharp, straight to the mark. He turned the
pages quickly, and read her a chapter of St. John. As he sat
in the armchair reading, intent, his voice only thinking,
she felt as if he were using her unconsciously as a man uses
his tools at some work he is bent on. She loved it. And the
wistfulness of his voice was like a reaching to something,
and it was as if she were what he reached with. She sat back
on the sofa away from him, and yet feeling herself the very
instrument his hand grasped. It gave her great pleasure.
Then he began to falter and to get self-conscious. And
when he came to the verse, "A woman, when she is in travail,
hath sorrow because her hour is come", he missed it out.
Miriam had felt him growing uncomfortable. She shrank when
the well-known words did not follow. He went on reading, but
she did not hear. A grief and shame made her bend her head.
Six months ago he would have read it simply. Now there was a
scotch in his running with her. Now she felt there was
really something hostile between them, something of which
they were ashamed.
She ate her cake mechanically. He tried to go on with his
argument, but could not get back the right note. Soon Edgar
came in. Mrs. Morel had gone to her friends'. The three set
off to Willey Farm.
Miriam brooded over his split with her. There was
something else he wanted. He could not be satisfied; he
could give her no peace. There was between them now always a
ground for strife. She wanted to prove him. She believed
that his chief need in life was herself. If she could prove
it, both to herself and to him, the rest might go; she could
simply trust to the future.
So in May she asked him to come to Willey Farm and meet
Mrs. Dawes. There was something he hankered after. She saw
him, whenever they spoke of Clara Dawes, rouse and get
slightly angry. He said he did not like her. Yet he was keen
to know about her. Well, he should put himself to the test.
She believed that there were in him desires for higher
things, and desires for lower, and that the desire for the
higher would conquer. At any rate, he should try. She forgot
that her "higher" and "lower" were arbitrary.
He was rather excited at the idea of meeting Clara at
Willey Farm. Mrs. Dawes came for the day. Her heavy,
dun-coloured hair was coiled on top of her head. She wore a
white blouse and navy skirt, and somehow, wherever she was,
seemed to make things look paltry and insignificant. When
she was in the room, the kitchen seemed too small and mean
altogether. Miriam's beautiful twilighty parlour looked
stiff and stupid. All the Leivers were eclipsed like
candles. They found her rather hard to put up with. Yet she
was perfectly amiable, but indifferent, and rather hard.
Paul did not come till afternoon. He was early. As he
swung off his bicycle, Miriam saw him look round at the
house eagerly. He would be disappointed if the visitor had
not come. Miriam went out to meet him, bowing her head
because of the sunshine. Nasturtiums were coming out crimson
under the cool green shadow of their leaves. The girl stood,
dark-haired, glad to see him.
"Hasn't Clara come?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Miriam in her musical tone. "She's
reading."
He wheeled his bicycle into the barn. He had put on a
handsome tie, of which he was rather proud, and socks to
match.
"She came this morning?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Miriam, as she walked at his side. "You
said you'd bring me that letter from the man at Liberty's.
Have you remembered?"
"Oh, dash, no!" he said. "But nag at me till you get it."
"I don't like to nag at you."
"Do it whether or not. And is she any more agreeable?" he
continued.
"You know I always think she is quite agreeable."
He was silent. Evidently his eagerness to be early to-day
had been the newcomer. Miriam already began to suffer. They
went together towards the house. He took the clips off his
trousers, but was too lazy to brush the dust from his shoes,
in spite of the socks and tie.
Clara sat in the cool parlour reading. He saw the nape of
her white neck, and the fine hair lifted from it. She rose,
looking at him indifferently. To shake hands she lifted her
arm straight, in a manner that seemed at once to keep him at
a distance, and yet to fling something to him. He noticed
how her breasts swelled inside her blouse, and how her
shoulder curved handsomely under the thin muslin at the top
of her arm.
"You have chosen a fine day," he said.
"It happens so," she said.
"Yes," he said; "I am glad."
She sat down, not thanking him for his politeness.
"What have you been doing all morning?" asked Paul of
Miriam.
"Well, you see," said Miriam, coughing huskily, "Clara
only came with father—and so—she's not been here very long."
Clara sat leaning on the table, holding aloof. He noticed
her hands were large, but well kept. And the skin on them
seemed almost coarse, opaque, and white, with fine golden
hairs. She did not mind if he observed her hands. She
intended to scorn him. Her heavy arm lay negligently on the
table. Her mouth was closed as if she were offended, and she
kept her face slightly averted.
"You were at Margaret Bonford's meeting the other
evening," he said to her.
Miriam did not know this courteous Paul. Clara glanced at
him.
"Yes," she said.
"Why," asked Miriam, "how do you know?"
"I went in for a few minutes before the train came," he
answered.
Clara turned away again rather disdainfully.
"I think she's a lovable little woman," said Paul.
"Margaret Bonford!" exclaimed Clara. "She's a great deal
cleverer than most men."
"Well, I didn't say she wasn't," he said, deprecating.
"She's lovable for all that."
"And, of course, that is all that matters," said Clara
witheringly.
He rubbed his head, rather perplexed, rather annoyed.
"I suppose it matters more than her cleverness," he said;
"which, after all, would never get her to heaven."
"It's not heaven she wants to get—it's her fair share on
earth," retorted Clara. She spoke as if he were responsible
for some deprivation which Miss Bonford suffered.
"Well," he said, "I thought she was warm, and awfully
nice—only too frail. I wished she was sitting comfortably in
peace—"
"'Darning her husband's stockings,'" said Clara
scathingly.
"I'm sure she wouldn't mind darning even my stockings,"
he said. "And I'm sure she'd do them well. Just as I
wouldn't mind blacking her boots if she wanted me to."
But Clara refused to answer this sally of his. He talked
to Miriam for a little while. The other woman held aloof.
"Well," he said, "I think I'll go and see Edgar. Is he on
the land?"
"I believe," said Miriam, "he's gone for a load of coal.
He should be back directly."
"Then," he said, "I'll go and meet him."
Miriam dared not propose anything for the three of them.
He rose and left them.
On the top road, where the gorse was out, he saw Edgar
walking lazily beside the mare, who nodded her white-starred
forehead as she dragged the clanking load of coal. The young
farmer's face lighted up as he saw his friend. Edgar was
good-looking, with dark, warm eyes. His clothes were old and
rather disreputable, and he walked with considerable pride.
"Hello!" he said, seeing Paul bareheaded. "Where are you
going?"
"Came to meet you. Can't stand 'Nevermore.'"
Edgar's teeth flashed in a laugh of amusement.
"Who is 'Nevermore'?" he asked.
"The lady—Mrs. Dawes—it ought to be Mrs. The Raven that
quothed 'Nevermore.'"
Edgar laughed with glee.
"Don't you like her?" he asked.
"Not a fat lot," said Paul. "Why, do you?"
"No!" The answer came with a deep ring of conviction.
"No!" Edgar pursed up his lips. "I can't say she's much in
my line." He mused a little. Then: "But why do you call her
'Nevermore'?" he asked.
"Well," said Paul, "if she looks at a man she says
haughtily 'Nevermore,' and if she looks at herself in the
looking-glass she says disdainfully 'Nevermore,' and if she
thinks back she says it in disgust, and if she looks forward
she says it cynically."
Edgar considered this speech, failed to make much out of
it, and said, laughing:
"You think she's a man-hater?"
"SHE thinks she is," replied Paul.
"But you don't think so?"
"No," replied Paul.
"Wasn't she nice with you, then?"
"Could you imagine her NICE with anybody?" asked the
young man.
Edgar laughed. Together they unloaded the coal in the
yard. Paul was rather self-conscious, because he knew Clara
could see if she looked out of the window. She didn't look.
On Saturday afternoons the horses were brushed down and
groomed. Paul and Edgar worked together, sneezing with the
dust that came from the pelts of Jimmy and Flower.
"Do you know a new song to teach me?" said Edgar.
He continued to work all the time. The back of his neck
was sun-red when he bent down, and his fingers that held the
brush were thick. Paul watched him sometimes.
"'Mary Morrison'?" suggested the younger.
Edgar agreed. He had a good tenor voice, and he loved to
learn all the songs his friend could teach him, so that he
could sing whilst he was carting. Paul had a very
indifferent baritone voice, but a good ear. However, he sang
softly, for fear of Clara. Edgar repeated the line in a
clear tenor. At times they both broke off to sneeze, and
first one, then the other, abused his horse.
Miriam was impatient of men. It took so little to amuse
them—even Paul. She thought it anomalous in him that he
could be so thoroughly absorbed in a triviality.
It was tea-time when they had finished.
"What song was that?" asked Miriam.
Edgar told her. The conversation turned to singing.
"We have such jolly times," Miriam said to Clara.
Mrs. Dawes ate her meal in a slow, dignified way.
Whenever the men were present she grew distant.
"Do you like singing?" Miriam asked her.
"If it is good," she said.
Paul, of course, coloured.
"You mean if it is high-class and trained?" he said.
"I think a voice needs training before the singing is
anything," she said.
"You might as well insist on having people's voices
trained before you allowed them to talk," he replied.
"Really, people sing for their own pleasure, as a rule."
"And it may be for other people's discomfort."
"Then the other people should have flaps to their ears,"
he replied.
The boys laughed. There was a silence. He flushed deeply,
and ate in silence.
After tea, when all the men had gone but Paul, Mrs.
Leivers said to Clara:
"And you find life happier now?"
"Infinitely."
"And you are satisfied?"
"So long as I can be free and independent."
"And you don't MISS anything in your life?" asked Mrs.
Leivers gently.
"I've put all that behind me."
Paul had been feeling uncomfortable during this
discourse. He got up.
"You'll find you're always tumbling over the things
you've put behind you," he said. Then he took his departure
to the cowsheds. He felt he had been witty, and his manly
pride was high. He whistled as he went down the brick track.
Miriam came for him a little later to know if he would go
with Clara and her for a walk. They set off down to Strelley
Mill Farm. As they were going beside the brook, on the
Willey Water side, looking through the brake at the edge of
the wood, where pink campions glowed under a few sunbeams,
they saw, beyond the tree-trunks and the thin hazel bushes,
a man leading a great bay horse through the gullies. The big
red beast seemed to dance romantically through that dimness
of green hazel drift, away there where the air was shadowy,
as if it were in the past, among the fading bluebells that
might have bloomed for Deidre or Iseult.
The three stood charmed.
"What a treat to be a knight," he said, "and to have a
pavilion here."
"And to have us shut up safely?" replied Clara.
"Yes," he answered, "singing with your maids at your
broidery. I would carry your banner of white and green and
heliotrope. I would have 'W.S.P.U.' emblazoned on my shield,
beneath a woman rampant."
"I have no doubt," said Clara, "that you would much
rather fight for a woman than let her fight for herself."
"I would. When she fights for herself she seems like a
dog before a looking-glass, gone into a mad fury with its
own shadow."
"And YOU are the looking-glass?" she asked, with a curl
of the lip.
"Or the shadow," he replied.
"I am afraid," she said, "that you are too clever."
"Well, I leave it to you to be GOOD," he retorted,
laughing. "Be good, sweet maid, and just let ME be clever."
But Clara wearied of his flippancy. Suddenly, looking at
her, he saw that the upward lifting of her face was misery
and not scorn. His heart grew tender for everybody. He
turned and was gentle with Miriam, whom he had neglected
till then.
At the wood's edge they met Limb, a thin, swarthy man of
forty, tenant of Strelley Mill, which he ran as a
cattle-raising farm. He held the halter of the powerful
stallion indifferently, as if he were tired. The three stood
to let him pass over the stepping-stones of the first brook.
Paul admired that so large an animal should walk on such
springy toes, with an endless excess of vigour. Limb pulled
up before them.
"Tell your father, Miss Leivers," he said, in a peculiar
piping voice, "that his young beas'es 'as broke that bottom
fence three days an' runnin'."
"Which?" asked Miriam, tremulous.
The great horse breathed heavily, shifting round its red
flanks, and looking suspiciously with its wonderful big eyes
upwards from under its lowered head and falling mane.
"Come along a bit," replied Limb, "an' I'll show you."
The man and the stallion went forward. It danced
sideways, shaking its white fetlocks and looking frightened,
as it felt itself in the brook.
"No hanky-pankyin'," said the man affectionately to the
beast.
It went up the bank in little leaps, then splashed finely
through the second brook. Clara, walking with a kind of
sulky abandon, watched it half-fascinated,
half-contemptuous. Limb stopped and pointed to the fence
under some willows.
"There, you see where they got through," he said. "My
man's druv 'em back three times."
"Yes," answered Miriam, colouring as if she were at
fault.
"Are you comin' in?" asked the man.
"No, thanks; but we should like to go by the pond."
"Well, just as you've a mind," he said.
The horse gave little whinneys of pleasure at being so
near home.
"He is glad to be back," said Clara, who was interested
in the creature.
"Yes—'e's been a tidy step to-day."
They went through the gate, and saw approaching them from
the big farmhouse a smallish, dark, excitable-looking woman
of about thirty-five. Her hair was touched with grey, her
dark eyes looked wild. She walked with her hands behind her
back. Her brother went forward. As it saw her, the big bay
stallion whinneyed again. She came up excitedly.
"Are you home again, my boy!" she said tenderly to the
horse, not to the man. The great beast shifted round to her,
ducking his head. She smuggled into his mouth the wrinkled
yellow apple she had been hiding behind her back, then she
kissed him near the eyes. He gave a big sigh of pleasure.
She held his head in her arms against her breast.
"Isn't he splendid!" said Miriam to her.
Miss Limb looked up. Her dark eyes glanced straight at
Paul.
"Oh, good-evening, Miss Leivers," she said. "It's ages
since you've been down."
Miriam introduced her friends.
"Your horse IS a fine fellow!" said Clara.
"Isn't he!" Again she kissed him. "As loving as any man!"
"More loving than most men, I should think," replied
Clara.
"He's a nice boy!" cried the woman, again embracing the
horse.
Clara, fascinated by the big beast, went up to stroke his
neck.
"He's quite gentle," said Miss Limb. "Don't you think big
fellows are?"
"He's a beauty!" replied Clara.
She wanted to look in his eyes. She wanted him to look at
her.
"It's a pity he can't talk," she said.
"Oh, but he can—all but," replied the other woman.
Then her brother moved on with the horse.
"Are you coming in? DO come in, Mr.—I didn't catch it."
"Morel," said Miriam. "No, we won't come in, but we
should like to go by the mill-pond."
"Yes—yes, do. Do you fish, Mr. Morel?"
"No," said Paul.
"Because if you do you might come and fish any time,"
said Miss Limb. "We scarcely see a soul from week's end to
week's end. I should be thankful."
"What fish are there in the pond?" he asked.
They went through the front garden, over the sluice, and
up the steep bank to the pond, which lay in shadow, with its
two wooded islets. Paul walked with Miss Limb.
"I shouldn't mind swimming here," he said.
"Do," she replied. "Come when you like. My brother will
be awfully pleased to talk with you. He is so quiet, because
there is no one to talk to. Do come and swim."
Clara came up.
"It's a fine depth," she said, "and so clear."
"Yes," said Miss Limb.
"Do you swim?" said Paul. "Miss Limb was just saying we
could come when we liked."
"Of course there's the farm-hands," said Miss Limb.
They talked a few moments, then went on up the wild hill,
leaving the lonely, haggard-eyed woman on the bank.
The hillside was all ripe with sunshine. It was wild and
tussocky, given over to rabbits. The three walked in
silence. Then:
"She makes me feel uncomfortable," said Paul.
"You mean Miss Limb?" asked Miriam. "Yes."
"What's a matter with her? Is she going dotty with being
too lonely?"
"Yes," said Miriam. "It's not the right sort of life for
her. I think it's cruel to bury her there. I really ought to
go and see her more. But—she upsets me."
"She makes me feel sorry for her—yes, and she bothers
me," he said.
"I suppose," blurted Clara suddenly, "she wants a man."
The other two were silent for a few moments.
"But it's the loneliness sends her cracked," said Paul.
Clara did not answer, but strode on uphill. She was
walking with her hand hanging, her legs swinging as she
kicked through the dead thistles and the tussocky grass, her
arms hanging loose. Rather than walking, her handsome body
seemed to be blundering up the hill. A hot wave went over
Paul. He was curious about her. Perhaps life had been cruel
to her. He forgot Miriam, who was walking beside him talking
to him. She glanced at him, finding he did not answer her.
His eyes were fixed ahead on Clara.
"Do you still think she is disagreeable?" she asked.
He did not notice that the question was sudden. It ran
with his thoughts.
"Something's the matter with her," he said.
"Yes," answered Miriam.
They found at the top of the hill a hidden wild field,
two sides of which were backed by the wood, the other sides
by high loose hedges of hawthorn and elder bushes. Between
these overgrown bushes were gaps that the cattle might have
walked through had there been any cattle now. There the turf
was smooth as velveteen, padded and holed by the rabbits.
The field itself was coarse, and crowded with tall, big
cowslips that had never been cut. Clusters of strong flowers
rose everywhere above the coarse tussocks of bent. It was
like a roadstead crowded with tan, fairy shipping.
"Ah!" cried Miriam, and she looked at Paul, her dark eyes
dilating. He smiled. Together they enjoyed the field of
flowers. Clara, a little way off, was looking at the
cowslips disconsolately. Paul and Miriam stayed close
together, talking in subdued tones. He kneeled on one knee,
quickly gathering the best blossoms, moving from tuft to
tuft restlessly, talking softly all the time. Miriam plucked
the flowers lovingly, lingering over them. He always seemed
to her too quick and almost scientific. Yet his bunches had
a natural beauty more than hers. He loved them, but as if
they were his and he had a right to them. She had more
reverence for them: they held something she had not.
The flowers were very fresh and sweet. He wanted to drink
them. As he gathered them, he ate the little yellow
trumpets. Clara was still wandering about disconsolately.
Going towards her, he said:
"Why don't you get some?"
"I don't believe in it. They look better growing."
"But you'd like some?"
"They want to be left."
"I don't believe they do."
"I don't want the corpses of flowers about me," she said.
"That's a stiff, artificial notion," he said. "They don't
die any quicker in water than on their roots. And besides,
they LOOK nice in a bowl—they look jolly. And you only call
a thing a corpse because it looks corpse-like."
"Whether it is one or not?" she argued.
"It isn't one to me. A dead flower isn't a corpse of a
flower."
Clara now ignored him.
"And even so—what right have you to pull them?" she
asked.
"Because I like them, and want them—and there's plenty of
them."
"And that is sufficient?"
"Yes. Why not? I'm sure they'd smell nice in your room in
Nottingham."
"And I should have the pleasure of watching them die."
"But then—it does not matter if they do die."
Whereupon he left her, and went stooping over the clumps
of tangled flowers which thickly sprinkled the field like
pale, luminous foam-clots. Miriam had come close. Clara was
kneeling, breathing some scent from the cowslips.
"I think," said Miriam, "if you treat them with reverence
you don't do them any harm. It is the spirit you pluck them
in that matters."
"Yes," he said. "But no, you get 'em because you want
'em, and that's all." He held out his bunch.
Miriam was silent. He picked some more.
"Look at these!" he continued; "sturdy and lusty like
little trees and like boys with fat legs."
Clara's hat lay on the grass not far off. She was
kneeling, bending forward still to smell the flowers. Her
neck gave him a sharp pang, such a beautiful thing, yet not
proud of itself just now. Her breasts swung slightly in her
blouse. The arching curve of her back was beautiful and
strong; she wore no stays. Suddenly, without knowing, he was
scattering a handful of cowslips over her hair and neck,
saying:
"Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
If the Lord won't have you the devil must."
The chill flowers fell on her neck. She looked up at him,
with almost pitiful, scared grey eyes, wondering what he was
doing. Flowers fell on her face, and she shut her eyes.
Suddenly, standing there above her, he felt awkward.
"I thought you wanted a funeral," he said, ill at ease.
Clara laughed strangely, and rose, picking the cowslips
from her hair. She took up her hat and pinned it on. One
flower had remained tangled in her hair. He saw, but would
not tell her. He gathered up the flowers he had sprinkled
over her.
At the edge of the wood the bluebells had flowed over
into the field and stood there like flood-water. But they
were fading now. Clara strayed up to them. He wandered after
her. The bluebells pleased him.
"Look how they've come out of the wood!" he said.
Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of gratitude.
"Yes," she smiled.
His blood beat up.
"It makes me think of the wild men of the woods, how
terrified they would be when they got breast to breast with
the open space."
"Do you think they were?" she asked.
"I wonder which was more frightened among old
tribes—those bursting out of their darkness of woods upon
all the space of light, or those from the open tiptoeing
into the forests."
"I should think the second," she answered.
"Yes, you DO feel like one of the open space sort, trying
to force yourself into the dark, don't you?"
"How should I know?" she answered queerly.
The conversation ended there.
The evening was deepening over the earth. Already the
valley was full of shadow. One tiny square of light stood
opposite at Crossleigh Bank Farm. Brightness was swimming on
the tops of the hills. Miriam came up slowly, her face in
her big, loose bunch of flowers, walking ankle-deep through
the scattered froth of the cowslips. Beyond her the trees
were coming into shape, all shadow.
"Shall we go?" she asked.
And the three turned away. They were all silent. Going
down the path they could see the light of home right across,
and on the ridge of the hill a thin dark outline with little
lights, where the colliery village touched the sky.
"It has been nice, hasn't it?" he asked.
Miriam murmured assent. Clara was silent.
"Don't you think so?" he persisted.
But she walked with her head up, and still did not
answer. He could tell by the way she moved, as if she didn't
care, that she suffered.
At this time Paul took his mother to Lincoln. She was
bright and enthusiastic as ever, but as he sat opposite her
in the railway carriage, she seemed to look frail. He had a
momentary sensation as if she were slipping away from him.
Then he wanted to get hold of her, to fasten her, almost to
chain her. He felt he must keep hold of her with his hand.
They drew near to the city. Both were at the window
looking for the cathedral.
"There she is, mother!" he cried.
They saw the great cathedral lying couchant above the
plain.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "So she is!"
He looked at his mother. Her blue eyes were watching the
cathedral quietly. She seemed again to be beyond him.
Something in the eternal repose of the uplifted cathedral,
blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her,
something of the fatality. What was, WAS. With all his young
will he could not alter it. He saw her face, the skin still
fresh and pink and downy, but crow's-feet near her eyes, her
eyelids steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed
with disillusion; and there was on her the same eternal
look, as if she knew fate at last. He beat against it with
all the strength of his soul.
"Look, mother, how big she is above the town! Think,
there are streets and streets below her! She looks bigger
than the city altogether."
"So she does!" exclaimed his mother, breaking bright into
life again. But he had seen her sitting, looking steady out
of the window at the cathedral, her face and eyes fixed,
reflecting the relentlessness of life. And the crow's-feet
near her eyes, and her mouth shut so hard, made him feel he
would go mad.
They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant.
"Don't imagine I like it," she said, as she ate her
cutlet. "I DON'T like it, I really don't! Just THINK of your
money wasted!"
"You never mind my money," he said. "You forget I'm a
fellow taking his girl for an outing."
And he bought her some blue violets.
"Stop it at once, sir!" she commanded. "How can I do it?"
"You've got nothing to do. Stand still!"
And in the middle of High Street he stuck the flowers in
her coat.
"An old thing like me!" she said, sniffing.
"You see," he said, "I want people to think we're awful
swells. So look ikey."
"I'll jowl your head," she laughed.
"Strut!" he commanded. "Be a fantail pigeon."
It took him an hour to get her through the street. She
stood above Glory Hole, she stood before Stone Bow, she
stood everywhere, and exclaimed.
A man came up, took off his hat, and bowed to her.
"Can I show you the town, madam?"
"No, thank you," she answered. "I've got my son."
Then Paul was cross with her for not answering with more
dignity.
"You go away with you!" she exclaimed. "Ha! that's the
Jew's House. Now, do you remember that lecture, Paul—?"
But she could scarcely climb the cathedral hill. He did
not notice. Then suddenly he found her unable to speak. He
took her into a little public-house, where she rested.
"It's nothing," she said. "My heart is only a bit old;
one must expect it."
He did not answer, but looked at her. Again his heart was
crushed in a hot grip. He wanted to cry, he wanted to smash
things in fury.
They set off again, pace by pace, so slowly. And every
step seemed like a weight on his chest. He felt as if his
heart would burst. At last they came to the top. She stood
enchanted, looking at the castle gate, looking at the
cathedral front. She had quite forgotten herself.
"Now THIS is better than I thought it could be!" she
cried.
But he hated it. Everywhere he followed her, brooding.
They sat together in the cathedral. They attended a little
service in the choir. She was timid.
"I suppose it is open to anybody?" she asked him.
"Yes," he replied. "Do you think they'd have the damned
cheek to send us away."
"Well, I'm sure," she exclaimed, "they would if they
heard your language."
Her face seemed to shine again with joy and peace during
the service. And all the time he was wanting to rage and
smash things and cry.
Afterwards, when they were leaning over the wall, looking
at the town below, he blurted suddenly:
"Why can't a man have a YOUNG mother? What is she old
for?"
"Well," his mother laughed, "she can scarcely help it."
"And why wasn't I the oldest son? Look—they say the young
ones have the advantage—but look, THEY had the young mother.
You should have had me for your eldest son."
"I didn't arrange it," she remonstrated. "Come to
consider, you're as much to blame as me."
He turned on her, white, his eyes furious.
"What are you old for!" he said, mad with his impotence.
"WHY can't you walk? WHY can't you come with me to places?"
"At one time," she replied, "I could have run up that
hill a good deal better than you."
"What's the good of that to ME?" he cried, hitting his
fist on the wall. Then he became plaintive. "It's too bad of
you to be ill. Little, it is—"
"Ill!" she cried. "I'm a bit old, and you'll have to put
up with it, that's all."
They were quiet. But it was as much as they could bear.
They got jolly again over tea. As they sat by Brayford,
watching the boats, he told her about Clara. His mother
asked him innumerable questions.
"Then who does she live with?"
"With her mother, on Bluebell Hill."
"And have they enough to keep them?"
"I don't think so. I think they do lace work."
"And wherein lies her charm, my boy?"
"I don't know that she's charming, mother. But she's
nice. And she seems straight, you know—not a bit deep, not a
bit."
"But she's a good deal older than you."
"She's thirty, I'm going on twenty-three."
"You haven't told me what you like her for."
"Because I don't know—a sort of defiant way she's got—a
sort of angry way."
Mrs. Morel considered. She would have been glad now for
her son to fall in love with some woman who would—she did
not know what. But he fretted so, got so furious suddenly,
and again was melancholic. She wished he knew some nice
woman—She did not know what she wished, but left it vague.
At any rate, she was not hostile to the idea of Clara.
Annie, too, was getting married. Leonard had gone away to
work in Birmingham. One week-end when he was home she had
said to him:
"You don't look very well, my lad."
"I dunno," he said. "I feel anyhow or nohow, ma."
He called her "ma" already in his boyish fashion.
"Are you sure they're good lodgings?" she asked.
"Yes—yes. Only—it's a winder when you have to pour your
own tea out—an' nobody to grouse if you team it in your
saucer and sup it up. It somehow takes a' the taste out of
it."
Mrs. Morel laughed.
"And so it knocks you up?" she said.
"I dunno. I want to get married," he blurted, twisting
his fingers and looking down at his boots. There was a
silence.
"But," she exclaimed, "I thought you said you'd wait
another year."
"Yes, I did say so," he replied stubbornly.
Again she considered.
"And you know," she said, "Annie's a bit of a
spendthrift. She's saved no more than eleven pounds. And I
know, lad, you haven't had much chance."
He coloured up to the ears.
"I've got thirty-three quid," he said.
"It doesn't go far," she answered.
He said nothing, but twisted his fingers.
"And you know," she said, "I've nothing—"
"I didn't want, ma!" he cried, very red, suffering and
remonstrating.
"No, my lad, I know. I was only wishing I had. And take
away five pounds for the wedding and things—it leaves
twenty-nine pounds. You won't do much on that."
He twisted still, impotent, stubborn, not looking up.
"But do you really want to get married?" she asked. "Do
you feel as if you ought?"
He gave her one straight look from his blue eyes.
"Yes," he said.
"Then," she replied, "we must all do the best we can for
it, lad."
The next time he looked up there were tears in his eyes.
"I don't want Annie to feel handicapped," he said,
struggling.
"My lad," she said, "you're steady—you've got a decent
place. If a man had NEEDED me I'd have married him on his
last week's wages. She may find it a bit hard to start
humbly. Young girls ARE like that. They look forward to the
fine home they think they'll have. But I had expensive
furniture. It's not everything."
So the wedding took place almost immediately. Arthur came
home, and was splendid in uniform. Annie looked nice in a
dove-grey dress that she could take for Sundays. Morel
called her a fool for getting married, and was cool with his
son-in-law. Mrs. Morel had white tips in her bonnet, and
some white on her blouse, and was teased by both her sons
for fancying herself so grand. Leonard was jolly and
cordial, and felt a fearful fool. Paul could not quite see
what Annie wanted to get married for. He was fond of her,
and she of him. Still, he hoped rather lugubriously that it
would turn out all right. Arthur was astonishingly handsome
in his scarlet and yellow, and he knew it well, but was
secretly ashamed of the uniform. Annie cried her eyes up in
the kitchen, on leaving her mother. Mrs. Morel cried a
little, then patted her on the back and said:
"But don't cry, child, he'll be good to you."
Morel stamped and said she was a fool to go and tie
herself up. Leonard looked white and overwrought. Mrs. Morel
said to him:
"I s'll trust her to you, my lad, and hold you
responsible for her."
"You can," he said, nearly dead with the ordeal. And it
was all over.
When Morel and Arthur were in bed, Paul sat talking, as
he often did, with his mother.
"You're not sorry she's married, mother, are you?" he
asked.
"I'm not sorry she's married—but—it seems strange that
she should go from me. It even seems to me hard that she can
prefer to go with her Leonard. That's how mothers are—I know
it's silly."
"And shall you be miserable about her?"
"When I think of my own wedding day," his mother
answered, "I can only hope her life will be different."
"But you can trust him to be good to her?"
"Yes, yes. They say he's not good enough for her. But I
say if a man is GENUINE, as he is, and a girl is fond of
him—then—it should be all right. He's as good as she."
"So you don't mind?"
"I would NEVER have let a daughter of mine marry a man I
didn't FEEL to be genuine through and through. And yet,
there's a gap now she's gone."
They were both miserable, and wanted her back again. It
seemed to Paul his mother looked lonely, in her new black
silk blouse with its bit of white trimming.
"At any rate, mother, I s'll never marry," he said.
"Ay, they all say that, my lad. You've not met the one
yet. Only wait a year or two."
"But I shan't marry, mother. I shall live with you, and
we'll have a servant."
"Ay, my lad, it's easy to talk. We'll see when the time
comes."
"What time? I'm nearly twenty-three."
"Yes, you're not one that would marry young. But in three
years' time—"
"I shall be with you just the same."
"We'll see, my boy, we'll see."
"But you don't want me to marry?"
"I shouldn't like to think of you going through your life
without anybody to care for you and do—no."
"And you think I ought to marry?"
"Sooner or later every man ought."
"But you'd rather it were later."
"It would be hard—and very hard. It's as they say:
"'A son's my son till he takes him a wife,
But my daughter's my daughter the whole of her life.'"
"And you think I'd let a wife take me from you?"
"Well, you wouldn't ask her to marry your mother as well
as you," Mrs. Morel smiled.
"She could do what she liked; she wouldn't have to
interfere."
"She wouldn't—till she'd got you—and then you'd see."
"I never will see. I'll never marry while I've got you—I
won't."
"But I shouldn't like to leave you with nobody, my boy,"
she cried.
"You're not going to leave me. What are you? Fifty-three!
I'll give you till seventy-five. There you are, I'm fat and
forty-four. Then I'll marry a staid body. See!"
His mother sat and laughed.
"Go to bed," she said—"go to bed."
"And we'll have a pretty house, you and me, and a
servant, and it'll be just all right. I s'll perhaps be rich
with my painting."
"Will you go to bed!"
"And then you s'll have a pony-carriage. See yourself—a
little Queen Victoria trotting round."
"I tell you to go to bed," she laughed.
He kissed her and went. His plans for the future were
always the same.
Mrs. Morel sat brooding—about her daughter, about Paul,
about Arthur. She fretted at losing Annie. The family was
very closely bound. And she felt she MUST live now, to be
with her children. Life was so rich for her. Paul wanted
her, and so did Arthur. Arthur never knew how deeply he
loved her. He was a creature of the moment. Never yet had he
been forced to realise himself. The army had disciplined his
body, but not his soul. He was in perfect health and very
handsome. His dark, vigorous hair sat close to his smallish
head. There was something childish about his nose, something
almost girlish about his dark blue eyes. But he had the fun
red mouth of a man under his brown moustache, and his jaw
was strong. It was his father's mouth; it was the nose and
eyes of her own mother's people—good-looking,
weak-principled folk. Mrs. Morel was anxious about him. Once
he had really run the rig he was safe. But how far would he
go?
The army had not really done him any good. He resented
bitterly the authority of the officers. He hated having to
obey as if he were an animal. But he had too much sense to
kick. So he turned his attention to getting the best out of
it. He could sing, he was a boon-companion. Often he got
into scrapes, but they were the manly scrapes that are
easily condoned. So he made a good time out of it, whilst
his self-respect was in suppression. He trusted to his good
looks and handsome figure, his refinement, his decent
education to get him most of what he wanted, and he was not
disappointed. Yet he was restless. Something seemed to gnaw
him inside. He was never still, he was never alone. With his
mother he was rather humble. Paul he admired and loved and
despised slightly. And Paul admired and loved and despised
him slightly.
Mrs. Morel had had a few pounds left to her by her
father, and she decided to buy her son out of the army. He
was wild with joy. Now he was like a lad taking a holiday.
He had always been fond of Beatrice Wyld, and during his
furlough he picked up with her again. She was stronger and
better in health. The two often went long walks together,
Arthur taking her arm in soldier's fashion, rather stiffly.
And she came to play the piano whilst he sang. Then Arthur
would unhook his tunic collar. He grew flushed, his eyes
were bright, he sang in a manly tenor. Afterwards they sat
together on the sofa. He seemed to flaunt his body: she was
aware of him so—the strong chest, the sides, the thighs in
their close-fitting trousers.
He liked to lapse into the dialect when he talked to her.
She would sometimes smoke with him. Occasionally she would
only take a few whiffs at his cigarette.
"Nay," he said to her one evening, when she reached for
his cigarette. "Nay, tha doesna. I'll gi'e thee a smoke kiss
if ter's a mind."
"I wanted a whiff, no kiss at all," she answered.
"Well, an' tha s'lt ha'e a whiff," he said, "along wi' t'
kiss."
"I want a draw at thy fag," she cried, snatching for the
cigarette between his lips.
He was sitting with his shoulder touching her. She was
small and quick as lightning. He just escaped.
"I'll gi'e thee a smoke kiss," he said.
"Tha'rt a knivey nuisance, Arty Morel," she said, sitting
back.
"Ha'e a smoke kiss?"
The soldier leaned forward to her, smiling. His face was
near hers.
"Shonna!" she replied, turning away her head.
He took a draw at his cigarette, and pursed up his mouth,
and put his lips close to her. His dark-brown cropped
moustache stood out like a brush. She looked at the puckered
crimson lips, then suddenly snatched the cigarette from his
fingers and darted away. He, leaping after her, seized the
comb from her back hair. She turned, threw the cigarette at
him. He picked it up, put it in his mouth, and sat down.
"Nuisance!" she cried. "Give me my comb!"
She was afraid that her hair, specially done for him,
would come down. She stood with her hands to her head. He
hid the comb between his knees.
"I've non got it," he said.
The cigarette trembled between his lips with laughter as
he spoke.
"Liar!" she said.
"'S true as I'm here!" he laughed, showing his hands.
"You brazen imp!" she exclaimed, rushing and scuffling
for the comb, which he had under his knees. As she wrestled
with him, pulling at his smooth, tight-covered knees, he
laughed till he lay back on the sofa shaking with laughter.
The cigarette fell from his mouth almost singeing his
throat. Under his delicate tan the blood flushed up, and he
laughed till his blue eyes were blinded, his throat swollen
almost to choking. Then he sat up. Beatrice was putting in
her comb.
"Tha tickled me, Beat," he said thickly.
Like a flash her small white hand went out and smacked
his face. He started up, glaring at her. They stared at each
other. Slowly the flush mounted her cheek, she dropped her
eyes, then her head. He sat down sulkily. She went into the
scullery to adjust her hair. In private there she shed a few
tears, she did not know what for.
When she returned she was pursed up close. But it was
only a film over her fire. He, with ruffled hair, was
sulking upon the sofa. She sat down opposite, in the
armchair, and neither spoke. The clock ticked in the silence
like blows.
"You are a little cat, Beat," he said at length, half
apologetically.
"Well, you shouldn't be brazen," she replied.
There was again a long silence. He whistled to himself
like a man much agitated but defiant. Suddenly she went
across to him and kissed him.
"Did it, pore fing!" she mocked.
He lifted his face, smiling curiously.
"Kiss?" he invited her.
"Daren't I?" she asked.
"Go on!" he challenged, his mouth lifted to her.
Deliberately, and with a peculiar quivering smile that
seemed to overspread her whole body, she put her mouth on
his. Immediately his arms folded round her. As soon as the
long kiss was finished she drew back her head from him, put
her delicate fingers on his neck, through the open collar.
Then she closed her eyes, giving herself up again in a kiss.
She acted of her own free will. What she would do she
did, and made nobody responsible.
Paul felt life changing around him. The conditions of
youth were gone. Now it was a home of grown-up people. Annie
was a married woman, Arthur was following his own pleasure
in a way unknown to his folk. For so long they had all lived
at home, and gone out to pass their time. But now, for Annie
and Arthur, life lay outside their mother's house. They came
home for holiday and for rest. So there was that strange,
half-empty feeling about the house, as if the birds had
flown. Paul became more and more unsettled. Annie and Arthur
had gone. He was restless to follow. Yet home was for him
beside his mother. And still there was something else,
something outside, something he wanted.
He grew more and more restless. Miriam did not satisfy
him. His old mad desire to be with her grew weaker.
Sometimes he met Clara in Nottingham, sometimes he went to
meetings with her, sometimes he saw her at Willey Farm. But
on these last occasions the situation became strained. There
was a triangle of antagonism between Paul and Clara and
Miriam. With Clara he took on a smart, worldly, mocking tone
very antagonistic to Miriam. It did not matter what went
before. She might be intimate and sad with him. Then as soon
as Clara appeared, it all vanished, and he played to the
newcomer.
Miriam had one beautiful evening with him in the hay. He
had been on the horse-rake, and having finished, came to
help her to put the hay in cocks. Then he talked to her of
his hopes and despairs, and his whole soul seemed to lie
bare before her. She felt as if she watched the very
quivering stuff of life in him. The moon came out: they
walked home together: he seemed to have come to her because
he needed her so badly, and she listened to him, gave him
all her love and her faith. It seemed to her he brought her
the best of himself to keep, and that she would guard it all
her life. Nay, the sky did not cherish the stars more surely
and eternally than she would guard the good in the soul of
Paul Morel. She went on home alone, feeling exalted, glad in
her faith.
And then, the next day, Clara came. They were to have tea
in the hayfield. Miriam watched the evening drawing to gold
and shadow. And all the time Paul was sporting with Clara.
He made higher and higher heaps of hay that they were
jumping over. Miriam did not care for the game, and stood
aside. Edgar and Geoffrey and Maurice and Clara and Paul
jumped. Paul won, because he was light. Clara's blood was
roused. She could run like an Amazon. Paul loved the
determined way she rushed at the hay-cock and leaped, landed
on the other side, her breasts shaken, her thick hair come
undone.
"You touched!" he cried. "You touched!"
"No!" she flashed, turning to Edgar. "I didn't touch, did
I? Wasn't I clear?"
"I couldn't say," laughed Edgar.
None of them could say.
"But you touched," said Paul. "You're beaten."
"I did NOT touch!" she cried.
"As plain as anything," said Paul.
"Box his ears for me!" she cried to Edgar.
"Nay," Edgar laughed. "I daren't. You must do it
yourself."
"And nothing can alter the fact that you touched,"
laughed Paul.
She was furious with him. Her little triumph before these
lads and men was gone. She had forgotten herself in the
game. Now he was to humble her.
"I think you are despicable!" she said.
And again he laughed, in a way that tortured Miriam.
"And I KNEW you couldn't jump that heap," he teased.
She turned her back on him. Yet everybody could see that
the only person she listened to, or was conscious of, was
he, and he of her. It pleased the men to see this battle
between them. But Miriam was tortured.
Paul could choose the lesser in place of the higher, she
saw. He could be unfaithful to himself, unfaithful to the
real, deep Paul Morel. There was a danger of his becoming
frivolous, of his running after his satisfaction like any
Arthur, or like his father. It made Miriam bitter to think
that he should throw away his soul for this flippant traffic
of triviality with Clara. She walked in bitterness and
silence, while the other two rallied each other, and Paul
sported.
And afterwards, he would not own it, but he was rather
ashamed of himself, and prostrated himself before Miriam.
Then again he rebelled.
"It's not religious to be religious," he said. "I reckon
a crow is religious when it sails across the sky. But it
only does it because it feels itself carried to where it's
going, not because it thinks it is being eternal."
But Miriam knew that one should be religious in
everything, have God, whatever God might be, present in
everything.
"I don't believe God knows such a lot about Himself," he
cried. "God doesn't KNOW things, He IS things. And I'm sure
He's not soulful."
And then it seemed to her that Paul was arguing God on to
his own side, because he wanted his own way and his own
pleasure. There was a long battle between him and her. He
was utterly unfaithful to her even in her own presence; then
he was ashamed, then repentant; then he hated her, and went
off again. Those were the ever-recurring conditions.
She fretted him to the bottom of his soul. There she
remained—sad, pensive, a worshipper. And he caused her
sorrow. Half the time he grieved for her, half the time he
hated her. She was his conscience; and he felt, somehow, he
had got a conscience that was too much for him. He could not
leave her, because in one way she did hold the best of him.
He could not stay with her because she did not take the rest
of him, which was three-quarters. So he chafed himself into
rawness over her.
When she was twenty-one he wrote her a letter which could
only have been written to her.
"May I speak of our old, worn love, this last time. It,
too, is changing, is it not? Say, has not the body of that
love died, and left you its invulnerable soul? You see, I
can give you a spirit love, I have given it you this long,
long time; but not embodied passion. See, you are a nun. I
have given you what I would give a holy nun—as a mystic monk
to a mystic nun. Surely you esteem it best. Yet you
regret—no, have regretted—the other. In all our relations no
body enters. I do not talk to you through the senses—rather
through the spirit. That is why we cannot love in the common
sense. Ours is not an everyday affection. As yet we are
mortal, and to live side by side with one another would be
dreadful, for somehow with you I cannot long be trivial,
and, you know, to be always beyond this mortal state would
be to lose it. If people marry, they must live together as
affectionate humans, who may be commonplace with each other
without feeling awkward—not as two souls. So I feel it.
"Ought I to send this letter?—I doubt it. But there—it is
best to understand. Au revoir."
Miriam read this letter twice, after which she sealed it
up. A year later she broke the seal to show her mother the
letter.
"You are a nun—you are a nun." The words went into her
heart again and again. Nothing he ever had said had gone
into her so deeply, fixedly, like a mortal wound.
She answered him two days after the party.
"'Our intimacy would have been all-beautiful but for one
little mistake,'" she quoted. "Was the mistake mine?"
Almost immediately he replied to her from Nottingham,
sending her at the same time a little "Omar Khayyam."
"I am glad you answered; you are so calm and natural you
put me to shame. What a ranter I am! We are often out of
sympathy. But in fundamentals we may always be together I
think.
"I must thank you for your sympathy with my painting and
drawing. Many a sketch is dedicated to you. I do look
forward to your criticisms, which, to my shame and glory,
are always grand appreciations. It is a lovely joke, that.
Au revoir."
This was the end of the first phase of Paul's love
affair. He was now about twenty-three years old, and, though
still virgin, the sex instinct that Miriam had over-refined
for so long now grew particularly strong. Often, as he
talked to Clara Dawes, came that thickening and quickening
of his blood, that peculiar concentration in the breast, as
if something were alive there, a new self or a new centre of
consciousness, warning him that sooner or later he would
have to ask one woman or another. But he belonged to Miriam.
Of that she was so fixedly sure that he allowed her right.
CHAPTER X
CLARA
WHEN he was twenty-three years old, Paul sent in a
landscape to the winter exhibition at Nottingham Castle.
Miss Jordan had taken a good deal of interest in him, and
invited him to her house, where he met other artists. He was
beginning to grow ambitious.
One morning the postman came just as he was washing in
the scullery. Suddenly he heard a wild noise from his
mother. Rushing into the kitchen, he found her standing on
the hearthrug wildly waving a letter and crying "Hurrah!" as
if she had gone mad. He was shocked and frightened.
"Why, mother!" he exclaimed.
She flew to him, flung her arms round him for a moment,
then waved the letter, crying:
"Hurrah, my boy! I knew we should do it!"
He was afraid of her—the small, severe woman with graying
hair suddenly bursting out in such frenzy. The postman came
running back, afraid something had happened. They saw his
tipped cap over the short curtains. Mrs. Morel rushed to the
door.
"His picture's got first prize, Fred," she cried, "and is
sold for twenty guineas."
"My word, that's something like!" said the young postman,
whom they had known all his life.
"And Major Moreton has bought it!" she cried.
"It looks like meanin' something, that does, Mrs. Morel,"
said the postman, his blue eyes bright. He was glad to have
brought such a lucky letter. Mrs. Morel went indoors and sat
down, trembling. Paul was afraid lest she might have misread
the letter, and might be disappointed after all. He
scrutinised it once, twice. Yes, he became convinced it was
true. Then he sat down, his heart beating with joy.
"Mother!" he exclaimed.
"Didn't I SAY we should do it!" she said, pretending she
was not crying.
He took the kettle off the fire and mashed the tea.
"You didn't think, mother—" he began tentatively.
"No, my son—not so much—but I expected a good deal."
"But not so much," he said.
"No—no—but I knew we should do it."
And then she recovered her composure, apparently at
least. He sat with his shirt turned back, showing his young
throat almost like a girl's, and the towel in his hand, his
hair sticking up wet.
"Twenty guineas, mother! That's just what you wanted to
buy Arthur out. Now you needn't borrow any. It'll just do."
"Indeed, I shan't take it all," she said.
"But why?"
"Because I shan't."
"Well—you have twelve pounds, I'll have nine."
They cavilled about sharing the twenty guineas. She
wanted to take only the five pounds she needed. He would not
hear of it. So they got over the stress of emotion by
quarrelling.
Morel came home at night from the pit, saying:
"They tell me Paul's got first prize for his picture, and
sold it to Lord Henry Bentley for fifty pound."
"Oh, what stories people do tell!" she cried.
"Ha!" he answered. "I said I wor sure it wor a lie. But
they said tha'd told Fred Hodgkisson."
"As if I would tell him such stuff!"
"Ha!" assented the miner.
But he was disappointed nevertheless.
"It's true he has got the first prize," said Mrs. Morel.
The miner sat heavily in his chair.
"Has he, beguy!" he exclaimed.
He stared across the room fixedly.
"But as for fifty pounds—such nonsense!" She was silent
awhile. "Major Moreton bought it for twenty guineas, that's
true."
"Twenty guineas! Tha niver says!" exclaimed Morel.
"Yes, and it was worth it."
"Ay!" he said. "I don't misdoubt it. But twenty guineas
for a bit of a paintin' as he knocked off in an hour or
two!"
He was silent with conceit of his son. Mrs. Morel
sniffed, as if it were nothing.
"And when does he handle th' money?" asked the collier.
"That I couldn't tell you. When the picture is sent home,
I suppose."
There was silence. Morel stared at the sugar-basin
instead of eating his dinner. His black arm, with the hand
all gnarled with work lay on the table. His wife pretended
not to see him rub the back of his hand across his eyes, nor
the smear in the coal-dust on his black face.
"Yes, an' that other lad 'ud 'a done as much if they
hadna ha' killed 'im," he said quietly.
The thought of William went through Mrs. Morel like a
cold blade. It left her feeling she was tired, and wanted
rest.
Paul was invited to dinner at Mr. Jordan's. Afterwards he
said:
"Mother, I want an evening suit."
"Yes, I was afraid you would," she said. She was glad.
There was a moment or two of silence. "There's that one of
William's," she continued, "that I know cost four pounds ten
and which he'd only worn three times."
"Should you like me to wear it, mother?" he asked.
"Yes. I think it would fit you—at least the coat. The
trousers would want shortening."
He went upstairs and put on the coat and vest. Coming
down, he looked strange in a flannel collar and a flannel
shirt-front, with an evening coat and vest. It was rather
large.
"The tailor can make it right," she said, smoothing her
hand over his shoulder. "It's beautiful stuff. I never could
find in my heart to let your father wear the trousers, and
very glad I am now."
And as she smoothed her hand over the silk collar she
thought of her eldest son. But this son was living enough
inside the clothes. She passed her hand down his back to
feel him. He was alive and hers. The other was dead.
He went out to dinner several times in his evening suit
that had been William's. Each time his mother's heart was
firm with pride and joy. He was started now. The studs she
and the children had bought for William were in his
shirt-front; he wore one of William's dress shirts. But he
had an elegant figure. His face was rough, but warm-looking
and rather pleasing. He did not look particularly a
gentleman, but she thought he looked quite a man.
He told her everything that took place, everything that
was said. It was as if she had been there. And he was dying
to introduce her to these new friends who had dinner at
seven-thirty in the evening.
"Go along with you!" she said. "What do they want to know
me for?"
"They do!" he cried indignantly. "If they want to know
me—and they say they do—then they want to know you, because
you are quite as clever as I am."
"Go along with you, child!" she laughed.
But she began to spare her hands. They, too, were
work-gnarled now. The skin was shiny with so much hot water,
the knuckles rather swollen. But she began to be careful to
keep them out of soda. She regretted what they had been—so
small and exquisite. And when Annie insisted on her having
more stylish blouses to suit her age, she submitted. She
even went so far as to allow a black velvet bow to be placed
on her hair. Then she sniffed in her sarcastic manner, and
was sure she looked a sight. But she looked a lady, Paul
declared, as much as Mrs. Major Moreton, and far, far nicer.
The family was coming on. Only Morel remained unchanged, or
rather, lapsed slowly.
Paul and his mother now had long discussions about life.
Religion was fading into the background. He had shovelled
away an the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the
ground, and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that
one should feel inside oneself for right and wrong, and
should have the patience to gradually realise one's God. Now
life interested him more.
"You know," he said to his mother, "I don't want to
belong to the well-to-do middle class. I like my common
people best. I belong to the common people."
"But if anyone else said so, my son, wouldn't you be in a
tear. YOU know you consider yourself equal to any
gentleman."
"In myself," he answered, "not in my class or my
education or my manners. But in myself I am."
"Very well, then. Then why talk about the common people?"
"Because—the difference between people isn't in their
class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one
gets ideas, and from the common people—life itself, warmth.
You feel their hates and loves."
"It's all very well, my boy. But, then, why don't you go
and talk to your father's pals?"
"But they're rather different."
"Not at all. They're the common people. After all, whom
do you mix with now—among the common people? Those that
exchange ideas, like the middle classes. The rest don't
interest you."
"But—there's the life—"
"I don't believe there's a jot more life from Miriam than
you could get from any educated girl—say Miss Moreton. It is
YOU who are snobbish about class."
She frankly WANTED him to climb into the middle classes,
a thing not very difficult, she knew. And she wanted him in
the end to marry a lady.
Now she began to combat him in his restless fretting. He
still kept up his connection with Miriam, could neither
break free nor go the whole length of engagement. And this
indecision seemed to bleed him of his energy. Moreover, his
mother suspected him of an unrecognised leaning towards
Clara, and, since the latter was a married woman, she wished
he would fall in love with one of the girls in a better
station of life. But he was stupid, and would refuse to love
or even to admire a girl much, just because she was his
social superior.
"My boy," said his mother to him, "all your cleverness,
your breaking away from old things, and taking life in your
own hands, doesn't seem to bring you much happiness."
"What is happiness!" he cried. "It's nothing to me! How
AM I to be happy?"
The plump question disturbed her.
"That's for you to judge, my lad. But if you could meet
some GOOD woman who would MAKE you happy—and you began to
think of settling your life—when you have the means—so that
you could work without all this fretting—it would be much
better for you."
He frowned. His mother caught him on the raw of his wound
of Miriam. He pushed the tumbled hair off his forehead, his
eyes full of pain and fire.
"You mean easy, mother," he cried. "That's a woman's
whole doctrine for life—ease of soul and physical comfort.
And I do despise it."
"Oh, do you!" replied his mother. "And do you call yours
a divine discontent?"
"Yes. I don't care about its divinity. But damn your
happiness! So long as life's full, it doesn't matter whether
it's happy or not. I'm afraid your happiness would bore me."
"You never give it a chance," she said. Then suddenly all
her passion of grief over him broke out. "But it does
matter!" she cried. "And you OUGHT to be happy, you ought to
try to be happy, to live to be happy. How could I bear to
think your life wouldn't be a happy one!"
"Your own's been bad enough, mater, but it hasn't left
you so much worse off than the folk who've been happier. I
reckon you've done well. And I am the same. Aren't I well
enough off?"
"You're not, my son. Battle—battle—and suffer. It's about
all you do, as far as I can see."
"But why not, my dear? I tell you it's the best—"
"It isn't. And one OUGHT to be happy, one OUGHT."
By this time Mrs. Morel was trembling violently.
Struggles of this kind often took place between her and her
son, when she seemed to fight for his very life against his
own will to die. He took her in his arms. She was ill and
pitiful.
"Never mind, Little," he murmured. "So long as you don't
feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest
doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness."
She pressed him to her.
"But I want you to be happy," she said pathetically.
"Eh, my dear—say rather you want me to live."
Mrs. Morel felt as if her heart would break for him. At
this rate she knew he would not live. He had that poignant
carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life,
which is a form of slow suicide. It almost broke her heart.
With all the passion of her strong nature she hated Miriam
for having in this subtle way undermined his joy. It did not
matter to her that Miriam could not help it. Miriam did it,
and she hated her.
She wished so much he would fall in love with a girl
equal to be his mate—educated and strong. But he would not
look at anybody above him in station. He seemed to like Mrs.
Dawes. At any rate that feeling was wholesome. His mother
prayed and prayed for him, that he might not be wasted. That
was all her prayer—not for his soul or his righteousness,
but that he might not be wasted. And while he slept, for
hours and hours she thought and prayed for him.
He drifted away from Miriam imperceptibly, without
knowing he was going. Arthur only left the army to be
married. The baby was born six months after his wedding.
Mrs. Morel got him a job under the firm again, at twenty-one
shillings a week. She furnished for him, with the help of
Beatrice's mother, a little cottage of two rooms. He was
caught now. It did not matter how he kicked and struggled,
he was fast. For a time he chafed, was irritable with his
young wife, who loved him; he went almost distracted when
the baby, which was delicate, cried or gave trouble. He
grumbled for hours to his mother. She only said: "Well, my
lad, you did it yourself, now you must make the best of it."
And then the grit came out in him. He buckled to work,
undertook his responsibilities, acknowledged that he
belonged to his wife and child, and did make a good best of
it. He had never been very closely inbound into the family.
Now he was gone altogether.
The months went slowly along. Paul had more or less got
into connection with the Socialist, Suffragette, Unitarian
people in Nottingham, owing to his acquaintance with Clara.
One day a friend of his and of Clara's, in Bestwood, asked
him to take a message to Mrs. Dawes. He went in the evening
across Sneinton Market to Bluebell Hill. He found the house
in a mean little street paved with granite cobbles and
having causeways of dark blue, grooved bricks. The front
door went up a step from off this rough pavement, where the
feet of the passersby rasped and clattered. The brown paint
on the door was so old that the naked wood showed between
the rents. He stood on the street below and knocked. There
came a heavy footstep; a large, stout woman of about sixty
towered above him. He looked up at her from the pavement.
She had a rather severe face.
She admitted him into the parlour, which opened on to the
street. It was a small, stuffy, defunct room, of mahogany,
and deathly enlargements of photographs of departed people
done in carbon. Mrs. Radford left him. She was stately,
almost martial. In a moment Clara appeared. She flushed
deeply, and he was covered with confusion. It seemed as if
she did not like being discovered in her home circumstances.
"I thought it couldn't be your voice," she said.
But she might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.
She invited him out of the mausoleum of a parlour into the
kitchen.
That was a little, darkish room too, but it was smothered
in white lace. The mother had seated herself again by the
cupboard, and was drawing thread from a vast web of lace. A
clump of fluff and ravelled cotton was at her right hand, a
heap of three-quarter-inch lace lay on her left, whilst in
front of her was the mountain of lace web, piling the
hearthrug. Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between
the lengths of lace, strewed over the fender and the
fireplace. Paul dared not go forward, for fear of treading
on piles of white stuff.
On the table was a jenny for carding the lace. There was
a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace,
a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay a heap of drawn
lace.
The room was all lace, and it was so dark and warm that
the white, snowy stuff seemed the more distinct.
"If you're coming in you won't have to mind the work,"
said Mrs. Radford. "I know we're about blocked up. But sit
you down."
Clara, much embarrassed, gave him a chair against the
wall opposite the white heaps. Then she herself took her
place on the sofa, shamedly.
"Will you drink a bottle of stout?" Mrs. Radford asked.
"Clara, get him a bottle of stout."
He protested, but Mrs. Radford insisted.
"You look as if you could do with it," she said. "Haven't
you never any more colour than that?"
"It's only a thick skin I've got that doesn't show the
blood through," he answered.
Clara, ashamed and chagrined, brought him a bottle of
stout and a glass. He poured out some of the black stuff.
"Well," he said, lifting the glass, "here's health!"
"And thank you," said Mrs. Radford.
He took a drink of stout.
"And light yourself a cigarette, so long as you don't set
the house on fire," said Mrs. Radford.
"Thank you," he replied.
"Nay, you needn't thank me," she answered. "I s'll be
glad to smell a bit of smoke in th' 'ouse again. A house o'
women is as dead as a house wi' no fire, to my thinkin'. I'm
not a spider as likes a corner to myself. I like a man
about, if he's only something to snap at."
Clara began to work. Her jenny spun with a subdued buzz;
the white lace hopped from between her fingers on to the
card. It was filled; she snipped off the length, and pinned
the end down to the banded lace. Then she put a new card in
her jenny. Paul watched her. She sat square and magnificent.
Her throat and arms were bare. The blood still mantled below
her ears; she bent her head in shame of her humility. Her
face was set on her work. Her arms were creamy and full of
life beside the white lace; her large, well-kept hands
worked with a balanced movement, as if nothing would hurry
them. He, not knowing, watched her all the time. He saw the
arch of her neck from the shoulder, as she bent her head; he
saw the coil of dun hair; he watched her moving, gleaming
arms.
"I've heard a bit about you from Clara," continued the
mother. "You're in Jordan's, aren't you?" She drew her lace
unceasing.
"Yes."
"Ay, well, and I can remember when Thomas Jordan used to
ask ME for one of my toffies."
"Did he?" laughed Paul. "And did he get it?"
"Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't—which was
latterly. For he's the sort that takes all and gives naught,
he is—or used to be."
"I think he's very decent," said Paul.
"Yes; well, I'm glad to hear it."
Mrs. Radford looked across at him steadily. There was
something determined about her that he liked. Her face was
falling loose, but her eyes were calm, and there was
something strong in her that made it seem she was not old;
merely her wrinkles and loose cheeks were an anachronism.
She had the strength and sang-froid of a woman in the prime
of life. She continued drawing the lace with slow, dignified
movements. The big web came up inevitably over her apron;
the length of lace fell away at her side. Her arms were
finely shapen, but glossy and yellow as old ivory. They had
not the peculiar dull gleam that made Clara's so fascinating
to him.
"And you've been going with Miriam Leivers?" the mother
asked him.
"Well—" he answered.
"Yes, she's a nice girl," she continued. "She's very
nice, but she's a bit too much above this world to suit my
fancy."
"She is a bit like that," he agreed.
"She'll never be satisfied till she's got wings and can
fly over everybody's head, she won't," she said.
Clara broke in, and he told her his message. She spoke
humbly to him. He had surprised her in her drudgery. To have
her humble made him feel as if he were lifting his head in
expectation.
"Do you like jennying?" he asked.
"What can a woman do!" she replied bitterly.
"Is it sweated?"
"More or less. Isn't ALL woman's work? That's another
trick the men have played, since we force ourselves into the
labour market."
"Now then, you shut up about the men," said her mother.
"If the women wasn't fools, the men wouldn't be bad uns,
that's what I say. No man was ever that bad wi' me but what
he got it back again. Not but what they're a lousy lot,
there's no denying it."
"But they're all right really, aren't they?" he asked.
"Well, they're a bit different from women," she answered.
"Would you care to be back at Jordan's?" he asked Clara.
"I don't think so," she replied.
"Yes, she would!" cried her mother; "thank her stars if
she could get back. Don't you listen to her. She's for ever
on that 'igh horse of hers, an' it's back's that thin an'
starved it'll cut her in two one of these days."
Clara suffered badly from her mother. Paul felt as if his
eyes were coming very wide open. Wasn't he to take Clara's
fulminations so seriously, after all? She spun steadily at
her work. He experienced a thrill of joy, thinking she might
need his help. She seemed denied and deprived of so much.
And her arm moved mechanically, that should never have been
subdued to a mechanism, and her head was bowed to the lace,
that never should have been bowed. She seemed to be stranded
there among the refuse that life has thrown away, doing her
jennying. It was a bitter thing to her to be put aside by
life, as if it had no use for her. No wonder she protested.
She came with him to the door. He stood below in the mean
street, looking up at her. So fine she was in her stature
and her bearing, she reminded him of Juno dethroned. As she
stood in the doorway, she winced from the street, from her
surroundings.
"And you will go with Mrs. Hodgkisson to Hucknall?"
He was talking quite meaninglessly, only watching her.
Her grey eyes at last met his. They looked dumb with
humiliation, pleading with a kind of captive misery. He was
shaken and at a loss. He had thought her high and mighty.
When he left her, he wanted to run. He went to the
station in a sort of dream, and was at home without
realising he had moved out of her street.
He had an idea that Susan, the overseer of the Spiral
girls, was about to be married. He asked her the next day.
"I say, Susan, I heard a whisper of your getting married.
What about it?"
Susan flushed red.
"Who's been talking to you?" she replied.
"Nobody. I merely heard a whisper that you WERE
thinking—"
"Well, I am, though you needn't tell anybody. What's
more, I wish I wasn't!"
"Nay, Susan, you won't make me believe that."
"Shan't I? You CAN believe it, though. I'd rather stop
here a thousand times."
Paul was perturbed.
"Why, Susan?"
The girl's colour was high, and her eyes flashed.
"That's why!"
"And must you?"
For answer, she looked at him. There was about him a
candour and gentleness which made the women trust him. He
understood.
"Ah, I'm sorry," he said.
Tears came to her eyes.
"But you'll see it'll turn out all right. You'll make the
best of it," he continued rather wistfully.
"There's nothing else for it."
"Yea, there's making the worst of it. Try and make it all
right."
He soon made occasion to call again on Clara.
"Would you," he said, "care to come back to Jordan's?"
She put down her work, laid her beautiful arms on the
table, and looked at him for some moments without answering.
Gradually the flush mounted her cheek.
"Why?" she asked.
Paul felt rather awkward.
"Well, because Susan is thinking of leaving," he said.
Clara went on with her jennying. The white lace leaped in
little jumps and bounds on to the card. He waited for her.
Without raising her head, she said at last, in a peculiar
low voice:
"Have you said anything about it?"
"Except to you, not a word."
There was again a long silence.
"I will apply when the advertisement is out," she said.
"You will apply before that. I will let you know exactly
when."
She went on spinning her little machine, and did not
contradict him.
Clara came to Jordan's. Some of the older hands, Fanny
among them, remembered her earlier rule, and cordially
disliked the memory. Clara had always been "ikey", reserved,
and superior. She had never mixed with the girls as one of
themselves. If she had occasion to find fault, she did it
coolly and with perfect politeness, which the defaulter felt
to be a bigger insult than crassness. Towards Fanny, the
poor, overstrung hunchback, Clara was unfailingly
compassionate and gentle, as a result of which Fanny shed
more bitter tears than ever the rough tongues of the other
overseers had caused her.
There was something in Clara that Paul disliked, and much
that piqued him. If she were about, he always watched her
strong throat or her neck, upon which the blonde hair grew
low and fluffy. There was a fine down, almost invisible,
upon the skin of her face and arms, and when once he had
perceived it, he saw it always.
When he was at his work, painting in the afternoon, she
would come and stand near to him, perfectly motionless. Then
he felt her, though she neither spoke nor touched him.
Although she stood a yard away he felt as if he were in
contact with her. Then he could paint no more. He flung down
the brushes, and turned to talk to her.
Sometimes she praised his work; sometimes she was
critical and cold.
"You are affected in that piece," she would say; and, as
there was an element of truth in her condemnation, his blood
boiled with anger.
Again: "What of this?" he would ask enthusiastically.
"H'm!" She made a small doubtful sound. "It doesn't
interest me much."
"Because you don't understand it," he retorted.
"Then why ask me about it?"
"Because I thought you would understand."
She would shrug her shoulders in scorn of his work. She
maddened him. He was furious. Then he abused her, and went
into passionate exposition of his stuff. This amused and
stimulated her. But she never owned that she had been wrong.
During the ten years that she had belonged to the women's
movement she had acquired a fair amount of education, and,
having had some of Miriam's passion to be instructed, had
taught herself French, and could read in that language with
a struggle. She considered herself as a woman apart, and
particularly apart, from her class. The girls in the Spiral
department were all of good homes. It was a small, special
industry, and had a certain distinction. There was an air of
refinement in both rooms. But Clara was aloof also from her
fellow-workers.
None of these things, however, did she reveal to Paul.
She was not the one to give herself away. There was a sense
of mystery about her. She was so reserved, he felt she had
much to reserve. Her history was open on the surface, but
its inner meaning was hidden from everybody. It was
exciting. And then sometimes he caught her looking at him
from under her brows with an almost furtive, sullen
scrutiny, which made him move quickly. Often she met his
eyes. But then her own were, as it were, covered over,
revealing nothing. She gave him a little, lenient smile. She
was to him extraordinarily provocative, because of the
knowledge she seemed to possess, and gathered fruit of
experience he could not attain.
One day he picked up a copy of Lettres de mon Moulin
from her work-bench.
"You read French, do you?" he cried.
Clara glanced round negligently. She was making an
elastic stocking of heliotrope silk, turning the Spiral
machine with slow, balanced regularity, occasionally bending
down to see her work or to adjust the needles; then her
magnificent neck, with its down and fine pencils of hair,
shone white against the lavender, lustrous silk. She turned
a few more rounds, and stopped.
"What did you say?" she asked, smiling sweetly.
Paul's eyes glittered at her insolent indifference to
him.
"I did not know you read French," he said, very polite.
"Did you not?" she replied, with a faint, sarcastic
smile.
"Rotten swank!" he said, but scarcely loud enough to be
heard.
He shut his mouth angrily as he watched her. She seemed
to scorn the work she mechanically produced; yet the hose
she made were as nearly perfect as possible.
"You don't like Spiral work," he said.
"Oh, well, all work is work," she answered, as if she
knew all about it.
He marvelled at her coldness. He had to do everything
hotly. She must be something special.
"What would you prefer to do?" he asked.
She laughed at him indulgently, as she said:
"There is so little likelihood of my ever being given a
choice, that I haven't wasted time considering."
"Pah!" he said, contemptuous on his side now. "You only
say that because you're too proud to own up what you want
and can't get."
"You know me very well," she replied coldly.
"I know you think you're terrific great shakes, and that
you live under the eternal insult of working in a factory."
He was very angry and very rude. She merely turned away
from him in disdain. He walked whistling down the room,
flirted and laughed with Hilda.
Later on he said to himself:
"What was I so impudent to Clara for?" He was rather
annoyed with himself, at the same time glad. "Serve her
right; she stinks with silent pride," he said to himself
angrily.
In the afternoon he came down. There was a certain weight
on his heart which he wanted to remove. He thought to do it
by offering her chocolates.
"Have one?" he said. "I bought a handful to sweeten me
up."
To his great relief, she accepted. He sat on the
work-bench beside her machine, twisting a piece of silk
round his finger. She loved him for his quick, unexpected
movements, like a young animal. His feet swung as he
pondered. The sweets lay strewn on the bench. She bent over
her machine, grinding rhythmically, then stooping to see the
stocking that hung beneath, pulled down by the weight. He
watched the handsome crouching of her back, and the
apron-strings curling on the floor.
"There is always about you," he said, "a sort of waiting.
Whatever I see you doing, you're not really there: you are
waiting—like Penelope when she did her weaving." He could
not help a spurt of wickedness. "I'll call you Penelope," he
said.
"Would it make any difference?" she said, carefully
removing one of her needles.
"That doesn't matter, so long as it pleases me. Here, I
say, you seem to forget I'm your boss. It just occurs to
me."
"And what does that mean?" she asked coolly.
"It means I've got a right to boss you."
"Is there anything you want to complain about?"
"Oh, I say, you needn't be nasty," he said angrily.
"I don't know what you want," she said, continuing her
task.
"I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully."
"Call you 'sir', perhaps?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, call me 'sir'. I should love it."
"Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir."
His mouth closed, and a frown came on his face. He jumped
suddenly down.
"You're too blessed superior for anything," he said.
And he went away to the other girls. He felt he was being
angrier than he had any need to be. In fact, he doubted
slightly that he was showing off. But if he were, then he
would. Clara heard him laughing, in a way she hated, with
the girls down the next room.
When at evening he went through the department after the
girls had gone, he saw his chocolates lying untouched in
front of Clara's machine. He left them. In the morning they
were still there, and Clara was at work. Later on Minnie, a
little brunette they called Pussy, called to him:
"Hey, haven't you got a chocolate for anybody?"
"Sorry, Pussy," he replied. "I meant to have offered
them; then I went and forgot 'em."
"I think you did," she answered.
"I'll bring you some this afternoon. You don't want them
after they've been lying about, do you?"
"Oh, I'm not particular," smiled Pussy.
"Oh no," he said. "They'll be dusty."
He went up to Clara's bench.
"Sorry I left these things littering about," he said.
She flushed scarlet. He gathered them together in his
fist.
"They'll be dirty now," he said. "You should have taken
them. I wonder why you didn't. I meant to have told you I
wanted you to."
He flung them out of the window into the yard below. He
just glanced at her. She winced from his eyes.
In the afternoon he brought another packet.
"Will you take some?" he said, offering them first to
Clara. "These are fresh."
She accepted one, and put it on to the bench.
"Oh, take several—for luck," he said.
She took a couple more, and put them on the bench also.
Then she turned in confusion to her work. He went on up the
room.
"Here you are, Pussy," he said. "Don't be greedy!"
"Are they all for her?" cried the others, rushing up.
"Of course they're not," he said.
The girls clamoured round. Pussy drew back from her
mates.
"Come out!" she cried. "I can have first pick, can't I,
Paul?"
"Be nice with 'em," he said, and went away.
"You ARE a dear," the girls cried.
"Tenpence," he answered.
He went past Clara without speaking. She felt the three
chocolate creams would burn her if she touched them. It
needed all her courage to slip them into the pocket of her
apron.
The girls loved him and were afraid of him. He was so
nice while he was nice, but if he were offended, so distant,
treating them as if they scarcely existed, or not more than
the bobbins of thread. And then, if they were impudent, he
said quietly: "Do you mind going on with your work," and
stood and watched.
When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house
was in trouble. Arthur was just going to be married. His
mother was not well. His father, getting an old man, and
lame from his accidents, was given a paltry, poor job.
Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed himself to
her, yet could not give himself. The house, moreover, needed
his support. He was pulled in all directions. He was not
glad it was his birthday. It made him bitter.
He got to work at eight o'clock. Most of the clerks had
not turned up. The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was
changing his coat, he heard a voice behind him say:
"Paul, Paul, I want you."
It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her
stairs, her face radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her
in astonishment.
"I want you," she said.
He stood, at a loss.
"Come on," she coaxed. "Come before you begin on the
letters."
He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow,
"finishing-off" room. Fanny walked before him: her black
bodice was short—the waist was under her armpits—and her
green-black cashmere skirt seemed very long, as she strode
with big strides before the young man, himself so graceful.
She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room, where
the window opened on to chimney-pots. Paul watched her thin
hands and her flat red wrists as she excitedly twitched her
white apron, which was spread on the bench in front of her.
She hesitated.
"You didn't think we'd forgot you?" she asked,
reproachful.
"Why?" he asked. He had forgotten his birthday himself.
"'Why,' he says! 'Why!' Why, look here!" She pointed to
the calendar, and he saw, surrounding the big black number
"21", hundreds of little crosses in black-lead.
"Oh, kisses for my birthday," he laughed. "How did you
know?"
"Yes, you want to know, don't you?" Fanny mocked, hugely
delighted. "There's one from everybody—except Lady Clara—and
two from some. But I shan't tell you how many I put."
"Oh, I know, you're spooney," he said.
"There you ARE mistaken!" she cried, indignant. "I could
never be so soft." Her voice was strong and contralto.
"You always pretend to be such a hard-hearted hussy," he
laughed. "And you know you're as sentimental—"
"I'd rather be called sentimental than frozen meat,"
Fanny blurted. Paul knew she referred to Clara, and he
smiled.
"Do you say such nasty things about me?" he laughed.
"No, my duck," the hunchback woman answered, lavishly
tender. She was thirty-nine. "No, my duck, because you don't
think yourself a fine figure in marble and us nothing but
dirt. I'm as good as you, aren't I, Paul?" and the question
delighted her.
"Why, we're not better than one another, are we?" he
replied.
"But I'm as good as you, aren't I, Paul?" she persisted
daringly.
"Of course you are. If it comes to goodness, you're
better."
She was rather afraid of the situation. She might get
hysterical.
"I thought I'd get here before the others—won't they say
I'm deep! Now shut your eyes—" she said.
"And open your mouth, and see what God sends you," he
continued, suiting action to words, and expecting a piece of
chocolate. He heard the rustle of the apron, and a faint
clink of metal. "I'm going to look," he said.
He opened his eyes. Fanny, her long cheeks flushed, her
blue eyes shining, was gazing at him. There was a little
bundle of paint-tubes on the bench before him. He turned
pale.
"No, Fanny," he said quickly.
"From us all," she answered hastily.
"No, but—"
"Are they the right sort?" she asked, rocking herself
with delight.
"Jove! they're the best in the catalogue."
"But they're the right sorts?" she cried.
"They're off the little list I'd made to get when my ship
came in." He bit his lip.
Fanny was overcome with emotion. She must turn the
conversation.
"They was all on thorns to do it; they all paid their
shares, all except the Queen of Sheba."
The Queen of Sheba was Clara.
"And wouldn't she join?" Paul asked.
"She didn't get the chance; we never told her; we wasn't
going to have HER bossing THIS show. We didn't WANT her to
join."
Paul laughed at the woman. He was much moved. At last he
must go. She was very close to him. Suddenly she flung her
arms round his neck and kissed him vehemently.
"I can give you a kiss to-day," she said apologetically.
"You've looked so white, it's made my heart ache."
Paul kissed her, and left her. Her arms were so pitifully
thin that his heart ached also.
That day he met Clara as he ran downstairs to wash his
hands at dinner-time.
"You have stayed to dinner!" he exclaimed. It was unusual
for her.
"Yes; and I seem to have dined on old surgical-appliance
stock. I MUST go out now, or I shall feel stale india-rubber
right through."
She lingered. He instantly caught at her wish.
"You are going anywhere?" he asked.
They went together up to the Castle. Outdoors she dressed
very plainly, down to ugliness; indoors she always looked
nice. She walked with hesitating steps alongside Paul,
bowing and turning away from him. Dowdy in dress, and
drooping, she showed to great disadvantage. He could
scarcely recognise her strong form, that seemed to slumber
with power. She appeared almost insignificant, drowning her
stature in her stoop, as she shrank from the public gaze.
The Castle grounds were very green and fresh. Climbing
the precipitous ascent, he laughed and chattered, but she
was silent, seeming to brood over something. There was
scarcely time to go inside the squat, square building that
crowns the bluff of rock. They leaned upon the wall where
the cliff runs sheer down to the Park. Below them, in their
holes in the sandstone, pigeons preened themselves and cooed
softly. Away down upon the boulevard at the foot of the
rock, tiny trees stood in their own pools of shadow, and
tiny people went scurrying about in almost ludicrous
importance.
"You feel as if you could scoop up the folk like
tadpoles, and have a handful of them," he said.
She laughed, answering:
"Yes; it is not necessary to get far off in order to see
us proportionately. The trees are much more significant."
"Bulk only," he said.
She laughed cynically.
Away beyond the boulevard the thin stripes of the metals
showed upon the railway-track, whose margin was crowded with
little stacks of timber, beside which smoking toy engines
fussed. Then the silver string of the canal lay at random
among the black heaps. Beyond, the dwellings, very dense on
the river flat, looked like black, poisonous herbage, in
thick rows and crowded beds, stretching right away, broken
now and then by taller plants, right to where the river
glistened in a hieroglyph across the country. The steep
scarp cliffs across the river looked puny. Great stretches
of country darkened with trees and faintly brightened with
corn-land, spread towards the haze, where the hills rose
blue beyond grey.
"It is comforting," said Mrs. Dawes, "to think the town
goes no farther. It is only a LITTLE sore upon the country
yet."
"A little scab," Paul said.
She shivered. She loathed the town. Looking drearily
across at the country which was forbidden her, her impassive
face, pale and hostile, she reminded Paul of one of the
bitter, remorseful angels.
"But the town's all right," he said; "it's only
temporary. This is the crude, clumsy make-shift we've
practised on, till we find out what the idea is. The town
will come all right."
The pigeons in the pockets of rock, among the perched
bushes, cooed comfortably. To the left the large church of
St. Mary rose into space, to keep close company with the
Castle, above the heaped rubble of the town. Mrs. Dawes
smiled brightly as she looked across the country.
"I feel better," she said.
"Thank you," he replied. "Great compliment!"
"Oh, my brother!" she laughed.
"H'm! that's snatching back with the left hand what you
gave with the right, and no mistake," he said.
She laughed in amusement at him.
"But what was the matter with you?" he asked. "I know you
were brooding something special. I can see the stamp of it
on your face yet."
"I think I will not tell you," she said.
"All right, hug it," he answered.
She flushed and bit her lip.
"No," she said, "it was the girls."
"What about 'em?" Paul asked.
"They have been plotting something for a week now, and
to-day they seem particularly full of it. All alike; they
insult me with their secrecy."
"Do they?" he asked in concern.
"I should not mind," she went on, in the metallic, angry
tone, "if they did not thrust it into my face—the fact that
they have a secret."
"Just like women," said he.
"It is hateful, their mean gloating," she said intensely.
Paul was silent. He knew what the girls gloated over. He
was sorry to be the cause of this new dissension.
"They can have all the secrets in the world," she went
on, brooding bitterly; "but they might refrain from glorying
in them, and making me feel more out of it than ever. It
is—it is almost unbearable."
Paul thought for a few minutes. He was much perturbed.
"I will tell you what it's all about," he said, pale and
nervous. "It's my birthday, and they've bought me a fine lot
of paints, all the girls. They're jealous of you"—he felt
her stiffen coldly at the word 'jealous'—"merely because I
sometimes bring you a book," he added slowly. "But, you see,
it's only a trifle. Don't bother about it, will
you—because"—he laughed quickly—"well, what would they say
if they saw us here now, in spite of their victory?"
She was angry with him for his clumsy reference to their
present intimacy. It was almost insolent of him. Yet he was
so quiet, she forgave him, although it cost her an effort.
Their two hands lay on the rough stone parapet of the
Castle wall. He had inherited from his mother a fineness of
mould, so that his hands were small and vigorous. Hers were
large, to match her large limbs, but white and powerful
looking. As Paul looked at them he knew her. "She is wanting
somebody to take her hands—for all she is so contemptuous of
us," he said to himself. And she saw nothing but his two
hands, so warm and alive, which seemed to live for her. He
was brooding now, staring out over the country from under
sullen brows. The little, interesting diversity of shapes
had vanished from the scene; all that remained was a vast,
dark matrix of sorrow and tragedy, the same in all the
houses and the river-flats and the people and the birds;
they were only shapen differently. And now that the forms
seemed to have melted away, there remained the mass from
which all the landscape was composed, a dark mass of
struggle and pain. The factory, the girls, his mother, the
large, uplifted church, the thicket of the town, merged into
one atmosphere—dark, brooding, and sorrowful, every bit.
"Is that two o'clock striking?" Mrs. Dawes said in
surprise.
Paul started, and everything sprang into form, regained
its individuality, its forgetfulness, and its cheerfulness.
They hurried back to work.
When he was in the rush of preparing for the night's
post, examining the work up from Fanny's room, which smelt
of ironing, the evening postman came in.
"'Mr. Paul Morel,'" he said, smiling, handing Paul a
package. "A lady's handwriting! Don't let the girls see it."
The postman, himself a favourite, was pleased to make fun
of the girls' affection for Paul.
It was a volume of verse with a brief note: "You will
allow me to send you this, and so spare me my isolation. I
also sympathise and wish you well.—C.D." Paul flushed hot.
"Good Lord! Mrs. Dawes. She can't afford it. Good Lord,
who ever'd have thought it!"
He was suddenly intensely moved. He was filled with the
warmth of her. In the glow he could almost feel her as if
she were present—her arms, her shoulders, her bosom, see
them, feel them, almost contain them.
This move on the part of Clara brought them into closer
intimacy. The other girls noticed that when Paul met Mrs.
Dawes his eyes lifted and gave that peculiar bright greeting
which they could interpret. Knowing he was unaware, Clara
made no sign, save that occasionally she turned aside her
face from him when he came upon her.
They walked out together very often at dinner-time; it
was quite open, quite frank. Everybody seemed to feel that
he was quite unaware of the state of his own feeling, and
that nothing was wrong. He talked to her now with some of
the old fervour with which he had talked to Miriam, but he
cared less about the talk; he did not bother about his
conclusions.
One day in October they went out to Lambley for tea.
Suddenly they came to a halt on top of the hill. He climbed
and sat on a gate, she sat on the stile. The afternoon was
perfectly still, with a dim haze, and yellow sheaves glowing
through. They were quiet.
"How old were you when you married?" he asked quietly.
"Twenty-two."
Her voice was subdued, almost submissive. She would tell
him now.
"It is eight years ago?"
"Yes."
"And when did you leave him?"
"Three years ago."
"Five years! Did you love him when you married him?"
She was silent for some time; then she said slowly:
"I thought I did—more or less. I didn't think much about
it. And he wanted me. I was very prudish then."
"And you sort of walked into it without thinking?"
"Yes. I seemed to have been asleep nearly all my life."
"Somnambule? But—when did you wake up?"
"I don't know that I ever did, or ever have—since I was a
child."
"You went to sleep as you grew to be a woman? How queer!
And he didn't wake you?"
"No; he never got there," she replied, in a monotone.
The brown birds dashed over the hedges where the
rose-hips stood naked and scarlet.
"Got where?" he asked.
"At me. He never really mattered to me."
The afternoon was so gently warm and dim. Red roofs of
the cottages burned among the blue haze. He loved the day.
He could feel, but he could not understand, what Clara was
saying.
"But why did you leave him? Was he horrid to you?"
She shuddered lightly.
"He—he sort of degraded me. He wanted to bully me because
he hadn't got me. And then I felt as if I wanted to run, as
if I was fastened and bound up. And he seemed dirty."
"I see."
He did not at all see.
"And was he always dirty?" he asked.
"A bit," she replied slowly. "And then he seemed as if he
couldn't get AT me, really. And then he got brutal—he WAS
brutal!"
"And why did you leave him finally?"
"Because—because he was unfaithful to me—"
They were both silent for some time. Her hand lay on the
gate-post as she balanced. He put his own over it. His heart
beat quickly.
"But did you—were you ever—did you ever give him a
chance?"
"Chance? How?"
"To come near to you."
"I married him—and I was willing—"
They both strove to keep their voices steady.
"I believe he loves you," he said.
"It looks like it," she replied.
He wanted to take his hand away, and could not. She saved
him by removing her own. After a silence, he began again:
"Did you leave him out of count all along?"
"He left me," she said.
"And I suppose he couldn't MAKE himself mean everything
to you?"
"He tried to bully me into it."
But the conversation had got them both out of their
depth. Suddenly Paul jumped down.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go and get some tea."
They found a cottage, where they sat in the cold parlour.
She poured out his tea. She was very quiet. He felt she had
withdrawn again from him. After tea, she stared broodingly
into her tea-cup, twisting her wedding ring all the time. In
her abstraction she took the ring off her finger, stood it
up, and spun it upon the table. The gold became a
diaphanous, glittering globe. It fell, and the ring was
quivering upon the table. She spun it again and again. Paul
watched, fascinated.
But she was a married woman, and he believed in simple
friendship. And he considered that he was perfectly
honourable with regard to her. It was only a friendship
between man and woman, such as any civilised persons might
have.
He was like so many young men of his own age. Sex had
become so complicated in him that he would have denied that
he ever could want Clara or Miriam or any woman whom he
knew. Sex desire was a sort of detached thing, that did not
belong to a woman. He loved Miriam with his soul. He grew
warm at the thought of Clara, he battled with her, he knew
the curves of her breast and shoulders as if they had been
moulded inside him; and yet he did not positively desire
her. He would have denied it for ever. He believed himself
really bound to Miriam. If ever he should marry, some time
in the far future, it would be his duty to marry Miriam.
That he gave Clara to understand, and she said nothing, but
left him to his courses. He came to her, Mrs. Dawes,
whenever he could. Then he wrote frequently to Miriam, and
visited the girl occasionally. So he went on through the
winter; but he seemed not so fretted. His mother was easier
about him. She thought he was getting away from Miriam.
Miriam knew now how strong was the attraction of Clara
for him; but still she was certain that the best in him
would triumph. His feeling for Mrs. Dawes—who, moreover, was
a married woman—was shallow and temporal, compared with his
love for herself. He would come back to her, she was sure;
with some of his young freshness gone, perhaps, but cured of
his desire for the lesser things which other women than
herself could give him. She could bear all if he were
inwardly true to her and must come back.
He saw none of the anomaly of his position. Miriam was
his old friend, lover, and she belonged to Bestwood and home
and his youth. Clara was a newer friend, and she belonged to
Nottingham, to life, to the world. It seemed to him quite
plain.
Mrs. Dawes and he had many periods of coolness, when they
saw little of each other; but they always came together
again.
"Were you horrid with Baxter Dawes?" he asked her. It was
a thing that seemed to trouble him.
"In what way?"
"Oh, I don't know. But weren't you horrid with him?
Didn't you do something that knocked him to pieces?"
"What, pray?"
"Making him feel as if he were nothing—I know," Paul
declared.
"You are so clever, my friend," she said coolly.
The conversation broke off there. But it made her cool
with him for some time.
She very rarely saw Miriam now. The friendship between
the two women was not broken off, but considerably weakened.
"Will you come in to the concert on Sunday afternoon?"
Clara asked him just after Christmas.
"I promised to go up to Willey Farm," he replied.
"Oh, very well."
"You don't mind, do you?" he asked.
"Why should I?" she answered.
Which almost annoyed him.
"You know," he said, "Miriam and I have been a lot to
each other ever since I was sixteen—that's seven years now."
"It's a long time," Clara replied.
"Yes; but somehow she—it doesn't go right—"
"How?" asked Clara.
"She seems to draw me and draw me, and she wouldn't leave
a single hair of me free to fall out and blow away—she'd
keep it."
"But you like to be kept."
"No," he said, "I don't. I wish it could be normal, give
and take—like me and you. I want a woman to keep me, but not
in her pocket."
"But if you love her, it couldn't be normal, like me and
you."
"Yes; I should love her better then. She sort of wants me
so much that I can't give myself."
"Wants you how?"
"Wants the soul out of my body. I can't help shrinking
back from her."
"And yet you love her!"
"No, I don't love her. I never even kiss her."
"Why not?" Clara asked.
"I don't know."
"I suppose you're afraid," she said.
"I'm not. Something in me shrinks from her like
hell—she's so good, when I'm not good."
"How do you know what she is?"
"I do! I know she wants a sort of soul union."
"But how do you know what she wants?"
"I've been with her for seven years."
"And you haven't found out the very first thing about
her."
"What's that?"
"That she doesn't want any of your soul communion. That's
your own imagination. She wants you."
He pondered over this. Perhaps he was wrong.
"But she seems—" he began.
"You've never tried," she answered.
CHAPTER XI
THE TEST ON MIRIAM
WITH the spring came again the old madness and battle.
Now he knew he would have to go to Miriam. But what was his
reluctance? He told himself it was only a sort of overstrong
virginity in her and him which neither could break through.
He might have married her; but his circumstances at home
made it difficult, and, moreover, he did not want to marry.
Marriage was for life, and because they had become close
companions, he and she, he did not see that it should
inevitably follow they should be man and wife. He did not
feel that he wanted marriage with Miriam. He wished he did.
He would have given his head to have felt a joyous desire to
marry her and to have her. Then why couldn't he bring it
off? There was some obstacle; and what was the obstacle? It
lay in the physical bondage. He shrank from the physical
contact. But why? With her he felt bound up inside himself.
He could not go out to her. Something struggled in him, but
he could not get to her. Why? She loved him. Clara said she
even wanted him; then why couldn't he go to her, make love
to her, kiss her? Why, when she put her arm in his, timidly,
as they walked, did he feel he would burst forth in
brutality and recoil? He owed himself to her; he wanted to
belong to her. Perhaps the recoil and the shrinking from her
was love in its first fierce modesty. He had no aversion for
her. No, it was the opposite; it was a strong desire
battling with a still stronger shyness and virginity. It
seemed as if virginity were a positive force, which fought
and won in both of them. And with her he felt it so hard to
overcome; yet he was nearest to her, and with her alone
could he deliberately break through. And he owed himself to
her. Then, if they could get things right, they could marry;
but he would not marry unless he could feel strong in the
joy of it—never. He could not have faced his mother. It
seemed to him that to sacrifice himself in a marriage he did
not want would be degrading, and would undo all his life,
make it a nullity. He would try what he COULD do.
And he had a great tenderness for Miriam. Always, she was
sad, dreaming her religion; and he was nearly a religion to
her. He could not bear to fail her. It would all come right
if they tried.
He looked round. A good many of the nicest men he knew
were like himself, bound in by their own virginity, which
they could not break out of. They were so sensitive to their
women that they would go without them for ever rather than
do them a hurt, an injustice. Being the sons of mothers
whose husbands had blundered rather brutally through their
feminine sanctities, they were themselves too diffident and
shy. They could easier deny themselves than incur any
reproach from a woman; for a woman was like their mother,
and they were full of the sense of their mother. They
preferred themselves to suffer the misery of celibacy,
rather than risk the other person.
He went back to her. Something in her, when he looked at
her, brought the tears almost to his eyes. One day he stood
behind her as she sang. Annie was playing a song on the
piano. As Miriam sang her mouth seemed hopeless. She sang
like a nun singing to heaven. It reminded him so much of the
mouth and eyes of one who sings beside a Botticelli Madonna,
so spiritual. Again, hot as steel, came up the pain in him.
Why must he ask her for the other thing? Why was there his
blood battling with her? If only he could have been always
gentle, tender with her, breathing with her the atmosphere
of reverie and religious dreams, he would give his right
hand. It was not fair to hurt her. There seemed an eternal
maidenhood about her; and when he thought of her mother, he
saw the great brown eyes of a maiden who was nearly scared
and shocked out of her virgin maidenhood, but not quite, in
spite of her seven children. They had been born almost
leaving her out of count, not of her, but upon her. So she
could never let them go, because she never had possessed
them.
Mrs. Morel saw him going again frequently to Miriam, and
was astonished. He said nothing to his mother. He did not
explain nor excuse himself. If he came home late, and she
reproached him, he frowned and turned on her in an
overbearing way:
"I shall come home when I like," he said; "I am old
enough."
"Must she keep you till this time?"
"It is I who stay," he answered.
"And she lets you? But very well," she said.
And she went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for him;
but she lay listening until he came, often long after. It
was a great bitterness to her that he had gone back to
Miriam. She recognised, however, the uselessness of any
further interference. He went to Willey Farm as a man now,
not as a youth. She had no right over him. There was a
coldness between him and her. He hardly told her anything.
Discarded, she waited on him, cooked for him still, and
loved to slave for him; but her face closed again like a
mask. There was nothing for her to do now but the housework;
for all the rest he had gone to Miriam. She could not
forgive him. Miriam killed the joy and the warmth in him. He
had been such a jolly lad, and full of the warmest
affection; now he grew colder, more and more irritable and
gloomy. It reminded her of William; but Paul was worse. He
did things with more intensity, and more realisation of what
he was about. His mother knew how he was suffering for want
of a woman, and she saw him going to Miriam. If he had made
up his mind, nothing on earth would alter him. Mrs. Morel
was tired. She began to give up at last; she had finished.
She was in the way.
He went on determinedly. He realised more or less what
his mother felt. It only hardened his soul. He made himself
callous towards her; but it was like being callous to his
own health. It undermined him quickly; yet he persisted.
He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one
evening. He had been talking to Miriam for some weeks, but
had not come to the point. Now he said suddenly:
"I am twenty-four, almost."
She had been brooding. She looked up at him suddenly in
surprise.
"Yes. What makes you say it?"
There was something in the charged atmosphere that she
dreaded.
"Sir Thomas More says one can marry at twenty-four."
She laughed quaintly, saying:
"Does it need Sir Thomas More's sanction?"
"No; but one ought to marry about then."
"Ay," she answered broodingly; and she waited.
"I can't marry you," he continued slowly, "not now,
because we've no money, and they depend on me at home."
She sat half-guessing what was coming.
"But I want to marry now—"
"You want to marry?" she repeated.
"A woman—you know what I mean."
She was silent.
"Now, at last, I must," he said.
"Ay," she answered.
"And you love me?"
She laughed bitterly.
"Why are you ashamed of it," he answered. "You wouldn't
be ashamed before your God, why are you before people?"
"Nay," she answered deeply, "I am not ashamed."
"You are," he replied bitterly; "and it's my fault. But
you know I can't help being—as I am—don't you?"
"I know you can't help it," she replied.
"I love you an awful lot—then there is something short."
"Where?" she answered, looking at him.
"Oh, in me! It is I who ought to be ashamed—like a
spiritual cripple. And I am ashamed. It is misery. Why is
it?"
"I don't know," replied Miriam.
"And I don't know," he repeated. "Don't you think we have
been too fierce in our what they call purity? Don't you
think that to be so much afraid and averse is a sort of
dirtiness?"
She looked at him with startled dark eyes.
"You recoiled away from anything of the sort, and I took
the motion from you, and recoiled also, perhaps worse."
There was silence in the room for some time.
"Yes," she said, "it is so."
"There is between us," he said, "all these years of
intimacy. I feel naked enough before you. Do you
understand?"
"I think so," she answered.
"And you love me?"
She laughed.
"Don't be bitter," he pleaded.
She looked at him and was sorry for him; his eyes were
dark with torture. She was sorry for him; it was worse for
him to have this deflated love than for herself, who could
never be properly mated. He was restless, for ever urging
forward and trying to find a way out. He might do as he
liked, and have what he liked of her.
"Nay," she said softly, "I am not bitter."
She felt she could bear anything for him; she would
suffer for him. She put her hand on his knee as he leaned
forward in his chair. He took it and kissed it; but it hurt
to do so. He felt he was putting himself aside. He sat there
sacrificed to her purity, which felt more like nullity. How
could he kiss her hand passionately, when it would drive her
away, and leave nothing but pain? Yet slowly he drew her to
him and kissed her.
They knew each other too well to pretend anything. As she
kissed him, she watched his eyes; they were staring across
the room, with a peculiar dark blaze in them that fascinated
her. He was perfectly still. She could feel his heart
throbbing heavily in his breast.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
The blaze in his eyes shuddered, became uncertain.
"I was thinking, all the while, I love you. I have been
obstinate."
She sank her head on his breast.
"Yes," she answered.
"That's all," he said, and his voice seemed sure, and his
mouth was kissing her throat.
Then she raised her head and looked into his eyes with
her full gaze of love. The blaze struggled, seemed to try to
get away from her, and then was quenched. He turned his head
quickly aside. It was a moment of anguish.
"Kiss me," she whispered.
He shut his eyes, and kissed her, and his arms folded her
closer and closer.
When she walked home with him over the fields, he said:
"I am glad I came back to you. I feel so simple with
you—as if there was nothing to hide. We will be happy?"
"Yes," she murmured, and the tears came to her eyes.
"Some sort of perversity in our souls," he said, "makes
us not want, get away from, the very thing we want. We have
to fight against that."
"Yes," she said, and she felt stunned.
As she stood under the drooping-thorn tree, in the
darkness by the roadside, he kissed her, and his fingers
wandered over her face. In the darkness, where he could not
see her but only feel her, his passion flooded him. He
clasped her very close.
"Sometime you will have me?" he murmured, hiding his face
on her shoulder. It was so difficult.
"Not now," she said.
His hopes and his heart sunk. A dreariness came over him.
"No," he said.
His clasp of her slackened.
"I love to feel your arm THERE!" she said, pressing his
arm against her back, where it went round her waist. "It
rests me so."
He tightened the pressure of his arm upon the small of
her back to rest her.
"We belong to each other," he said.
"Yes."
"Then why shouldn't we belong to each other altogether?"
"But—" she faltered.
"I know it's a lot to ask," he said; "but there's not
much risk for you really—not in the Gretchen way. You can
trust me there?"
"Oh, I can trust you." The answer came quick and strong.
"It's not that—it's not that at all—but—"
"What?"
She hid her face in his neck with a little cry of misery.
"I don't know!" she cried.
She seemed slightly hysterical, but with a sort of
horror. His heart died in him.
"You don't think it ugly?" he asked.
"No, not now. You have TAUGHT me it isn't."
"You are afraid?"
She calmed herself hastily.
"Yes, I am only afraid," she said.
He kissed her tenderly.
"Never mind," he said. "You should please yourself."
Suddenly she gripped his arms round her, and clenched her
body stiff.
"You SHALL have me," she said, through her shut teeth.
His heart beat up again like fire. He folded her close,
and his mouth was on her throat. She could not bear it. She
drew away. He disengaged her.
"Won't you be late?" she asked gently.
He sighed, scarcely hearing what she said. She waited,
wishing he would go. At last he kissed her quickly and
climbed the fence. Looking round he saw the pale blotch of
her face down in the darkness under the hanging tree. There
was no more of her but this pale blotch.
"Good-bye!" she called softly. She had no body, only a
voice and a dim face. He turned away and ran down the road,
his fists clenched; and when he came to the wall over the
lake he leaned there, almost stunned, looking up the black
water.
Miriam plunged home over the meadows. She was not afraid
of people, what they might say; but she dreaded the issue
with him. Yes, she would let him have her if he insisted;
and then, when she thought of it afterwards, her heart went
down. He would be disappointed, he would find no
satisfaction, and then he would go away. Yet he was so
insistent; and over this, which did not seem so
all-important to her, was their love to break down. After
all, he was only like other men, seeking his satisfaction.
Oh, but there was something more in him, something deeper!
She could trust to it, in spite of all desires. He said that
possession was a great moment in life. All strong emotions
concentrated there. Perhaps it was so. There was something
divine in it; then she would submit, religiously, to the
sacrifice. He should have her. And at the thought her whole
body clenched itself involuntarily, hard, as if against
something; but Life forced her through this gate of
suffering, too, and she would submit. At any rate, it would
give him what he wanted, which was her deepest wish. She
brooded and brooded and brooded herself towards accepting
him.
He courted her now like a lover. Often, when he grew hot,
she put his face from her, held it between her hands, and
looked in his eyes. He could not meet her gaze. Her dark
eyes, full of love, earnest and searching, made him turn
away. Not for an instant would she let him forget. Back
again he had to torture himself into a sense of his
responsibility and hers. Never any relaxing, never any
leaving himself to the great hunger and impersonality of
passion; he must be brought back to a deliberate, reflective
creature. As if from a swoon of passion she caged him back
to the littleness, the personal relationship. He could not
bear it. "Leave me alone—leave me alone!" he wanted to cry;
but she wanted him to look at her with eyes full of love.
His eyes, full of the dark, impersonal fire of desire, did
not belong to her.
There was a great crop of cherries at the farm. The trees
at the back of the house, very large and tall, hung thick
with scarlet and crimson drops, under the dark leaves. Paul
and Edgar were gathering the fruit one evening. It had been
a hot day, and now the clouds were rolling in the sky, dark
and warm. Paul combed high in the tree, above the scarlet
roofs of the buildings. The wind, moaning steadily, made the
whole tree rock with a subtle, thrilling motion that stirred
the blood. The young man, perched insecurely in the slender
branches, rocked till he felt slightly drunk, reached down
the boughs, where the scarlet beady cherries hung thick
underneath, and tore off handful after handful of the sleek,
cool-fleshed fruit. Cherries touched his ears and his neck
as he stretched forward, their chill finger-tips sending a
flash down his blood. All shades of red, from a golden
vermilion to a rich crimson, glowed and met his eyes under a
darkness of leaves.
The sun, going down, suddenly caught the broken clouds.
Immense piles of gold flared out in the south-east, heaped
in soft, glowing yellow right up the sky. The world, till
now dusk and grey, reflected the gold glow, astonished.
Everywhere the trees, and the grass, and the far-off water,
seemed roused from the twilight and shining.
Miriam came out wondering.
"Oh!" Paul heard her mellow voice call, "isn't it
wonderful?"
He looked down. There was a faint gold glimmer on her
face, that looked very soft, turned up to him.
"How high you are!" she said.
Beside her, on the rhubarb leaves, were four dead birds,
thieves that had been shot. Paul saw some cherry stones
hanging quite bleached, like skeletons, picked clear of
flesh. He looked down again to Miriam.
"Clouds are on fire," he said.
"Beautiful!" she cried.
She seemed so small, so soft, so tender, down there. He
threw a handful of cherries at her. She was startled and
frightened. He laughed with a low, chuckling sound, and
pelted her. She ran for shelter, picking up some cherries.
Two fine red pairs she hung over her ears; then she looked
up again.
"Haven't you got enough?" she asked.
"Nearly. It is like being on a ship up here."
"And how long will you stay?"
"While the sunset lasts."
She went to the fence and sat there, watching the gold
clouds fall to pieces, and go in immense, rose-coloured ruin
towards the darkness. Gold flamed to scarlet, like pain in
its intense brightness. Then the scarlet sank to rose, and
rose to crimson, and quickly the passion went out of the
sky. All the world was dark grey. Paul scrambled quickly
down with his basket, tearing his shirt-sleeve as he did so.
"They are lovely," said Miriam, fingering the cherries.
"I've torn my sleeve," he answered.
She took the three-cornered rip, saying:
"I shall have to mend it." It was near the shoulder. She
put her fingers through the tear. "How warm!" she said.
He laughed. There was a new, strange note in his voice,
one that made her pant.
"Shall we stay out?" he said.
"Won't it rain?" she asked.
"No, let us walk a little way."
They went down the fields and into the thick plantation
of trees and pines.
"Shall we go in among the trees?" he asked.
"Do you want to?"
"Yes."
It was very dark among the firs, and the sharp spines
pricked her face. She was afraid. Paul was silent and
strange.
"I like the darkness," he said. "I wish it were
thicker—good, thick darkness."
He seemed to be almost unaware of her as a person: she
was only to him then a woman. She was afraid.
He stood against a pine-tree trunk and took her in his
arms. She relinquished herself to him, but it was a
sacrifice in which she felt something of horror. This
thick-voiced, oblivious man was a stranger to her.
Later it began to rain. The pine-trees smelled very
strong. Paul lay with his head on the ground, on the dead
pine needles, listening to the sharp hiss of the rain—a
steady, keen noise. His heart was down, very heavy. Now he
realised that she had not been with him all the time, that
her soul had stood apart, in a sort of horror. He was
physically at rest, but no more. Very dreary at heart, very
sad, and very tender, his fingers wandered over her face
pitifully. Now again she loved him deeply. He was tender and
beautiful.
"The rain!" he said.
"Yes—is it coming on you?"
She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his
shoulders, to feel if the raindrops fell on him. She loved
him dearly. He, as he lay with his face on the dead
pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet. He did not mind if
the raindrops came on him: he would have lain and got wet
through: he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living
were smeared away into the beyond, near and quite lovable.
This strange, gentle reaching-out to death was new to him.
"We must go," said Miriam.
"Yes," he answered, but did not move.
To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow;
night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed
like BEING. To be alive, to be urgent and insistent—that was
NOT-TO-BE. The highest of all was to melt out into the
darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being.
"The rain is coming in on us," said Miriam.
He rose, and assisted her.
"It is a pity," he said.
"What?"
"To have to go. I feel so still."
"Still!" she repeated.
"Stiller than I have ever been in my life."
He was walking with his hand in hers. She pressed his
fingers, feeling a slight fear. Now he seemed beyond her;
she had a fear lest she should lose him.
"The fir-trees are like presences on the darkness: each
one only a presence."
She was afraid, and said nothing.
"A sort of hush: the whole night wondering and asleep: I
suppose that's what we do in death—sleep in wonder."
She had been afraid before of the brute in him: now of
the mystic. She trod beside him in silence. The rain fell
with a heavy "Hush!" on the trees. At last they gained the
cartshed.
"Let us stay here awhile," he said.
There was a sound of rain everywhere, smothering
everything.
"I feel so strange and still," he said; "along with
everything."
"Ay," she answered patiently.
He seemed again unaware of her, though he held her hand
close.
"To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which
is our effort—to live effortless, a kind of curious
sleep—that is very beautiful, I think; that is our
after-life—our immortality."
"Yes?"
"Yes—and very beautiful to have."
"You don't usually say that."
"No."
In a while they went indoors. Everybody looked at them
curiously. He still kept the quiet, heavy look in his eyes,
the stillness in his voice. Instinctively, they all left him
alone.
About this time Miriam's grandmother, who lived in a tiny
cottage in Woodlinton, fell ill, and the girl was sent to
keep house. It was a beautiful little place. The cottage had
a big garden in front, with red brick walls, against which
the plum trees were nailed. At the back another garden was
separated from the fields by a tall old hedge. It was very
pretty. Miriam had not much to do, so she found time for her
beloved reading, and for writing little introspective pieces
which interested her.
At the holiday-time her grandmother, being better, was
driven to Derby to stay with her daughter for a day or two.
She was a crotchety old lady, and might return the second
day or the third; so Miriam stayed alone in the cottage,
which also pleased her.
Paul used often to cycle over, and they had as a rule
peaceful and happy times. He did not embarrass her much; but
then on the Monday of the holiday he was to spend a whole
day with her.
It was perfect weather. He left his mother, telling her
where he was going. She would be alone all the day. It cast
a shadow over him; but he had three days that were all his
own, when he was going to do as he liked. It was sweet to
rush through the morning lanes on his bicycle.
He got to the cottage at about eleven o'clock. Miriam was
busy preparing dinner. She looked so perfectly in keeping
with the little kitchen, ruddy and busy. He kissed her and
sat down to watch. The room was small and cosy. The sofa was
covered all over with a sort of linen in squares of red and
pale blue, old, much washed, but pretty. There was a stuffed
owl in a case over a corner cupboard. The sunlight came
through the leaves of the scented geraniums in the window.
She was cooking a chicken in his honour. It was their
cottage for the day, and they were man and wife. He beat the
eggs for her and peeled the potatoes. He thought she gave a
feeling of home almost like his mother; and no one could
look more beautiful, with her tumbled curls, when she was
flushed from the fire.
The dinner was a great success. Like a young husband, he
carved. They talked all the time with unflagging zest. Then
he wiped the dishes she had washed, and they went out down
the fields. There was a bright little brook that ran into a
bog at the foot of a very steep bank. Here they wandered,
picking still a few marsh-marigolds and many big blue
forget-me-nots. Then she sat on the bank with her hands full
of flowers, mostly golden water-blobs. As she put her face
down into the marigolds, it was all overcast with a yellow
shine.
"Your face is bright," he said, "like a transfiguration."
She looked at him, questioning. He laughed pleadingly to
her, laying his hands on hers. Then he kissed her fingers,
then her face.
The world was all steeped in sunshine, and quite still,
yet not asleep, but quivering with a kind of expectancy.
"I have never seen anything more beautiful than this," he
said. He held her hand fast all the time.
"And the water singing to itself as it runs—do you love
it?" She looked at him full of love. His eyes were very
dark, very bright.
"Don't you think it's a great day?" he asked.
She murmured her assent. She WAS happy, and he saw it.
"And our day—just between us," he said.
They lingered a little while. Then they stood up upon the
sweet thyme, and he looked down at her simply.
"Will you come?" he asked.
They went back to the house, hand in hand, in silence.
The chickens came scampering down the path to her. He locked
the door, and they had the little house to themselves.
He never forgot seeing her as she lay on the bed, when he
was unfastening his collar. First he saw only her beauty,
and was blind with it. She had the most beautiful body he
had ever imagined. He stood unable to move or speak, looking
at her, his face half-smiling with wonder. And then he
wanted her, but as he went forward to her, her hands lifted
in a little pleading movement, and he looked at her face,
and stopped. Her big brown eyes were watching him, still and
resigned and loving; she lay as if she had given herself up
to sacrifice: there was her body for him; but the look at
the back of her eyes, like a creature awaiting immolation,
arrested him, and all his blood fell back.
"You are sure you want me?" he asked, as if a cold shadow
had come over him.
"Yes, quite sure."
She was very quiet, very calm. She only realised that she
was doing something for him. He could hardly bear it. She
lay to be sacrificed for him because she loved him so much.
And he had to sacrifice her. For a second, he wished he were
sexless or dead. Then he shut his eyes again to her, and his
blood beat back again.
And afterwards he loved her—loved her to the last fibre
of his being. He loved her. But he wanted, somehow, to cry.
There was something he could not bear for her sake. He
stayed with her till quite late at night. As he rode home he
felt that he was finally initiated. He was a youth no
longer. But why had he the dull pain in his soul? Why did
the thought of death, the after-life, seem so sweet and
consoling?
He spent the week with Miriam, and wore her out with his
passion before it was gone. He had always, almost wilfully,
to put her out of count, and act from the brute strength of
his own feelings. And he could not do it often, and there
remained afterwards always the sense of failure and of
death. If he were really with her, he had to put aside
himself and his desire. If he would have her, he had to put
her aside.
"When I come to you," he asked her, his eyes dark with
pain and shame, "you don't really want me, do you?"
"Ah, yes!" she replied quickly.
He looked at her.
"Nay," he said.
She began to tremble.
"You see," she said, taking his face and shutting it out
against her shoulder—"you see—as we are—how can I get used
to you? It would come all right if we were married."
He lifted her head, and looked at her.
"You mean, now, it is always too much shock?"
"Yes—and—"
"You are always clenched against me."
She was trembling with agitation.
"You see," she said, "I'm not used to the thought—"
"You are lately," he said.
"But all my life. Mother said to me: 'There is one thing
in marriage that is always dreadful, but you have to bear
it.' And I believed it."
"And still believe it," he said.
"No!" she cried hastily. "I believe, as you do, that
loving, even in THAT way, is the high-water mark of living."
"That doesn't alter the fact that you never want it."
"No," she said, taking his head in her arms and rocking
in despair. "Don't say so! You don't understand." She rocked
with pain. "Don't I want your children?"
"But not me."
"How can you say so? But we must be married to have
children—"
"Shall we be married, then? I want you to have my
children."
He kissed her hand reverently. She pondered sadly,
watching him.
"We are too young," she said at length.
"Twenty-four and twenty-three—"
"Not yet," she pleaded, as she rocked herself in
distress.
"When you will," he said.
She bowed her head gravely. The tone of hopelessness in
which he said these things grieved her deeply. It had always
been a failure between them. Tacitly, she acquiesced in what
he felt.
And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly
one Sunday night, just as they were going to bed:
"I shan't go so much to Miriam's, mother."
She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything.
"You please yourself," she said.
So he went to bed. But there was a new quietness about
him which she had wondered at. She almost guessed. She would
leave him alone, however. Precipitation might spoil things.
She watched him in his loneliness, wondering where he would
end. He was sick, and much too quiet for him. There was a
perpetual little knitting of his brows, such as she had seen
when he was a small baby, and which had been gone for many
years. Now it was the same again. And she could do nothing
for him. He had to go on alone, make his own way.
He continued faithful to Miriam. For one day he had loved
her utterly. But it never came again. The sense of failure
grew stronger. At first it was only a sadness. Then he began
to feel he could not go on. He wanted to run, to go abroad,
anything. Gradually he ceased to ask her to have him.
Instead of drawing them together, it put them apart. And
then he realised, consciously, that it was no good. It was
useless trying: it would never be a success between them.
For some months he had seen very little of Clara. They
had occasionally walked out for half an hour at dinner-time.
But he always reserved himself for Miriam. With Clara,
however, his brow cleared, and he was gay again. She treated
him indulgently, as if he were a child. He thought he did
not mind. But deep below the surface it piqued him.
Sometimes Miriam said:
"What about Clara? I hear nothing of her lately."
"I walked with her about twenty minutes yesterday," he
replied.
"And what did she talk about?"
"I don't know. I suppose I did all the jawing—I usually
do. I think I was telling her about the strike, and how the
women took it."
"Yes."
So he gave the account of himself.
But insidiously, without his knowing it, the warmth he
felt for Clara drew him away from Miriam, for whom he felt
responsible, and to whom he felt he belonged. He thought he
was being quite faithful to her. It was not easy to estimate
exactly the strength and warmth of one's feelings for a
woman till they have run away with one.
He began to give more time to his men friends. There was
Jessop, at the art school; Swain, who was chemistry
demonstrator at the university; Newton, who was a teacher;
besides Edgar and Miriam's younger brothers. Pleading work,
he sketched and studied with Jessop. He called in the
university for Swain, and the two went "down town" together.
Having come home in the train with Newton, he called and had
a game of billiards with him in the Moon and Stars. If he
gave to Miriam the excuse of his men friends, he felt quite
justified. His mother began to be relieved. He always told
her where he had been.
During the summer Clara wore sometimes a dress of soft
cotton stuff with loose sleeves. When she lifted her hands,
her sleeves fell back, and her beautiful strong arms shone
out.
"Half a minute," he cried. "Hold your arm still."
He made sketches of her hand and arm, and the drawings
contained some of the fascination the real thing had for
him. Miriam, who always went scrupulously through his books
and papers, saw the drawings.
"I think Clara has such beautiful arms," he said.
"Yes! When did you draw them?"
"On Tuesday, in the work-room. You know, I've got a
corner where I can work. Often I can do every single thing
they need in the department, before dinner. Then I work for
myself in the afternoon, and just see to things at night."
"Yes," she said, turning the leaves of his sketch-book.
Frequently he hated Miriam. He hated her as she bent
forward and pored over his things. He hated her way of
patiently casting him up, as if he were an endless
psychological account. When he was with her, he hated her
for having got him, and yet not got him, and he tortured
her. She took all and gave nothing, he said. At least, she
gave no living warmth. She was never alive, and giving off
life. Looking for her was like looking for something which
did not exist. She was only his conscience, not his mate. He
hated her violently, and was more cruel to her. They dragged
on till the next summer. He saw more and more of Clara.
At last he spoke. He had been sitting working at home one
evening. There was between him and his mother a peculiar
condition of people frankly finding fault with each other.
Mrs. Morel was strong on her feet again. He was not going to
stick to Miriam. Very well; then she would stand aloof till
he said something. It had been coming a long time, this
bursting of the storm in him, when he would come back to
her. This evening there was between them a peculiar
condition of suspense. He worked feverishly and
mechanically, so that he could escape from himself. It grew
late. Through the open door, stealthily, came the scent of
madonna lilies, almost as if it were prowling abroad.
Suddenly he got up and went out of doors.
The beauty of the night made him want to shout. A
half-moon, dusky gold, was sinking behind the black sycamore
at the end of the garden, making the sky dull purple with
its glow. Nearer, a dim white fence of lilies went across
the garden, and the air all round seemed to stir with scent,
as if it were alive. He went across the bed of pinks, whose
keen perfume came sharply across the rocking, heavy scent of
the lilies, and stood alongside the white barrier of
flowers. They flagged all loose, as if they were panting.
The scent made him drunk. He went down to the field to watch
the moon sink under.
A corncrake in the hay-close called insistently. The moon
slid quite quickly downwards, growing more flushed. Behind
him the great flowers leaned as if they were calling. And
then, like a shock, he caught another perfume, something raw
and coarse. Hunting round, he found the purple iris, touched
their fleshy throats and their dark, grasping hands. At any
rate, he had found something. They stood stiff in the
darkness. Their scent was brutal. The moon was melting down
upon the crest of the hill. It was gone; all was dark. The
corncrake called still.
Breaking off a pink, he suddenly went indoors.
"Come, my boy," said his mother. "I'm sure it's time you
went to bed."
He stood with the pink against his lips.
"I shall break off with Miriam, mother," he answered
calmly.
She looked up at him over her spectacles. He was staring
back at her, unswerving. She met his eyes for a moment, then
took off her glasses. He was white. The male was up in him,
dominant. She did not want to see him too clearly.
"But I thought—" she began.
"Well," he answered, "I don't love her. I don't want to
marry her—so I shall have done."
"But," exclaimed his mother, amazed, "I thought lately
you had made up your mind to have her, and so I said
nothing."
"I had—I wanted to—but now I don't want. It's no good. I
shall break off on Sunday. I ought to, oughtn't I?"
"You know best. You know I said so long ago."
"I can't help that now. I shall break off on Sunday."
"Well," said his mother, "I think it will be best. But
lately I decided you had made up your mind to have her, so I
said nothing, and should have said nothing. But I say as I
have always said, I DON'T think she is suited to you."
"On Sunday I break off," he said, smelling the pink. He
put the flower in his mouth. Unthinking, he bared his teeth,
closed them on the blossom slowly, and had a mouthful of
petals. These he spat into the fire, kissed his mother, and
went to bed.
On Sunday he went up to the farm in the early afternoon.
He had written Miriam that they would walk over the fields
to Hucknall. His mother was very tender with him. He said
nothing. But she saw the effort it was costing. The peculiar
set look on his face stilled her.
"Never mind, my son," she said. "You will be so much
better when it is all over."
Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and
resentment. He did not want sympathy.
Miriam met him at the lane-end. She was wearing a new
dress of figured muslin that had short sleeves. Those short
sleeves, and Miriam's brown-skinned arms beneath them—such
pitiful, resigned arms—gave him so much pain that they
helped to make him cruel. She had made herself look so
beautiful and fresh for him. She seemed to blossom for him
alone. Every time he looked at her—a mature young woman now,
and beautiful in her new dress—it hurt so much that his
heart seemed almost to be bursting with the restraint he put
on it. But he had decided, and it was irrevocable.
On the hills they sat down, and he lay with his head in
her lap, whilst she fingered his hair. She knew that "he was
not there," as she put it. Often, when she had him with her,
she looked for him, and could not find him. But this
afternoon she was not prepared.
It was nearly five o'clock when he told her. They were
sitting on the bank of a stream, where the lip of turf hung
over a hollow bank of yellow earth, and he was hacking away
with a stick, as he did when he was perturbed and cruel.
"I have been thinking," he said, "we ought to break off."
"Why?" she cried in surprise.
"Because it's no good going on."
"Why is it no good?"
"It isn't. I don't want to marry. I don't want ever to
marry. And if we're not going to marry, it's no good going
on."
"But why do you say this now?"
"Because I've made up my mind."
"And what about these last months, and the things you
told me then?"
"I can't help it! I don't want to go on."
"You don't want any more of me?"
"I want us to break off—you be free of me, I free of
you."
"And what about these last months?"
"I don't know. I've not told you anything but what I
thought was true."
"Then why are you different now?"
"I'm not—I'm the same—only I know it's no good going on."
"You haven't told me why it's no good."
"Because I don't want to go on—and I don't want to
marry."
"How many times have you offered to marry me, and I
wouldn't?"
"I know; but I want us to break off."
There was silence for a moment or two, while he dug
viciously at the earth. She bent her head, pondering. He was
an unreasonable child. He was like an infant which, when it
has drunk its fill, throws away and smashes the cup. She
looked at him, feeling she could get hold of him and WRING
some consistency out of him. But she was helpless. Then she
cried:
"I have said you were only fourteen—you are only FOUR!"
He still dug at the earth viciously. He heard.
"You are a child of four," she repeated in her anger.
He did not answer, but said in his heart: "All right; if
I'm a child of four, what do you want me for? I don't want
another mother." But he said nothing to her, and there was
silence.
"And have you told your people?" she asked.
"I have told my mother."
There was another long interval of silence.
"Then what do you WANT?" she asked.
"Why, I want us to separate. We have lived on each other
all these years; now let us stop. I will go my own way
without you, and you will go your way without me. You will
have an independent life of your own then."
There was in it some truth that, in spite of her
bitterness, she could not help registering. She knew she
felt in a sort of bondage to him, which she hated because
she could not control it. She hated her love for him from
the moment it grew too strong for her. And, deep down, she
had hated him because she loved him and he dominated her.
She had resisted his domination. She had fought to keep
herself free of him in the last issue. And she was free of
him, even more than he of her.
"And," he continued, "we shall always be more or less
each other's work. You have done a lot for me, I for you.
Now let us start and live by ourselves."
"What do you want to do?" she asked.
"Nothing—only to be free," he answered.
She, however, knew in her heart that Clara's influence
was over him to liberate him. But she said nothing.
"And what have I to tell my mother?" she asked.
"I told my mother," he answered, "that I was breaking
off—clean and altogether."
"I shall not tell them at home," she said.
Frowning, "You please yourself," he said.
He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was
leaving her in the lurch. It angered him.
"Tell them you wouldn't and won't marry me, and have
broken off," he said. "It's true enough."
She bit her finger moodily. She thought over their whole
affair. She had known it would come to this; she had seen it
all along. It chimed with her bitter expectation.
"Always—it has always been so!" she cried. "It has been
one long battle between us—you fighting away from me."
It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. The
man's heart stood still. Was this how she saw it?
"But we've had SOME perfect hours, SOME perfect times,
when we were together!" he pleaded.
"Never!" she cried; "never! It has always been you
fighting me off."
"Not always—not at first!" he pleaded.
"Always, from the very beginning—always the same!"
She had finished, but she had done enough. He sat aghast.
He had wanted to say: "It has been good, but it is at an
end." And she—she whose love he had believed in when he had
despised himself—denied that their love had ever been love.
"He had always fought away from her?" Then it had been
monstrous. There had never been anything really between
them; all the time he had been imagining something where
there was nothing. And she had known. She had known so much,
and had told him so little. She had known all the time. All
the time this was at the bottom of her!
He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair
appeared in a cynical aspect to him. She had really played
with him, not he with her. She had hidden all her
condemnation from him, had flattered him, and despised him.
She despised him now. He grew intellectual and cruel.
"You ought to marry a man who worships you," he said;
"then you could do as you liked with him. Plenty of men will
worship you, if you get on the private side of their
natures. You ought to marry one such. They would never fight
you off."
"Thank you!" she said. "But don't advise me to marry
someone else any more. You've done it before."
"Very well," he said; "I will say no more."
He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of
giving one. Their eight years of friendship and love, THE
eight years of his life, were nullified.
"When did you think of this?" she asked.
"I thought definitely on Thursday night."
"I knew it was coming," she said.
That pleased him bitterly. "Oh, very well! If she knew
then it doesn't come as a surprise to her," he thought.
"And have you said anything to Clara?" she asked.
"No; but I shall tell her now."
There was a silence.
"Do you remember the things you said this time last year,
in my grandmother's house—nay last month even?"
"Yes," he said; "I do! And I meant them! I can't help
that it's failed."
"It has failed because you want something else."
"It would have failed whether or not. YOU never believed
in me."
She laughed strangely.
He sat in silence. He was full of a feeling that she had
deceived him. She had despised him when he thought she
worshipped him. She had let him say wrong things, and had
not contradicted him. She had let him fight alone. But it
stuck in his throat that she had despised him whilst he
thought she worshipped him. She should have told him when
she found fault with him. She had not played fair. He hated
her. All these years she had treated him as if he were a
hero, and thought of him secretly as an infant, a foolish
child. Then why had she left the foolish child to his folly?
His heart was hard against her.
She sat full of bitterness. She had known—oh, well she
had known! All the time he was away from her she had summed
him up, seen his littleness, his meanness, and his folly.
Even she had guarded her soul against him. She was not
overthrown, not prostrated, not even much hurt. She had
known. Only why, as he sat there, had he still this strange
dominance over her? His very movements fascinated her as if
she were hypnotised by him. Yet he was despicable, false,
inconsistent, and mean. Why this bondage for her? Why was it
the movement of his arm stirred her as nothing else in the
world could? Why was she fastened to him? Why, even now, if
he looked at her and commanded her, would she have to obey?
She would obey him in his trifling commands. But once he was
obeyed, then she had him in her power, she knew, to lead him
where she would. She was sure of herself. Only, this new
influence! Ah, he was not a man! He was a baby that cries
for the newest toy. And all the attachment of his soul would
not keep him. Very well, he would have to go. But he would
come back when he had tired of his new sensation.
He hacked at the earth till she was fretted to death. She
rose. He sat flinging lumps of earth in the stream.
"We will go and have tea here?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered.
They chattered over irrelevant subjects during tea. He
held forth on the love of ornament—the cottage parlour moved
him thereto—and its connection with aesthetics. She was cold
and quiet. As they walked home, she asked:
"And we shall not see each other?"
"No—or rarely," he answered.
"Nor write?" she asked, almost sarcastically.
"As you will," he answered. "We're not strangers—never
should be, whatever happened. I will write to you now and
again. You please yourself."
"I see!" she answered cuttingly.
But he was at that stage at which nothing else hurts. He
had made a great cleavage in his life. He had had a great
shock when she had told him their love had been always a
conflict. Nothing more mattered. If it never had been much,
there was no need to make a fuss that it was ended.
He left her at the lane-end. As she went home, solitary,
in her new frock, having her people to face at the other
end, he stood still with shame and pain in the highroad,
thinking of the suffering he caused her.
In the reaction towards restoring his self-esteem, he
went into the Willow Tree for a drink. There were four girls
who had been out for the day, drinking a modest glass of
port. They had some chocolates on the table. Paul sat near
with his whisky. He noticed the girls whispering and
nudging. Presently one, a bonny dark hussy, leaned to him
and said:
"Have a chocolate?"
The others laughed loudly at her impudence.
"All right," said Paul. "Give me a hard one—nut. I don't
like creams."
"Here you are, then," said the girl; "here's an almond
for you."
She held the sweet between her fingers. He opened his
mouth. She popped it in, and blushed.
"You ARE nice!" he said.
"Well," she answered, "we thought you looked overcast,
and they dared me offer you a chocolate."
"I don't mind if I have another—another sort," he said.
And presently they were all laughing together.
It was nine o'clock when he got home, falling dark. He
entered the house in silence. His mother, who had been
waiting, rose anxiously.
"I told her," he said.
"I'm glad," replied the mother, with great relief.
He hung up his cap wearily.
"I said we'd have done altogether," he said.
"That's right, my son," said the mother. "It's hard for
her now, but best in the long run. I know. You weren't
suited for her."
He laughed shakily as he sat down.
"I've had such a lark with some girls in a pub," he said.
His mother looked at him. He had forgotten Miriam now. He
told her about the girls in the Willow Tree. Mrs. Morel
looked at him. It seemed unreal, his gaiety. At the back of
it was too much horror and misery.
"Now have some supper," she said very gently.
Afterwards he said wistfully:
"She never thought she'd have me, mother, not from the
first, and so she's not disappointed."
"I'm afraid," said his mother, "she doesn't give up hopes
of you yet."
"No," he said, "perhaps not."
"You'll find it's better to have done," she said.
"I don't know," he said desperately.
"Well, leave her alone," replied his mother. So he left
her, and she was alone. Very few people cared for her, and
she for very few people. She remained alone with herself,
waiting.
CHAPTER XII
PASSION
HE was gradually making it possible to earn a livelihood
by his art. Liberty's had taken several of his painted
designs on various stuffs, and he could sell designs for
embroideries, for altar-cloths, and similar things, in one
or two places. It was not very much he made at present, but
he might extend it. He had also made friends with the
designer for a pottery firm, and was gaining some knowledge
of his new acquaintance's art. The applied arts interested
him very much. At the same time he laboured slowly at his
pictures. He loved to paint large figures, full of light,
but not merely made up of lights and cast shadows, like the
impressionists; rather definite figures that had a certain
luminous quality, like some of Michael Angelo's people. And
these he fitted into a landscape, in what he thought true
proportion. He worked a great deal from memory, using
everybody he knew. He believed firmly in his work, that it
was good and valuable. In spite of fits of depression,
shrinking, everything, he believed in his work.
He was twenty-four when he said his first confident thing
to his mother.
"Mother," he said, "I s'll make a painter that they'll
attend to."
She sniffed in her quaint fashion. It was like a
half-pleased shrug of the shoulders.
"Very well, my boy, we'll see," she said.
"You shall see, my pigeon! You see if you're not swanky
one of these days!"
"I'm quite content, my boy," she smiled.
"But you'll have to alter. Look at you with Minnie!"
Minnie was the small servant, a girl of fourteen.
"And what about Minnie?" asked Mrs. Morel, with dignity.
"I heard her this morning: 'Eh, Mrs. Morel! I was going
to do that,' when you went out in the rain for some coal,"
he said. "That looks a lot like your being able to manage
servants!"
"Well, it was only the child's niceness," said Mrs.
Morel.
"And you apologising to her: 'You can't do two things at
once, can you?'"
"She WAS busy washing up," replied Mrs. Morel.
"And what did she say? 'It could easy have waited a bit.
Now look how your feet paddle!'"
"Yes—brazen young baggage!" said Mrs. Morel, smiling.
He looked at his mother, laughing. She was quite warm and
rosy again with love of him. It seemed as if all the
sunshine were on her for a moment. He continued his work
gladly. She seemed so well when she was happy that he forgot
her grey hair.
And that year she went with him to the Isle of Wight for
a holiday. It was too exciting for them both, and too
beautiful. Mrs. Morel was full of joy and wonder. But he
would have her walk with him more than she was able. She had
a bad fainting bout. So grey her face was, so blue her
mouth! It was agony to him. He felt as if someone were
pushing a knife in his chest. Then she was better again, and
he forgot. But the anxiety remained inside him, like a wound
that did not close.
After leaving Miriam he went almost straight to Clara. On
the Monday following the day of the rupture he went down to
the work-room. She looked up at him and smiled. They had
grown very intimate unawares. She saw a new brightness about
him.
"Well, Queen of Sheba!" he said, laughing.
"But why?" she asked.
"I think it suits you. You've got a new frock on."
She flushed, asking:
"And what of it?"
"Suits you—awfully! I could design you a dress."
"How would it be?"
He stood in front of her, his eyes glittering as he
expounded. He kept her eyes fixed with his. Then suddenly he
took hold of her. She half-started back. He drew the stuff
of her blouse tighter, smoothed it over her breast.
"More SO!" he explained.
But they were both of them flaming with blushes, and
immediately he ran away. He had touched her. His whole body
was quivering with the sensation.
There was already a sort of secret understanding between
them. The next evening he went to the cinematograph with her
for a few minutes before train-time. As they sat, he saw her
hand lying near him. For some moments he dared not touch it.
The pictures danced and dithered. Then he took her hand in
his. It was large and firm; it filled his grasp. He held it
fast. She neither moved nor made any sign. When they came
out his train was due. He hesitated.
"Good-night," she said. He darted away across the road.
The next day he came again, talking to her. She was
rather superior with him.
"Shall we go a walk on Monday?" he asked.
She turned her face aside.
"Shall you tell Miriam?" she replied sarcastically.
"I have broken off with her," he said.
"When?"
"Last Sunday."
"You quarrelled?"
"No! I had made up my mind. I told her quite definitely I
should consider myself free."
Clara did not answer, and he returned to his work. She
was so quiet and so superb!
On the Saturday evening he asked her to come and drink
coffee with him in a restaurant, meeting him after work was
over. She came, looking very reserved and very distant. He
had three-quarters of an hour to train-time.
"We will walk a little while," he said.
She agreed, and they went past the Castle into the Park.
He was afraid of her. She walked moodily at his side, with a
kind of resentful, reluctant, angry walk. He was afraid to
take her hand.
"Which way shall we go?" he asked as they walked in
darkness.
"I don't mind."
"Then we'll go up the steps."
He suddenly turned round. They had passed the Park steps.
She stood still in resentment at his suddenly abandoning
her. He looked for her. She stood aloof. He caught her
suddenly in his arms, held her strained for a moment, kissed
her. Then he let her go.
"Come along," he said, penitent.
She followed him. He took her hand and kissed her
finger-tips. They went in silence. When they came to the
light, he let go her hand. Neither spoke till they reached
the station. Then they looked each other in the eyes.
"Good-night," she said.
And he went for his train. His body acted mechanically.
People talked to him. He heard faint echoes answering them.
He was in a delirium. He felt that he would go mad if Monday
did not come at once. On Monday he would see her again. All
himself was pitched there, ahead. Sunday intervened. He
could not bear it. He could not see her till Monday. And
Sunday intervened—hour after hour of tension. He wanted to
beat his head against the door of the carriage. But he sat
still. He drank some whisky on the way home, but it only
made it worse. His mother must not be upset, that was all.
He dissembled, and got quickly to bed. There he sat,
dressed, with his chin on his knees, staring out of the
window at the far hill, with its few lights. He neither
thought nor slept, but sat perfectly still, staring. And
when at last he was so cold that he came to himself, he
found his watch had stopped at half-past two. It was after
three o'clock. He was exhausted, but still there was the
torment of knowing it was only Sunday morning. He went to
bed and slept. Then he cycled all day long, till he was
fagged out. And he scarcely knew where he had been. But the
day after was Monday. He slept till four o'clock. Then he
lay and thought. He was coming nearer to himself—he could
see himself, real, somewhere in front. She would go a walk
with him in the afternoon. Afternoon! It seemed years ahead.
Slowly the hours crawled. His father got up; he heard him
pottering about. Then the miner set off to the pit, his
heavy boots scraping the yard. Cocks were still crowing. A
cart went down the road. His mother got up. She knocked the
fire. Presently she called him softly. He answered as if he
were asleep. This shell of himself did well.
He was walking to the station—another mile! The train was
near Nottingham. Would it stop before the tunnels? But it
did not matter; it would get there before dinner-time. He
was at Jordan's. She would come in half an hour. At any
rate, she would be near. He had done the letters. She would
be there. Perhaps she had not come. He ran downstairs. Ah!
he saw her through the glass door. Her shoulders stooping a
little to her work made him feel he could not go forward; he
could not stand. He went in. He was pale, nervous, awkward,
and quite cold. Would she misunderstand him? He could not
write his real self with this shell.
"And this afternoon," he struggled to say. "You will
come?"
"I think so," she replied, murmuring.
He stood before her, unable to say a word. She hid her
face from him. Again came over him the feeling that he would
lose consciousness. He set his teeth and went upstairs. He
had done everything correctly yet, and he would do so. All
the morning things seemed a long way off, as they do to a
man under chloroform. He himself seemed under a tight band
of constraint. Then there was his other self, in the
distance, doing things, entering stuff in a ledger, and he
watched that far-off him carefully to see he made no
mistake.
But the ache and strain of it could not go on much
longer. He worked incessantly. Still it was only twelve
o'clock. As if he had nailed his clothing against the desk,
he stood there and worked, forcing every stroke out of
himself. It was a quarter to one; he could clear away. Then
he ran downstairs.
"You will meet me at the Fountain at two o'clock," he
said.
"I can't be there till half-past."
"Yes!" he said.
She saw his dark, mad eyes.
"I will try at a quarter past."
And he had to be content. He went and got some dinner.
All the time he was still under chloroform, and every minute
was stretched out indefinitely. He walked miles of streets.
Then he thought he would be late at the meeting-place. He
was at the Fountain at five past two. The torture of the
next quarter of an hour was refined beyond expression. It
was the anguish of combining the living self with the shell.
Then he saw her. She came! And he was there.
"You are late," he said.
"Only five minutes," she answered.
"I'd never have done it to you," he laughed.
She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her
beautiful figure.
"You want some flowers," he said, going to the nearest
florist's.
She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch of
scarlet, brick-red carnations. She put them in her coat,
flushing.
"That's a fine colour!" he said.
"I'd rather have had something softer," she said.
He laughed.
"Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the
street?" he said.
She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He
looked sideways at her as they walked. There was a wonderful
close down on her face near the ear that he wanted to touch.
And a certain heaviness, the heaviness of a very full ear of
corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there was about
her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning down the
street, everything going round.
As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder
against him, and he took her hand. He felt himself coming
round from the anaesthetic, beginning to breathe. Her ear,
half-hidden among her blonde hair, was near to him. The
temptation to kiss it was almost too great. But there were
other people on top of the car. It still remained to him to
kiss it. After all, he was not himself, he was some
attribute of hers, like the sunshine that fell on her.
He looked quickly away. It had been raining. The big
bluff of the Castle rock was streaked with rain, as it
reared above the flat of the town. They crossed the wide,
black space of the Midland Railway, and passed the cattle
enclosure that stood out white. Then they ran down sordid
Wilford Road.
She rocked slightly to the tram's motion, and as she
leaned against him, rocked upon him. He was a vigorous,
slender man, with exhaustless energy. His face was rough,
with rough-hewn features, like the common people's; but his
eyes under the deep brows were so full of life that they
fascinated her. They seemed to dance, and yet they were
still trembling on the finest balance of laughter. His mouth
the same was just going to spring into a laugh of triumph,
yet did not. There was a sharp suspense about him. She bit
her lip moodily. His hand was hard clenched over hers.
They paid their two halfpennies at the turnstile and
crossed the bridge. The Trent was very full. It swept silent
and insidious under the bridge, travelling in a soft body.
There had been a great deal of rain. On the river levels
were flat gleams of flood water. The sky was grey, with
glisten of silver here and there. In Wilford churchyard the
dahlias were sodden with rain—wet black-crimson balls. No
one was on the path that went along the green river meadow,
along the elm-tree colonnade.
There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water
and the green meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were
spangled with gold. The river slid by in a body, utterly
silent and swift, intertwining among itself like some
subtle, complex creature. Clara walked moodily beside him.
"Why," she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone,
"did you leave Miriam?"
He frowned.
"Because I WANTED to leave her," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I didn't want to go on with her. And I didn't
want to marry."
She was silent for a moment. They picked their way down
the muddy path. Drops of water fell from the elm-trees.
"You didn't want to marry Miriam, or you didn't want to
marry at all?" she asked.
"Both," he answered—"both!"
They had to manoeuvre to get to the stile, because of the
pools of water.
"And what did she say?" Clara asked.
"Miriam? She said I was a baby of four, and that I always
HAD battled her off."
Clara pondered over this for a time.
"But you have really been going with her for some time?"
she asked.
"Yes."
"And now you don't want any more of her?"
"No. I know it's no good."
She pondered again.
"Don't you think you've treated her rather badly?" she
asked.
"Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back. But it would
have been no good going on. Two wrongs don't make a right."
"How old ARE you?" Clara asked.
"Twenty-five."
"And I am thirty," she said.
"I know you are."
"I shall be thirty-one—or AM I thirty-one?"
"I neither know nor care. What does it matter!"
They were at the entrance to the Grove. The wet, red
track, already sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep
bank between the grass. On either side stood the elm-trees
like pillars along a great aisle, arching over and making
high up a roof from which the dead leaves fell. All was
empty and silent and wet. She stood on top of the stile, and
he held both her hands. Laughing, she looked down into his
eyes. Then she leaped. Her breast came against his; he held
her, and covered her face with kisses.
They went on up the slippery, steep red path. Presently
she released his hand and put it round her waist.
"You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly,"
she said.
They walked along. His finger-tips felt the rocking of
her breast. All was silent and deserted. On the left the red
wet plough-land showed through the doorways between the
elm-boles and their branches. On the right, looking down,
they could see the tree-tops of elms growing far beneath
them, hear occasionally the gurgle of the river. Sometimes
there below they caught glimpses of the full, soft-sliding
Trent, and of water-meadows dotted with small cattle.
"It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to
come," he said.
But he was watching her throat below the ear, where the
flush was fusing into the honey-white, and her mouth that
pouted disconsolate. She stirred against him as she walked,
and his body was like a taut string.
Halfway up the big colonnade of elms, where the Grove
rose highest above the river, their forward movement
faltered to an end. He led her across to the grass, under
the trees at the edge of the path. The cliff of red earth
sloped swiftly down, through trees and bushes, to the river
that glimmered and was dark between the foliage. The
far-below water-meadows were very green. He and she stood
leaning against one another, silent, afraid, their bodies
touching all along. There came a quick gurgle from the river
below.
"Why," he asked at length, "did you hate Baxter Dawes?"
She turned to him with a splendid movement. Her mouth was
offered him, and her throat; her eyes were half-shut; her
breast was tilted as if it asked for him. He flashed with a
small laugh, shut his eyes, and met her in a long, whole
kiss. Her mouth fused with his; their bodies were sealed and
annealed. It was some minutes before they withdrew. They
were standing beside the public path.
"Will you go down to the river?" he asked.
She looked at him, leaving herself in his hands. He went
over the brim of the declivity and began to climb down.
"It is slippery," he said.
"Never mind," she replied.
The red clay went down almost sheer. He slid, went from
one tuft of grass to the next, hanging on to the bushes,
making for a little platform at the foot of a tree. There he
waited for her, laughing with excitement. Her shoes were
clogged with red earth. It was hard for her. He frowned. At
last he caught her hand, and she stood beside him. The cliff
rose above them and fell away below. Her colour was up, her
eyes flashed. He looked at the big drop below them.
"It's risky," he said; "or messy, at any rate. Shall we
go back?"
"Not for my sake," she said quickly.
"All right. You see, I can't help you; I should only
hinder. Give me that little parcel and your gloves. Your
poor shoes!"
They stood perched on the face of the declivity, under
the trees.
"Well, I'll go again," he said.
Away he went, slipping, staggering, sliding to the next
tree, into which he fell with a slam that nearly shook the
breath out of him. She came after cautiously, hanging on to
the twigs and grasses. So they descended, stage by stage, to
the river's brink. There, to his disgust, the flood had
eaten away the path, and the red decline ran straight into
the water. He dug in his heels and brought himself up
violently. The string of the parcel broke with a snap; the
brown parcel bounded down, leaped into the water, and sailed
smoothly away. He hung on to his tree.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he cried crossly. Then he
laughed. She was coming perilously down.
"Mind!" he warned her. He stood with his back to the
tree, waiting. "Come now," he called, opening his arms.
She let herself run. He caught her, and together they
stood watching the dark water scoop at the raw edge of the
bank. The parcel had sailed out of sight.
"It doesn't matter," she said.
He held her close and kissed her. There was only room for
their four feet.
"It's a swindle!" he said. "But there's a rut where a man
has been, so if we go on I guess we shall find the path
again."
The river slid and twined its great volume. On the other
bank cattle were feeding on the desolate flats. The cliff
rose high above Paul and Clara on their right hand. They
stood against the tree in the watery silence.
"Let us try going forward," he said; and they struggled
in the red clay along the groove a man's nailed boots had
made. They were hot and flushed. Their barkled shoes hung
heavy on their steps. At last they found the broken path. It
was littered with rubble from the water, but at any rate it
was easier. They cleaned their boots with twigs. His heart
was beating thick and fast.
Suddenly, coming on to the little level, he saw two
figures of men standing silent at the water's edge. His
heart leaped. They were fishing. He turned and put his hand
up warningly to Clara. She hesitated, buttoned her coat. The
two went on together.
The fishermen turned curiously to watch the two intruders
on their privacy and solitude. They had had a fire, but it
was nearly out. All kept perfectly still. The men turned
again to their fishing, stood over the grey glinting river
like statues. Clara went with bowed head, flushing; he was
laughing to himself. Directly they passed out of sight
behind the willows.
"Now they ought to be drowned," said Paul softly.
Clara did not answer. They toiled forward along a tiny
path on the river's lip. Suddenly it vanished. The bank was
sheer red solid clay in front of them, sloping straight into
the river. He stood and cursed beneath his breath, setting
his teeth.
"It's impossible!" said Clara.
He stood erect, looking round. Just ahead were two islets
in the stream, covered with osiers. But they were
unattainable. The cliff came down like a sloping wall from
far above their heads. Behind, not far back, were the
fishermen. Across the river the distant cattle fed silently
in the desolate afternoon. He cursed again deeply under his
breath. He gazed up the great steep bank. Was there no hope
but to scale back to the public path?
"Stop a minute," he said, and, digging his heels sideways
into the steep bank of red clay, he began nimbly to mount.
He looked across at every tree-foot. At last he found what
he wanted. Two beech-trees side by side on the hill held a
little level on the upper face between their roots. It was
littered with damp leaves, but it would do. The fishermen
were perhaps sufficiently out of sight. He threw down his
rainproof and waved to her to come.
She toiled to his side. Arriving there, she looked at him
heavily, dumbly, and laid her head on his shoulder. He held
her fast as he looked round. They were safe enough from all
but the small, lonely cows over the river. He sunk his mouth
on her throat, where he felt her heavy pulse beat under his
lips. Everything was perfectly still. There was nothing in
the afternoon but themselves.
When she arose, he, looking on the ground all the time,
saw suddenly sprinkled on the black wet beech-roots many
scarlet carnation petals, like splashed drops of blood; and
red, small splashes fell from her bosom, streaming down her
dress to her feet.
"Your flowers are smashed," he said.
She looked at him heavily as she put back her hair.
Suddenly he put his finger-tips on her cheek.
"Why dost look so heavy?" he reproached her.
She smiled sadly, as if she felt alone in herself. He
caressed her cheek with his fingers, and kissed her.
"Nay!" he said. "Never thee bother!"
She gripped his fingers tight, and laughed shakily. Then
she dropped her hand. He put the hair back from her brows,
stroking her temples, kissing them lightly.
"But tha shouldna worrit!" he said softly, pleading.
"No, I don't worry!" she laughed tenderly and resigned.
"Yea, tha does! Dunna thee worrit," he implored,
caressing.
"No!" she consoled him, kissing him.
They had a stiff climb to get to the top again. It took
them a quarter of an hour. When he got on to the level
grass, he threw off his cap, wiped the sweat from his
forehead, and sighed.
"Now we're back at the ordinary level," he said.
She sat down, panting, on the tussocky grass. Her cheeks
were flushed pink. He kissed her, and she gave way to joy.
"And now I'll clean thy boots and make thee fit for
respectable folk," he said.
He kneeled at her feet, worked away with a stick and
tufts of grass. She put her fingers in his hair, drew his
head to her, and kissed it.
"What am I supposed to be doing," he said, looking at her
laughing; "cleaning shoes or dibbling with love? Answer me
that!"
"Just whichever I please," she replied.
"I'm your boot-boy for the time being, and nothing else!"
But they remained looking into each other's eyes and
laughing. Then they kissed with little nibbling kisses.
"T-t-t-t!" he went with his tongue, like his mother. "I
tell you, nothing gets done when there's a woman about."
And he returned to his boot-cleaning, singing softly. She
touched his thick hair, and he kissed her fingers. He worked
away at her shoes. At last they were quite presentable.
"There you are, you see!" he said. "Aren't I a great hand
at restoring you to respectability? Stand up! There, you
look as irreproachable as Britannia herself!"
He cleaned his own boots a little, washed his hands in a
puddle, and sang. They went on into Clifton village. He was
madly in love with her; every movement she made, every
crease in her garments, sent a hot flash through him and
seemed adorable.
The old lady at whose house they had tea was roused into
gaiety by them.
"I could wish you'd had something of a better day," she
said, hovering round.
"Nay!" he laughed. "We've been saying how nice it is."
The old lady looked at him curiously. There was a
peculiar glow and charm about him. His eyes were dark and
laughing. He rubbed his moustache with a glad movement.
"Have you been saying SO!" she exclaimed, a light rousing
in her old eyes.
"Truly!" he laughed.
"Then I'm sure the day's good enough," said the old lady.
She fussed about, and did not want to leave them.
"I don't know whether you'd like some radishes as well,"
she said to Clara; "but I've got some in the garden—AND a
cucumber."
Clara flushed. She looked very handsome.
"I should like some radishes," she answered.
And the old lady pottered off gleefully.
"If she knew!" said Clara quietly to him.
"Well, she doesn't know; and it shows we're nice in
ourselves, at any rate. You look quite enough to satisfy an
archangel, and I'm sure I feel harmless—so—if it makes you
look nice, and makes folk happy when they have us, and makes
us happy—why, we're not cheating them out of much!"
They went on with the meal. When they were going away,
the old lady came timidly with three tiny dahlias in full
blow, neat as bees, and speckled scarlet and white. She
stood before Clara, pleased with herself, saying:
"I don't know whether—" and holding the flowers forward
in her old hand.
"Oh, how pretty!" cried Clara, accepting the flowers.
"Shall she have them all?" asked Paul reproachfully of
the old woman.
"Yes, she shall have them all," she replied, beaming with
joy. "You have got enough for your share."
"Ah, but I shall ask her to give me one!" he teased.
"Then she does as she pleases," said the old lady,
smiling. And she bobbed a little curtsey of delight.
Clara was rather quiet and uncomfortable. As they walked
along, he said:
"You don't feel criminal, do you?"
She looked at him with startled grey eyes.
"Criminal!" she said. "No."
"But you seem to feel you have done a wrong?"
"No," she said. "I only think, 'If they knew!'"
"If they knew, they'd cease to understand. As it is, they
do understand, and they like it. What do they matter? Here,
with only the trees and me, you don't feel not the least bit
wrong, do you?"
He took her by the arm, held her facing him, holding her
eyes with his. Something fretted him.
"Not sinners, are we?" he said, with an uneasy little
frown.
"No," she replied.
He kissed her, laughing.
"You like your little bit of guiltiness, I believe," he
said. "I believe Eve enjoyed it, when she went cowering out
of Paradise."
But there was a certain glow and quietness about her that
made him glad. When he was alone in the railway-carriage, he
found himself tumultuously happy, and the people exceedingly
nice, and the night lovely, and everything good.
Mrs. Morel was sitting reading when he got home. Her
health was not good now, and there had come that ivory
pallor into her face which he never noticed, and which
afterwards he never forgot. She did not mention her own
ill-health to him. After all, she thought, it was not much.
"You are late!" she said, looking at him.
His eyes were shining; his face seemed to glow. He smiled
to her.
"Yes; I've been down Clifton Grove with Clara."
His mother looked at him again.
"But won't people talk?" she said.
"Why? They know she's a suffragette, and so on. And what
if they do talk!"
"Of course, there may be nothing wrong in it," said his
mother. "But you know what folks are, and if once she gets
talked about—"
"Well, I can't help it. Their jaw isn't so almighty
important, after all."
"I think you ought to consider HER."
"So I DO! What can people say?—that we take a walk
together. I believe you're jealous."
"You know I should be GLAD if she weren't a married
woman."
"Well, my dear, she lives separate from her husband, and
talks on platforms; so she's already singled out from the
sheep, and, as far as I can see, hasn't much to lose. No;
her life's nothing to her, so what's the worth of nothing?
She goes with me—it becomes something. Then she must pay—we
both must pay! Folk are so frightened of paying; they'd
rather starve and die."
"Very well, my son. We'll see how it will end."
"Very well, my mother. I'll abide by the end."
"We'll see!"
"And she's—she's AWFULLY nice, mother; she is really! You
don't know!"
"That's not the same as marrying her."
"It's perhaps better."
There was silence for a while. He wanted to ask his
mother something, but was afraid.
"Should you like to know her?" He hesitated.
"Yes," said Mrs. Morel coolly. "I should like to know
what she's like."
"But she's nice, mother, she is! And not a bit common!"
"I never suggested she was."
"But you seem to think she's—not as good as—She's better
than ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She's
BETTER, she is! She's fair, she's honest, she's straight!
There isn't anything underhand or superior about her. Don't
be mean about her!"
Mrs. Morel flushed.
"I am sure I am not mean about her. She may be quite as
you say, but—"
"You don't approve," he finished.
"And do you expect me to?" she answered coldly.
"Yes!—yes!—if you'd anything about you, you'd be glad! Do
you WANT to see her?"
"I said I did."
"Then I'll bring her—shall I bring her here?"
"You please yourself."
"Then I WILL bring her here—one Sunday—to tea. If you
think a horrid thing about her, I shan't forgive you."
His mother laughed.
"As if it would make any difference!" she said. He knew
he had won.
"Oh, but it feels so fine, when she's there! She's such a
queen in her way."
Occasionally he still walked a little way from chapel
with Miriam and Edgar. He did not go up to the farm. She,
however, was very much the same with him, and he did not
feel embarrassed in her presence. One evening she was alone
when he accompanied her. They began by talking books: it was
their unfailing topic. Mrs. Morel had said that his and
Miriam's affair was like a fire fed on books—if there were
no more volumes it would die out. Miriam, for her part,
boasted that she could read him like a book, could place her
finger any minute on the chapter and the line. He, easily
taken in, believed that Miriam knew more about him than
anyone else. So it pleased him to talk to her about himself,
like the simplest egoist. Very soon the conversation drifted
to his own doings. It flattered him immensely that he was of
such supreme interest.
"And what have you been doing lately?"
"I—oh, not much! I made a sketch of Bestwood from the
garden, that is nearly right at last. It's the hundredth
try."
So they went on. Then she said:
"You've not been out, then, lately?"
"Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with
Clara."
"It was not very nice weather," said Miriam, "was it?"
"But I wanted to go out, and it was all right. The Trent
IS full."
"And did you go to Barton?" she asked.
"No; we had tea in Clifton."
"DID you! That would be nice."
"It was! The jolliest old woman! She gave us several
pompom dahlias, as pretty as you like."
Miriam bowed her head and brooded. He was quite
unconscious of concealing anything from her.
"What made her give them you?" she asked.
He laughed.
"Because she liked us—because we were jolly, I should
think."
Miriam put her finger in her mouth.
"Were you late home?" she asked.
At last he resented her tone.
"I caught the seven-thirty."
"Ha!"
They walked on in silence, and he was angry.
"And how IS Clara?" asked Miriam.
"Quite all right, I think."
"That's good!" she said, with a tinge of irony. "By the
way, what of her husband? One never hears anything of him."
"He's got some other woman, and is also quite all right,"
he replied. "At least, so I think."
"I see—you don't know for certain. Don't you think a
position like that is hard on a woman?"
"Rottenly hard!"
"It's so unjust!" said Miriam. "The man does as he
likes—"
"Then let the woman also," he said.
"How can she? And if she does, look at her position!"
"What of it?"
"Why, it's impossible! You don't understand what a woman
forfeits—"
"No, I don't. But if a woman's got nothing but her fair
fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die
of it!"
So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she
knew he would act accordingly.
She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know
enough.
Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned
to marriage, then to Clara's marriage with Dawes.
"You see," he said, "she never knew the fearful
importance of marriage. She thought it was all in the day's
march—it would have to come—and Dawes—well, a good many
women would have given their souls to get him; so why not
him? Then she developed into the femme incomprise, and
treated him badly, I'll bet my boots."
"And she left him because he didn't understand her?"
"I suppose so. I suppose she had to. It isn't altogether
a question of understanding; it's a question of living. With
him, she was only half-alive; the rest was dormant,
deadened. And the dormant woman was the femme incomprise,
and she HAD to be awakened."
"And what about him."
"I don't know. I rather think he loves her as much as he
can, but he's a fool."
"It was something like your mother and father," said
Miriam.
"Yes; but my mother, I believe, got real joy and
satisfaction out of my father at first. I believe she had a
passion for him; that's why she stayed with him. After all,
they were bound to each other."
"Yes," said Miriam.
"That's what one MUST HAVE, I think," he continued—"the
real, real flame of feeling through another person—once,
only once, if it only lasts three months. See, my mother
looks as if she'd HAD everything that was necessary for her
living and developing. There's not a tiny bit of feeling of
sterility about her."
"No," said Miriam.
"And with my father, at first, I'm sure she had the real
thing. She knows; she has been there. You can feel it about
her, and about him, and about hundreds of people you meet
every day; and, once it has happened to you, you can go on
with anything and ripen."
"What happened, exactly?" asked Miriam.
"It's so hard to say, but the something big and intense
that changes you when you really come together with somebody
else. It almost seems to fertilise your soul and make it
that you can go on and mature."
"And you think your mother had it with your father?"
"Yes; and at the bottom she feels grateful to him for
giving it her, even now, though they are miles apart."
"And you think Clara never had it?"
"I'm sure."
Miriam pondered this. She saw what he was seeking—a sort
of baptism of fire in passion, it seemed to her. She
realised that he would never be satisfied till he had it.
Perhaps it was essential to him, as to some men, to sow wild
oats; and afterwards, when he was satisfied, he would not
rage with restlessness any more, but could settle down and
give her his life into her hands. Well, then, if he must go,
let him go and have his fill—something big and intense, he
called it. At any rate, when he had got it, he would not
want it—that he said himself; he would want the other thing
that she could give him. He would want to be owned, so that
he could work. It seemed to her a bitter thing that he must
go, but she could let him go into an inn for a glass of
whisky, so she could let him go to Clara, so long as it was
something that would satisfy a need in him, and leave him
free for herself to possess.
"Have you told your mother about Clara?" she asked.
She knew this would be a test of the seriousness of his
feeling for the other woman: she knew he was going to Clara
for something vital, not as a man goes for pleasure to a
prostitute, if he told his mother.
"Yes," he said, "and she is coming to tea on Sunday."
"To your house?"
"Yes; I want mater to see her."
"Ah!"
There was a silence. Things had gone quicker than she
thought. She felt a sudden bitterness that he could leave
her so soon and so entirely. And was Clara to be accepted by
his people, who had been so hostile to herself?
"I may call in as I go to chapel," she said. "It is a
long time since I saw Clara."
"Very well," he said, astonished, and unconsciously
angry.
On the Sunday afternoon he went to Keston to meet Clara
at the station. As he stood on the platform he was trying to
examine in himself if he had a premonition.
"Do I FEEL as if she'd come?" he said to himself, and he
tried to find out. His heart felt queer and contracted. That
seemed like foreboding. Then he HAD a foreboding she would
not come! Then she would not come, and instead of taking her
over the fields home, as he had imagined, he would have to
go alone. The train was late; the afternoon would be wasted,
and the evening. He hated her for not coming. Why had she
promised, then, if she could not keep her promise? Perhaps
she had missed her train—he himself was always missing
trains—but that was no reason why she should miss this
particular one. He was angry with her; he was furious.
Suddenly he saw the train crawling, sneaking round the
corner. Here, then, was the train, but of course she had not
come. The green engine hissed along the platform, the row of
brown carriages drew up, several doors opened. No; she had
not come! No! Yes; ah, there she was! She had a big black
hat on! He was at her side in a moment.
"I thought you weren't coming," he said.
She was laughing rather breathlessly as she put out her
hand to him; their eyes met. He took her quickly along the
platform, talking at a great rate to hide his feeling. She
looked beautiful. In her hat were large silk roses, coloured
like tarnished gold. Her costume of dark cloth fitted so
beautifully over her breast and shoulders. His pride went up
as he walked with her. He felt the station people, who knew
him, eyed her with awe and admiration.
"I was sure you weren't coming," he laughed shakily.
She laughed in answer, almost with a little cry.
"And I wondered, when I was in the train, WHATEVER I
should do if you weren't there!" she said.
He caught her hand impulsively, and they went along the
narrow twitchel. They took the road into Nuttall and over
the Reckoning House Farm. It was a blue, mild day.
Everywhere the brown leaves lay scattered; many scarlet hips
stood upon the hedge beside the wood. He gathered a few for
her to wear.
"Though, really," he said, as he fitted them into the
breast of her coat, "you ought to object to my getting them,
because of the birds. But they don't care much for rose-hips
in this part, where they can get plenty of stuff. You often
find the berries going rotten in the springtime."
So he chattered, scarcely aware of what he said, only
knowing he was putting berries in the bosom of her coat,
while she stood patiently for him. And she watched his quick
hands, so full of life, and it seemed to her she had never
SEEN anything before. Till now, everything had been
indistinct.
They came near to the colliery. It stood quite still and
black among the corn-fields, its immense heap of slag seen
rising almost from the oats.
"What a pity there is a coal-pit here where it is so
pretty!" said Clara.
"Do you think so?" he answered. "You see, I am so used to
it I should miss it. No; and I like the pits here and there.
I like the rows of trucks, and the headstocks, and the steam
in the daytime, and the lights at night. When I was a boy, I
always thought a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire
by night was a pit, with its steam, and its lights, and the
burning bank,—and I thought the Lord was always at the
pit-top."
As they drew near home she walked in silence, and seemed
to hang back. He pressed her fingers in his own. She
flushed, but gave no response.
"Don't you want to come home?" he asked.
"Yes, I want to come," she replied.
It did not occur to him that her position in his home
would be rather a peculiar and difficult one. To him it
seemed just as if one of his men friends were going to be
introduced to his mother, only nicer.
The Morels lived in a house in an ugly street that ran
down a steep hill. The street itself was hideous. The house
was rather superior to most. It was old, grimy, with a big
bay window, and it was semi-detached; but it looked gloomy.
Then Paul opened the door to the garden, and all was
different. The sunny afternoon was there, like another land.
By the path grew tansy and little trees. In front of the
window was a plot of sunny grass, with old lilacs round it.
And away went the garden, with heaps of dishevelled
chrysanthemums in the sunshine, down to the sycamore-tree,
and the field, and beyond one looked over a few red-roofed
cottages to the hills with all the glow of the autumn
afternoon.
Mrs. Morel sat in her rocking-chair, wearing her black
silk blouse. Her grey-brown hair was taken smooth back from
her brow and her high temples; her face was rather pale.
Clara, suffering, followed Paul into the kitchen. Mrs. Morel
rose. Clara thought her a lady, even rather stiff. The young
woman was very nervous. She had almost a wistful look,
almost resigned.
"Mother—Clara," said Paul.
Mrs. Morel held out her hand and smiled.
"He has told me a good deal about you," she said.
The blood flamed in Clara's cheek.
"I hope you don't mind my coming," she faltered.
"I was pleased when he said he would bring you," replied
Mrs. Morel.
Paul, watching, felt his heart contract with pain. His
mother looked so small, and sallow, and done-for beside the
luxuriant Clara.
"It's such a pretty day, mother!" he said. "And we saw a
jay."
His mother looked at him; he had turned to her. She
thought what a man he seemed, in his dark, well-made
clothes. He was pale and detached-looking; it would be hard
for any woman to keep him. Her heart glowed; then she was
sorry for Clara.
"Perhaps you'll leave your things in the parlour," said
Mrs. Morel nicely to the young woman.
"Oh, thank you," she replied.
"Come on," said Paul, and he led the way into the little
front room, with its old piano, its mahogany furniture, its
yellowing marble mantelpiece. A fire was burning; the place
was littered with books and drawing-boards. "I leave my
things lying about," he said. "It's so much easier."
She loved his artist's paraphernalia, and the books, and
the photos of people. Soon he was telling her: this was
William, this was William's young lady in the evening dress,
this was Annie and her husband, this was Arthur and his wife
and the baby. She felt as if she were being taken into the
family. He showed her photos, books, sketches, and they
talked a little while. Then they returned to the kitchen.
Mrs. Morel put aside her book. Clara wore a blouse of fine
silk chiffon, with narrow black-and-white stripes; her hair
was done simply, coiled on top of her head. She looked
rather stately and reserved.
"You have gone to live down Sneinton Boulevard?" said
Mrs. Morel. "When I was a girl—girl, I say!—when I was a
young woman WE lived in Minerva Terrace."
"Oh, did you!" said Clara. "I have a friend in number 6."
And the conversation had started. They talked Nottingham
and Nottingham people; it interested them both. Clara was
still rather nervous; Mrs. Morel was still somewhat on her
dignity. She clipped her language very clear and precise.
But they were going to get on well together, Paul saw.
Mrs. Morel measured herself against the younger woman,
and found herself easily stronger. Clara was deferential.
She knew Paul's surprising regard for his mother, and she
had dreaded the meeting, expecting someone rather hard and
cold. She was surprised to find this little interested woman
chatting with such readiness; and then she felt, as she felt
with Paul, that she would not care to stand in Mrs. Morel's
way. There was something so hard and certain in his mother,
as if she never had a misgiving in her life.
Presently Morel came down, ruffled and yawning, from his
afternoon sleep. He scratched his grizzled head, he plodded
in his stocking feet, his waistcoat hung open over his
shirt. He seemed incongruous.
"This is Mrs. Dawes, father," said Paul.
Then Morel pulled himself together. Clara saw Paul's
manner of bowing and shaking hands.
"Oh, indeed!" exclaimed Morel. "I am very glad to see
you—I am, I assure you. But don't disturb yourself. No, no
make yourself quite comfortable, and be very welcome."
Clara was astonished at this flood of hospitality from
the old collier. He was so courteous, so gallant! She
thought him most delightful.
"And may you have come far?" he asked.
"Only from Nottingham," she said.
"From Nottingham! Then you have had a beautiful day for
your journey."
Then he strayed into the scullery to wash his hands and
face, and from force of habit came on to the hearth with the
towel to dry himself.
At tea Clara felt the refinement and sang-froid of the
household. Mrs. Morel was perfectly at her ease. The pouring
out the tea and attending to the people went on
unconsciously, without interrupting her in her talk. There
was a lot of room at the oval table; the china of dark blue
willow-pattern looked pretty on the glossy cloth. There was
a little bowl of small, yellow chrysanthemums. Clara felt
she completed the circle, and it was a pleasure to her. But
she was rather afraid of the self-possession of the Morels,
father and all. She took their tone; there was a feeling of
balance. It was a cool, clear atmosphere, where everyone was
himself, and in harmony. Clara enjoyed it, but there was a
fear deep at the bottom of her.
Paul cleared the table whilst his mother and Clara
talked. Clara was conscious of his quick, vigorous body as
it came and went, seeming blown quickly by a wind at its
work. It was almost like the hither and thither of a leaf
that comes unexpected. Most of herself went with him. By the
way she leaned forward, as if listening, Mrs. Morel could
see she was possessed elsewhere as she talked, and again the
elder woman was sorry for her.
Having finished, he strolled down the garden, leaving the
two women to talk. It was a hazy, sunny afternoon, mild and
soft. Clara glanced through the window after him as he
loitered among the chrysanthemums. She felt as if something
almost tangible fastened her to him; yet he seemed so easy
in his graceful, indolent movement, so detached as he tied
up the too-heavy flower branches to their stakes, that she
wanted to shriek in her helplessness.
Mrs. Morel rose.
"You will let me help you wash up," said Clara.
"Eh, there are so few, it will only take a minute," said
the other.
Clara, however, dried the tea-things, and was glad to be
on such good terms with his mother; but it was torture not
to be able to follow him down the garden. At last she
allowed herself to go; she felt as if a rope were taken off
her ankle.
The afternoon was golden over the hills of Derbyshire. He
stood across in the other garden, beside a bush of pale
Michaelmas daisies, watching the last bees crawl into the
hive. Hearing her coming, he turned to her with an easy
motion, saying:
"It's the end of the run with these chaps."
Clara stood near him. Over the low red wall in front was
the country and the far-off hills, all golden dim.
At that moment Miriam was entering through the
garden-door. She saw Clara go up to him, saw him turn, and
saw them come to rest together. Something in their perfect
isolation together made her know that it was accomplished
between them, that they were, as she put it, married. She
walked very slowly down the cinder-track of the long garden.
Clara had pulled a button from a hollyhock spire, and was
breaking it to get the seeds. Above her bowed head the pink
flowers stared, as if defending her. The last bees were
falling down to the hive.
"Count your money," laughed Paul, as she broke the flat
seeds one by one from the roll of coin. She looked at him.
"I'm well off," she said, smiling.
"How much? Pf!" He snapped his fingers. "Can I turn them
into gold?"
"I'm afraid not," she laughed.
They looked into each other's eyes, laughing. At that
moment they became aware of Miriam. There was a click, and
everything had altered.
"Hello, Miriam!" he exclaimed. "You said you'd come!"
"Yes. Had you forgotten?"
She shook hands with Clara, saying:
"It seems strange to see you here."
"Yes," replied the other; "it seems strange to be here."
There was a hesitation.
"This is pretty, isn't it?" said Miriam.
"I like it very much," replied Clara.
Then Miriam realised that Clara was accepted as she had
never been.
"Have you come down alone?" asked Paul.
"Yes; I went to Agatha's to tea. We are going to chapel.
I only called in for a moment to see Clara."
"You should have come in here to tea," he said.
Miriam laughed shortly, and Clara turned impatiently
aside.
"Do you like the chrysanthemums?" he asked.
"Yes; they are very fine," replied Miriam.
"Which sort do you like best?" he asked.
"I don't know. The bronze, I think."
"I don't think you've seen all the sorts. Come and look.
Come and see which are YOUR favourites, Clara."
He led the two women back to his own garden, where the
towsled bushes of flowers of all colours stood raggedly
along the path down to the field. The situation did not
embarrass him, to his knowledge.
"Look, Miriam; these are the white ones that came from
your garden. They aren't so fine here, are they?"
"No," said Miriam.
"But they're hardier. You're so sheltered; things grow
big and tender, and then die. These little yellow ones I
like. Will you have some?"
While they were out there the bells began to ring in the
church, sounding loud across the town and the field. Miriam
looked at the tower, proud among the clustering roofs, and
remembered the sketches he had brought her. It had been
different then, but he had not left her even yet. She asked
him for a book to read. He ran indoors.
"What! is that Miriam?" asked his mother coldly.
"Yes; she said she'd call and see Clara."
"You told her, then?" came the sarcastic answer.
"Yes; why shouldn't I?"
"There's certainly no reason why you shouldn't," said
Mrs. Morel, and she returned to her book. He winced from his
mother's irony, frowned irritably, thinking: "Why can't I do
as I like?"
"You've not seen Mrs. Morel before?" Miriam was saying to
Clara.
"No; but she's so nice!"
"Yes," said Miriam, dropping her head; "in some ways
she's very fine."
"I should think so."
"Had Paul told you much about her?"
"He had talked a good deal."
"Ha!"
There was silence until he returned with the book.
"When will you want it back?" Miriam asked.
"When you like," he answered.
Clara turned to go indoors, whilst he accompanied Miriam
to the gate.
"When will you come up to Willey Farm?" the latter asked.
"I couldn't say," replied Clara.
"Mother asked me to say she'd be pleased to see you any
time, if you cared to come."
"Thank you; I should like to, but I can't say when."
"Oh, very well!" exclaimed Miriam rather bitterly,
turning away.
She went down the path with her mouth to the flowers he
had given her.
"You're sure you won't come in?" he said.
"No, thanks."
"We are going to chapel."
"Ah, I shall see you, then!" Miriam was very bitter.
"Yes."
They parted. He felt guilty towards her. She was bitter,
and she scorned him. He still belonged to herself, she
believed; yet he could have Clara, take her home, sit with
her next his mother in chapel, give her the same hymn-book
he had given herself years before. She heard him running
quickly indoors.
But he did not go straight in. Halting on the plot of
grass, he heard his mother's voice, then Clara's answer:
"What I hate is the bloodhound quality in Miriam."
"Yes," said his mother quickly, "yes; DOESN'T it make you
hate her, now!"
His heart went hot, and he was angry with them for
talking about the girl. What right had they to say that?
Something in the speech itself stung him into a flame of
hate against Miriam. Then his own heart rebelled furiously
at Clara's taking the liberty of speaking so about Miriam.
After all, the girl was the better woman of the two, he
thought, if it came to goodness. He went indoors. His mother
looked excited. She was beating with her hand rhythmically
on the sofa-arm, as women do who are wearing out. He could
never bear to see the movement. There was a silence; then he
began to talk.
In chapel Miriam saw him find the place in the hymn-book
for Clara, in exactly the same way as he used for herself.
And during the sermon he could see the girl across the
chapel, her hat throwing a dark shadow over her face. What
did she think, seeing Clara with him? He did not stop to
consider. He felt himself cruel towards Miriam.
After chapel he went over Pentrich with Clara. It was a
dark autumn night. They had said good-bye to Miriam, and his
heart had smitten him as he left the girl alone. "But it
serves her right," he said inside himself, and it almost
gave him pleasure to go off under her eyes with this other
handsome woman.
There was a scent of damp leaves in the darkness. Clara's
hand lay warm and inert in his own as they walked. He was
full of conflict. The battle that raged inside him made him
feel desperate.
Up Pentrich Hill Clara leaned against him as he went. He
slid his arm round her waist. Feeling the strong motion of
her body under his arm as she walked, the tightness in his
chest because of Miriam relaxed, and the hot blood bathed
him. He held her closer and closer.
Then: "You still keep on with Miriam," she said quietly.
"Only talk. There never WAS a great deal more than talk
between us," he said bitterly.
"Your mother doesn't care for her," said Clara.
"No, or I might have married her. But it's all up
really!"
Suddenly his voice went passionate with hate.
"If I was with her now, we should be jawing about the
'Christian Mystery', or some such tack. Thank God, I'm not!"
They walked on in silence for some time.
"But you can't really give her up," said Clara.
"I don't give her up, because there's nothing to give,"
he said.
"There is for her."
"I don't know why she and I shouldn't be friends as long
as we live," he said. "But it'll only be friends."
Clara drew away from him, leaning away from contact with
him.
"What are you drawing away for?" he asked.
She did not answer, but drew farther from him.
"Why do you want to walk alone?" he asked.
Still there was no answer. She walked resentfully,
hanging her head.
"Because I said I would be friends with Miriam!" he
exclaimed.
She would not answer him anything.
"I tell you it's only words that go between us," he
persisted, trying to take her again.
She resisted. Suddenly he strode across in front of her,
barring her way.
"Damn it!" he said. "What do you want now?"
"You'd better run after Miriam," mocked Clara.
The blood flamed up in him. He stood showing his teeth.
She drooped sulkily. The lane was dark, quite lonely. He
suddenly caught her in his arms, stretched forward, and put
his mouth on her face in a kiss of rage. She turned
frantically to avoid him. He held her fast. Hard and
relentless his mouth came for her. Her breasts hurt against
the wall of his chest. Helpless, she went loose in his arms,
and he kissed her, and kissed her.
He heard people coming down the hill.
"Stand up! stand up!" he said thickly, gripping her arm
till it hurt. If he had let go, she would have sunk to the
ground.
She sighed and walked dizzily beside him. They went on in
silence.
"We will go over the fields," he said; and then she woke
up.
But she let herself be helped over the stile, and she
walked in silence with him over the first dark field. It was
the way to Nottingham and to the station, she knew. He
seemed to be looking about. They came out on a bare hilltop
where stood the dark figure of the ruined windmill. There he
halted. They stood together high up in the darkness, looking
at the lights scattered on the night before them, handfuls
of glittering points, villages lying high and low on the
dark, here and there.
"Like treading among the stars," he said, with a quaky
laugh.
Then he took her in his arms, and held her fast. She
moved aside her mouth to ask, dogged and low:
"What time is it?"
"It doesn't matter," he pleaded thickly.
"Yes it does—yes! I must go!"
"It's early yet," he said.
"What time is it?" she insisted.
All round lay the black night, speckled and spangled with
lights.
"I don't know."
She put her hand on his chest, feeling for his watch. He
felt the joints fuse into fire. She groped in his waistcoat
pocket, while he stood panting. In the darkness she could
see the round, pale face of the watch, but not the figures.
She stooped over it. He was panting till he could take her
in his arms again.
"I can't see," she said.
"Then don't bother."
"Yes; I'm going!" she said, turning away.
"Wait! I'll look!" But he could not see. "I'll strike a
match."
He secretly hoped it was too late to catch the train. She
saw the glowing lantern of his hands as he cradled the
light: then his face lit up, his eyes fixed on the watch.
Instantly all was dark again. All was black before her eyes;
only a glowing match was red near her feet. Where was he?
"What is it?" she asked, afraid.
"You can't do it," his voice answered out of the
darkness.
There was a pause. She felt in his power. She had heard
the ring in his voice. It frightened her.
"What time is it?" she asked, quiet, definite, hopeless.
"Two minutes to nine," he replied, telling the truth with
a struggle.
"And can I get from here to the station in fourteen
minutes?"
"No. At any rate—"
She could distinguish his dark form again a yard or so
away. She wanted to escape.
"But can't I do it?" she pleaded.
"If you hurry," he said brusquely. "But you could easily
walk it, Clara; it's only seven miles to the tram. I'll come
with you."
"No; I want to catch the train."
"But why?"
"I do—I want to catch the train."
Suddenly his voice altered.
"Very well," he said, dry and hard. "Come along, then."
And he plunged ahead into the darkness. She ran after
him, wanting to cry. Now he was hard and cruel to her. She
ran over the rough, dark fields behind him, out of breath,
ready to drop. But the double row of lights at the station
drew nearer. Suddenly:
"There she is!" he cried, breaking into a run.
There was a faint rattling noise. Away to the right the
train, like a luminous caterpillar, was threading across the
night. The rattling ceased.
"She's over the viaduct. You'll just do it."
Clara ran, quite out of breath, and fell at last into the
train. The whistle blew. He was gone. Gone!—and she was in a
carriage full of people. She felt the cruelty of it.
He turned round and plunged home. Before he knew where he
was he was in the kitchen at home. He was very pale. His
eyes were dark and dangerous-looking, as if he were drunk.
His mother looked at him.
"Well, I must say your boots are in a nice state!" she
said.
He looked at his feet. Then he took off his overcoat. His
mother wondered if he were drunk.
"She caught the train then?" she said.
"Yes."
"I hope HER feet weren't so filthy. Where on earth you
dragged her I don't know!"
He was silent and motionless for some time.
"Did you like her?" he asked grudgingly at last.
"Yes, I liked her. But you'll tire of her, my son; you
know you will."
He did not answer. She noticed how he laboured in his
breathing.
"Have you been running?" she asked.
"We had to run for the train."
"You'll go and knock yourself up. You'd better drink hot
milk."
It was as good a stimulant as he could have, but he
refused and went to bed. There he lay face down on the
counterpane, and shed tears of rage and pain. There was a
physical pain that made him bite his lips till they bled,
and the chaos inside him left him unable to think, almost to
feel.
"This is how she serves me, is it?" he said in his heart,
over and over, pressing his face in the quilt. And he hated
her. Again he went over the scene, and again he hated her.
The next day there was a new aloofness about him. Clara
was very gentle, almost loving. But he treated her
distantly, with a touch of contempt. She sighed, continuing
to be gentle. He came round.
One evening of that week Sarah Bernhardt was at the
Theatre Royal in Nottingham, giving "La Dame aux Camelias".
Paul wanted to see this old and famous actress, and he asked
Clara to accompany him. He told his mother to leave the key
in the window for him.
"Shall I book seats?" he asked of Clara.
"Yes. And put on an evening suit, will you? I've never
seen you in it."
"But, good Lord, Clara! Think of ME in evening suit at
the theatre!" he remonstrated.
"Would you rather not?" she asked.
"I will if you WANT me to; but I s'll feel a fool."
She laughed at him.
"Then feel a fool for my sake, once, won't you?"
The request made his blood flush up.
"I suppose I s'll have to."
"What are you taking a suitcase for?" his mother asked.
He blushed furiously.
"Clara asked me," he said.
"And what seats are you going in?"
"Circle—three-and-six each!"
"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed his mother sarcastically.
"It's only once in the bluest of blue moons," he said.
He dressed at Jordan's, put on an overcoat and a cap, and
met Clara in a cafe. She was with one of her suffragette
friends. She wore an old long coat, which did not suit her,
and had a little wrap over her head, which he hated. The
three went to the theatre together.
Clara took off her coat on the stairs, and he discovered
she was in a sort of semi-evening dress, that left her arms
and neck and part of her breast bare. Her hair was done
fashionably. The dress, a simple thing of green crape,
suited her. She looked quite grand, he thought. He could see
her figure inside the frock, as if that were wrapped closely
round her. The firmness and the softness of her upright body
could almost be felt as he looked at her. He clenched his
fists.
And he was to sit all the evening beside her beautiful
naked arm, watching the strong throat rise from the strong
chest, watching the breasts under the green stuff, the curve
of her limbs in the tight dress. Something in him hated her
again for submitting him to this torture of nearness. And he
loved her as she balanced her head and stared straight in
front of her, pouting, wistful, immobile, as if she yielded
herself to her fate because it was too strong for her. She
could not help herself; she was in the grip of something
bigger than herself. A kind of eternal look about her, as if
she were a wistful sphinx, made it necessary for him to kiss
her. He dropped his programme, and crouched down on the
floor to get it, so that he could kiss her hand and wrist.
Her beauty was a torture to him. She sat immobile. Only,
when the lights went down, she sank a little against him,
and he caressed her hand and arm with his fingers. He could
smell her faint perfume. All the time his blood kept
sweeping up in great white-hot waves that killed his
consciousness momentarily.
The drama continued. He saw it all in the distance, going
on somewhere; he did not know where, but it seemed far away
inside him. He was Clara's white heavy arms, her throat, her
moving bosom. That seemed to be himself. Then away somewhere
the play went on, and he was identified with that also.
There was no himself. The grey and black eyes of Clara, her
bosom coming down on him, her arm that he held gripped
between his hands, were all that existed. Then he felt
himself small and helpless, her towering in her force above
him.
Only the intervals, when the lights came up, hurt him
expressibly. He wanted to run anywhere, so long as it would
be dark again. In a maze, he wandered out for a drink. Then
the lights were out, and the strange, insane reality of
Clara and the drama took hold of him again.
The play went on. But he was obsessed by the desire to
kiss the tiny blue vein that nestled in the bend of her arm.
He could feel it. His whole face seemed suspended till he
had put his lips there. It must be done. And the other
people! At last he bent quickly forward and touched it with
his lips. His moustache brushed the sensitive flesh. Clara
shivered, drew away her arm.
When all was over, the lights up, the people clapping, he
came to himself and looked at his watch. His train was gone.
"I s'll have to walk home!" he said.
Clara looked at him.
"It is too late?" she asked.
He nodded. Then he helped her on with her coat.
"I love you! You look beautiful in that dress," he
murmured over her shoulder, among the throng of bustling
people.
She remained quiet. Together they went out of the
theatre. He saw the cabs waiting, the people passing. It
seemed he met a pair of brown eyes which hated him. But he
did not know. He and Clara turned away, mechanically taking
the direction to the station.
The train had gone. He would have to walk the ten miles
home.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I shall enjoy it."
"Won't you," she said, flushing, "come home for the
night? I can sleep with mother."
He looked at her. Their eyes met.
"What will your mother say?" he asked.
"She won't mind."
"You're sure?"
"Quite!"
"SHALL I come?"
"If you will."
"Very well."
And they turned away. At the first stopping-place they
took the car. The wind blew fresh in their faces. The town
was dark; the tram tipped in its haste. He sat with her hand
fast in his.
"Will your mother be gone to bed?" he asked.
"She may be. I hope not."
They hurried along the silent, dark little street, the
only people out of doors. Clara quickly entered the house.
He hesitated.
He leaped up the step and was in the room. Her mother
appeared in the inner doorway, large and hostile.
"Who have you got there?" she asked.
"It's Mr. Morel; he has missed his train. I thought we
might put him up for the night, and save him a ten-mile
walk."
"H'm," exclaimed Mrs. Radford. "That's your lookout! If
you've invited him, he's very welcome as far as I'm
concerned. YOU keep the house!"
"If you don't like me, I'll go away again," he said.
"Nay, nay, you needn't! Come along in! I dunno what
you'll think of the supper I'd got her."
It was a little dish of chip potatoes and a piece of
bacon. The table was roughly laid for one.
"You can have some more bacon," continued Mrs. Radford.
"More chips you can't have."
"It's a shame to bother you," he said.
"Oh, don't you be apologetic! It doesn't DO wi' me! You
treated her to the theatre, didn't you?" There was a sarcasm
in the last question.
"Well?" laughed Paul uncomfortably.
"Well, and what's an inch of bacon! Take your coat off."
The big, straight-standing woman was trying to estimate
the situation. She moved about the cupboard. Clara took his
coat. The room was very warm and cosy in the lamplight.
"My sirs!" exclaimed Mrs. Radford; "but you two's a pair
of bright beauties, I must say! What's all that get-up for?"
"I believe we don't know," he said, feeling a victim.
"There isn't room in THIS house for two such
bobby-dazzlers, if you fly your kites THAT high!" she
rallied them. It was a nasty thrust.
He in his dinner jacket, and Clara in her green dress and
bare arms, were confused. They felt they must shelter each
other in that little kitchen.
"And look at THAT blossom!" continued Mrs. Radford,
pointing to Clara. "What does she reckon she did it for?"
Paul looked at Clara. She was rosy; her neck was warm
with blushes. There was a moment of silence.
"You like to see it, don't you?" he asked.
The mother had them in her power. All the time his heart
was beating hard, and he was tight with anxiety. But he
would fight her.
"Me like to see it!" exclaimed the old woman. "What
should I like to see her make a fool of herself for?"
"I've seen people look bigger fools," he said. Clara was
under his protection now.
"Oh, ay! and when was that?" came the sarcastic
rejoinder.
"When they made frights of themselves," he answered.
Mrs. Radford, large and threatening, stood suspended on
the hearthrug, holding her fork.
"They're fools either road," she answered at length,
turning to the Dutch oven.
"No," he said, fighting stoutly. "Folk ought to look as
well as they can."
"And do you call THAT looking nice!" cried the mother,
pointing a scornful fork at Clara. "That—that looks as if it
wasn't properly dressed!"
"I believe you're jealous that you can't swank as well,"
he said laughing.
"Me! I could have worn evening dress with anybody, if I'd
wanted to!" came the scornful answer.
"And why didn't you want to?" he asked pertinently. "Or
DID you wear it?"
There was a long pause. Mrs. Radford readjusted the bacon
in the Dutch oven. His heart beat fast, for fear he had
offended her.
"Me!" she exclaimed at last. "No, I didn't! And when I
was in service, I knew as soon as one of the maids came out
in bare shoulders what sort SHE was, going to her sixpenny
hop!"
"Were you too good to go to a sixpenny hop?" he said.
Clara sat with bowed head. His eyes were dark and
glittering. Mrs. Radford took the Dutch oven from the fire,
and stood near him, putting bits of bacon on his plate.
"THERE'S a nice crozzly bit!" she said.
"Don't give me the best!" he said.
"SHE'S got what SHE wants," was the answer.
There was a sort of scornful forbearance in the woman's
tone that made Paul know she was mollified.
"But DO have some!" he said to Clara.
She looked up at him with her grey eyes, humiliated and
lonely.
"No thanks!" she said.
"Why won't you?" he answered carelessly.
The blood was beating up like fire in his veins. Mrs.
Radford sat down again, large and impressive and aloof. He
left Clara altogether to attend to the mother.
"They say Sarah Bernhardt's fifty," he said.
"Fifty! She's turned sixty!" came the scornful answer.
"Well," he said, "you'd never think it! She made me want
to howl even now."
"I should like to see myself howling at THAT bad old
baggage!" said Mrs. Radford. "It's time she began to think
herself a grandmother, not a shrieking catamaran—"
He laughed.
"A catamaran is a boat the Malays use," he said.
"And it's a word as I use," she retorted.
"My mother does sometimes, and it's no good my telling
her," he said.
"I s'd think she boxes your ears," said Mrs. Radford,
good-humouredly.
"She'd like to, and she says she will, so I give her a
little stool to stand on."
"That's the worst of my mother," said Clara. "She never
wants a stool for anything."
"But she often can't touch THAT lady with a long prop,"
retorted Mrs. Radford to Paul.
"I s'd think she doesn't want touching with a prop," he
laughed. "I shouldn't."
"It might do the pair of you good to give you a crack on
the head with one," said the mother, laughing suddenly.
"Why are you so vindictive towards me?" he said. "I've
not stolen anything from you."
"No; I'll watch that," laughed the older woman.
Soon the supper was finished. Mrs. Radford sat guard in
her chair. Paul lit a cigarette. Clara went upstairs,
returning with a sleeping-suit, which she spread on the
fender to air.
"Why, I'd forgot all about THEM!" said Mrs. Radford.
"Where have they sprung from?"
"Out of my drawer."
"H'm! You bought 'em for Baxter, an' he wouldn't wear
'em, would he?"—laughing. "Said he reckoned to do wi'out
trousers i' bed." She turned confidentially to Paul, saying:
"He couldn't BEAR 'em, them pyjama things."
The young man sat making rings of smoke.
"Well, it's everyone to his taste," he laughed.
Then followed a little discussion of the merits of
pyjamas.
"My mother loves me in them," he said. "She says I'm a
pierrot."
"I can imagine they'd suit you," said Mrs. Radford.
After a while he glanced at the little clock that was
ticking on the mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve.
"It is funny," he said, "but it takes hours to settle
down to sleep after the theatre."
"It's about time you did," said Mrs. Radford, clearing
the table.
"Are YOU tired?" he asked of Clara.
"Not the least bit," she answered, avoiding his eyes.
"Shall we have a game at cribbage?" he said.
"I've forgotten it."
"Well, I'll teach you again. May we play crib, Mrs.
Radford?" he asked.
"You'll please yourselves," she said; "but it's pretty
late."
"A game or so will make us sleepy," he answered.
Clara brought the cards, and sat spinning her
wedding-ring whilst he shuffled them. Mrs. Radford was
washing up in the scullery. As it grew later Paul felt the
situation getting more and more tense.
"Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and two's
eight—!"
The clock struck one. Still the game continued. Mrs.
Radford had done all the little jobs preparatory to going to
bed, had locked the door and filled the kettle. Still Paul
went on dealing and counting. He was obsessed by Clara's
arms and throat. He believed he could see where the division
was just beginning for her breasts. He could not leave her.
She watched his hands, and felt her joints melt as they
moved quickly. She was so near; it was almost as if he
touched her, and yet not quite. His mettle was roused. He
hated Mrs. Radford. She sat on, nearly dropping asleep, but
determined and obstinate in her chair. Paul glanced at her,
then at Clara. She met his eyes, that were angry, mocking,
and hard as steel. Her own answered him in shame. He knew
SHE, at any rate, was of his mind. He played on.
At last Mrs. Radford roused herself stiffly, and said:
"Isn't it nigh on time you two was thinking o' bed?"
Paul played on without answering. He hated her
sufficiently to murder her.
"Half a minute," he said.
The elder woman rose and sailed stubbornly into the
scullery, returning with his candle, which she put on the
mantelpiece. Then she sat down again. The hatred of her went
so hot down his veins, he dropped his cards.
"We'll stop, then," he said, but his voice was still a
challenge.
Clara saw his mouth shut hard. Again he glanced at her.
It seemed like an agreement. She bent over the cards,
coughing, to clear her throat.
"Well, I'm glad you've finished," said Mrs. Radford.
"Here, take your things"—she thrust the warm suit in his
hand—"and this is your candle. Your room's over this;
there's only two, so you can't go far wrong. Well,
good-night. I hope you'll rest well."
"I'm sure I shall; I always do," he said.
"Yes; and so you ought at your age," she replied.
He bade good-night to Clara, and went. The twisting
stairs of white, scrubbed wood creaked and clanged at every
step. He went doggedly. The two doors faced each other. He
went in his room, pushed the door to, without fastening the
latch.
It was a small room with a large bed. Some of Clara's
hair-pins were on the dressing-table—her hair-brush. Her
clothes and some skirts hung under a cloth in a corner.
There was actually a pair of stockings over a chair. He
explored the room. Two books of his own were there on the
shelf. He undressed, folded his suit, and sat on the bed,
listening. Then he blew out the candle, lay down, and in two
minutes was almost asleep. Then click!—he was wide awake and
writhing in torment. It was as if, when he had nearly got to
sleep, something had bitten him suddenly and sent him mad.
He sat up and looked at the room in the darkness, his feet
doubled under him, perfectly motionless, listening. He heard
a cat somewhere away outside; then the heavy, poised tread
of the mother; then Clara's distinct voice:
"Will you unfasten my dress?"
There was silence for some time. At last the mother said:
"Now then! aren't you coming up?"
"No, not yet," replied the daughter calmly.
"Oh, very well then! If it's not late enough, stop a bit
longer. Only you needn't come waking me up when I've got to
sleep."
"I shan't be long," said Clara.
Immediately afterwards Paul heard the mother slowly
mounting the stairs. The candlelight flashed through the
cracks in his door. Her dress brushed the door, and his
heart jumped. Then it was dark, and he heard the clatter of
her latch. She was very leisurely indeed in her preparations
for sleep. After a long time it was quite still. He sat
strung up on the bed, shivering slightly. His door was an
inch open. As Clara came upstairs, he would intercept her.
He waited. All was dead silence. The clock struck two. Then
he heard a slight scrape of the fender downstairs. Now he
could not help himself. His shivering was uncontrollable. He
felt he must go or die.
He stepped off the bed, and stood a moment, shuddering.
Then he went straight to the door. He tried to step lightly.
The first stair cracked like a shot. He listened. The old
woman stirred in her bed. The staircase was dark. There was
a slit of light under the stair-foot door, which opened into
the kitchen. He stood a moment. Then he went on,
mechanically. Every step creaked, and his back was creeping,
lest the old woman's door should open behind him up above.
He fumbled with the door at the bottom. The latch opened
with a loud clack. He went through into the kitchen, and
shut the door noisily behind him. The old woman daren't come
now.
Then he stood, arrested. Clara was kneeling on a pile of
white underclothing on the hearthrug, her back towards him,
warming herself. She did not look round, but sat crouching
on her heels, and her rounded beautiful back was towards
him, and her face was hidden. She was warming her body at
the fire for consolation. The glow was rosy on one side, the
shadow was dark and warm on the other. Her arms hung slack.
He shuddered violently, clenching his teeth and fists
hard to keep control. Then he went forward to her. He put
one hand on her shoulder, the fingers of the other hand
under her chin to raise her face. A convulsed shiver ran
through her, once, twice, at his touch. She kept her head
bent.
"Sorry!" he murmured, realising that his hands were very
cold.
Then she looked up at him, frightened, like a thing that
is afraid of death.
"My hands are so cold," he murmured.
"I like it," she whispered, closing her eyes.
The breath of her words were on his mouth. Her arms
clasped his knees. The cord of his sleeping-suit dangled
against her and made her shiver. As the warmth went into
him, his shuddering became less.
At length, unable to stand so any more, he raised her,
and she buried her head on his shoulder. His hands went over
her slowly with an infinite tenderness of caress. She clung
close to him, trying to hide herself against him. He clasped
her very fast. Then at last she looked at him, mute,
imploring, looking to see if she must be ashamed.
His eyes were dark, very deep, and very quiet. It was as
if her beauty and his taking it hurt him, made him
sorrowful. He looked at her with a little pain, and was
afraid. He was so humble before her. She kissed him
fervently on the eyes, first one, then the other, and she
folded herself to him. She gave herself. He held her fast.
It was a moment intense almost to agony.
She stood letting him adore her and tremble with joy of
her. It healed her hurt pride. It healed her; it made her
glad. It made her feel erect and proud again. Her pride had
been wounded inside her. She had been cheapened. Now she
radiated with joy and pride again. It was her restoration
and her recognition.
Then he looked at her, his face radiant. They laughed to
each other, and he strained her to his chest. The seconds
ticked off, the minutes passed, and still the two stood
clasped rigid together, mouth to mouth, like a statue in one
block.
But again his fingers went seeking over her, restless,
wandering, dissatisfied. The hot blood came up wave upon
wave. She laid her head on his shoulder.
"Come you to my room," he murmured.
She looked at him and shook her head, her mouth pouting
disconsolately, her eyes heavy with passion. He watched her
fixedly.
"Yes!" he said.
Again she shook her head.
"Why not?" he asked.
She looked at him still heavily, sorrowfully, and again
she shook her head. His eyes hardened, and he gave way.
When, later on, he was back in bed, he wondered why she
had refused to come to him openly, so that her mother would
know. At any rate, then things would have been definite. And
she could have stayed with him the night, without having to
go, as she was, to her mother's bed. It was strange, and he
could not understand it. And then almost immediately he fell
asleep.
He awoke in the morning with someone speaking to him.
Opening his eyes, he saw Mrs. Radford, big and stately,
looking down on him. She held a cup of tea in her hand.
"Do you think you're going to sleep till Doomsday?" she
said.
He laughed at once.
"It ought only to be about five o'clock," he said.
"Well," she answered, "it's half-past seven, whether or
not. Here, I've brought you a cup of tea."
He rubbed his face, pushed the tumbled hair off his
forehead, and roused himself.
"What's it so late for!" he grumbled.
He resented being wakened. It amused her. She saw his
neck in the flannel sleeping-jacket, as white and round as a
girl's. He rubbed his hair crossly.
"It's no good your scratching your head," she said. "It
won't make it no earlier. Here, an' how long d'you think I'm
going to stand waiting wi' this here cup?"
"Oh, dash the cup!" he said.
"You should go to bed earlier," said the woman.
He looked up at her, laughing with impudence.
"I went to bed before YOU did," he said.
"Yes, my Guyney, you did!" she exclaimed.
"Fancy," he said, stirring his tea, "having tea brought
to bed to me! My mother'll think I'm ruined for life."
"Don't she never do it?" asked Mrs. Radford.
"She'd as leave think of flying."
"Ah, I always spoilt my lot! That's why they've turned
out such bad uns," said the elderly woman.
"You'd only Clara," he said. "And Mr. Radford's in
heaven. So I suppose there's only you left to be the bad
un."
"I'm not bad; I'm only soft," she said, as she went out
of the bedroom. "I'm only a fool, I am!"
Clara was very quiet at breakfast, but she had a sort of
air of proprietorship over him that pleased him infinitely.
Mrs. Radford was evidently fond of him. He began to talk of
his painting.
"What's the good," exclaimed the mother, "of your
whittling and worrying and twistin' and too-in' at that
painting of yours? What GOOD does it do you, I should like
to know? You'd better be enjoyin' yourself."
"Oh, but," exclaimed Paul, "I made over thirty guineas
last year."
"Did you! Well, that's a consideration, but it's nothing
to the time you put in."
"And I've got four pounds owing. A man said he'd give me
five pounds if I'd paint him and his missis and the dog and
the cottage. And I went and put the fowls in instead of the
dog, and he was waxy, so I had to knock a quid off. I was
sick of it, and I didn't like the dog. I made a picture of
it. What shall I do when he pays me the four pounds?"
"Nay! you know your own uses for your money," said Mrs.
Radford.
"But I'm going to bust this four pounds. Should we go to
the seaside for a day or two?"
"Who?"
"You and Clara and me."
"What, on your money!" she exclaimed, half-wrathful.
"Why not?"
"YOU wouldn't be long in breaking your neck at a hurdle
race!" she said.
"So long as I get a good run for my money! Will you?"
"Nay; you may settle that atween you."
"And you're willing?" he asked, amazed and rejoicing.
"You'll do as you like," said Mrs. Radford, "whether I'm
willing or not."
CHAPTER XIII
BAXTER DAWES
SOON after Paul had been to the theatre with Clara, he
was drinking in the Punch Bowl with some friends of his when
Dawes came in. Clara's husband was growing stout; his
eyelids were getting slack over his brown eyes; he was
losing his healthy firmness of flesh. He was very evidently
on the downward track. Having quarrelled with his sister, he
had gone into cheap lodgings. His mistress had left him for
a man who would marry her. He had been in prison one night
for fighting when he was drunk, and there was a shady
betting episode in which he was concerned.
Paul and he were confirmed enemies, and yet there was
between them that peculiar feeling of intimacy, as if they
were secretly near to each other, which sometimes exists
between two people, although they never speak to one
another. Paul often thought of Baxter Dawes, often wanted to
get at him and be friends with him. He knew that Dawes often
thought about him, and that the man was drawn to him by some
bond or other. And yet the two never looked at each other
save in hostility.
Since he was a superior employee at Jordan's, it was the
thing for Paul to offer Dawes a drink.
"What'll you have?" he asked of him.
"Nowt wi' a bleeder like you!" replied the man.
Paul turned away with a slight disdainful movement of the
shoulders, very irritating.
"The aristocracy," he continued, "is really a military
institution. Take Germany, now. She's got thousands of
aristocrats whose only means of existence is the army.
They're deadly poor, and life's deadly slow. So they hope
for a war. They look for war as a chance of getting on. Till
there's a war they are idle good-for-nothings. When there's
a war, they are leaders and commanders. There you are,
then—they WANT war!"
He was not a favourite debater in the public-house, being
too quick and overbearing. He irritated the older men by his
assertive manner, and his cocksureness. They listened in
silence, and were not sorry when he finished.
Dawes interrupted the young man's flow of eloquence by
asking, in a loud sneer:
"Did you learn all that at th' theatre th' other night?"
Paul looked at him; their eyes met. Then he knew Dawes
had seen him coming out of the theatre with Clara.
"Why, what about th' theatre?" asked one of Paul's
associates, glad to get a dig at the young fellow, and
sniffing something tasty.
"Oh, him in a bob-tailed evening suit, on the lardy-da!"
sneered Dawes, jerking his head contemptuously at Paul.
"That's comin' it strong," said the mutual friend. "Tart
an' all?"
"Tart, begod!" said Dawes.
"Go on; let's have it!" cried the mutual friend.
"You've got it," said Dawes, "an' I reckon Morelly had it
an' all."
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" said the mutual friend. "An'
was it a proper tart?"
"Tart, God blimey—yes!"
"How do you know?"
"Oh," said Dawes, "I reckon he spent th' night—"
There was a good deal of laughter at Paul's expense.
"But who WAS she? D'you know her?" asked the mutual
friend.
"I should SHAY SHO," said Dawes.
This brought another burst of laughter.
"Then spit it out," said the mutual friend.
Dawes shook his head, and took a gulp of beer.
"It's a wonder he hasn't let on himself," he said. "He'll
be braggin' of it in a bit."
"Come on, Paul," said the friend; "it's no good. You
might just as well own up."
"Own up what? That I happened to take a friend to the
theatre?"
"Oh well, if it was all right, tell us who she was, lad,"
said the friend.
"She WAS all right," said Dawes.
Paul was furious. Dawes wiped his golden moustache with
his fingers, sneering.
"Strike me—! One o' that sort?" said the mutual friend.
"Paul, boy, I'm surprised at you. And do you know her,
Baxter?"
"Just a bit, like!"
He winked at the other men.
"Oh well," said Paul, "I'll be going!"
The mutual friend laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
"Nay," he said, "you don't get off as easy as that, my
lad. We've got to have a full account of this business."
"Then get it from Dawes!" he said.
"You shouldn't funk your own deeds, man," remonstrated
the friend.
Then Dawes made a remark which caused Paul to throw half
a glass of beer in his face.
"Oh, Mr. Morel!" cried the barmaid, and she rang the bell
for the "chucker-out".
Dawes spat and rushed for the young man. At that minute a
brawny fellow with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his
trousers tight over his haunches intervened.
"Now, then!" he said, pushing his chest in front of
Dawes.
"Come out!" cried Dawes.
Paul was leaning, white and quivering, against the brass
rail of the bar. He hated Dawes, wished something could
exterminate him at that minute; and at the same time, seeing
the wet hair on the man's forehead, he thought he looked
pathetic. He did not move.
"Come out, you—," said Dawes.
"That's enough, Dawes," cried the barmaid.
"Come on," said the "chucker-out", with kindly
insistence, "you'd better be getting on."
And, by making Dawes edge away from his own close
proximity, he worked him to the door.
"THAT'S the little sod as started it!" cried Dawes,
half-cowed, pointing to Paul Morel.
"Why, what a story, Mr. Dawes!" said the barmaid. "You
know it was you all the time."
Still the "chucker-out" kept thrusting his chest forward
at him, still he kept edging back, until he was in the
doorway and on the steps outside; then he turned round.
"All right," he said, nodding straight at his rival.
Paul had a curious sensation of pity, almost of
affection, mingled with violent hate, for the man. The
coloured door swung to; there was silence in the bar.
"Serve, him, jolly well right!" said the barmaid.
"But it's a nasty thing to get a glass of beer in your
eyes," said the mutual friend.
"I tell you I was glad he did," said the barmaid. "Will
you have another, Mr. Morel?"
She held up Paul's glass questioningly. He nodded.
"He's a man as doesn't care for anything, is Baxter
Dawes," said one.
"Pooh! is he?" said the barmaid. "He's a loud-mouthed
one, he is, and they're never much good. Give me a
pleasant-spoken chap, if you want a devil!"
"Well, Paul, my lad," said the friend, "you'll have to
take care of yourself now for a while."
"You won't have to give him a chance over you, that's
all," said the barmaid.
"Can you box?" asked a friend.
"Not a bit," he answered, still very white.
"I might give you a turn or two," said the friend.
"Thanks, I haven't time."
And presently he took his departure.
"Go along with him, Mr. Jenkinson," whispered the
barmaid, tipping Mr. Jenkinson the wink.
The man nodded, took his hat, said: "Good-night all!"
very heartily, and followed Paul, calling:
"Half a minute, old man. You an' me's going the same
road, I believe."
"Mr. Morel doesn't like it," said the barmaid. "You'll
see, we shan't have him in much more. I'm sorry; he's good
company. And Baxter Dawes wants locking up, that's what he
wants."
Paul would have died rather than his mother should get to
know of this affair. He suffered tortures of humiliation and
self-consciousness. There was now a good deal of his life of
which necessarily he could not speak to his mother. He had a
life apart from her—his sexual life. The rest she still
kept. But he felt he had to conceal something from her, and
it irked him. There was a certain silence between them, and
he felt he had, in that silence, to defend himself against
her; he felt condemned by her. Then sometimes he hated her,
and pulled at her bondage. His life wanted to free itself of
her. It was like a circle where life turned back on itself,
and got no farther. She bore him, loved him, kept him, and
his love turned back into her, so that he could not be free
to go forward with his own life, really love another woman.
At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother's
influence. He did not tell her things; there was a distance
between them.
Clara was happy, almost sure of him. She felt she had at
last got him for herself; and then again came the
uncertainty. He told her jestingly of the affair with her
husband. Her colour came up, her grey eyes flashed.
"That's him to a 'T'," she cried—"like a navvy! He's not
fit for mixing with decent folk."
"Yet you married him," he said.
It made her furious that he reminded her.
"I did!" she cried. "But how was I to know?"
"I think he might have been rather nice," he said.
"You think I made him what he is!" she exclaimed.
"Oh no! he made himself. But there's something about
him—"
Clara looked at her lover closely. There was something in
him she hated, a sort of detached criticism of herself, a
coldness which made her woman's soul harden against him.
"And what are you going to do?" she asked.
"How?"
"About Baxter."
"There's nothing to do, is there?" he replied.
"You can fight him if you have to, I suppose?" she said.
"No; I haven't the least sense of the 'fist'. It's funny.
With most men there's the instinct to clench the fist and
hit. It's not so with me. I should want a knife or a pistol
or something to fight with."
"Then you'd better carry something," she said.
"Nay," he laughed; "I'm not daggeroso."
"But he'll do something to you. You don't know him."
"All right," he said, "we'll see."
"And you'll let him?"
"Perhaps, if I can't help it."
"And if he kills you?" she said.
"I should be sorry, for his sake and mine."
Clara was silent for a moment.
"You DO make me angry!" she exclaimed.
"That's nothing afresh," he laughed.
"But why are you so silly? You don't know him."
"And don't want."
"Yes, but you're not going to let a man do as he likes
with you?"
"What must I do?" he replied, laughing.
"I should carry a revolver," she said. "I'm sure he's
dangerous."
"I might blow my fingers off," he said.
"No; but won't you?" she pleaded.
"No."
"Not anything?"
"No."
"And you'll leave him to—?"
"Yes."
"You are a fool!"
"Fact!"
She set her teeth with anger.
"I could SHAKE you!" she cried, trembling with passion.
"Why?"
"Let a man like HIM do as he likes with you."
"You can go back to him if he triumphs," he said.
"Do you want me to hate you?" she asked.
"Well, I only tell you," he said.
"And YOU say you LOVE me!" she exclaimed, low and
indignant.
"Ought I to slay him to please you?" he said. "But if I
did, see what a hold he'd have over me."
"Do you think I'm a fool!" she exclaimed.
"Not at all. But you don't understand me, my dear."
There was a pause between them.
"But you ought NOT to expose yourself," she pleaded.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"'The man in righteousness arrayed,
The pure and blameless liver,
Needs not the keen Toledo blade,
Nor venom-freighted quiver,'"
he quoted.
She looked at him searchingly.
"I wish I could understand you," she said.
"There's simply nothing to understand," he laughed.
She bowed her head, brooding.
He did not see Dawes for several days; then one morning
as he ran upstairs from the Spiral room he almost collided
with the burly metal-worker.
"What the—!" cried the smith.
"Sorry!" said Paul, and passed on.
"SORRY!" sneered Dawes.
Paul whistled lightly, "Put Me among the Girls".
"I'll stop your whistle, my jockey!" he said.
The other took no notice.
"You're goin' to answer for that job of the other night."
Paul went to his desk in his corner, and turned over the
leaves of the ledger.
"Go and tell Fanny I want order 097, quick!" he said to
his boy.
Dawes stood in the doorway, tall and threatening, looking
at the top of the young man's head.
"Six and five's eleven and seven's one-and-six," Paul
added aloud.
"An' you hear, do you!" said Dawes.
"FIVE AND NINEPENCE!" He wrote a figure. "What's that?"
he said.
"I'm going to show you what it is," said the smith.
The other went on adding the figures aloud.
"Yer crawlin' little—, yer daresn't face me proper!"
Paul quickly snatched the heavy ruler. Dawes started. The
young man ruled some lines in his ledger. The elder man was
infuriated.
"But wait till I light on you, no matter where it is,
I'll settle your hash for a bit, yer little swine!"
"All right," said Paul.
At that the smith started heavily from the doorway. Just
then a whistle piped shrilly. Paul went to the
speaking-tube.
"Yes!" he said, and he listened. "Er—yes!" He listened,
then he laughed. "I'll come down directly. I've got a
visitor just now."
Dawes knew from his tone that he had been speaking to
Clara. He stepped forward.
"Yer little devil!" he said. "I'll visitor you, inside of
two minutes! Think I'm goin' to have YOU whipperty-snappin'
round?"
The other clerks in the warehouse looked up. Paul's
office-boy appeared, holding some white article.
"Fanny says you could have had it last night if you'd let
her know," he said.
"All right," answered Paul, looking at the stocking. "Get
it off." Dawes stood frustrated, helpless with rage. Morel
turned round.
"Excuse me a minute," he said to Dawes, and he would have
run downstairs.
"By God, I'll stop your gallop!" shouted the smith,
seizing him by the arm. He turned quickly.
"Hey! Hey!" cried the office-boy, alarmed.
Thomas Jordan started out of his little glass office, and
came running down the room.
"What's a-matter, what's a-matter?" he said, in his old
man's sharp voice.
"I'm just goin' ter settle this little—, that's all,"
said Dawes desperately.
"What do you mean?" snapped Thomas Jordan.
"What I say," said Dawes, but he hung fire.
Morel was leaning against the counter, ashamed,
half-grinning.
"What's it all about?" snapped Thomas Jordan.
"Couldn't say," said Paul, shaking his head and shrugging
his shoulders.
"Couldn't yer, couldn't yer!" cried Dawes, thrusting
forward his handsome, furious face, and squaring his fist.
"Have you finished?" cried the old man, strutting. "Get
off about your business, and don't come here tipsy in the
morning."
Dawes turned his big frame slowly upon him.
"Tipsy!" he said. "Who's tipsy? I'm no more tipsy than
YOU are!"
"We've heard that song before," snapped the old man. "Now
you get off, and don't be long about it. Comin' HERE with
your rowdying."
The smith looked down contemptuously on his employer. His
hands, large, and grimy, and yet well shaped for his labour,
worked restlessly. Paul remembered they were the hands of
Clara's husband, and a flash of hate went through him.
"Get out before you're turned out!" snapped Thomas
Jordan.
"Why, who'll turn me out?" said Dawes, beginning to
sneer.
Mr. Jordan started, marched up to the smith, waving him
off, thrusting his stout little figure at the man, saying:
"Get off my premises—get off!"
He seized and twitched Dawes's arm.
"Come off!" said the smith, and with a jerk of the elbow
he sent the little manufacturer staggering backwards.
Before anyone could help him, Thomas Jordan had collided
with the flimsy spring-door. It had given way, and let him
crash down the half-dozen steps into Fanny's room. There was
a second of amazement; then men and girls were running.
Dawes stood a moment looking bitterly on the scene, then he
took his departure.
Thomas Jordan was shaken and braised, not otherwise hurt.
He was, however, beside himself with rage. He dismissed
Dawes from his employment, and summoned him for assault.
At the trial Paul Morel had to give evidence. Asked how
the trouble began, he said:
"Dawes took occasion to insult Mrs. Dawes and me because
I accompanied her to the theatre one evening; then I threw
some beer at him, and he wanted his revenge."
"Cherchez la femme!" smiled the magistrate.
The case was dismissed after the magistrate had told
Dawes he thought him a skunk.
"You gave the case away," snapped Mr. Jordan to Paul.
"I don't think I did," replied the latter. "Besides, you
didn't really want a conviction, did you?"
"What do you think I took the case up for?"
"Well," said Paul, "I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing."
Clara was also very angry.
"Why need MY name have been dragged in?" she said.
"Better speak it openly than leave it to be whispered."
"There was no need for anything at all," she declared.
"We are none the poorer," he said indifferently.
"YOU may not be," she said.
"And you?" he asked.
"I need never have been mentioned."
"I'm sorry," he said; but he did not sound sorry.
He told himself easily: "She will come round." And she
did.
He told his mother about the fall of Mr. Jordan and the
trial of Dawes. Mrs. Morel watched him closely.
"And what do you think of it all?" she asked him.
"I think he's a fool," he said.
But he was very uncomfortable, nevertheless.
"Have you ever considered where it will end?" his mother
said.
"No," he answered; "things work out of themselves."
"They do, in a way one doesn't like, as a rule," said his
mother.
"And then one has to put up with them," he said.
"You'll find you're not as good at 'putting up' as you
imagine," she said.
He went on working rapidly at his design.
"Do you ever ask HER opinion?" she said at length.
"What of?"
"Of you, and the whole thing."
"I don't care what her opinion of me is. She's fearfully
in love with me, but it's not very deep."
"But quite as deep as your feeling for her."
He looked up at his mother curiously.
"Yes," he said. "You know, mother, I think there must be
something the matter with me, that I CAN'T love. When she's
there, as a rule, I DO love her. Sometimes, when I see her
just as THE WOMAN, I love her, mother; but then, when she
talks and criticises, I often don't listen to her."
"Yet she's as much sense as Miriam."
"Perhaps; and I love her better than Miriam. But WHY
don't they hold me?"
The last question was almost a lamentation. His mother
turned away her face, sat looking across the room, very
quiet, grave, with something of renunciation.
"But you wouldn't want to marry Clara?" she said.
"No; at first perhaps I would. But why—why don't I want
to marry her or anybody? I feel sometimes as if I wronged my
women, mother."
"How wronged them, my son?"
"I don't know."
He went on painting rather despairingly; he had touched
the quick of the trouble.
"And as for wanting to marry," said his mother, "there's
plenty of time yet."
"But no, mother. I even love Clara, and I did Miriam; but
to GIVE myself to them in marriage I couldn't. I couldn't
belong to them. They seem to want ME, and I can't ever give
it them."
"You haven't met the right woman."
"And I never shall meet the right woman while you live,"
he said.
She was very quiet. Now she began to feel again tired, as
if she were done.
"We'll see, my son," she answered.
The feeling that things were going in a circle made him
mad.
Clara was, indeed, passionately in love with him, and he
with her, as far as passion went. In the daytime he forgot
her a good deal. She was working in the same building, but
he was not aware of it. He was busy, and her existence was
of no matter to him. But all the time she was in her Spiral
room she had a sense that he was upstairs, a physical sense
of his person in the same building. Every second she
expected him to come through the door, and when he came it
was a shock to her. But he was often short and offhand with
her. He gave her his directions in an official manner,
keeping her at bay. With what wits she had left she listened
to him. She dared not misunderstand or fail to remember, but
it was a cruelty to her. She wanted to touch his chest. She
knew exactly how his breast was shapen under the waistcoat,
and she wanted to touch it. It maddened her to hear his
mechanical voice giving orders about the work. She wanted to
break through the sham of it, smash the trivial coating of
business which covered him with hardness, get at the man
again; but she was afraid, and before she could feel one
touch of his warmth he was gone, and she ached again.
He knew that she was dreary every evening she did not see
him, so he gave her a good deal of his time. The days were
often a misery to her, but the evenings and the nights were
usually a bliss to them both. Then they were silent. For
hours they sat together, or walked together in the dark, and
talked only a few, almost meaningless words. But he had her
hand in his, and her bosom left its warmth in his chest,
making him feel whole.
One evening they were walking down by the canal, and
something was troubling him. She knew she had not got him.
All the time he whistled softly and persistently to himself.
She listened, feeling she could learn more from his
whistling than from his speech. It was a sad dissatisfied
tune—a tune that made her feel he would not stay with her.
She walked on in silence. When they came to the swing bridge
he sat down on the great pole, looking at the stars in the
water. He was a long way from her. She had been thinking.
"Will you always stay at Jordan's?" she asked.
"No," he answered without reflecting. "No; I s'll leave
Nottingham and go abroad—soon."
"Go abroad! What for?"
"I dunno! I feel restless."
"But what shall you do?"
"I shall have to get some steady designing work, and some
sort of sale for my pictures first," he said. "I am
gradually making my way. I know I am."
"And when do you think you'll go?"
"I don't know. I shall hardly go for long, while there's
my mother."
"You couldn't leave her?"
"Not for long."
She looked at the stars in the black water. They lay very
white and staring. It was an agony to know he would leave
her, but it was almost an agony to have him near her.
"And if you made a nice lot of money, what would you do?"
she asked.
"Go somewhere in a pretty house near London with my
mother."
"I see."
There was a long pause.
"I could still come and see you," he said. "I don't know.
Don't ask me what I should do; I don't know."
There was a silence. The stars shuddered and broke upon
the water. There came a breath of wind. He went suddenly to
her, and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't ask me anything about the future," he said
miserably. "I don't know anything. Be with me now, will you,
no matter what it is?"
And she took him in her arms. After all, she was a
married woman, and she had no right even to what he gave
her. He needed her badly. She had him in her arms, and he
was miserable. With her warmth she folded him over, consoled
him, loved him. She would let the moment stand for itself.
After a moment he lifted his head as if he wanted to
speak.
"Clara," he said, struggling.
She caught him passionately to her, pressed his head down
on her breast with her hand. She could not bear the
suffering in his voice. She was afraid in her soul. He might
have anything of her—anything; but she did not want to KNOW.
She felt she could not bear it. She wanted him to be soothed
upon her—soothed. She stood clasping him and caressing him,
and he was something unknown to her—something almost
uncanny. She wanted to soothe him into forgetfulness.
And soon the struggle went down in his soul, and he
forgot. But then Clara was not there for him, only a woman,
warm, something he loved and almost worshipped, there in the
dark. But it was not Clara, and she submitted to him. The
naked hunger and inevitability of his loving her, something
strong and blind and ruthless in its primitiveness, made the
hour almost terrible to her. She knew how stark and alone he
was, and she felt it was great that he came to her; and she
took him simply because his need was bigger either than her
or him, and her soul was still within her. She did this for
him in his need, even if he left her, for she loved him.
All the while the peewits were screaming in the field.
When he came to, he wondered what was near his eyes, curving
and strong with life in the dark, and what voice it was
speaking. Then he realised it was the grass, and the peewit
was calling. The warmth was Clara's breathing heaving. He
lifted his head, and looked into her eyes. They were dark
and shining and strange, life wild at the source staring
into his life, stranger to him, yet meeting him; and he put
his face down on her throat, afraid. What was she? A strong,
strange, wild life, that breathed with his in the darkness
through this hour. It was all so much bigger than themselves
that he was hushed. They had met, and included in their
meeting the thrust of the manifold grass stems, the cry of
the peewit, the wheel of the stars.
When they stood up they saw other lovers stealing down
the opposite hedge. It seemed natural they were there; the
night contained them.
And after such an evening they both were very still,
having known the immensity of passion. They felt small,
half-afraid, childish and wondering, like Adam and Eve when
they lost their innocence and realised the magnificence of
the power which drove them out of Paradise and across the
great night and the great day of humanity. It was for each
of them an initiation and a satisfaction. To know their own
nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood which
carried them always, gave them rest within themselves. If so
great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify
them altogether with itself, so that they knew they were
only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass
blade its little height, and every tree, and living thing,
then why fret about themselves? They could let themselves be
carried by life, and they felt a sort of peace each in the
other. There was a verification which they had had together.
Nothing could nullify it, nothing could take it away; it was
almost their belief in life.
But Clara was not satisfied. Something great was there,
she knew; something great enveloped her. But it did not keep
her. In the morning it was not the same. They had KNOWN, but
she could not keep the moment. She wanted it again; she
wanted something permanent. She had not realised fully. She
thought it was he whom she wanted. He was not safe to her.
This that had been between them might never be again; he
might leave her. She had not got him; she was not satisfied.
She had been there, but she had not gripped the—the
something—she knew not what—which she was mad to have.
In the morning he had considerable peace, and was happy
in himself. It seemed almost as if he had known the baptism
of fire in passion, and it left him at rest. But it was not
Clara. It was something that happened because of her, but it
was not her. They were scarcely any nearer each other. It
was as if they had been blind agents of a great force.
When she saw him that day at the factory her heart melted
like a drop of fire. It was his body, his brows. The drop of
fire grew more intense in her breast; she must hold him. But
he, very quiet, very subdued this morning, went on giving
his instruction. She followed him into the dark, ugly
basement, and lifted her arms to him. He kissed her, and the
intensity of passion began to burn him again. Somebody was
at the door. He ran upstairs; she returned to her room,
moving as if in a trance.
After that the fire slowly went down. He felt more and
more that his experience had been impersonal, and not Clara.
He loved her. There was a big tenderness, as after a strong
emotion they had known together; but it was not she who
could keep his soul steady. He had wanted her to be
something she could not be.
And she was mad with desire of him. She could not see him
without touching him. In the factory, as he talked to her
about Spiral hose, she ran her hand secretly along his side.
She followed him out into the basement for a quick kiss; her
eyes, always mute and yearning, full of unrestrained
passion, she kept fixed on his. He was afraid of her, lest
she should too flagrantly give herself away before the other
girls. She invariably waited for him at dinnertime for him
to embrace her before she went. He felt as if she were
helpless, almost a burden to him, and it irritated him.
"But what do you always want to be kissing and embracing
for?" he said. "Surely there's a time for everything."
She looked up at him, and the hate came into her eyes.
"DO I always want to be kissing you?" she said.
"Always, even if I come to ask you about the work. I
don't want anything to do with love when I'm at work. Work's
work—"
"And what is love?" she asked. "Has it to have special
hours?"
"Yes; out of work hours."
"And you'll regulate it according to Mr. Jordan's closing
time?"
"Yes; and according to the freedom from business of any
sort."
"It is only to exist in spare time?"
"That's all, and not always then—not the kissing sort of
love."
"And that's all you think of it?"
"It's quite enough."
"I'm glad you think so."
And she was cold to him for some time—she hated him; and
while she was cold and contemptuous, he was uneasy till she
had forgiven him again. But when they started afresh they
were not any nearer. He kept her because he never satisfied
her.
In the spring they went together to the seaside. They had
rooms at a little cottage near Theddlethorpe, and lived as
man and wife. Mrs. Radford sometimes went with them.
It was known in Nottingham that Paul Morel and Mrs. Dawes
were going together, but as nothing was very obvious, and
Clara always a solitary person, and he seemed so simple and
innocent, it did not make much difference.
He loved the Lincolnshire coast, and she loved the sea.
In the early morning they often went out together to bathe.
The grey of the dawn, the far, desolate reaches of the
fenland smitten with winter, the sea-meadows rank with
herbage, were stark enough to rejoice his soul. As they
stepped on to the highroad from their plank bridge, and
looked round at the endless monotony of levels, the land a
little darker than the sky, the sea sounding small beyond
the sandhills, his heart filled strong with the sweeping
relentlessness of life. She loved him then. He was solitary
and strong, and his eyes had a beautiful light.
They shuddered with cold; then he raced her down the road
to the green turf bridge. She could run well. Her colour
soon came, her throat was bare, her eyes shone. He loved her
for being so luxuriously heavy, and yet so quick. Himself
was light; she went with a beautiful rush. They grew warm,
and walked hand in hand.
A flush came into the sky, the wan moon, half-way down
the west, sank into insignificance. On the shadowy land
things began to take life, plants with great leaves became
distinct. They came through a pass in the big, cold
sandhills on to the beach. The long waste of foreshore lay
moaning under the dawn and the sea; the ocean was a flat
dark strip with a white edge. Over the gloomy sea the sky
grew red. Quickly the fire spread among the clouds and
scattered them. Crimson burned to orange, orange to dull
gold, and in a golden glitter the sun came up, dribbling
fierily over the waves in little splashes, as if someone had
gone along and the light had spilled from her pail as she
walked.
The breakers ran down the shore in long, hoarse strokes.
Tiny seagulls, like specks of spray, wheeled above the line
of surf. Their crying seemed larger than they. Far away the
coast reached out, and melted into the morning, the tussocky
sandhills seemed to sink to a level with the beach.
Mablethorpe was tiny on their right. They had alone the
space of all this level shore, the sea, and the upcoming
sun, the faint noise of the waters, the sharp crying of the
gulls.
They had a warm hollow in the sandhills where the wind
did not come. He stood looking out to sea.
"It's very fine," he said.
"Now don't get sentimental," she said.
It irritated her to see him standing gazing at the sea,
like a solitary and poetic person. He laughed. She quickly
undressed.
"There are some fine waves this morning," she said
triumphantly.
She was a better swimmer than he; he stood idly watching
her.
"Aren't you coming?" she said.
"In a minute," he answered.
She was white and velvet skinned, with heavy shoulders. A
little wind, coming from the sea, blew across her body and
ruffled her hair.
The morning was of a lovely limpid gold colour. Veils of
shadow seemed to be drifting away on the north and the
south. Clara stood shrinking slightly from the touch of the
wind, twisting her hair. The sea-grass rose behind the white
stripped woman. She glanced at the sea, then looked at him.
He was watching her with dark eyes which she loved and could
not understand. She hugged her breasts between her arms,
cringing, laughing:
"Oo, it will be so cold!" she said.
He bent forward and kissed her, held her suddenly close,
and kissed her again. She stood waiting. He looked into her
eyes, then away at the pale sands.
"Go, then!" he said quietly.
She flung her arms round his neck, drew him against her,
kissed him passionately, and went, saying:
"But you'll come in?"
"In a minute."
She went plodding heavily over the sand that was soft as
velvet. He, on the sandhills, watched the great pale coast
envelop her. She grew smaller, lost proportion, seemed only
like a large white bird toiling forward.
"Not much more than a big white pebble on the beach, not
much more than a clot of foam being blown and rolled over
the sand," he said to himself.
She seemed to move very slowly across the vast sounding
shore. As he watched, he lost her. She was dazzled out of
sight by the sunshine. Again he saw her, the merest white
speck moving against the white, muttering sea-edge.
"Look how little she is!" he said to himself. "She's lost
like a grain of sand in the beach—just a concentrated speck
blown along, a tiny white foam-bubble, almost nothing among
the morning. Why does she absorb me?"
The morning was altogether uninterrupted: she was gone in
the water. Far and wide the beach, the sandhills with their
blue marrain, the shining water, glowed together in immense,
unbroken solitude.
"What is she, after all?" he said to himself. "Here's the
seacoast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is
she, fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble
of foam. What does she mean to me, after all? She represents
something, like a bubble of foam represents the sea. But
what is she? It's not her I care for."
Then, startled by his own unconscious thoughts, that
seemed to speak so distinctly that all the morning could
hear, he undressed and ran quickly down the sands. She was
watching for him. Her arm flashed up to him, she heaved on a
wave, subsided, her shoulders in a pool of liquid silver. He
jumped through the breakers, and in a moment her hand was on
his shoulder.
He was a poor swimmer, and could not stay long in the
water. She played round him in triumph, sporting with her
superiority, which he begrudged her. The sunshine stood deep
and fine on the water. They laughed in the sea for a minute
or two, then raced each other back to the sandhills.
When they were drying themselves, panting heavily, he
watched her laughing, breathless face, her bright shoulders,
her breasts that swayed and made him frightened as she
rubbed them, and he thought again:
"But she is magnificent, and even bigger than the morning
and the sea. Is she—? Is she—"
She, seeing his dark eyes fixed on her, broke off from
her drying with a laugh.
"What are you looking at?" she said.
"You," he answered, laughing.
Her eyes met his, and in a moment he was kissing her
white "goose-fleshed" shoulder, and thinking:
"What is she? What is she?"
She loved him in the morning. There was something
detached, hard, and elemental about his kisses then, as if
he were only conscious of his own will, not in the least of
her and her wanting him.
Later in the day he went out sketching.
"You," he said to her, "go with your mother to Sutton. I
am so dull."
She stood and looked at him. He knew she wanted to come
with him, but he preferred to be alone. She made him feel
imprisoned when she was there, as if he could not get a free
deep breath, as if there were something on top of him. She
felt his desire to be free of her.
In the evening he came back to her. They walked down the
shore in the darkness, then sat for a while in the shelter
of the sandhills.
"It seems," she said, as they stared over the darkness of
the sea, where no light was to be seen—"it seemed as if you
only loved me at night—as if you didn't love me in the
daytime."
He ran the cold sand through his fingers, feeling guilty
under the accusation.
"The night is free to you," he replied. "In the daytime I
want to be by myself."
"But why?" she said. "Why, even now, when we are on this
short holiday?"
"I don't know. Love-making stifles me in the daytime."
"But it needn't be always love-making," she said.
"It always is," he answered, "when you and I are
together."
She sat feeling very bitter.
"Do you ever want to marry me?" he asked curiously.
"Do you me?" she replied.
"Yes, yes; I should like us to have children," he
answered slowly.
She sat with her head bent, fingering the sand.
"But you don't really want a divorce from Baxter, do
you?" he said.
It was some minutes before she replied.
"No," she said, very deliberately; "I don't think I do."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Do you feel as if you belonged to him?"
"No; I don't think so."
"What, then?"
"I think he belongs to me," she replied.
He was silent for some minutes, listening to the wind
blowing over the hoarse, dark sea.
"And you never really intended to belong to ME?" he said.
"Yes, I do belong to you," she answered.
"No," he said; "because you don't want to be divorced."
It was a knot they could not untie, so they left it, took
what they could get, and what they could not attain they
ignored.
"I consider you treated Baxter rottenly," he said another
time.
He half-expected Clara to answer him, as his mother
would: "You consider your own affairs, and don't know so
much about other people's." But she took him seriously,
almost to his own surprise.
"Why?" she said.
"I suppose you thought he was a lily of the valley, and
so you put him in an appropriate pot, and tended him
according. You made up your mind he was a lily of the valley
and it was no good his being a cow-parsnip. You wouldn't
have it."
"I certainly never imagined him a lily of the valley."
"You imagined him something he wasn't. That's just what a
woman is. She thinks she knows what's good for a man, and
she's going to see he gets it; and no matter if he's
starving, he may sit and whistle for what he needs, while
she's got him, and is giving him what's good for him."
"And what are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm thinking what tune I shall whistle," he laughed.
And instead of boxing his ears, she considered him in
earnest.
"You think I want to give you what's good for you?" she
asked.
"I hope so; but love should give a sense of freedom, not
of prison. Miriam made me feel tied up like a donkey to a
stake. I must feed on her patch, and nowhere else. It's
sickening!"
"And would YOU let a WOMAN do as she likes?"
"Yes; I'll see that she likes to love me. If she
doesn't—well, I don't hold her."
"If you were as wonderful as you say—," replied Clara.
"I should be the marvel I am," he laughed.
There was a silence in which they hated each other,
though they laughed.
"Love's a dog in a manger," he said.
"And which of us is the dog?" she asked.
"Oh well, you, of course."
So there went on a battle between them. She knew she
never fully had him. Some part, big and vital in him, she
had no hold over; nor did she ever try to get it, or even to
realise what it was. And he knew in some way that she held
herself still as Mrs. Dawes. She did not love Dawes, never
had loved him; but she believed he loved her, at least
depended on her. She felt a certain surety about him that
she never felt with Paul Morel. Her passion for the young
man had filled her soul, given her a certain satisfaction,
eased her of her self-mistrust, her doubt. Whatever else she
was, she was inwardly assured. It was almost as if she had
gained HERSELF, and stood now distinct and complete. She had
received her confirmation; but she never believed that her
life belonged to Paul Morel, nor his to her. They would
separate in the end, and the rest of her life would be an
ache after him. But at any rate, she knew now, she was sure
of herself. And the same could almost be said of him.
Together they had received the baptism of life, each through
the other; but now their missions were separate. Where he
wanted to go she could not come with him. They would have to
part sooner or later. Even if they married, and were
faithful to each other, still he would have to leave her, go
on alone, and she would only have to attend to him when he
came home. But it was not possible. Each wanted a mate to go
side by side with.
Clara had gone to live with her mother upon Mapperley
Plains. One evening, as Paul and she were walking along
Woodborough Road, they met Dawes. Morel knew something about
the bearing of the man approaching, but he was absorbed in
his thinking at the moment, so that only his artist's eye
watched the form of the stranger. Then he suddenly turned to
Clara with a laugh, and put his hand on her shoulder,
saying, laughing:
"But we walk side by side, and yet I'm in London arguing
with an imaginary Orpen; and where are you?"
At that instant Dawes passed, almost touching Morel. The
young man glanced, saw the dark brown eyes burning, full of
hate and yet tired.
"Who was that?" he asked of Clara.
"It was Baxter," she replied.
Paul took his hand from her shoulder and glanced round;
then he saw again distinctly the man's form as it approached
him. Dawes still walked erect, with his fine shoulders flung
back, and his face lifted; but there was a furtive look in
his eyes that gave one the impression he was trying to get
unnoticed past every person he met, glancing suspiciously to
see what they thought of him. And his hands seemed to be
wanting to hide. He wore old clothes, the trousers were torn
at the knee, and the handkerchief tied round his throat was
dirty; but his cap was still defiantly over one eye. As she
saw him, Clara felt guilty. There was a tiredness and
despair on his face that made her hate him, because it hurt
her.
"He looks shady," said Paul.
But the note of pity in his voice reproached her, and
made her feel hard.
"His true commonness comes out," she answered.
"Do you hate him?" he asked.
"You talk," she said, "about the cruelty of women; I wish
you knew the cruelty of men in their brute force. They
simply don't know that the woman exists."
"Don't I?" he said.
"No," she answered.
"Don't I know you exist?"
"About ME you know nothing," she said bitterly—"about
ME!"
"No more than Baxter knew?" he asked.
"Perhaps not as much."
He felt puzzled, and helpless, and angry. There she
walked unknown to him, though they had been through such
experience together.
"But you know ME pretty well," he said.
She did not answer.
"Did you know Baxter as well as you know me?" he asked.
"He wouldn't let me," she said.
"And I have let you know me?"
"It's what men WON'T let you do. They won't let you get
really near to them," she said.
"And haven't I let you?"
"Yes," she answered slowly; "but you've never come near
to me. You can't come out of yourself, you can't. Baxter
could do that better than you."
He walked on pondering. He was angry with her for
preferring Baxter to him.
"You begin to value Baxter now you've not got him," he
said.
"No; I can only see where he was different from you."
But he felt she had a grudge against him.
One evening, as they were coming home over the fields,
she startled him by asking:
"Do you think it's worth it—the—the sex part?"
"The act of loving, itself?"
"Yes; is it worth anything to you?"
"But how can you separate it?" he said. "It's the
culmination of everything. All our intimacy culminates
then."
"Not for me," she said.
He was silent. A flash of hate for her came up. After
all, she was dissatisfied with him, even there, where he
thought they fulfilled each other. But he believed her too
implicitly.
"I feel," she continued slowly, "as if I hadn't got you,
as if all of you weren't there, and as if it weren't ME you
were taking—"
"Who, then?"
"Something just for yourself. It has been fine, so that I
daren't think of it. But is it ME you want, or is it IT?"
He again felt guilty. Did he leave Clara out of count,
and take simply women? But he thought that was splitting a
hair.
"When I had Baxter, actually had him, then I DID feel as
if I had all of him," she said.
"And it was better?" he asked.
"Yes, yes; it was more whole. I don't say you haven't
given me more than he ever gave me."
"Or could give you."
"Yes, perhaps; but you've never given me yourself."
He knitted his brows angrily.
"If I start to make love to you," he said, "I just go
like a leaf down the wind."
"And leave me out of count," she said.
"And then is it nothing to you?" he asked, almost rigid
with chagrin.
"It's something; and sometimes you have carried me
away—right away—I know—and—I reverence you for it—but—"
"Don't 'but' me," he said, kissing her quickly, as a fire
ran through him.
She submitted, and was silent.
It was true as he said. As a rule, when he started
love-making, the emotion was strong enough to carry with it
everything—reason, soul, blood—in a great sweep, like the
Trent carries bodily its back-swirls and intertwinings,
noiselessly. Gradually the little criticisms, the little
sensations, were lost, thought also went, everything borne
along in one flood. He became, not a man with a mind, but a
great instinct. His hands were like creatures, living; his
limbs, his body, were all life and consciousness, subject to
no will of his, but living in themselves. Just as he was, so
it seemed the vigorous, wintry stars were strong also with
life. He and they struck with the same pulse of fire, and
the same joy of strength which held the bracken-frond stiff
near his eyes held his own body firm. It was as if he, and
the stars, and the dark herbage, and Clara were licked up in
an immense tongue of flame, which tore onwards and upwards.
Everything rushed along in living beside him; everything was
still, perfect in itself, along with him. This wonderful
stillness in each thing in itself, while it was being borne
along in a very ecstasy of living, seemed the highest point
of bliss.
And Clara knew this held him to her, so she trusted
altogether to the passion. It, however, failed her very
often. They did not often reach again the height of that
once when the peewits had called. Gradually, some mechanical
effort spoilt their loving, or, when they had splendid
moments, they had them separately, and not so
satisfactorily. So often he seemed merely to be running on
alone; often they realised it had been a failure, not what
they had wanted. He left her, knowing THAT evening had only
made a little split between them. Their loving grew more
mechanical, without the marvellous glamour. Gradually they
began to introduce novelties, to get back some of the
feeling of satisfaction. They would be very near, almost
dangerously near to the river, so that the black water ran
not far from his face, and it gave a little thrill; or they
loved sometimes in a little hollow below the fence of the
path where people were passing occasionally, on the edge of
the town, and they heard footsteps coming, almost felt the
vibration of the tread, and they heard what the passersby
said—strange little things that were never intended to be
heard. And afterwards each of them was rather ashamed, and
these things caused a distance between the two of them. He
began to despise her a little, as if she had merited it!
One night he left her to go to Daybrook Station over the
fields. It was very dark, with an attempt at snow, although
the spring was so far advanced. Morel had not much time; he
plunged forward. The town ceases almost abruptly on the edge
of a steep hollow; there the houses with their yellow lights
stand up against the darkness. He went over the stile, and
dropped quickly into the hollow of the fields. Under the
orchard one warm window shone in Swineshead Farm. Paul
glanced round. Behind, the houses stood on the brim of the
dip, black against the sky, like wild beasts glaring
curiously with yellow eyes down into the darkness. It was
the town that seemed savage and uncouth, glaring on the
clouds at the back of him. Some creature stirred under the
willows of the farm pond. It was too dark to distinguish
anything.
He was close up to the next stile before he saw a dark
shape leaning against it. The man moved aside.
"Good-evening!" he said.
"Good-evening!" Morel answered, not noticing.
"Paul Morel?" said the man.
Then he knew it was Dawes. The man stopped his way.
"I've got yer, have I?" he said awkwardly.
"I shall miss my train," said Paul.
He could see nothing of Dawes's face. The man's teeth
seemed to chatter as he talked.
"You're going to get it from me now," said Dawes.
Morel attempted to move forward; the other man stepped in
front of him.
"Are yer goin' to take that top-coat off," he said, "or
are you goin' to lie down to it?"
Paul was afraid the man was mad.
"But," he said, "I don't know how to fight."
"All right, then," answered Dawes, and before the younger
man knew where he was, he was staggering backwards from a
blow across the face.
The whole night went black. He tore off his overcoat and
coat, dodging a blow, and flung the garments over Dawes. The
latter swore savagely. Morel, in his shirt-sleeves, was now
alert and furious. He felt his whole body unsheath itself
like a claw. He could not fight, so he would use his wits.
The other man became more distinct to him; he could see
particularly the shirt-breast. Dawes stumbled over Paul's
coats, then came rushing forward. The young man's mouth was
bleeding. It was the other man's mouth he was dying to get
at, and the desire was anguish in its strength. He stepped
quickly through the stile, and as Dawes was coming through
after him, like a flash he got a blow in over the other's
mouth. He shivered with pleasure. Dawes advanced slowly,
spitting. Paul was afraid; he moved round to get to the
stile again. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, came a great
blow against his ear, that sent him falling helpless
backwards. He heard Dawes's heavy panting, like a wild
beast's, then came a kick on the knee, giving him such agony
that he got up and, quite blind, leapt clean under his
enemy's guard. He felt blows and kicks, but they did not
hurt. He hung on to the bigger man like a wild cat, till at
last Dawes fell with a crash, losing his presence of mind.
Paul went down with him. Pure instinct brought his hands to
the man's neck, and before Dawes, in frenzy and agony, could
wrench him free, he had got his fists twisted in the scarf
and his knuckles dug in the throat of the other man. He was
a pure instinct, without reason or feeling. His body, hard
and wonderful in itself, cleaved against the struggling body
of the other man; not a muscle in him relaxed. He was quite
unconscious, only his body had taken upon itself to kill
this other man. For himself, he had neither feeling nor
reason. He lay pressed hard against his adversary, his body
adjusting itself to its one pure purpose of choking the
other man, resisting exactly at the right moment, with
exactly the right amount of strength, the struggles of the
other, silent, intent, unchanging, gradually pressing its
knuckles deeper, feeling the struggles of the other body
become wilder and more frenzied. Tighter and tighter grew
his body, like a screw that is gradually increasing in
pressure, till something breaks.
Then suddenly he relaxed, full of wonder and misgiving.
Dawes had been yielding. Morel felt his body flame with
pain, as he realised what he was doing; he was all
bewildered. Dawes's struggles suddenly renewed themselves in
a furious spasm. Paul's hands were wrenched, torn out of the
scarf in which they were knotted, and he was flung away,
helpless. He heard the horrid sound of the other's gasping,
but he lay stunned; then, still dazed, he felt the blows of
the other's feet, and lost consciousness.
Dawes, grunting with pain like a beast, was kicking the
prostrate body of his rival. Suddenly the whistle of the
train shrieked two fields away. He turned round and glared
suspiciously. What was coming? He saw the lights of the
train draw across his vision. It seemed to him people were
approaching. He made off across the field into Nottingham,
and dimly in his consciousness as he went, he felt on his
foot the place where his boot had knocked against one of the
lad's bones. The knock seemed to re-echo inside him; he
hurried to get away from it.
Morel gradually came to himself. He knew where he was and
what had happened, but he did not want to move. He lay
still, with tiny bits of snow tickling his face. It was
pleasant to lie quite, quite still. The time passed. It was
the bits of snow that kept rousing him when he did not want
to be roused. At last his will clicked into action.
"I mustn't lie here," he said; "it's silly."
But still he did not move.
"I said I was going to get up," he repeated. "Why don't
I?"
And still it was some time before he had sufficiently
pulled himself together to stir; then gradually he got up.
Pain made him sick and dazed, but his brain was clear.
Reeling, he groped for his coats and got them on, buttoning
his overcoat up to his ears. It was some time before he
found his cap. He did not know whether his face was still
bleeding. Walking blindly, every step making him sick with
pain, he went back to the pond and washed his face and
hands. The icy water hurt, but helped to bring him back to
himself. He crawled back up the hill to the tram. He wanted
to get to his mother—he must get to his mother—that was his
blind intention. He covered his face as much as he could,
and struggled sickly along. Continually the ground seemed to
fall away from him as he walked, and he felt himself
dropping with a sickening feeling into space; so, like a
nightmare, he got through with the journey home.
Everybody was in bed. He looked at himself. His face was
discoloured and smeared with blood, almost like a dead man's
face. He washed it, and went to bed. The night went by in
delirium. In the morning he found his mother looking at him.
Her blue eyes—they were all he wanted to see. She was there;
he was in her hands.
"It's not much, mother," he said. "It was Baxter Dawes."
"Tell me where it hurts you," she said quietly.
"I don't know—my shoulder. Say it was a bicycle accident,
mother."
He could not move his arm. Presently Minnie, the little
servant, came upstairs with some tea.
"Your mother's nearly frightened me out of my
wits—fainted away," she said.
He felt he could not bear it. His mother nursed him; he
told her about it.
"And now I should have done with them all," she said
quietly.
"I will, mother."
She covered him up.
"And don't think about it," she said—"only try to go to
sleep. The doctor won't be here till eleven."
He had a dislocated shoulder, and the second day acute
bronchitis set in. His mother was pale as death now, and
very thin. She would sit and look at him, then away into
space. There was something between them that neither dared
mention. Clara came to see him. Afterwards he said to his
mother:
"She makes me tired, mother."
"Yes; I wish she wouldn't come," Mrs. Morel replied.
Another day Miriam came, but she seemed almost like a
stranger to him.
"You know, I don't care about them, mother," he said.
"I'm afraid you don't, my son," she replied sadly.
It was given out everywhere that it was a bicycle
accident. Soon he was able to go to work again, but now
there was a constant sickness and gnawing at his heart. He
went to Clara, but there seemed, as it were, nobody there.
He could not work. He and his mother seemed almost to avoid
each other. There was some secret between them which they
could not bear. He was not aware of it. He only knew that
his life seemed unbalanced, as if it were going to smash
into pieces.
Clara did not know what was the matter with him. She
realised that he seemed unaware of her. Even when he came to
her he seemed unaware of her; always he was somewhere else.
She felt she was clutching for him, and he was somewhere
else. It tortured her, and so she tortured him. For a month
at a time she kept him at arm's length. He almost hated her,
and was driven to her in spite of himself. He went mostly
into the company of men, was always at the George or the
White Horse. His mother was ill, distant, quiet, shadowy. He
was terrified of something; he dared not look at her. Her
eyes seemed to grow darker, her face more waxen; still she
dragged about at her work.
At Whitsuntide he said he would go to Blackpool for four
days with his friend Newton. The latter was a big, jolly
fellow, with a touch of the bounder about him. Paul said his
mother must go to Sheffield to stay a week with Annie, who
lived there. Perhaps the change would do her good. Mrs.
Morel was attending a woman's doctor in Nottingham. He said
her heart and her digestion were wrong. She consented to go
to Sheffield, though she did not want to; but now she would
do everything her son wished of her. Paul said he would come
for her on the fifth day, and stay also in Sheffield till
the holiday was up. It was agreed.
The two young men set off gaily for Blackpool. Mrs. Morel
was quite lively as Paul kissed her and left her. Once at
the station, he forgot everything. Four days were clear—not
an anxiety, not a thought. The two young men simply enjoyed
themselves. Paul was like another man. None of himself
remained—no Clara, no Miriam, no mother that fretted him. He
wrote to them all, and long letters to his mother; but they
were jolly letters that made her laugh. He was having a good
time, as young fellows will in a place like Blackpool. And
underneath it all was a shadow for her.
Paul was very gay, excited at the thought of staying with
his mother in Sheffield. Newton was to spend the day with
them. Their train was late. Joking, laughing, with their
pipes between their teeth, the young men swung their bags on
to the tram-car. Paul had bought his mother a little collar
of real lace that he wanted to see her wear, so that he
could tease her about it.
Annie lived in a nice house, and had a little maid. Paul
ran gaily up the steps. He expected his mother laughing in
the hall, but it was Annie who opened to him. She seemed
distant to him. He stood a second in dismay. Annie let him
kiss her cheek.
"Is my mother ill?" he said.
"Yes; she's not very well. Don't upset her."
"Is she in bed?"
"Yes."
And then the queer feeling went over him, as if all the
sunshine had gone out of him, and it was all shadow. He
dropped the bag and ran upstairs. Hesitating, he opened the
door. His mother sat up in bed, wearing a dressing-gown of
old-rose colour. She looked at him almost as if she were
ashamed of herself, pleading to him, humble. He saw the ashy
look about her.
"Mother!" he said.
"I thought you were never coming," she answered gaily.
But he only fell on his knees at the bedside, and buried
his face in the bedclothes, crying in agony, and saying:
"Mother—mother—mother!"
She stroked his hair slowly with her thin hand.
"Don't cry," she said. "Don't cry—it's nothing."
But he felt as if his blood was melting into tears, and
he cried in terror and pain.
"Don't—don't cry," his mother faltered.
Slowly she stroked his hair. Shocked out of himself, he
cried, and the tears hurt in every fibre of his body.
Suddenly he stopped, but he dared not lift his face out of
the bedclothes.
"You ARE late. Where have you been?" his mother asked.
"The train was late," he replied, muffled in the sheet.
"Yes; that miserable Central! Is Newton come?"
"Yes."
"I'm sure you must be hungry, and they've kept dinner
waiting."
With a wrench he looked up at her.
"What is it, mother?" he asked brutally.
She averted her eyes as she answered:
"Only a bit of a tumour, my boy. You needn't trouble.
It's been there—the lump has—a long time."
Up came the tears again. His mind was clear and hard, but
his body was crying.
"Where?" he said.
She put her hand on her side.
"Here. But you know they can sweal a tumour away."
He stood feeling dazed and helpless, like a child. He
thought perhaps it was as she said. Yes; he reassured
himself it was so. But all the while his blood and his body
knew definitely what it was. He sat down on the bed, and
took her hand. She had never had but the one ring—her
wedding-ring.
"When were you poorly?" he asked.
"It was yesterday it began," she answered submissively.
"Pains?"
"Yes; but not more than I've often had at home. I believe
Dr. Ansell is an alarmist."
"You ought not to have travelled alone," he said, to
himself more than to her.
"As if that had anything to do with it!" she answered
quickly.
They were silent for a while.
"Now go and have your dinner," she said. "You MUST be
hungry."
"Have you had yours?"
"Yes; a beautiful sole I had. Annie IS good to me."
They talked a little while, then he went downstairs. He
was very white and strained. Newton sat in miserable
sympathy.
After dinner he went into the scullery to help Annie to
wash up. The little maid had gone on an errand.
"Is it really a tumour?" he asked.
Annie began to cry again.
"The pain she had yesterday—I never saw anybody suffer
like it!" she cried. "Leonard ran like a madman for Dr.
Ansell, and when she'd got to bed she said to me: 'Annie,
look at this lump on my side. I wonder what it is?' And
there I looked, and I thought I should have dropped. Paul,
as true as I'm here, it's a lump as big as my double fist. I
said: 'Good gracious, mother, whenever did that come?' 'Why,
child,' she said, 'it's been there a long time.' I thought I
should have died, our Paul, I did. She's been having these
pains for months at home, and nobody looking after her."
The tears came to his eyes, then dried suddenly.
"But she's been attending the doctor in Nottingham—and
she never told me," he said.
"If I'd have been at home," said Annie, "I should have
seen for myself."
He felt like a man walking in unrealities. In the
afternoon he went to see the doctor. The latter was a
shrewd, lovable man.
"But what is it?" he said.
The doctor looked at the young man, then knitted his
fingers.
"It may be a large tumour which has formed in the
membrane," he said slowly, "and which we MAY be able to make
go away."
"Can't you operate?" asked Paul.
"Not there," replied the doctor.
"Are you sure?"
"QUITE!"
Paul meditated a while.
"Are you sure it's a tumour?" he asked. "Why did Dr.
Jameson in Nottingham never find out anything about it?
She's been going to him for weeks, and he's treated her for
heart and indigestion."
"Mrs. Morel never told Dr. Jameson about the lump," said
the doctor.
"And do you KNOW it's a tumour?"
"No, I am not sure."
"What else MIGHT it be? You asked my sister if there was
cancer in the family. Might it be cancer?"
"I don't know."
"And what shall you do?"
"I should like an examination, with Dr. Jameson."
"Then have one."
"You must arrange about that. His fee wouldn't be less
than ten guineas to come here from Nottingham."
"When would you like him to come?"
"I will call in this evening, and we will talk it over."
Paul went away, biting his lip.
His mother could come downstairs for tea, the doctor
said. Her son went upstairs to help her. She wore the
old-rose dressing-gown that Leonard had given Annie, and,
with a little colour in her face, was quite young again.
"But you look quite pretty in that," he said.
"Yes; they make me so fine, I hardly know myself," she
answered.
But when she stood up to walk, the colour went. Paul
helped her, half-carrying her. At the top of the stairs she
was gone. He lifted her up and carried her quickly
downstairs; laid her on the couch. She was light and frail.
Her face looked as if she were dead, with blue lips shut
tight. Her eyes opened—her blue, unfailing eyes—and she
looked at him pleadingly, almost wanting him to forgive her.
He held brandy to her lips, but her mouth would not open.
All the time she watched him lovingly. She was only sorry
for him. The tears ran down his face without ceasing, but
not a muscle moved. He was intent on getting a little brandy
between her lips. Soon she was able to swallow a
teaspoonful. She lay back, so tired. The tears continued to
run down his face.
"But," she panted, "it'll go off. Don't cry!"
"I'm not doing," he said.
After a while she was better again. He was kneeling
beside the couch. They looked into each other's eyes.
"I don't want you to make a trouble of it," she said.
"No, mother. You'll have to be quite still, and then
you'll get better soon."
But he was white to the lips, and their eyes as they
looked at each other understood. Her eyes were so blue—such
a wonderful forget-me-not blue! He felt if only they had
been of a different colour he could have borne it better.
His heart seemed to be ripping slowly in his breast. He
kneeled there, holding her hand, and neither said anything.
Then Annie came in.
"Are you all right?" she murmured timidly to her mother.
"Of course," said Mrs. Morel.
Paul sat down and told her about Blackpool. She was
curious.
A day or two after, he went to see Dr. Jameson in
Nottingham, to arrange for a consultation. Paul had
practically no money in the world. But he could borrow.
His mother had been used to go to the public consultation
on Saturday morning, when she could see the doctor for only
a nominal sum. Her son went on the same day. The
waiting-room was full of poor women, who sat patiently on a
bench around the wall. Paul thought of his mother, in her
little black costume, sitting waiting likewise. The doctor
was late. The women all looked rather frightened. Paul asked
the nurse in attendance if he could see the doctor
immediately he came. It was arranged so. The women sitting
patiently round the walls of the room eyed the young man
curiously.
At last the doctor came. He was about forty,
good-looking, brown-skinned. His wife had died, and he, who
had loved her, had specialised on women's ailments. Paul
told his name and his mother's. The doctor did not remember.
"Number forty-six M.," said the nurse; and the doctor
looked up the case in his book.
"There is a big lump that may be a tumour," said Paul.
"But Dr. Ansell was going to write you a letter."
"Ah, yes!" replied the doctor, drawing the letter from
his pocket. He was very friendly, affable, busy, kind. He
would come to Sheffield the next day.
"What is your father?" he asked.
"He is a coal-miner," replied Paul.
"Not very well off, I suppose?"
"This—I see after this," said Paul.
"And you?" smiled the doctor.
"I am a clerk in Jordan's Appliance Factory."
The doctor smiled at him.
"Er—to go to Sheffield!" he said, putting the tips of his
fingers together, and smiling with his eyes. "Eight
guineas?"
"Thank you!" said Paul, flushing and rising. "And you'll
come to-morrow?"
"To-morrow—Sunday? Yes! Can you tell me about what time
there is a train in the afternoon?"
"There is a Central gets in at four-fifteen."
"And will there be any way of getting up to the house?
Shall I have to walk?" The doctor smiled.
"There is the tram," said Paul; "the Western Park tram."
The doctor made a note of it.
"Thank you!" he said, and shook hands.
Then Paul went on home to see his father, who was left in
the charge of Minnie. Walter Morel was getting very grey
now. Paul found him digging in the garden. He had written
him a letter. He shook hands with his father.
"Hello, son! Tha has landed, then?" said the father.
"Yes," replied the son. "But I'm going back to-night."
"Are ter, beguy!" exclaimed the collier. "An' has ter
eaten owt?"
"No."
"That's just like thee," said Morel. "Come thy ways in."
The father was afraid of the mention of his wife. The two
went indoors. Paul ate in silence; his father, with earthy
hands, and sleeves rolled up, sat in the arm-chair opposite
and looked at him.
"Well, an' how is she?" asked the miner at length, in a
little voice.
"She can sit up; she can be carried down for tea," said
Paul.
"That's a blessin'!" exclaimed Morel. "I hope we s'll
soon be havin' her whoam, then. An' what's that Nottingham
doctor say?"
"He's going to-morrow to have an examination of her."
"Is he beguy! That's a tidy penny, I'm thinkin'!"
"Eight guineas."
"Eight guineas!" the miner spoke breathlessly. "Well, we
mun find it from somewhere."
"I can pay that," said Paul.
There was silence between them for some time.
"She says she hopes you're getting on all right with
Minnie," Paul said.
"Yes, I'm all right, an' I wish as she was," answered
Morel. "But Minnie's a good little wench, bless 'er heart!"
He sat looking dismal.
"I s'll have to be going at half-past three," said Paul.
"It's a trapse for thee, lad! Eight guineas! An' when
dost think she'll be able to get as far as this?"
"We must see what the doctors say to-morrow," Paul said.
Morel sighed deeply. The house seemed strangely empty,
and Paul thought his father looked lost, forlorn, and old.
"You'll have to go and see her next week, father," he
said.
"I hope she'll be a-whoam by that time," said Morel.
"If she's not," said Paul, "then you must come."
"I dunno wheer I s'll find th' money," said Morel.
"And I'll write to you what the doctor says," said Paul.
"But tha writes i' such a fashion, I canna ma'e it out,"
said Morel.
"Well, I'll write plain."
It was no good asking Morel to answer, for he could
scarcely do more than write his own name.
The doctor came. Leonard felt it his duty to meet him
with a cab. The examination did not take long. Annie,
Arthur, Paul, and Leonard were waiting in the parlour
anxiously. The doctors came down. Paul glanced at them. He
had never had any hope, except when he had deceived himself.
"It MAY be a tumour; we must wait and see," said Dr.
Jameson.
"And if it is," said Annie, "can you sweal it away?"
"Probably," said the doctor.
Paul put eight sovereigns and half a sovereign on the
table. The doctor counted them, took a florin out of his
purse, and put that down.
"Thank you!" he said. "I'm sorry Mrs. Morel is so ill.
But we must see what we can do."
"There can't be an operation?" said Paul.
The doctor shook his head.
"No," he said; "and even if there could, her heart
wouldn't stand it."
"Is her heart risky?" asked Paul.
"Yes; you must be careful with her."
"Very risky?"
"No—er—no, no! Just take care."
And the doctor was gone.
Then Paul carried his mother downstairs. She lay simply,
like a child. But when he was on the stairs, she put her
arms round his neck, clinging.
"I'm so frightened of these beastly stairs," she said.
And he was frightened, too. He would let Leonard do it
another time. He felt he could not carry her.
"He thinks it's only a tumour!" cried Annie to her
mother. "And he can sweal it away."
"I KNEW he could," protested Mrs. Morel scornfully.
She pretended not to notice that Paul had gone out of the
room. He sat in the kitchen, smoking. Then he tried to brush
some grey ash off his coat. He looked again. It was one of
his mother's grey hairs. It was so long! He held it up, and
it drifted into the chimney. He let go. The long grey hair
floated and was gone in the blackness of the chimney.
The next day he kissed her before going back to work. It
was very early in the morning, and they were alone.
"You won't fret, my boy!" she said.
"No, mother."
"No; it would be silly. And take care of yourself."
"Yes," he answered. Then, after a while: "And I shall
come next Saturday, and shall bring my father?"
"I suppose he wants to come," she replied. "At any rate,
if he does you'll have to let him."
He kissed her again, and stroked the hair from her
temples, gently, tenderly, as if she were a lover.
"Shan't you be late?" she murmured.
"I'm going," he said, very low.
Still he sat a few minutes, stroking the brown and grey
hair from her temples.
"And you won't be any worse, mother?"
"No, my son."
"You promise me?"
"Yes; I won't be any worse."
He kissed her, held her in his arms for a moment, and was
gone. In the early sunny morning he ran to the station,
crying all the way; he did not know what for. And her blue
eyes were wide and staring as she thought of him.
In the afternoon he went a walk with Clara. They sat in
the little wood where bluebells were standing. He took her
hand.
"You'll see," he said to Clara, "she'll never be better."
"Oh, you don't know!" replied the other.
"I do," he said.
She caught him impulsively to her breast.
"Try and forget it, dear," she said; "try and forget it."
"I will," he answered.
Her breast was there, warm for him; her hands were in his
hair. It was comforting, and he held his arms round her. But
he did not forget. He only talked to Clara of something
else. And it was always so. When she felt it coming, the
agony, she cried to him:
"Don't think of it, Paul! Don't think of it, my darling!"
And she pressed him to her breast, rocked him, soothed
him like a child. So he put the trouble aside for her sake,
to take it up again immediately he was alone. All the time,
as he went about, he cried mechanically. His mind and hands
were busy. He cried, he did not know why. It was his blood
weeping. He was just as much alone whether he was with Clara
or with the men in the White Horse. Just himself and this
pressure inside him, that was all that existed. He read
sometimes. He had to keep his mind occupied. And Clara was a
way of occupying his mind.
On the Saturday Walter Morel went to Sheffield. He was a
forlorn figure, looking rather as if nobody owned him. Paul
ran upstairs.
"My father's come," he said, kissing his mother.
"Has he?" she answered wearily.
The old collier came rather frightened into the bedroom.
"How dun I find thee, lass?" he said, going forward and
kissing her in a hasty, timid fashion.
"Well, I'm middlin'," she replied.
"I see tha art," he said. He stood looking down on her.
Then he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Helpless, and
as if nobody owned him, he looked.
"Have you gone on all right?" asked the wife, rather
wearily, as if it were an effort to talk to him.
"Yis," he answered. "'Er's a bit behint-hand now and
again, as yer might expect."
"Does she have your dinner ready?" asked Mrs. Morel.
"Well, I've 'ad to shout at 'er once or twice," he said.
"And you MUST shout at her if she's not ready. She WILL
leave things to the last minute."
She gave him a few instructions. He sat looking at her as
if she were almost a stranger to him, before whom he was
awkward and humble, and also as if he had lost his presence
of mind, and wanted to run. This feeling that he wanted to
run away, that he was on thorns to be gone from so trying a
situation, and yet must linger because it looked better,
made his presence so trying. He put up his eyebrows for
misery, and clenched his fists on his knees, feeling so
awkward in presence of big trouble.
Mrs. Morel did not change much. She stayed in Sheffield
for two months. If anything, at the end she was rather
worse. But she wanted to go home. Annie had her children.
Mrs. Morel wanted to go home. So they got a motor-car from
Nottingham—for she was too ill to go by train—and she was
driven through the sunshine. It was just August; everything
was bright and warm. Under the blue sky they could all see
she was dying. Yet she was jollier than she had been for
weeks. They all laughed and talked.
"Annie," she exclaimed, "I saw a lizard dart on that
rock!"
Her eyes were so quick; she was still so full of life.
Morel knew she was coming. He had the front door open.
Everybody was on tiptoe. Half the street turned out. They
heard the sound of the great motor-car. Mrs. Morel, smiling,
drove home down the street.
"And just look at them all come out to see me!" she said.
"But there, I suppose I should have done the same. How do
you do, Mrs. Mathews? How are you, Mrs. Harrison?"
They none of them could hear, but they saw her smile and
nod. And they all saw death on her face, they said. It was a
great event in the street.
Morel wanted to carry her indoors, but he was too old.
Arthur took her as if she were a child. They had set her a
big, deep chair by the hearth where her rocking-chair used
to stand. When she was unwrapped and seated, and had drunk a
little brandy, she looked round the room.
"Don't think I don't like your house, Annie," she said;
"but it's nice to be in my own home again."
And Morel answered huskily:
"It is, lass, it is."
And Minnie, the little quaint maid, said:
"An' we glad t' 'ave yer."
There was a lovely yellow ravel of sunflowers in the
garden. She looked out of the window.
"There are my sunflowers!" she said.
CHAPTER XIV
THE RELEASE
"By the way," said Dr. Ansell one evening when Morel was
in Sheffield, "we've got a man in the fever hospital here
who comes from Nottingham—Dawes. He doesn't seem to have
many belongings in this world."
"Baxter Dawes!" Paul exclaimed.
"That's the man—has been a fine fellow, physically, I
should think. Been in a bit of a mess lately. You know him?"
"He used to work at the place where I am."
"Did he? Do you know anything about him? He's just
sulking, or he'd be a lot better than he is by now."
"I don't know anything of his home circumstances, except
that he's separated from his wife and has been a bit down, I
believe. But tell him about me, will you? Tell him I'll come
and see him."
The next time Morel saw the doctor he said:
"And what about Dawes?"
"I said to him," answered the other, "'Do you know a man
from Nottingham named Morel?' and he looked at me as if he'd
jump at my throat. So I said: 'I see you know the name; it's
Paul Morel.' Then I told him about your saying you would go
and see him. 'What does he want?' he said, as if you were a
policeman."
"And did he say he would see me?" asked Paul.
"He wouldn't say anything—good, bad or indifferent,"
replied the doctor.
"Why not?"
"That's what I want to know. There he lies and sulks, day
in, day out. Can't get a word of information out of him."
"Do you think I might go?" asked Paul.
"You might."
There was a feeling of connection between the rival men,
more than ever since they had fought. In a way Morel felt
guilty towards the other, and more or less responsible. And
being in such a state of soul himself, he felt an almost
painful nearness to Dawes, who was suffering and despairing,
too. Besides, they had met in a naked extremity of hate, and
it was a bond. At any rate, the elemental man in each had
met.
He went down to the isolation hospital, with Dr. Ansell's
card. This sister, a healthy young Irishwoman, led him down
the ward.
"A visitor to see you, Jim Crow," she said.
Dawes turned over suddenly with a startled grunt.
"Eh?"
"Caw!" she mocked. "He can only say 'Caw!' I have brought
you a gentleman to see you. Now say 'Thank you,' and show
some manners."
Dawes looked swiftly with his dark, startled eyes beyond
the sister at Paul. His look was full of fear, mistrust,
hate, and misery. Morel met the swift, dark eyes, and
hesitated. The two men were afraid of the naked selves they
had been.
"Dr. Ansell told me you were here," said Morel, holding
out his hand.
Dawes mechanically shook hands.
"So I thought I'd come in," continued Paul.
There was no answer. Dawes lay staring at the opposite
wall.
"Say 'Caw!"' mocked the nurse. "Say 'Caw!' Jim Crow."
"He is getting on all right?" said Paul to her.
"Oh yes! He lies and imagines he's going to die," said
the nurse, "and it frightens every word out of his mouth."
"And you MUST have somebody to talk to," laughed Morel.
"That's it!" laughed the nurse. "Only two old men and a
boy who always cries. It is hard lines! Here am I dying to
hear Jim Crow's voice, and nothing but an odd 'Caw!' will he
give!"
"So rough on you!" said Morel.
"Isn't it?" said the nurse.
"I suppose I am a godsend," he laughed.
"Oh, dropped straight from heaven!" laughed the nurse.
Presently she left the two men alone. Dawes was thinner,
and handsome again, but life seemed low in him. As the
doctor said, he was lying sulking, and would not move
forward towards convalescence. He seemed to grudge every
beat of his heart.
"Have you had a bad time?" asked Paul.
Suddenly again Dawes looked at him.
"What are you doing in Sheffield?" he asked.
"My mother was taken ill at my sister's in Thurston
Street. What are you doing here?"
There was no answer.
"How long have you been in?" Morel asked.
"I couldn't say for sure," Dawes answered grudgingly.
He lay staring across at the wall opposite, as if trying
to believe Morel was not there. Paul felt his heart go hard
and angry.
"Dr. Ansell told me you were here," he said coldly.
The other man did not answer.
"Typhoid's pretty bad, I know," Morel persisted.
Suddenly Dawes said:
"What did you come for?"
"Because Dr. Ansell said you didn't know anybody here. Do
you?"
"I know nobody nowhere," said Dawes.
"Well," said Paul, "it's because you don't choose to,
then."
There was another silence.
"We s'll be taking my mother home as soon as we can,"
said Paul.
"What's a-matter with her?" asked Dawes, with a sick
man's interest in illness.
"She's got a cancer."
There was another silence.
"But we want to get her home," said Paul. "We s'll have
to get a motor-car."
Dawes lay thinking.
"Why don't you ask Thomas Jordan to lend you his?" said
Dawes.
"It's not big enough," Morel answered.
Dawes blinked his dark eyes as he lay thinking.
"Then ask Jack Pilkington; he'd lend it you. You know
him."
"I think I s'll hire one," said Paul.
"You're a fool if you do," said Dawes.
The sick man was gaunt and handsome again. Paul was sorry
for him because his eyes looked so tired.
"Did you get a job here?" he asked.
"I was only here a day or two before I was taken bad,"
Dawes replied.
"You want to get in a convalescent home," said Paul.
The other's face clouded again.
"I'm goin' in no convalescent home," he said.
"My father's been in the one at Seathorpe, an' he liked
it. Dr. Ansell would get you a recommend."
Dawes lay thinking. It was evident he dared not face the
world again.
"The seaside would be all right just now," Morel said.
"Sun on those sandhills, and the waves not far out."
The other did not answer.
"By Gad!" Paul concluded, too miserable to bother much;
"it's all right when you know you're going to walk again,
and swim!"
Dawes glanced at him quickly. The man's dark eyes were
afraid to meet any other eyes in the world. But the real
misery and helplessness in Paul's tone gave him a feeling of
relief.
"Is she far gone?" he asked.
"She's going like wax," Paul answered; "but
cheerful—lively!"
He bit his lip. After a minute he rose.
"Well, I'll be going," he said. "I'll leave you this
half-crown."
"I don't want it," Dawes muttered.
Morel did not answer, but left the coin on the table.
"Well," he said, "I'll try and run in when I'm back in
Sheffield. Happen you might like to see my brother-in-law?
He works in Pyecrofts."
"I don't know him," said Dawes.
"He's all right. Should I tell him to come? He might
bring you some papers to look at."
The other man did not answer. Paul went. The strong
emotion that Dawes aroused in him, repressed, made him
shiver.
He did not tell his mother, but next day he spoke to
Clara about this interview. It was in the dinner-hour. The
two did not often go out together now, but this day he asked
her to go with him to the Castle grounds. There they sat
while the scarlet geraniums and the yellow calceolarias
blazed in the sunlight. She was now always rather
protective, and rather resentful towards him.
"Did you know Baxter was in Sheffield Hospital with
typhoid?" he asked.
She looked at him with startled grey eyes, and her face
went pale.
"No," she said, frightened.
"He's getting better. I went to see him yesterday—the
doctor told me."
Clara seemed stricken by the news.
"Is he very bad?" she asked guiltily.
"He has been. He's mending now."
"What did he say to you?"
"Oh, nothing! He seems to be sulking."
There was a distance between the two of them. He gave her
more information.
She went about shut up and silent. The next time they
took a walk together, she disengaged herself from his arm,
and walked at a distance from him. He was wanting her
comfort badly.
"Won't you be nice with me?" he asked.
She did not answer.
"What's the matter?" he said, putting his arm across her
shoulder.
"Don't!" she said, disengaging herself.
He left her alone, and returned to his own brooding.
"Is it Baxter that upsets you?" he asked at length.
"I HAVE been VILE to him!" she said.
"I've said many a time you haven't treated him well," he
replied.
And there was a hostility between them. Each pursued his
own train of thought.
"I've treated him—no, I've treated him badly," she said.
"And now you treat ME badly. It serves me right."
"How do I treat you badly?" he said.
"It serves me right," she repeated. "I never considered
him worth having, and now you don't consider ME. But it
serves me right. He loved me a thousand times better than
you ever did."
"He didn't!" protested Paul.
"He did! At any rate, he did respect me, and that's what
you don't do."
"It looked as if he respected you!" he said.
"He did! And I MADE him horrid—I know I did! You've
taught me that. And he loved me a thousand times better than
ever you do."
"All right," said Paul.
He only wanted to be left alone now. He had his own
trouble, which was almost too much to bear. Clara only
tormented him and made him tired. He was not sorry when he
left her.
She went on the first opportunity to Sheffield to see her
husband. The meeting was not a success. But she left him
roses and fruit and money. She wanted to make restitution.
It was not that she loved him. As she looked at him lying
there her heart did not warm with love. Only she wanted to
humble herself to him, to kneel before him. She wanted now
to be self-sacrificial. After all, she had failed to make
Morel really love her. She was morally frightened. She
wanted to do penance. So she kneeled to Dawes, and it gave
him a subtle pleasure. But the distance between them was
still very great—too great. It frightened the man. It almost
pleased the woman. She liked to feel she was serving him
across an insuperable distance. She was proud now.
Morel went to see Dawes once or twice. There was a sort
of friendship between the two men, who were all the while
deadly rivals. But they never mentioned the woman who was
between them.
Mrs. Morel got gradually worse. At first they used to
carry her downstairs, sometimes even into the garden. She
sat propped in her chair, smiling, and so pretty. The gold
wedding-ring shone on her white hand; her hair was carefully
brushed. And she watched the tangled sunflowers dying, the
chrysanthemums coming out, and the dahlias.
Paul and she were afraid of each other. He knew, and she
knew, that she was dying. But they kept up a pretence of
cheerfulness. Every morning, when he got up, he went into
her room in his pyjamas.
"Did you sleep, my dear?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered.
"Not very well?"
"Well, yes!"
Then he knew she had lain awake. He saw her hand under
the bedclothes, pressing the place on her side where the
pain was.
"Has it been bad?" he asked.
"No. It hurt a bit, but nothing to mention."
And she sniffed in her old scornful way. As she lay she
looked like a girl. And all the while her blue eyes watched
him. But there were the dark pain-circles beneath that made
him ache again.
"It's a sunny day," he said.
"It's a beautiful day."
"Do you think you'll be carried down?"
"I shall see."
Then he went away to get her breakfast. All day long he
was conscious of nothing but her. It was a long ache that
made him feverish. Then, when he got home in the early
evening, he glanced through the kitchen window. She was not
there; she had not got up.
He ran straight upstairs and kissed her. He was almost
afraid to ask:
"Didn't you get up, pigeon?"
"No," she said, "it was that morphia; it made me tired."
"I think he gives you too much," he said.
"I think he does," she answered.
He sat down by the bed, miserably. She had a way of
curling and lying on her side, like a child. The grey and
brown hair was loose over her ear.
"Doesn't it tickle you?" he said, gently putting it back.
"It does," she replied.
His face was near hers. Her blue eyes smiled straight
into his, like a girl's—warm, laughing with tender love. It
made him pant with terror, agony, and love.
"You want your hair doing in a plait," he said. "Lie
still."
And going behind her, he carefully loosened her hair,
brushed it out. It was like fine long silk of brown and
grey. Her head was snuggled between her shoulders. As he
lightly brushed and plaited her hair, he bit his lip and
felt dazed. It all seemed unreal, he could not understand
it.
At night he often worked in her room, looking up from
time to time. And so often he found her blue eyes fixed on
him. And when their eyes met, she smiled. He worked away
again mechanically, producing good stuff without knowing
what he was doing.
Sometimes he came in, very pale and still, with watchful,
sudden eyes, like a man who is drunk almost to death. They
were both afraid of the veils that were ripping between
them.
Then she pretended to be better, chattered to him gaily,
made a great fuss over some scraps of news. For they had
both come to the condition when they had to make much of the
trifles, lest they should give in to the big thing, and
their human independence would go smash. They were afraid,
so they made light of things and were gay.
Sometimes as she lay he knew she was thinking of the
past. Her mouth gradually shut hard in a line. She was
holding herself rigid, so that she might die without ever
uttering the great cry that was tearing from her. He never
forgot that hard, utterly lonely and stubborn clenching of
her mouth, which persisted for weeks. Sometimes, when it was
lighter, she talked about her husband. Now she hated him.
She did not forgive him. She could not bear him to be in the
room. And a few things, the things that had been most bitter
to her, came up again so strongly that they broke from her,
and she told her son.
He felt as if his life were being destroyed, piece by
piece, within him. Often the tears came suddenly. He ran to
the station, the tear-drops falling on the pavement. Often
he could not go on with his work. The pen stopped writing.
He sat staring, quite unconscious. And when he came round
again he felt sick, and trembled in his limbs. He never
questioned what it was. His mind did not try to analyse or
understand. He merely submitted, and kept his eyes shut; let
the thing go over him.
His mother did the same. She thought of the pain, of the
morphia, of the next day; hardly ever of the death. That was
coming, she knew. She had to submit to it. But she would
never entreat it or make friends with it. Blind, with her
face shut hard and blind, she was pushed towards the door.
The days passed, the weeks, the months.
Sometimes, in the sunny afternoons, she seemed almost
happy.
"I try to think of the nice times—when we went to
Mablethorpe, and Robin Hood's Bay, and Shanklin," she said.
"After all, not everybody has seen those beautiful places.
And wasn't it beautiful! I try to think of that, not of the
other things."
Then, again, for a whole evening she spoke not a word;
neither did he. They were together, rigid, stubborn, silent.
He went into his room at last to go to bed, and leaned
against the doorway as if paralysed, unable to go any
farther. His consciousness went. A furious storm, he knew
not what, seemed to ravage inside him. He stood leaning
there, submitting, never questioning.
In the morning they were both normal again, though her
face was grey with the morphia, and her body felt like ash.
But they were bright again, nevertheless. Often, especially
if Annie or Arthur were at home, he neglected her. He did
not see much of Clara. Usually he was with men. He was quick
and active and lively; but when his friends saw him go white
to the gills, his eyes dark and glittering, they had a
certain mistrust of him. Sometimes he went to Clara, but she
was almost cold to him.
"Take me!" he said simply.
Occasionally she would. But she was afraid. When he had
her then, there was something in it that made her shrink
away from him—something unnatural. She grew to dread him. He
was so quiet, yet so strange. She was afraid of the man who
was not there with her, whom she could feel behind this
make-belief lover; somebody sinister, that filled her with
horror. She began to have a kind of horror of him. It was
almost as if he were a criminal. He wanted her—he had
her—and it made her feel as if death itself had her in its
grip. She lay in horror. There was no man there loving her.
She almost hated him. Then came little bouts of tenderness.
But she dared not pity him.
Dawes had come to Colonel Seely's Home near Nottingham.
There Paul visited him sometimes, Clara very occasionally.
Between the two men the friendship developed peculiarly.
Dawes, who mended very slowly and seemed very feeble, seemed
to leave himself in the hands of Morel.
In the beginning of November Clara reminded Paul that it
was her birthday.
"I'd nearly forgotten," he said.
"I'd thought quite," she replied.
"No. Shall we go to the seaside for the week-end?"
They went. It was cold and rather dismal. She waited for
him to be warm and tender with her, instead of which he
seemed hardly aware of her. He sat in the railway-carriage,
looking out, and was startled when she spoke to him. He was
not definitely thinking. Things seemed as if they did not
exist. She went across to him.
"What is it dear?" she asked.
"Nothing!" he said. "Don't those windmill sails look
monotonous?"
He sat holding her hand. He could not talk nor think. It
was a comfort, however, to sit holding her hand. She was
dissatisfied and miserable. He was not with her; she was
nothing.
And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking
at the black, heavy sea.
"She will never give in," he said quietly.
Clara's heart sank.
"No," she replied.
"There are different ways of dying. My father's people
are frightened, and have to be hauled out of life into death
like cattle into a slaughter-house, pulled by the neck; but
my mother's people are pushed from behind, inch by inch.
They are stubborn people, and won't die."
"Yes," said Clara.
"And she won't die. She can't. Mr. Renshaw, the parson,
was in the other day. 'Think!' he said to her; 'you will
have your mother and father, and your sisters, and your son,
in the Other Land.' And she said: 'I have done without them
for a long time, and CAN do without them now. It is the
living I want, not the dead.' She wants to live even now."
"Oh, how horrible!" said Clara, too frightened to speak.
"And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me," he
went on monotonously. "She's got such a will, it seems as if
she would never go—never!"
"Don't think of it!" cried Clara.
"And she was religious—she is religious now—but it is no
good. She simply won't give in. And do you know, I said to
her on Thursday: 'Mother, if I had to die, I'd die. I'd WILL
to die.' And she said to me, sharp: 'Do you think I haven't?
Do you think you can die when you like?'"
His voice ceased. He did not cry, only went on speaking
monotonously. Clara wanted to run. She looked round. There
was the black, re-echoing shore, the dark sky down on her.
She got up terrified. She wanted to be where there was
light, where there were other people. She wanted to be away
from him. He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle.
"And I don't want her to eat," he said, "and she knows
it. When I ask her: 'Shall you have anything' she's almost
afraid to say 'Yes.' 'I'll have a cup of Benger's,' she
says. 'It'll only keep your strength up,' I said to her.
'Yes'—and she almost cried—'but there's such a gnawing when
I eat nothing, I can't bear it.' So I went and made her the
food. It's the cancer that gnaws like that at her. I wish
she'd die!"
"Come!" said Clara roughly. "I'm going."
He followed her down the darkness of the sands. He did
not come to her. He seemed scarcely aware of her existence.
And she was afraid of him, and disliked him.
In the same acute daze they went back to Nottingham. He
was always busy, always doing something, always going from
one to the other of his friends.
On the Monday he went to see Baxter Dawes. Listless and
pale, the man rose to greet the other, clinging to his chair
as he held out his hand.
"You shouldn't get up," said Paul.
Dawes sat down heavily, eyeing Morel with a sort of
suspicion.
"Don't you waste your time on me," he said, "if you've
owt better to do."
"I wanted to come," said Paul. "Here! I brought you some
sweets."
The invalid put them aside.
"It's not been much of a week-end," said Morel.
"How's your mother?" asked the other.
"Hardly any different."
"I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn't
come on Sunday."
"I was at Skegness," said Paul. "I wanted a change."
The other looked at him with dark eyes. He seemed to be
waiting, not quite daring to ask, trusting to be told.
"I went with Clara," said Paul.
"I knew as much," said Dawes quietly.
"It was an old promise," said Paul.
"You have it your own way," said Dawes.
This was the first time Clara had been definitely
mentioned between them.
"Nay," said Morel slowly; "she's tired of me."
Again Dawes looked at him.
"Since August she's been getting tired of me," Morel
repeated.
The two men were very quiet together. Paul suggested a
game of draughts. They played in silence.
"I s'll go abroad when my mother's dead," said Paul.
"Abroad!" repeated Dawes.
"Yes; I don't care what I do."
They continued the game. Dawes was winning.
"I s'll have to begin a new start of some sort," said
Paul; "and you as well, I suppose."
He took one of Dawes's pieces.
"I dunno where," said the other.
"Things have to happen," Morel said. "It's no good doing
anything—at least—no, I don't know. Give me some toffee."
The two men ate sweets, and began another game of
draughts.
"What made that scar on your mouth?" asked Dawes.
Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over
the garden.
"I had a bicycle accident," he said.
Dawes's hand trembled as he moved the piece.
"You shouldn't ha' laughed at me," he said, very low.
"When?"
"That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed
me—you with your hand on her shoulder."
"I never laughed at you," said Paul.
Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.
"I never knew you were there till the very second when
you passed," said Morel.
"It was that as did me," Dawes said, very low.
Paul took another sweet.
"I never laughed," he said, "except as I'm always
laughing."
They finished the game.
That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to
have something to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch
over Bulwell; the black clouds were like a low ceiling. As
he went along the ten miles of highroad, he felt as if he
were walking out of life, between the black levels of the
sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room. If
he walked and walked for ever, there was only that place to
come to.
He was not tired when he got near home, or He did not
know it. Across the field he could see the red firelight
leaping in her bedroom window.
"When she's dead," he said to himself, "that fire will go
out."
He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. His
mothers door was wide open, because she slept alone still.
The red firelight dashed its glow on the landing. Soft as a
shadow, he peeped in her doorway.
"Paul!" she murmured.
His heart seemed to break again. He went in and sat by
the bed.
"How late you are!" she murmured.
"Not very," he said.
"Why, what time is it?" The murmur came plaintive and
helpless.
"It's only just gone eleven."
That was not true; it was nearly one o'clock.
"Oh!" she said; "I thought it was later."
And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that
would not go.
"Can't you sleep, my pigeon?" he said.
"No, I can't," she wailed.
"Never mind, Little!" He said crooning. "Never mind, my
love. I'll stop with you half an hour, my pigeon; then
perhaps it will be better."
And he sat by the bedside, slowly, rhythmically stroking
her brows with his finger-tips, stroking her eyes shut,
soothing her, holding her fingers in his free hand. They
could hear the sleepers' breathing in the other rooms.
"Now go to bed," she murmured, lying quite still under
his fingers and his love.
"Will you sleep?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so."
"You feel better, my Little, don't you?"
"Yes," she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child.
Still the days and the weeks went by. He hardly ever went
to see Clara now. But he wandered restlessly from one person
to another for some help, and there was none anywhere.
Miriam had written to him tenderly. He went to see her. Her
heart was very sore when she saw him, white, gaunt, with his
eyes dark and bewildered. Her pity came up, hurting her till
she could not bear it.
"How is she?" she asked.
"The same—the same!" he said. "The doctor says she can't
last, but I know she will. She'll be here at Christmas."
Miriam shuddered. She drew him to her; she pressed him to
her bosom; she kissed him and kissed him. He submitted, but
it was torture. She could not kiss his agony. That remained
alone and apart. She kissed his face, and roused his blood,
while his soul was apart writhing with the agony of death.
And she kissed him and fingered his body, till at last,
feeling he would go mad, he got away from her. It was not
what he wanted just then—not that. And she thought she had
soothed him and done him good.
December came, and some snow. He stayed at home all the
while now. They could not afford a nurse. Annie came to look
after her mother; the parish nurse, whom they loved, came in
morning and evening. Paul shared the nursing with Annie.
Often, in the evenings, when friends were in the kitchen
with them, they all laughed together and shook with
laughter. It was reaction. Paul was so comical, Annie was so
quaint. The whole party laughed till they cried, trying to
subdue the sound. And Mrs. Morel, lying alone in the
darkness heard them, and among her bitterness was a feeling
of relief.
Then Paul would go upstairs gingerly, guiltily, to see if
she had heard.
"Shall I give you some milk?" he asked.
"A little," she replied plaintively.
And he would put some water with it, so that it should
not nourish her. Yet he loved her more than his own life.
She had morphia every night, and her heart got fitful.
Annie slept beside her. Paul would go in in the early
morning, when his sister got up. His mother was wasted and
almost ashen in the morning with the morphia. Darker and
darker grew her eyes, all pupil, with the torture. In the
mornings the weariness and ache were too much to bear. Yet
she could not—would not—weep, or even complain much.
"You slept a bit later this morning, little one," he
would say to her.
"Did I?" she answered, with fretful weariness.
"Yes; it's nearly eight o'clock."
He stood looking out of the window. The whole country was
bleak and pallid under the snow. Then he felt her pulse.
There was a strong stroke and a weak one, like a sound and
its echo. That was supposed to betoken the end. She let him
feel her wrist, knowing what he wanted.
Sometimes they looked in each other's eyes. Then they
almost seemed to make an agreement. It was almost as if he
were agreeing to die also. But she did not consent to die;
she would not. Her body was wasted to a fragment of ash. Her
eyes were dark and full of torture.
"Can't you give her something to put an end to it?" he
asked the doctor at last.
But the doctor shook his head.
"She can't last many days now, Mr. Morel," he said.
Paul went indoors.
"I can't bear it much longer; we shall all go mad," said
Annie.
The two sat down to breakfast.
"Go and sit with her while we have breakfast, Minnie,"
said Annie. But the girl was frightened.
Paul went through the country, through the woods, over
the snow. He saw the marks of rabbits and birds in the white
snow. He wandered miles and miles. A smoky red sunset came
on slowly, painfully, lingering. He thought she would die
that day. There was a donkey that came up to him over the
snow by the wood's edge, and put its head against him, and
walked with him alongside. He put his arms round the
donkey's neck, and stroked his cheeks against his ears.
His mother, silent, was still alive, with her hard mouth
gripped grimly, her eyes of dark torture only living.
It was nearing Christmas; there was more snow. Annie and
he felt as if they could go on no more. Still her dark eyes
were alive. Morel, silent and frightened, obliterated
himself. Sometimes he would go into the sick-room and look
at her. Then he backed out, bewildered.
She kept her hold on life still. The miners had been out
on strike, and returned a fortnight or so before Christmas.
Minnie went upstairs with the feeding-cup. It was two days
after the men had been in.
"Have the men been saying their hands are sore, Minnie?"
she asked, in the faint, querulous voice that would not give
in. Minnie stood surprised.
"Not as I know of, Mrs. Morel," she answered.
"But I'll bet they are sore," said the dying woman, as
she moved her head with a sigh of weariness. "But, at any
rate, there'll be something to buy in with this week."
Not a thing did she let slip.
"Your father's pit things will want well airing, Annie,"
she said, when the men were going back to work.
"Don't you bother about that, my dear," said Annie.
One night Annie and Paul were alone. Nurse was upstairs.
"She'll live over Christmas," said Annie. They were both
full of horror. "She won't," he replied grimly. "I s'll give
her morphia."
"Which?" said Annie.
"All that came from Sheffield," said Paul.
"Ay—do!" said Annie.
The next day he was painting in the bedroom. She seemed
to be asleep. He stepped softly backwards and forwards at
his painting. Suddenly her small voice wailed:
"Don't walk about, Paul."
He looked round. Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face,
were looking at him.
"No, my dear," he said gently. Another fibre seemed to
snap in his heart.
That evening he got all the morphia pills there were, and
took them downstairs. Carefully he crushed them to powder.
"What are you doing?" said Annie.
"I s'll put 'em in her night milk."
Then they both laughed together like two conspiring
children. On top of all their horror flicked this little
sanity.
Nurse did not come that night to settle Mrs. Morel down.
Paul went up with the hot milk in a feeding-cup. It was nine
o'clock.
She was reared up in bed, and he put the feeding-cup
between her lips that he would have died to save from any
hurt. She took a sip, then put the spout of the cup away and
looked at him with her dark, wondering eyes. He looked at
her.
"Oh, it IS bitter, Paul!" she said, making a little
grimace.
"It's a new sleeping draught the doctor gave me for you,"
he said. "He thought it would leave you in such a state in
the morning."
"And I hope it won't," she said, like a child.
She drank some more of the milk.
"But it IS horrid!" she said.
He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making a
little move.
"I know—I tasted it," he said. "But I'll give you some
clean milk afterwards."
"I think so," she said, and she went on with the draught.
She was obedient to him like a child. He wondered if she
knew. He saw her poor wasted throat moving as she drank with
difficulty. Then he ran downstairs for more milk. There were
no grains in the bottom of the cup.
"Has she had it?" whispered Annie.
"Yes—and she said it was bitter."
"Oh!" laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her
teeth.
"And I told her it was a new draught. Where's that milk?"
They both went upstairs.
"I wonder why nurse didn't come to settle me down?"
complained the mother, like a child, wistfully.
"She said she was going to a concert, my love," replied
Annie.
"Did she?"
They were silent a minute. Mrs. Morel gulped the little
clean milk.
"Annie, that draught WAS horrid!" she said plaintively.
"Was it, my love? Well, never mind."
The mother sighed again with weariness. Her pulse was
very irregular.
"Let US settle you down," said Annie. "Perhaps nurse will
be so late."
"Ay," said the mother—"try."
They turned the clothes back. Paul saw his mother like a
girl curled up in her flannel nightdress. Quickly they made
one half of the bed, moved her, made the other, straightened
her nightgown over her small feet, and covered her up.
"There," said Paul, stroking her softly. "There!—now
you'll sleep."
"Yes," she said. "I didn't think you could do the bed so
nicely," she added, almost gaily. Then she curled up, with
her cheek on her hand, her head snugged between her
shoulders. Paul put the long thin plait of grey hair over
her shoulder and kissed her.
"You'll sleep, my love," he said.
"Yes," she answered trustfully. "Good-night."
They put out the light, and it was still.
Morel was in bed. Nurse did not come. Annie and Paul came
to look at her at about eleven. She seemed to be sleeping as
usual after her draught. Her mouth had come a bit open.
"Shall we sit up?" said Paul.
"I s'll lie with her as I always do," said Annie. "She
might wake up."
"All right. And call me if you see any difference."
"Yes."
They lingered before the bedroom fire, feeling the night
big and black and snowy outside, their two selves alone in
the world. At last he went into the next room and went to
bed.
He slept almost immediately, but kept waking every now
and again. Then he went sound asleep. He started awake at
Annie's whispered, "Paul, Paul!" He saw his sister in her
white nightdress, with her long plait of hair down her back,
standing in the darkness.
"Yes?" he whispered, sitting up.
"Come and look at her."
He slipped out of bed. A bud of gas was burning in the
sick chamber. His mother lay with her cheek on her hand,
curled up as she had gone to sleep. But her mouth had fallen
open, and she breathed with great, hoarse breaths, like
snoring, and there were long intervals between.
"She's going!" he whispered.
"Yes," said Annie.
"How long has she been like it?"
"I only just woke up."
Annie huddled into the dressing-gown, Paul wrapped
himself in a brown blanket. It was three o'clock. He mended
the fire. Then the two sat waiting. The great, snoring
breath was taken—held awhile—then given back. There was a
space—a long space. Then they started. The great, snoring
breath was taken again. He bent close down and looked at
her.
"Isn't it awful!" whispered Annie.
He nodded. They sat down again helplessly. Again came the
great, snoring breath. Again they hung suspended. Again it
was given back, long and harsh. The sound, so irregular, at
such wide intervals, sounded through the house. Morel, in
his room, slept on. Paul and Annie sat crouched, huddled,
motionless. The great snoring sound began again—there was a
painful pause while the breath was held—back came the
rasping breath. Minute after minute passed. Paul looked at
her again, bending low over her.
"She may last like this," he said.
They were both silent. He looked out of the window, and
could faintly discern the snow on the garden.
"You go to my bed," he said to Annie. "I'll sit up."
"No," she said, "I'll stop with you."
"I'd rather you didn't," he said.
At last Annie crept out of the room, and he was alone. He
hugged himself in his brown blanket, crouched in front of
his mother, watching. She looked dreadful, with the bottom
jaw fallen back. He watched. Sometimes he thought the great
breath would never begin again. He could not bear it—the
waiting. Then suddenly, startling him, came the great harsh
sound. He mended the fire again, noiselessly. She must not
be disturbed. The minutes went by. The night was going,
breath by breath. Each time the sound came he felt it wring
him, till at last he could not feel so much.
His father got up. Paul heard the miner drawing his
stockings on, yawning. Then Morel, in shirt and stockings,
entered.
"Hush!" said Paul.
Morel stood watching. Then he looked at his son,
helplessly, and in horror.
"Had I better stop a-whoam?" he whispered.
"No. Go to work. She'll last through to-morrow."
"I don't think so."
"Yes. Go to work."
The miner looked at her again, in fear, and went
obediently out of the room. Paul saw the tape of his garters
swinging against his legs.
After another half-hour Paul went downstairs and drank a
cup of tea, then returned. Morel, dressed for the pit, came
upstairs again.
"Am I to go?" he said.
"Yes."
And in a few minutes Paul heard his father's heavy steps
go thudding over the deadening snow. Miners called in the
streets as they tramped in gangs to work. The terrible,
long-drawn breaths continued—heave—heave—heave; then a long
pause—then—ah-h-h-h-h! as it came back. Far away over the
snow sounded the hooters of the ironworks. One after another
they crowed and boomed, some small and far away, some near,
the blowers of the collieries and the other works. Then
there was silence. He mended the fire. The great breaths
broke the silence—she looked just the same. He put back the
blind and peered out. Still it was dark. Perhaps there was a
lighter tinge. Perhaps the snow was bluer. He drew up the
blind and got dressed. Then, shuddering, he drank brandy
from the bottle on the wash-stand. The snow WAS growing
blue. He heard a cart clanking down the street. Yes, it was
seven o'clock, and it was coming a little bit light. He
heard some people calling. The world was waking. A grey,
deathly dawn crept over the snow. Yes, he could see the
houses. He put out the gas. It seemed very dark. The
breathing came still, but he was almost used to it. He could
see her. She was just the same. He wondered if he piled
heavy clothes on top of her it would stop. He looked at her.
That was not her—not her a bit. If he piled the blanket and
heavy coats on her—
Suddenly the door opened, and Annie entered. She looked
at him questioningly.
"Just the same," he said calmly.
They whispered together a minute, then he went downstairs
to get breakfast. It was twenty to eight. Soon Annie came
down.
"Isn't it awful! Doesn't she look awful!" she whispered,
dazed with horror.
He nodded.
"If she looks like that!" said Annie.
"Drink some tea," he said.
They went upstairs again. Soon the neighbours came with
their frightened question:
"How is she?"
It went on just the same. She lay with her cheek in her
hand, her mouth fallen open, and the great, ghastly snores
came and went.
At ten o'clock nurse came. She looked strange and
woebegone.
"Nurse," cried Paul, "she'll last like this for days?"
"She can't, Mr. Morel," said nurse. "She can't."
There was a silence.
"Isn't it dreadful!" wailed the nurse. "Who would have
thought she could stand it? Go down now, Mr. Morel, go
down."
At last, at about eleven o'clock, he went downstairs and
sat in the neighbour's house. Annie was downstairs also.
Nurse and Arthur were upstairs. Paul sat with his head in
his hand. Suddenly Annie came flying across the yard crying,
half mad:
"Paul—Paul—she's gone!"
In a second he was back in his own house and upstairs.
She lay curled up and still, with her face on her hand, and
nurse was wiping her mouth. They all stood back. He kneeled
down, and put his face to hers and his arms round her:
"My love—my love—oh, my love!" he whispered again and
again. "My love—oh, my love!"
Then he heard the nurse behind him, crying, saying:
"She's better, Mr. Morel, she's better."
When he took his face up from his warm, dead mother he
went straight downstairs and began blacking his boots.
There was a good deal to do, letters to write, and so on.
The doctor came and glanced at her, and sighed.
"Ay—poor thing!" he said, then turned away. "Well, call
at the surgery about six for the certificate."
The father came home from work at about four o'clock. He
dragged silently into the house and sat down. Minnie bustled
to give him his dinner. Tired, he laid his black arms on the
table. There were swede turnips for his dinner, which he
liked. Paul wondered if he knew. It was some time, and
nobody had spoken. At last the son said:
"You noticed the blinds were down?"
Morel looked up.
"No," he said. "Why—has she gone?"
"Yes."
"When wor that?"
"About twelve this morning."
"H'm!"
The miner sat still for a moment, then began his dinner.
It was as if nothing had happened. He ate his turnips in
silence. Afterwards he washed and went upstairs to dress.
The door of her room was shut.
"Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him when he came
down.
"No," he said.
In a little while he went out. Annie went away, and Paul
called on the undertaker, the clergyman, the doctor, the
registrar. It was a long business. He got back at nearly
eight o'clock. The undertaker was coming soon to measure for
the coffin. The house was empty except for her. He took a
candle and went upstairs.
The room was cold, that had been warm for so long.
Flowers, bottles, plates, all sick-room litter was taken
away; everything was harsh and austere. She lay raised on
the bed, the sweep of the sheet from the raised feet was
like a clean curve of snow, so silent. She lay like a maiden
asleep. With his candle in his hand, he bent over her. She
lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her love. The mouth
was a little open as if wondering from the suffering, but
her face was young, her brow clear and white as if life had
never touched it. He looked again at the eyebrows, at the
small, winsome nose a bit on one side. She was young again.
Only the hair as it arched so beautifully from her temples
was mixed with silver, and the two simple plaits that lay on
her shoulders were filigree of silver and brown. She would
wake up. She would lift her eyelids. She was with him still.
He bent and kissed her passionately. But there was coldness
against his mouth. He bit his lips with horror. Looking at
her, he felt he could never, never let her go. No! He
stroked the hair from her temples. That, too, was cold. He
saw the mouth so dumb and wondering at the hurt. Then he
crouched on the floor, whispering to her:
"Mother, mother!"
He was still with her when the undertakers came, young
men who had been to school with him. They touched her
reverently, and in a quiet, businesslike fashion. They did
not look at her. He watched jealously. He and Annie guarded
her fiercely. They would not let anybody come to see her,
and the neighbours were offended.
After a while Paul went out of the house, and played
cards at a friend's. It was midnight when he got back. His
father rose from the couch as he entered, saying in a
plaintive way:
"I thought tha wor niver comin', lad."
"I didn't think you'd sit up," said Paul.
His father looked so forlorn. Morel had been a man
without fear—simply nothing frightened him. Paul realised
with a start that he had been afraid to go to bed, alone in
the house with his dead. He was sorry.
"I forgot you'd be alone, father," he said.
"Dost want owt to eat?" asked Morel.
"No."
"Sithee—I made thee a drop o' hot milk. Get it down thee;
it's cold enough for owt."
Paul drank it.
After a while Morel went to bed. He hurried past the
closed door, and left his own door open. Soon the son came
upstairs also. He went in to kiss her good-night, as usual.
It was cold and dark. He wished they had kept her fire
burning. Still she dreamed her young dream. But she would be
cold.
"My dear!" he whispered. "My dear!"
And he did not kiss her, for fear she should be cold and
strange to him. It eased him she slept so beautifully. He
shut her door softly, not to wake her, and went to bed.
In the morning Morel summoned his courage, hearing Annie
downstairs and Paul coughing in the room across the landing.
He opened her door, and went into the darkened room. He saw
the white uplifted form in the twilight, but her he dared
not see. Bewildered, too frightened to possess any of his
faculties, he got out of the room again and left her. He
never looked at her again. He had not seen her for months,
because he had not dared to look. And she looked like his
young wife again.
"Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him sharply after
breakfast.
"Yes," he said.
"And don't you think she looks nice?"
"Yes."
He went out of the house soon after. And all the time he
seemed to be creeping aside to avoid it.
Paul went about from place to place, doing the business
of the death. He met Clara in Nottingham, and they had tea
together in a cafe, when they were quite jolly again. She
was infinitely relieved to find he did not take it
tragically.
Later, when the relatives began to come for the funeral,
the affair became public, and the children became social
beings. They put themselves aside. They buried her in a
furious storm of rain and wind. The wet clay glistened, all
the white flowers were soaked. Annie gripped his arm and
leaned forward. Down below she saw a dark corner of
William's coffin. The oak box sank steadily. She was gone.
The rain poured in the grave. The procession of black, with
its umbrellas glistening, turned away. The cemetery was
deserted under the drenching cold rain.
Paul went home and busied himself supplying the guests
with drinks. His father sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Morel's
relatives, "superior" people, and wept, and said what a good
lass she'd been, and how he'd tried to do everything he
could for her—everything. He had striven all his life to do
what he could for her, and he'd nothing to reproach himself
with. She was gone, but he'd done his best for her. He wiped
his eyes with his white handkerchief. He'd nothing to
reproach himself for, he repeated. All his life he'd done
his best for her.
And that was how he tried to dismiss her. He never
thought of her personally. Everything deep in him he denied.
Paul hated his father for sitting sentimentalising over her.
He knew he would do it in the public-houses. For the real
tragedy went on in Morel in spite of himself. Sometimes,
later, he came down from his afternoon sleep, white and
cowering.
"I HAVE been dreaming of thy mother," he said in a small
voice.
"Have you, father? When I dream of her it's always just
as she was when she was well. I dream of her often, but it
seems quite nice and natural, as if nothing had altered."
But Morel crouched in front of the fire in terror.
The weeks passed half-real, not much pain, not much of
anything, perhaps a little relief, mostly a nuit blanche.
Paul went restless from place to place. For some months,
since his mother had been worse, he had not made love to
Clara. She was, as it were, dumb to him, rather distant.
Dawes saw her very occasionally, but the two could not get
an inch across the great distance between them. The three of
them were drifting forward.
Dawes mended very slowly. He was in the convalescent home
at Skegness at Christmas, nearly well again. Paul went to
the seaside for a few days. His father was with Annie in
Sheffield. Dawes came to Paul's lodgings. His time in the
home was up. The two men, between whom was such a big
reserve, seemed faithful to each other. Dawes depended on
Morel now. He knew Paul and Clara had practically separated.
Two days after Christmas Paul was to go back to
Nottingham. The evening before he sat with Dawes smoking
before the fire.
"You know Clara's coming down for the day to-morrow?" he
said.
The other man glanced at him.
"Yes, you told me," he replied.
Paul drank the remainder of his glass of whisky.
"I told the landlady your wife was coming," he said.
"Did you?" said Dawes, shrinking, but almost leaving
himself in the other's hands. He got up rather stiffly, and
reached for Morel's glass.
"Let me fill you up," he said.
Paul jumped up.
"You sit still," he said.
But Dawes, with rather shaky hand, continued to mix the
drink.
"Say when," he said.
"Thanks!" replied the other. "But you've no business to
get up."
"It does me good, lad," replied Dawes. "I begin to think
I'm right again, then."
"You are about right, you know."
"I am, certainly I am," said Dawes, nodding to him.
"And Len says he can get you on in Sheffield."
Dawes glanced at him again, with dark eyes that agreed
with everything the other would say, perhaps a trifle
dominated by him.
"It's funny," said Paul, "starting again. I feel in a lot
bigger mess than you."
"In what way, lad?"
"I don't know. I don't know. It's as if I was in a
tangled sort of hole, rather dark and dreary, and no road
anywhere."
"I know—I understand it," Dawes said, nodding. "But
you'll find it'll come all right."
He spoke caressingly.
"I suppose so," said Paul.
Dawes knocked his pipe in a hopeless fashion.
"You've not done for yourself like I have," he said.
Morel saw the wrist and the white hand of the other man
gripping the stem of the pipe and knocking out the ash, as
if he had given up.
"How old are you?" Paul asked.
"Thirty-nine," replied Dawes, glancing at him.
Those brown eyes, full of the consciousness of failure,
almost pleading for reassurance, for someone to re-establish
the man in himself, to warm him, to set him up firm again,
troubled Paul.
"You'll just be in your prime," said Morel. "You don't
look as if much life had gone out of you."
The brown eyes of the other flashed suddenly.
"It hasn't," he said. "The go is there."
Paul looked up and laughed.
"We've both got plenty of life in us yet to make things
fly," he said.
The eyes of the two men met. They exchanged one look.
Having recognised the stress of passion each in the other,
they both drank their whisky.
"Yes, begod!" said Dawes, breathless.
There was a pause.
"And I don't see," said Paul, "why you shouldn't go on
where you left off."
"What—" said Dawes, suggestively.
"Yes—fit your old home together again."
Dawes hid his face and shook his head.
"Couldn't be done," he said, and looked up with an ironic
smile.
"Why? Because you don't want?"
"Perhaps."
They smoked in silence. Dawes showed his teeth as he bit
his pipe stem.
"You mean you don't want her?" asked Paul.
Dawes stared up at the picture with a caustic expression
on his face.
"I hardly know," he said.
The smoke floated softly up.
"I believe she wants you," said Paul.
"Do you?" replied the other, soft, satirical, abstract.
"Yes. She never really hitched on to me—you were always
there in the background. That's why she wouldn't get a
divorce."
Dawes continued to stare in a satirical fashion at the
picture over the mantelpiece.
"That's how women are with me," said Paul. "They want me
like mad, but they don't want to belong to me. And she
BELONGED to you all the time. I knew."
The triumphant male came up in Dawes. He showed his teeth
more distinctly.
"Perhaps I was a fool," he said.
"You were a big fool," said Morel.
"But perhaps even THEN you were a bigger fool," said
Dawes.
There was a touch of triumph and malice in it.
"Do you think so?" said Paul.
They were silent for some time.
"At any rate, I'm clearing out to-morrow," said Morel.
"I see," answered Dawes.
Then they did not talk any more. The instinct to murder
each other had returned. They almost avoided each other.
They shared the same bedroom. When they retired Dawes
seemed abstract, thinking of something. He sat on the side
of the bed in his shirt, looking at his legs.
"Aren't you getting cold?" asked Morel.
"I was lookin' at these legs," replied the other.
"What's up with 'em? They look all right," replied Paul,
from his bed.
"They look all right. But there's some water in 'em yet."
"And what about it?"
"Come and look."
Paul reluctantly got out of bed and went to look at the
rather handsome legs of the other man that were covered with
glistening, dark gold hair.
"Look here," said Dawes, pointing to his shin. "Look at
the water under here."
"Where?" said Paul.
The man pressed in his finger-tips. They left little
dents that filled up slowly.
"It's nothing," said Paul.
"You feel," said Dawes.
Paul tried with his fingers. It made little dents.
"H'm!" he said.
"Rotten, isn't it?" said Dawes.
"Why? It's nothing much."
"You're not much of a man with water in your legs."
"I can't see as it makes any difference," said Morel.
"I've got a weak chest."
He returned to his own bed.
"I suppose the rest of me's all right," said Dawes, and
he put out the light.
In the morning it was raining. Morel packed his bag. The
sea was grey and shaggy and dismal. He seemed to be cutting
himself off from life more and more. It gave him a wicked
pleasure to do it.
The two men were at the station. Clara stepped out of the
train, and came along the platform, very erect and coldly
composed. She wore a long coat and a tweed hat. Both men
hated her for her composure. Paul shook hands with her at
the barrier. Dawes was leaning against the bookstall,
watching. His black overcoat was buttoned up to the chin
because of the rain. He was pale, with almost a touch of
nobility in his quietness. He came forward, limping
slightly.
"You ought to look better than this," she said.
"Oh, I'm all right now."
The three stood at a loss. She kept the two men
hesitating near her.
"Shall we go to the lodging straight off," said Paul, "or
somewhere else?"
"We may as well go home," said Dawes.
Paul walked on the outside of the pavement, then Dawes,
then Clara. They made polite conversation. The sitting-room
faced the sea, whose tide, grey and shaggy, hissed not far
off.
Morel swung up the big arm-chair.
"Sit down, Jack," he said.
"I don't want that chair," said Dawes.
"Sit down!" Morel repeated.
Clara took off her things and laid them on the couch. She
had a slight air of resentment. Lifting her hair with her
fingers, she sat down, rather aloof and composed. Paul ran
downstairs to speak to the landlady.
"I should think you're cold," said Dawes to his wife.
"Come nearer to the fire."
"Thank you, I'm quite warm," she answered.
She looked out of the window at the rain and at the sea.
"When are you going back?" she asked.
"Well, the rooms are taken until to-morrow, so he wants
me to stop. He's going back to-night."
"And then you're thinking of going to Sheffield?"
"Yes."
"Are you fit to start work?"
"I'm going to start."
"You've really got a place?"
"Yes—begin on Monday."
"You don't look fit."
"Why don't I?"
She looked again out of the window instead of answering.
"And have you got lodgings in Sheffield?"
"Yes."
Again she looked away out of the window. The panes were
blurred with streaming rain.
"And can you manage all right?" she asked.
"I s'd think so. I s'll have to!"
They were silent when Morel returned.
"I shall go by the four-twenty," he said as he entered.
Nobody answered.
"I wish you'd take your boots off," he said to Clara.
"There's a pair of slippers of mine."
"Thank you," she said. "They aren't wet."
He put the slippers near her feet. She left them there.
Morel sat down. Both the men seemed helpless, and each of
them had a rather hunted look. But Dawes now carried himself
quietly, seemed to yield himself, while Paul seemed to screw
himself up. Clara thought she had never seen him look so
small and mean. He was as if trying to get himself into the
smallest possible compass. And as he went about arranging,
and as he sat talking, there seemed something false about
him and out of tune. Watching him unknown, she said to
herself there was no stability about him. He was fine in his
way, passionate, and able to give her drinks of pure life
when he was in one mood. And now he looked paltry and
insignificant. There was nothing stable about him. Her
husband had more manly dignity. At any rate HE did not waft
about with any wind. There was something evanescent about
Morel, she thought, something shifting and false. He would
never make sure ground for any woman to stand on. She
despised him rather for his shrinking together, getting
smaller. Her husband at least was manly, and when he was
beaten gave in. But this other would never own to being
beaten. He would shift round and round, prowl, get smaller.
She despised him. And yet she watched him rather than Dawes,
and it seemed as if their three fates lay in his hands. She
hated him for it.
She seemed to understand better now about men, and what
they could or would do. She was less afraid of them, more
sure of herself. That they were not the small egoists she
had imagined them made her more comfortable. She had learned
a good deal—almost as much as she wanted to learn. Her cup
had been full. It was still as full as she could carry. On
the whole, she would not be sorry when he was gone.
They had dinner, and sat eating nuts and drinking by the
fire. Not a serious word had been spoken. Yet Clara realised
that Morel was withdrawing from the circle, leaving her the
option to stay with her husband. It angered her. He was a
mean fellow, after all, to take what he wanted and then give
her back. She did not remember that she herself had had what
she wanted, and really, at the bottom of her heart, wished
to be given back.
Paul felt crumpled up and lonely. His mother had really
supported his life. He had loved her; they two had, in fact,
faced the world together. Now she was gone, and for ever
behind him was the gap in life, the tear in the veil,
through which his life seemed to drift slowly, as if he were
drawn towards death. He wanted someone of their own free
initiative to help him. The lesser things he began to let go
from him, for fear of this big thing, the lapse towards
death, following in the wake of his beloved. Clara could not
stand for him to hold on to. She wanted him, but not to
understand him. He felt she wanted the man on top, not the
real him that was in trouble. That would be too much trouble
to her; he dared not give it her. She could not cope with
him. It made him ashamed. So, secretly ashamed because he
was in such a mess, because his own hold on life was so
unsure, because nobody held him, feeling unsubstantial,
shadowy, as if he did not count for much in this concrete
world, he drew himself together smaller and smaller. He did
not want to die; he would not give in. But he was not afraid
of death. If nobody would help, he would go on alone.
Dawes had been driven to the extremity of life, until he
was afraid. He could go to the brink of death, he could lie
on the edge and look in. Then, cowed, afraid, he had to
crawl back, and like a beggar take what offered. There was a
certain nobility in it. As Clara saw, he owned himself
beaten, and he wanted to be taken back whether or not. That
she could do for him. It was three o'clock.
"I am going by the four-twenty," said Paul again to
Clara. "Are you coming then or later?"
"I don't know," she said.
"I'm meeting my father in Nottingham at seven-fifteen,"
he said.
"Then," she answered, "I'll come later."
Dawes jerked suddenly, as if he had been held on a
strain. He looked out over the sea, but he saw nothing.
"There are one or two books in the corner," said Morel.
"I've done with 'em."
At about four o'clock he went.
"I shall see you both later," he said, as he shook hands.
"I suppose so," said Dawes. "An' perhaps—one day—I s'll
be able to pay you back the money as—"
"I shall come for it, you'll see," laughed Paul. "I s'll
be on the rocks before I'm very much older."
"Ay—well—" said Dawes.
"Good-bye," he said to Clara.
"Good-bye," she said, giving him her hand. Then she
glanced at him for the last time, dumb and humble.
He was gone. Dawes and his wife sat down again.
"It's a nasty day for travelling," said the man.
"Yes," she answered.
They talked in a desultory fashion until it grew dark.
The landlady brought in the tea. Dawes drew up his chair to
the table without being invited, like a husband. Then he sat
humbly waiting for his cup. She served him as she would,
like a wife, not consulting his wish.
After tea, as it drew near to six o'clock, he went to the
window. All was dark outside. The sea was roaring.
"It's raining yet," he said.
"Is it?" she answered.
"You won't go to-night, shall you?" he said, hesitating.
She did not answer. He waited.
"I shouldn't go in this rain," he said.
"Do you WANT me to stay?" she asked.
His hand as he held the dark curtain trembled.
"Yes," he said.
He remained with his back to her. She rose and went
slowly to him. He let go the curtain, turned, hesitating,
towards her. She stood with her hands behind her back,
looking up at him in a heavy, inscrutable fashion.
"Do you want me, Baxter?" she asked.
His voice was hoarse as he answered:
"Do you want to come back to me?"
She made a moaning noise, lifted her arms, and put them
round his neck, drawing him to her. He hid his face on her
shoulder, holding her clasped.
"Take me back!" she whispered, ecstatic. "Take me back,
take me back!" And she put her fingers through his fine,
thin dark hair, as if she were only semi-conscious. He
tightened his grasp on her.
"Do you want me again?" he murmured, broken.
CHAPTER XV
DERELICT
CLARA went with her husband to Sheffield, and Paul
scarcely saw her again. Walter Morel seemed to have let all
the trouble go over him, and there he was, crawling about on
the mud of it, just the same. There was scarcely any bond
between father and son, save that each felt he must not let
the other go in any actual want. As there was no one to keep
on the home, and as they could neither of them bear the
emptiness of the house, Paul took lodgings in Nottingham,
and Morel went to live with a friendly family in Bestwood.
Everything seemed to have gone smash for the young man.
He could not paint. The picture he finished on the day of
his mother's death—one that satisfied him—was the last thing
he did. At work there was no Clara. When he came home he
could not take up his brushes again. There was nothing left.
So he was always in the town at one place or another,
drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really
wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but
there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he
were hunting something.
Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed
no reason why people should go along the street, and houses
pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these
things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty.
His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he
answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he
could not understand.
He was most himself when he was alone, or working hard
and mechanically at the factory. In the latter case there
was pure forgetfulness, when he lapsed from consciousness.
But it had to come to an end. It hurt him so, that things
had lost their reality. The first snowdrops came. He saw the
tiny drop-pearls among the grey. They would have given him
the liveliest emotion at one time. Now they were there, but
they did not seem to mean anything. In a few moments they
would cease to occupy that place, and just the space would
be, where they had been. Tall, brilliant tram-cars ran along
the street at night. It seemed almost a wonder they should
trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. "Why trouble to go
tilting down to Trent Bridges?" he asked of the big trams.
It seemed they just as well might NOT be as be.
The realest thing was the thick darkness at night. That
seemed to him whole and comprehensible and restful. He could
leave himself to it. Suddenly a piece of paper started near
his feet and blew along down the pavement. He stood still,
rigid, with clenched fists, a flame of agony going over him.
And he saw again the sick-room, his mother, her eyes.
Unconsciously he had been with her, in her company. The
swift hop of the paper reminded him she was gone. But he had
been with her. He wanted everything to stand still, so that
he could be with her again.
The days passed, the weeks. But everything seemed to have
fused, gone into a conglomerated mass. He could not tell one
day from another, one week from another, hardly one place
from another. Nothing was distinct or distinguishable. Often
he lost himself for an hour at a time, could not remember
what he had done.
One evening he came home late to his lodging. The fire
was burning low; everybody was in bed. He threw on some more
coal, glanced at the table, and decided he wanted no supper.
Then he sat down in the arm-chair. It was perfectly still.
He did not know anything, yet he saw the dim smoke wavering
up the chimney. Presently two mice came out, cautiously,
nibbling the fallen crumbs. He watched them as it were from
a long way off. The church clock struck two. Far away he
could hear the sharp clinking of the trucks on the railway.
No, it was not they that were far away. They were there in
their places. But where was he himself?
The time passed. The two mice, careering wildly,
scampered cheekily over his slippers. He had not moved a
muscle. He did not want to move. He was not thinking of
anything. It was easier so. There was no wrench of knowing
anything. Then, from time to time, some other consciousness,
working mechanically, flashed into sharp phrases.
"What am I doing?"
And out of the semi-intoxicated trance came the answer:
"Destroying myself."
Then a dull, live feeling, gone in an instant, told him
that it was wrong. After a while, suddenly came the
question:
"Why wrong?"
Again there was no answer, but a stroke of hot
stubbornness inside his chest resisted his own annihilation.
There was a sound of a heavy cart clanking down the road.
Suddenly the electric light went out; there was a bruising
thud in the penny-in-the-slot meter. He did not stir, but
sat gazing in front of him. Only the mice had scuttled, and
the fire glowed red in the dark room.
Then, quite mechanically and more distinctly, the
conversation began again inside him.
"She's dead. What was it all for—her struggle?"
That was his despair wanting to go after her.
"You're alive."
"She's not."
"She is—in you."
Suddenly he felt tired with the burden of it.
"You've got to keep alive for her sake," said his will in
him.
Something felt sulky, as if it would not rouse.
"You've got to carry forward her living, and what she had
done, go on with it."
But he did not want to. He wanted to give up.
"But you can go on with your painting," said the will in
him. "Or else you can beget children. They both carry on her
effort."
"Painting is not living."
"Then live."
"Marry whom?" came the sulky question.
"As best you can."
"Miriam?"
But he did not trust that.
He rose suddenly, went straight to bed. When he got
inside his bedroom and closed the door, he stood with
clenched fist.
"Mater, my dear—" he began, with the whole force of his
soul. Then he stopped. He would not say it. He would not
admit that he wanted to die, to have done. He would not own
that life had beaten him, or that death had beaten him.
Going straight to bed, he slept at once, abandoning himself
to the sleep.
So the weeks went on. Always alone, his soul oscillated,
first on the side of death, then on the side of life,
doggedly. The real agony was that he had nowhere to go,
nothing to do, nothing to say, and WAS nothing himself.
Sometimes he ran down the streets as if he were mad:
sometimes he was mad; things weren't there, things were
there. It made him pant. Sometimes he stood before the bar
of the public-house where he called for a drink. Everything
suddenly stood back away from him. He saw the face of the
barmaid, the gobbling drinkers, his own glass on the
slopped, mahogany board, in the distance. There was
something between him and them. He could not get into touch.
He did not want them; he did not want his drink. Turning
abruptly, he went out. On the threshold he stood and looked
at the lighted street. But he was not of it or in it.
Something separated him. Everything went on there below
those lamps, shut away from him. He could not get at them.
He felt he couldn't touch the lamp-posts, not if he reached.
Where could he go? There was nowhere to go, neither back
into the inn, or forward anywhere. He felt stifled. There
was nowhere for him. The stress grew inside him; he felt he
should smash.
"I mustn't," he said; and, turning blindly, he went in
and drank. Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it
made him worse. He ran down the road. For ever restless, he
went here, there, everywhere. He determined to work. But
when he had made six strokes, he loathed the pencil
violently, got up, and went away, hurried off to a club
where he could play cards or billiards, to a place where he
could flirt with a barmaid who was no more to him than the
brass pump-handle she drew.
He was very thin and lantern-jawed. He dared not meet his
own eyes in the mirror; he never looked at himself. He
wanted to get away from himself, but there was nothing to
get hold of. In despair he thought of Miriam.
Perhaps—perhaps—?
Then, happening to go into the Unitarian Church one
Sunday evening, when they stood up to sing the second hymn
he saw her before him. The light glistened on her lower lip
as she sang. She looked as if she had got something, at any
rate: some hope in heaven, if not in earth. Her comfort and
her life seemed in the after-world. A warm, strong feeling
for her came up. She seemed to yearn, as she sang, for the
mystery and comfort. He put his hope in her. He longed for
the sermon to be over, to speak to her.
The throng carried her out just before him. He could
nearly touch her. She did not know he was there. He saw the
brown, humble nape of her neck under its black curls. He
would leave himself to her. She was better and bigger than
he. He would depend on her.
She went wandering, in her blind way, through the little
throngs of people outside the church. She always looked so
lost and out of place among people. He went forward and put
his hand on her arm. She started violently. Her great brown
eyes dilated in fear, then went questioning at the sight of
him. He shrank slightly from her.
"I didn't know—" she faltered.
"Nor I," he said.
He looked away. His sudden, flaring hope sank again.
"What are you doing in town?" he asked.
"I'm staying at Cousin Anne's."
"Ha! For long?"
"No; only till to-morrow."
"Must you go straight home?"
She looked at him, then hid her face under her hat-brim.
"No," she said—"no; it's not necessary."
He turned away, and she went with him. They threaded
through the throng of church people. The organ was still
sounding in St. Mary's. Dark figures came through the
lighted doors; people were coming down the steps. The large
coloured windows glowed up in the night. The church was like
a great lantern suspended. They went down Hollow Stone, and
he took the car for the Bridges.
"You will just have supper with me," he said: "then I'll
bring you back."
"Very well," she replied, low and husky.
They scarcely spoke while they were on the car. The Trent
ran dark and full under the bridge. Away towards Colwick all
was black night. He lived down Holme Road, on the naked edge
of the town, facing across the river meadows towards
Sneinton Hermitage and the steep scrap of Colwick Wood. The
floods were out. The silent water and the darkness spread
away on their left. Almost afraid, they hurried along by the
houses.
Supper was laid. He swung the curtain over the window.
There was a bowl of freesias and scarlet anemones on the
table. She bent to them. Still touching them with her
finger-tips, she looked up at him, saying:
"Aren't they beautiful?"
"Yes," he said. "What will you drink—coffee?"
"I should like it," she said.
"Then excuse me a moment."
He went out to the kitchen.
Miriam took off her things and looked round. It was a
bare, severe room. Her photo, Clara's, Annie's, were on the
wall. She looked on the drawing-board to see what he was
doing. There were only a few meaningless lines. She looked
to see what books he was reading. Evidently just an ordinary
novel. The letters in the rack she saw were from Annie,
Arthur, and from some man or other she did not know.
Everything he had touched, everything that was in the least
personal to him, she examined with lingering absorption. He
had been gone from her for so long, she wanted to rediscover
him, his position, what he was now. But there was not much
in the room to help her. It only made her feel rather sad,
it was so hard and comfortless.
She was curiously examining a sketch-book when he
returned with the coffee.
"There's nothing new in it," he said, "and nothing very
interesting."
He put down the tray, and went to look over her shoulder.
She turned the pages slowly, intent on examining everything.
"H'm!" he said, as she paused at a sketch. "I'd forgotten
that. It's not bad, is it?"
"No," she said. "I don't quite understand it."
He took the book from her and went through it. Again he
made a curious sound of surprise and pleasure.
"There's some not bad stuff in there," he said.
"Not at all bad," she answered gravely.
He felt again her interest in his work. Or was it for
himself? Why was she always most interested in him as he
appeared in his work?
They sat down to supper.
"By the way," he said, "didn't I hear something about
your earning your own living?"
"Yes," she replied, bowing her dark head over her cup.
"And what of it?"
"I'm merely going to the farming college at Broughton for
three months, and I shall probably be kept on as a teacher
there."
"I say—that sounds all right for you! You always wanted
to be independent."
"Yes.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I only knew last week."
"But I heard a month ago," he said.
"Yes; but nothing was settled then."
"I should have thought," he said, "you'd have told me you
were trying."
She ate her food in the deliberate, constrained way,
almost as if she recoiled a little from doing anything so
publicly, that he knew so well.
"I suppose you're glad," he said.
"Very glad."
"Yes—it will be something."
He was rather disappointed.
"I think it will be a great deal," she said, almost
haughtily, resentfully.
He laughed shortly.
"Why do you think it won't?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't think it won't be a great deal. Only you'll
find earning your own living isn't everything."
"No," she said, swallowing with difficulty; "I don't
suppose it is."
"I suppose work CAN be nearly everything to a man," he
said, "though it isn't to me. But a woman only works with a
part of herself. The real and vital part is covered up."
"But a man can give ALL himself to work?" she asked.
"Yes, practically."
"And a woman only the unimportant part of herself?"
"That's it."
She looked up at him, and her eyes dilated with anger.
"Then," she said, "if it's true, it's a great shame."
"It is. But I don't know everything," he answered.
After supper they drew up to the fire. He swung her a
chair facing him, and they sat down. She was wearing a dress
of dark claret colour, that suited her dark complexion and
her large features. Still, the curls were fine and free, but
her face was much older, the brown throat much thinner. She
seemed old to him, older than Clara. Her bloom of youth had
quickly gone. A sort of stiffness, almost of woodenness, had
come upon her. She meditated a little while, then looked at
him.
"And how are things with you?" she asked.
"About all right," he answered.
She looked at him, waiting.
"Nay," she said, very low.
Her brown, nervous hands were clasped over her knee. They
had still the lack of confidence or repose, the almost
hysterical look. He winced as he saw them. Then he laughed
mirthlessly. She put her fingers between her lips. His slim,
black, tortured body lay quite still in the chair. She
suddenly took her finger from her mouth and looked at him.
"And you have broken off with Clara?"
"Yes."
His body lay like an abandoned thing, strewn in the
chair.
"You know," she said, "I think we ought to be married."
He opened his eyes for the first time since many months,
and attended to her with respect.
"Why?" he said.
"See," she said, "how you waste yourself! You might be
ill, you might die, and I never know—be no more then than if
I had never known you."
"And if we married?" he asked.
"At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and
being a prey to other women—like—like Clara."
"A prey?" he repeated, smiling.
She bowed her head in silence. He lay feeling his despair
come up again.
"I'm not sure," he said slowly, "that marriage would be
much good."
"I only think of you," she replied.
"I know you do. But—you love me so much, you want to put
me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered."
She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips,
while the bitterness surged up in her heart.
"And what will you do otherwise?" she asked.
"I don't know—go on, I suppose. Perhaps I shall soon go
abroad."
The despairing doggedness in his tone made her go on her
knees on the rug before the fire, very near to him. There
she crouched as if she were crushed by something, and could
not raise her head. His hands lay quite inert on the arms of
his chair. She was aware of them. She felt that now he lay
at her mercy. If she could rise, take him, put her arms
round him, and say, "You are mine," then he would leave
himself to her. But dare she? She could easily sacrifice
herself. But dare she assert herself? She was aware of his
dark-clothed, slender body, that seemed one stroke of life,
sprawled in the chair close to her. But no; she dared not
put her arms round it, take it up, and say, "It is mine,
this body. Leave it to me." And she wanted to. It called to
all her woman's instinct. But she crouched, and dared not.
She was afraid he would not let her. She was afraid it was
too much. It lay there, his body, abandoned. She knew she
ought to take it up and claim it, and claim every right to
it. But—could she do it? Her impotence before him, before
the strong demand of some unknown thing in him, was her
extremity. Her hands fluttered; she half-lifted her head.
Her eyes, shuddering, appealing, gone, almost distracted,
pleaded to him suddenly. His heart caught with pity. He took
her hands, drew her to him, and comforted her.
"Will you have me, to marry me?" he said very low.
Oh, why did not he take her? Her very soul belonged to
him. Why would he not take what was his? She had borne so
long the cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed
by him. Now he was straining her again. It was too much for
her. She drew back her head, held his face between her
hands, and looked him in the eyes. No, he was hard. He
wanted something else. She pleaded to him with all her love
not to make it her choice. She could not cope with it, with
him, she knew not with what. But it strained her till she
felt she would break.
"Do you want it?" she asked, very gravely.
"Not much," he replied, with pain.
She turned her face aside; then, raising herself with
dignity, she took his head to her bosom, and rocked him
softly. She was not to have him, then! So she could comfort
him. She put her fingers through his hair. For her, the
anguished sweetness of self-sacrifice. For him, the hate and
misery of another failure. He could not bear it—that breast
which was warm and which cradled him without taking the
burden of him. So much he wanted to rest on her that the
feint of rest only tortured him. He drew away.
"And without marriage we can do nothing?" he asked.
His mouth was lifted from his teeth with pain. She put
her little finger between her lips.
"No," she said, low and like the toll of a bell. "No, I
think not."
It was the end then between them. She could not take him
and relieve him of the responsibility of himself. She could
only sacrifice herself to him—sacrifice herself every day,
gladly. And that he did not want. He wanted her to hold him
and say, with joy and authority: "Stop all this restlessness
and beating against death. You are mine for a mate." She had
not the strength. Or was it a mate she wanted? or did she
want a Christ in him?
He felt, in leaving her, he was defrauding her of life.
But he knew that, in staying, stilling the inner, desperate
man, he was denying his own life. And he did not hope to
give life to her by denying his own.
She sat very quiet. He lit a cigarette. The smoke went up
from it, wavering. He was thinking of his mother, and had
forgotten Miriam. She suddenly looked at him. Her bitterness
came surging up. Her sacrifice, then, was useless. He lay
there aloof, careless about her. Suddenly she saw again his
lack of religion, his restless instability. He would destroy
himself like a perverse child. Well, then, he would!
"I think I must go," she said softly.
By her tone he knew she was despising him. He rose
quietly.
"I'll come along with you," he answered.
She stood before the mirror pinning on her hat. How
bitter, how unutterably bitter, it made her that he rejected
her sacrifice! Life ahead looked dead, as if the glow were
gone out. She bowed her face over the flowers—the freesias
so sweet and spring-like, the scarlet anemones flaunting
over the table. It was like him to have those flowers.
He moved about the room with a certain sureness of touch,
swift and relentless and quiet. She knew she could not cope
with him. He would escape like a weasel out of her hands.
Yet without him her life would trail on lifeless. Brooding,
she touched the flowers.
"Have them!" he said; and he took them out of the jar,
dripping as they were, and went quickly into the kitchen.
She waited for him, took the flowers, and they went out
together, he talking, she feeling dead.
She was going from him now. In her misery she leaned
against him as they sat on the car. He was unresponsive.
Where would he go? What would be the end of him? She could
not bear it, the vacant feeling where he should be. He was
so foolish, so wasteful, never at peace with himself. And
now where would he go? And what did he care that he wasted
her? He had no religion; it was all for the moment's
attraction that he cared, nothing else, nothing deeper.
Well, she would wait and see how it turned out with him.
When he had had enough he would give in and come to her.
He shook hands and left her at the door of her cousin's
house. When he turned away he felt the last hold for him had
gone. The town, as he sat upon the car, stretched away over
the bay of railway, a level fume of lights. Beyond the town
the country, little smouldering spots for more towns—the
sea—the night—on and on! And he had no place in it! Whatever
spot he stood on, there he stood alone. From his breast,
from his mouth, sprang the endless space, and it was there
behind him, everywhere. The people hurrying along the
streets offered no obstruction to the void in which he found
himself. They were small shadows whose footsteps and voices
could be heard, but in each of them the same night, the same
silence. He got off the car. In the country all was dead
still. Little stars shone high up; little stars spread far
away in the flood-waters, a firmament below. Everywhere the
vastness and terror of the immense night which is roused and
stirred for a brief while by the day, but which returns, and
will remain at last eternal, holding everything in its
silence and its living gloom. There was no Time, only Space.
Who could say his mother had lived and did not live? She had
been in one place, and was in another; that was all. And his
soul could not leave her, wherever she was. Now she was gone
abroad into the night, and he was with her still. They were
together. But yet there was his body, his chest, that leaned
against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar. They seemed
something. Where was he?—one tiny upright speck of flesh,
less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not
bear it. On every side the immense dark silence seemed
pressing him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet,
almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which
everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and
sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round
for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a
darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and
daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a
nothingness, and yet not nothing.
"Mother!" he whispered—"mother!"
She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid
all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted
her to touch him, have him alongside with her.
But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked
towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were
shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction,
to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the
faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.
THE END
