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diff --git a/217-h/217-h.htm b/217-h/217-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..de6c164 --- /dev/null +++ b/217-h/217-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,35845 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + + +body {margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 0em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sons and Lovers, by David Herbert Lawrence</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Sons and Lovers</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: David Herbert Lawrence</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 6, 1995 [eBook #217]<br /> +[Most recently updated: January 22, 2023]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Alan Charles Veeck, Jr. and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS AND LOVERS ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:70%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover " /><br /><br /> +</div> + +<h1>Sons and Lovers</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by D.H. Lawrence</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part01"><b>PART ONE</b></a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">I. The Early Married Life of the Morels </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">II. The Birth of Paul, and Another Battle </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">III. The Casting Off of Morel—The Taking on of William</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. The Young Life of Paul</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">V. Paul Launches into Life </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. Death in the Family </a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part02"><b>PART TWO</b></a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. Lad-and-Girl Love </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. Strife in Love </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. Defeat of Miriam </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">X. Clara</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. The Test on Miriam </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. Passion</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. Baxter Dawes </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. The Release</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. Derelict</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part01"></a>PART ONE</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I<br/> +THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS</h2> + +<p> +“The Bottoms” succeeded to “Hell Row”. Hell Row was a +block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill +Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two fields +away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by these small +mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a +circle round a gin. And all over the countryside were these same pits, some of +which had been worked in the time of Charles II., the few colliers and the +donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little +black places among the corn-fields and the meadows. And the cottages of these +coal-miners, in blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd farms and +homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of +Bestwood. +</p> + +<p> +Then, some sixty years ago, a sudden change took place, gin-pits were elbowed +aside by the large mines of the financiers. The coal and iron field of +Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was discovered. Carston, Waite and Co. appeared. +Amid tremendous excitement, Lord Palmerston formally opened the company’s +first mine at Spinney Park, on the edge of Sherwood Forest. +</p> + +<p> +About this time the notorious Hell Row, which through growing old had acquired +an evil reputation, was burned down, and much dirt was cleansed away. +</p> + +<p> +Carston, Waite and Co. found they had struck on a good thing, so, down the +valleys of the brooks from Selby and Nuttall, new mines were sunk, until soon +there were six pits working. From Nuttall, high up on the sandstone among the +woods, the railway ran, past the ruined priory of the Carthusians and past +Robin Hood’s Well, down to Spinney Park, then on to Minton, a large mine +among corn-fields; from Minton across the farmlands of the valleyside to +Bunker’s Hill, branching off there, and running north to Beggarlee and +Selby, that looks over at Crich and the hills of Derbyshire; six mines like +black studs on the countryside, linked by a loop of fine chain, the railway. +</p> + +<p> +To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co. built the +Squares, great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside of Bestwood, and then, +in the brook valley, on the site of Hell Row, they erected the Bottoms. +</p> + +<p> +The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners’ dwellings, two rows of +three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve houses in a block. This +double row of dwellings sat at the foot of the rather sharp slope from +Bestwood, and looked out, from the attic windows at least, on the slow climb of +the valley towards Selby. +</p> + +<p> +The houses themselves were substantial and very decent. One could walk all +round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in the shadow +of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny top block; seeing +neat front windows, little porches, little privet hedges, and dormer windows +for the attics. But that was outside; that was the view on to the uninhabited +parlours of all the colliers’ wives. The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was +at the back of the house, facing inward between the blocks, looking at a +scrubby back garden, and then at the ash-pits. And between the rows, between +the long lines of ash-pits, went the alley, where the children played and the +women gossiped and the men smoked. So, the actual conditions of living in the +Bottoms, that was so well built and that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury +because people must live in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that +nasty alley of ash-pits. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel was not anxious to move into the Bottoms, which was already twelve +years old and on the downward path, when she descended to it from Bestwood. But +it was the best she could do. Moreover, she had an end house in one of the top +blocks, and thus had only one neighbour; on the other side an extra strip of +garden. And, having an end house, she enjoyed a kind of aristocracy among the +other women of the “between” houses, because her rent was five +shillings and sixpence instead of five shillings a week. But this superiority +in station was not much consolation to Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +She was thirty-one years old, and had been married eight years. A rather small +woman, of delicate mould but resolute bearing, she shrank a little from the +first contact with the Bottoms women. She came down in the July, and in the +September expected her third baby. +</p> + +<p> +Her husband was a miner. They had only been in their new home three weeks when +the wakes, or fair, began. Morel, she knew, was sure to make a holiday of it. +He went off early on the Monday morning, the day of the fair. The two children +were highly excited. William, a boy of seven, fled off immediately after +breakfast, to prowl round the wakes ground, leaving Annie, who was only five, +to whine all morning to go also. Mrs. Morel did her work. She scarcely knew her +neighbours yet, and knew no one with whom to trust the little girl. So she +promised to take her to the wakes after dinner. +</p> + +<p> +William appeared at half-past twelve. He was a very active lad, fair-haired, +freckled, with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian about him. +</p> + +<p> +“Can I have my dinner, mother?” he cried, rushing in with his cap +on. “’Cause it begins at half-past one, the man says so.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can have your dinner as soon as it’s done,” replied the +mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it done?” he cried, his blue eyes staring at her in +indignation. “Then I’m goin’ be-out it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It will be done in five minutes. It +is only half-past twelve.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll be beginnin’,” the boy half cried, half +shouted. +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t die if they do,” said the mother. “Besides, +it’s only half-past twelve, so you’ve a full hour.” +</p> + +<p> +The lad began hastily to lay the table, and directly the three sat down. They +were eating batter-pudding and jam, when the boy jumped off his chair and stood +perfectly stiff. Some distance away could be heard the first small braying of a +merry-go-round, and the tooting of a horn. His face quivered as he looked at +his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“I told you!” he said, running to the dresser for his cap. +</p> + +<p> +“Take your pudding in your hand—and it’s only five past one, +so you were wrong—you haven’t got your twopence,” cried the +mother in a breath. +</p> + +<p> +The boy came back, bitterly disappointed, for his twopence, then went off +without a word. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to go, I want to go,” said Annie, beginning to cry. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, and you shall go, whining, wizzening little stick!” said the +mother. And later in the afternoon she trudged up the hill under the tall hedge +with her child. The hay was gathered from the fields, and cattle were turned on +to the eddish. It was warm, peaceful. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes. There were two sets of horses, one going by +steam, one pulled round by a pony; three organs were grinding, and there came +odd cracks of pistol-shots, fearful screeching of the cocoanut man’s +rattle, shouts of the Aunt Sally man, screeches from the peep-show lady. The +mother perceived her son gazing enraptured outside the Lion Wallace booth, at +the pictures of this famous lion that had killed a negro and maimed for life +two white men. She left him alone, and went to get Annie a spin of toffee. +Presently the lad stood in front of her, wildly excited. +</p> + +<p> +“You never said you was coming—isn’t the’ a lot of +things?—that lion’s killed three men—I’ve spent my +tuppence—an’ look here.” +</p> + +<p> +He pulled from his pocket two egg-cups, with pink moss-roses on them. +</p> + +<p> +“I got these from that stall where y’ave ter get them marbles in +them holes. An’ I got these two in two goes-’aepenny a +go-they’ve got moss-roses on, look here. I wanted these.” +</p> + +<p> +She knew he wanted them for her. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” she said, pleased. “They <i>are</i> +pretty!” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you carry ’em, ’cause I’m frightened o’ +breakin’ ’em?” +</p> + +<p> +He was tipful of excitement now she had come, led her about the ground, showed +her everything. Then, at the peep-show, she explained the pictures, in a sort +of story, to which he listened as if spellbound. He would not leave her. All +the time he stuck close to her, bristling with a small boy’s pride of +her. For no other woman looked such a lady as she did, in her little black +bonnet and her cloak. She smiled when she saw women she knew. When she was +tired she said to her son: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, are you coming now, or later?” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you goin’ a’ready?” he cried, his face full of +reproach. +</p> + +<p> +“Already? It is past four, <i>I</i> know.” +</p> + +<p> +“What are you goin’ a’ready for?” he lamented. +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t come if you don’t want,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And she went slowly away with her little girl, whilst her son stood watching +her, cut to the heart to let her go, and yet unable to leave the wakes. As she +crossed the open ground in front of the Moon and Stars she heard men shouting, +and smelled the beer, and hurried a little, thinking her husband was probably +in the bar. +</p> + +<p> +At about half-past six her son came home, tired now, rather pale, and somewhat +wretched. He was miserable, though he did not know it, because he had let her +go alone. Since she had gone, he had not enjoyed his wakes. +</p> + +<p> +“Has my dad been?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s helping to wait at the Moon and Stars. I seed him through +that black tin stuff wi’ holes in, on the window, wi’ his sleeves +rolled up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” exclaimed the mother shortly. “He’s got no money. +An’ he’ll be satisfied if he gets his ’lowance, whether they +give him more or not.” +</p> + +<p> +When the light was fading, and Mrs. Morel could see no more to sew, she rose +and went to the door. Everywhere was the sound of excitement, the restlessness +of the holiday, that at last infected her. She went out into the side garden. +Women were coming home from the wakes, the children hugging a white lamb with +green legs, or a wooden horse. Occasionally a man lurched past, almost as full +as he could carry. Sometimes a good husband came along with his family, +peacefully. But usually the women and children were alone. The stay-at-home +mothers stood gossiping at the corners of the alley, as the twilight sank, +folding their arms under their white aprons. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel was alone, but she was used to it. Her son and her little girl slept +upstairs; so, it seemed, her home was there behind her, fixed and stable. But +she felt wretched with the coming child. The world seemed a dreary place, where +nothing else would happen for her—at least until William grew up. But for +herself, nothing but this dreary endurance—till the children grew up. And +the children! She could not afford to have this third. She did not want it. The +father was serving beer in a public house, swilling himself drunk. She despised +him, and was tied to him. This coming child was too much for her. If it were +not for William and Annie, she was sick of it, the struggle with poverty and +ugliness and meanness. +</p> + +<p> +She went into the front garden, feeling too heavy to take herself out, yet +unable to stay indoors. The heat suffocated her. And looking ahead, the +prospect of her life made her feel as if she were buried alive. +</p> + +<p> +The front garden was a small square with a privet hedge. There she stood, +trying to soothe herself with the scent of flowers and the fading, beautiful +evening. Opposite her small gate was the stile that led uphill, under the tall +hedge between the burning glow of the cut pastures. The sky overhead throbbed +and pulsed with light. The glow sank quickly off the field; the earth and the +hedges smoked dusk. As it grew dark, a ruddy glare came out on the hilltop, and +out of the glare the diminished commotion of the fair. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes, down the trough of darkness formed by the path under the hedges, men +came lurching home. One young man lapsed into a run down the steep bit that +ended the hill, and went with a crash into the stile. Mrs. Morel shuddered. He +picked himself up, swearing viciously, rather pathetically, as if he thought +the stile had wanted to hurt him. +</p> + +<p> +She went indoors, wondering if things were never going to alter. She was +beginning by now to realise that they would not. She seemed so far away from +her girlhood, she wondered if it were the same person walking heavily up the +back garden at the Bottoms as had run so lightly up the breakwater at Sheerness +ten years before. +</p> + +<p> +“What have <i>I</i> to do with it?” she said to herself. +“What have I to do with all this? Even the child I am going to have! It +doesn’t seem as if <i>I</i> were taken into account.” +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes +one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred +over. +</p> + +<p> +“I wait,” Mrs. Morel said to herself—“I wait, and what +I wait for can never come.” +</p> + +<p> +Then she straightened the kitchen, lit the lamp, mended the fire, looked out +the washing for the next day, and put it to soak. After which she sat down to +her sewing. Through the long hours her needle flashed regularly through the +stuff. Occasionally she sighed, moving to relieve herself. And all the time she +was thinking how to make the most of what she had, for the children’s +sakes. +</p> + +<p> +At half-past eleven her husband came. His cheeks were very red and very shiny +above his black moustache. His head nodded slightly. He was pleased with +himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Oh! waitin’ for me, lass? I’ve bin ’elpin’ +Anthony, an’ what’s think he’s gen me? Nowt b’r a lousy +hae’f-crown, an’ that’s ivry penny—” +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks you’ve made the rest up in beer,” she said +shortly. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ I ’aven’t—that I ’aven’t. You +b’lieve me, I’ve ’ad very little this day, I have an’ +all.” His voice went tender. “Here, an’ I browt thee a bit +o’ brandysnap, an’ a cocoanut for th’ children.” He +laid the gingerbread and the cocoanut, a hairy object, on the table. +“Nay, tha niver said thankyer for nowt i’ thy life, did ter?” +</p> + +<p> +As a compromise, she picked up the cocoanut and shook it, to see if it had any +milk. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a good un, you may back yer life o’ that. I got it +fra’ Bill Hodgkisson. ‘Bill,’ I says, ‘tha non wants +them three nuts, does ter? Arena ter for gi’ein’ me one for my bit +of a lad an’ wench?’ ‘I ham, Walter, my lad,’ ’e +says; ‘ta’e which on ’em ter’s a mind.’ An’ +so I took one, an’ thanked ’im. I didn’t like ter shake it +afore ’is eyes, but ’e says, ‘Tha’d better ma’e +sure it’s a good un, Walt.’ An’ so, yer see, I knowed it was. +He’s a nice chap, is Bill Hodgkisson, e’s a nice chap!” +</p> + +<p> +“A man will part with anything so long as he’s drunk, and +you’re drunk along with him,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, tha mucky little ’ussy, who’s drunk, I sh’d like +ter know?” said Morel. He was extraordinarily pleased with himself, +because of his day’s helping to wait in the Moon and Stars. He chattered +on. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel, very tired, and sick of his babble, went to bed as quickly as +possible, while he raked the fire. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel came of a good old burgher family, famous independents who had +fought with Colonel Hutchinson, and who remained stout Congregationalists. Her +grandfather had gone bankrupt in the lace-market at a time when so many +lace-manufacturers were ruined in Nottingham. Her father, George Coppard, was +an engineer—a large, handsome, haughty man, proud of his fair skin and +blue eyes, but more proud still of his integrity. Gertrude resembled her mother +in her small build. But her temper, proud and unyielding, she had from the +Coppards. +</p> + +<p> +George Coppard was bitterly galled by his own poverty. He became foreman of the +engineers in the dockyard at Sheerness. Mrs. Morel—Gertrude—was the +second daughter. She favoured her mother, loved her mother best of all; but she +had the Coppards’ clear, defiant blue eyes and their broad brow. She +remembered to have hated her father’s overbearing manner towards her +gentle, humorous, kindly-souled mother. She remembered running over the +breakwater at Sheerness and finding the boat. She remembered to have been +petted and flattered by all the men when she had gone to the dockyard, for she +was a delicate, rather proud child. She remembered the funny old mistress, +whose assistant she had become, whom she had loved to help in the private +school. And she still had the Bible that John Field had given her. She used to +walk home from chapel with John Field when she was nineteen. He was the son of +a well-to-do tradesman, had been to college in London, and was to devote +himself to business. +</p> + +<p> +She could always recall in detail a September Sunday afternoon, when they had +sat under the vine at the back of her father’s house. The sun came +through the chinks of the vine-leaves and made beautiful patterns, like a lace +scarf, falling on her and on him. Some of the leaves were clean yellow, like +yellow flat flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“Now sit still,” he had cried. “Now your hair, I don’t +know what it <i>is</i> like! It’s as bright as copper and gold, as red as +burnt copper, and it has gold threads where the sun shines on it. Fancy their +saying it’s brown. Your mother calls it mouse-colour.” +</p> + +<p> +She had met his brilliant eyes, but her clear face scarcely showed the elation +which rose within her. +</p> + +<p> +“But you say you don’t like business,” she pursued. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t. I hate it!” he cried hotly. +</p> + +<p> +“And you would like to go into the ministry,” she half implored. +</p> + +<p> +“I should. I should love it, if I thought I could make a first-rate +preacher.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why don’t you—why <i>don’t</i> you?” Her +voice rang with defiance. “If <i>I</i> were a man, nothing would stop +me.” +</p> + +<p> +She held her head erect. He was rather timid before her. +</p> + +<p> +“But my father’s so stiff-necked. He means to put me into the +business, and I know he’ll do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if you’re a <i>man?</i>” she had cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Being a man isn’t everything,” he replied, frowning with +puzzled helplessness. +</p> + +<p> +Now, as she moved about her work at the Bottoms, with some experience of what +being a man meant, she knew that it was <i>not</i> everything. +</p> + +<p> +At twenty, owing to her health, she had left Sheerness. Her father had retired +home to Nottingham. John Field’s father had been ruined; the son had gone +as a teacher in Norwood. She did not hear of him until, two years later, she +made determined inquiry. He had married his landlady, a woman of forty, a widow +with property. +</p> + +<p> +And still Mrs. Morel preserved John Field’s Bible. She did not now +believe him to be—— Well, she understood pretty well what he might +or might not have been. So she preserved his Bible, and kept his memory intact +in her heart, for her own sake. To her dying day, for thirty-five years, she +did not speak of him. +</p> + +<p> +When she was twenty-three years old, she met, at a Christmas party, a young man +from the Erewash Valley. Morel was then twenty-seven years old. He was well +set-up, erect, and very smart. He had wavy black hair that shone again, and a +vigorous black beard that had never been shaved. His cheeks were ruddy, and his +red, moist mouth was noticeable because he laughed so often and so heartily. He +had that rare thing, a rich, ringing laugh. Gertrude Coppard had watched him, +fascinated. He was so full of colour and animation, his voice ran so easily +into comic grotesque, he was so ready and so pleasant with everybody. Her own +father had a rich fund of humour, but it was satiric. This man’s was +different: soft, non-intellectual, warm, a kind of gambolling. +</p> + +<p> +She herself was opposite. She had a curious, receptive mind which found much +pleasure and amusement in listening to other folk. She was clever in leading +folk to talk. She loved ideas, and was considered very intellectual. What she +liked most of all was an argument on religion or philosophy or politics with +some educated man. This she did not often enjoy. So she always had people tell +her about themselves, finding her pleasure so. +</p> + +<p> +In her person she was rather small and delicate, with a large brow, and +dropping bunches of brown silk curls. Her blue eyes were very straight, honest, +and searching. She had the beautiful hands of the Coppards. Her dress was +always subdued. She wore dark blue silk, with a peculiar silver chain of silver +scallops. This, and a heavy brooch of twisted gold, was her only ornament. She +was still perfectly intact, deeply religious, and full of beautiful candour. +</p> + +<p> +Walter Morel seemed melted away before her. She was to the miner that thing of +mystery and fascination, a lady. When she spoke to him, it was with a southern +pronunciation and a purity of English which thrilled him to hear. She watched +him. He danced well, as if it were natural and joyous in him to dance. His +grandfather was a French refugee who had married an English barmaid—if it +had been a marriage. Gertrude Coppard watched the young miner as he danced, a +certain subtle exultation like glamour in his movement, and his face the flower +of his body, ruddy, with tumbled black hair, and laughing alike whatever +partner he bowed above. She thought him rather wonderful, never having met +anyone like him. Her father was to her the type of all men. And George Coppard, +proud in his bearing, handsome, and rather bitter; who preferred theology in +reading, and who drew near in sympathy only to one man, the Apostle Paul; who +was harsh in government, and in familiarity ironic; who ignored all sensuous +pleasure:—he was very different from the miner. Gertrude herself was +rather contemptuous of dancing; she had not the slightest inclination towards +that accomplishment, and had never learned even a Roger de Coverley. She was +puritan, like her father, high-minded, and really stern. Therefore the dusky, +golden softness of this man’s sensuous flame of life, that flowed off his +flesh like the flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into incandescence +by thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her something wonderful, +beyond her. +</p> + +<p> +He came and bowed above her. A warmth radiated through her as if she had drunk +wine. +</p> + +<p> +“Now do come and have this one wi’ me,” he said caressively. +“It’s easy, you know. I’m pining to see you dance.” +</p> + +<p> +She had told him before she could not dance. She glanced at his humility and +smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. It moved the man so that he forgot +everything. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I won’t dance,” she said softly. Her words came clean +and ringing. +</p> + +<p> +Not knowing what he was doing—he often did the right thing by +instinct—he sat beside her, inclining reverentially. +</p> + +<p> +“But you mustn’t miss your dance,” she reproved. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, I don’t want to dance that—it’s not one as I care +about.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you invited me to it.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed very heartily at this. +</p> + +<p> +“I never thought o’ that. Tha’rt not long in taking the curl +out of me.” +</p> + +<p> +It was her turn to laugh quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t look as if you’d come much uncurled,” she +said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m like a pig’s tail, I curl because I canna help +it,” he laughed, rather boisterously. +</p> + +<p> +“And you are a miner!” she exclaimed in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I went down when I was ten.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him in wondering dismay. +</p> + +<p> +“When you were ten! And wasn’t it very hard?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“You soon get used to it. You live like th’ mice, an’ you pop +out at night to see what’s going on.” +</p> + +<p> +“It makes me feel blind,” she frowned. +</p> + +<p> +“Like a moudiwarp!” he laughed. “Yi, an’ there’s +some chaps as does go round like moudiwarps.” He thrust his face forward +in the blind, snout-like way of a mole, seeming to sniff and peer for +direction. “They dun though!” he protested naïvely. “Tha +niver seed such a way they get in. But tha mun let me ta’e thee down some +time, an’ tha can see for thysen.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, startled. This was a new tract of life suddenly opened +before her. She realised the life of the miners, hundreds of them toiling below +earth and coming up at evening. He seemed to her noble. He risked his life +daily, and with gaiety. She looked at him, with a touch of appeal in her pure +humility. +</p> + +<p> +“Shouldn’t ter like it?” he asked tenderly. +“’Appen not, it ’ud dirty thee.” +</p> + +<p> +She had never been “thee’d” and “thou’d” +before. +</p> + +<p> +The next Christmas they were married, and for three months she was perfectly +happy: for six months she was very happy. +</p> + +<p> +He had signed the pledge, and wore the blue ribbon of a tee-totaller: he was +nothing if not showy. They lived, she thought, in his own house. It was small, +but convenient enough, and quite nicely furnished, with solid, worthy stuff +that suited her honest soul. The women, her neighbours, were rather foreign to +her, and Morel’s mother and sisters were apt to sneer at her ladylike +ways. But she could perfectly well live by herself, so long as she had her +husband close. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes, when she herself wearied of love-talk, she tried to open her heart +seriously to him. She saw him listen deferentially, but without understanding. +This killed her efforts at a finer intimacy, and she had flashes of fear. +Sometimes he was restless of an evening: it was not enough for him just to be +near her, she realised. She was glad when he set himself to little jobs. +</p> + +<p> +He was a remarkably handy man—could make or mend anything. So she would +say: +</p> + +<p> +“I do like that coal-rake of your mother’s—it is small and +natty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does ter, my wench? Well, I made that, so I can make thee one!” +</p> + +<p> +“What! why, it’s a steel one!” +</p> + +<p> +“An’ what if it is! Tha s’lt ha’e one very similar, if +not exactly same.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not mind the mess, nor the hammering and noise. He was busy and happy. +</p> + +<p> +But in the seventh month, when she was brushing his Sunday coat, she felt +papers in the breast pocket, and, seized with a sudden curiosity, took them out +to read. He very rarely wore the frock-coat he was married in: and it had not +occurred to her before to feel curious concerning the papers. They were the +bills of the household furniture, still unpaid. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here,” she said at night, after he was washed and had had his +dinner. “I found these in the pocket of your wedding-coat. Haven’t +you settled the bills yet?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I haven’t had a chance.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you told me all was paid. I had better go into Nottingham on +Saturday and settle them. I don’t like sitting on another man’s +chairs and eating from an unpaid table.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“I can have your bank-book, can’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Tha can ha’e it, for what good it’ll be to thee.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought—” she began. He had told her he had a good bit of +money left over. But she realised it was no use asking questions. She sat rigid +with bitterness and indignation. +</p> + +<p> +The next day she went down to see his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t you buy the furniture for Walter?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I did,” tartly retorted the elder woman. +</p> + +<p> +“And how much did he give you to pay for it?” +</p> + +<p> +The elder woman was stung with fine indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“Eighty pound, if you’re so keen on knowin’,” she +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Eighty pounds! But there are forty-two pounds still owing!” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help that.” +</p> + +<p> +“But where has it all gone?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll find all the papers, I think, if you look—beside ten +pound as he owed me, an’ six pound as the wedding cost down here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Six pounds!” echoed Gertrude Morel. It seemed to her monstrous +that, after her own father had paid so heavily for her wedding, six pounds more +should have been squandered in eating and drinking at Walter’s +parents’ house, at his expense. +</p> + +<p> +“And how much has he sunk in his houses?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“His houses—which houses?” +</p> + +<p> +Gertrude Morel went white to the lips. He had told her the house he lived in, +and the next one, was his own. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought the house we live in—” she began. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re my houses, those two,” said the mother-in-law. +“And not clear either. It’s as much as I can do to keep the +mortgage interest paid.” +</p> + +<p> +Gertrude sat white and silent. She was her father now. +</p> + +<p> +“Then we ought to be paying you rent,” she said coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Walter is paying me rent,” replied the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“And what rent?” asked Gertrude. +</p> + +<p> +“Six and six a week,” retorted the mother. +</p> + +<p> +It was more than the house was worth. Gertrude held her head erect, looked +straight before her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is lucky to be you,” said the elder woman, bitingly, “to +have a husband as takes all the worry of the money, and leaves you a free +hand.” +</p> + +<p> +The young wife was silent. +</p> + +<p> +She said very little to her husband, but her manner had changed towards him. +Something in her proud, honourable soul had crystallised out hard as rock. +</p> + +<p> +When October came in, she thought only of Christmas. Two years ago, at +Christmas, she had met him. Last Christmas she had married him. This Christmas +she would bear him a child. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t dance yourself, do you, missis?” asked her nearest +neighbour, in October, when there was great talk of opening a dancing-class +over the Brick and Tile Inn at Bestwood. +</p> + +<p> +“No—I never had the least inclination to,” Mrs. Morel +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Fancy! An’ how funny as you should ha’ married your Mester. +You know he’s quite a famous one for dancing.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know he was famous,” laughed Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Yea, he is though! Why, he ran that dancing-class in the Miners’ +Arms club-room for over five year.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he did.” The other woman was defiant. “An’ it was +thronged every Tuesday, and Thursday, an’ Sat’day—an’ +there <i>was</i> carryin’s-on, accordin’ to all accounts.” +</p> + +<p> +This kind of thing was gall and bitterness to Mrs. Morel, and she had a fair +share of it. The women did not spare her, at first; for she was superior, +though she could not help it. +</p> + +<p> +He began to be rather late in coming home. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re working very late now, aren’t they?” she said +to her washer-woman. +</p> + +<p> +“No later than they allers do, I don’t think. But they stop to have +their pint at Ellen’s, an’ they get talkin’, an’ there +you are! Dinner stone cold—an’ it serves ’em right.” +</p> + +<p> +“But Mr. Morel does not take any drink.” +</p> + +<p> +The woman dropped the clothes, looked at Mrs. Morel, then went on with her +work, saying nothing. +</p> + +<p> +Gertrude Morel was very ill when the boy was born. Morel was good to her, as +good as gold. But she felt very lonely, miles away from her own people. She +felt lonely with him now, and his presence only made it more intense. +</p> + +<p> +The boy was small and frail at first, but he came on quickly. He was a +beautiful child, with dark gold ringlets, and dark-blue eyes which changed +gradually to a clear grey. His mother loved him passionately. He came just when +her own bitterness of disillusion was hardest to bear; when her faith in life +was shaken, and her soul felt dreary and lonely. She made much of the child, +and the father was jealous. +</p> + +<p> +At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband. She turned to the child; she turned +from the father. He had begun to neglect her; the novelty of his own home was +gone. He had no grit, she said bitterly to herself. What he felt just at the +minute, that was all to him. He could not abide by anything. There was nothing +at the back of all his show. +</p> + +<p> +There began a battle between the husband and wife—a fearful, bloody +battle that ended only with the death of one. She fought to make him undertake +his own responsibilities, to make him fulfill his obligations. But he was too +different from her. His nature was purely sensuous, and she strove to make him +moral, religious. She tried to force him to face things. He could not endure +it—it drove him out of his mind. +</p> + +<p> +While the baby was still tiny, the father’s temper had become so +irritable that it was not to be trusted. The child had only to give a little +trouble when the man began to bully. A little more, and the hard hands of the +collier hit the baby. Then Mrs. Morel loathed her husband, loathed him for +days; and he went out and drank; and she cared very little what he did. Only, +on his return, she scathed him with her satire. +</p> + +<p> +The estrangement between them caused him, knowingly or unknowingly, grossly to +offend her where he would not have done. +</p> + +<p> +William was only one year old, and his mother was proud of him, he was so +pretty. She was not well off now, but her sisters kept the boy in clothes. +Then, with his little white hat curled with an ostrich feather, and his white +coat, he was a joy to her, the twining wisps of hair clustering round his head. +Mrs. Morel lay listening, one Sunday morning, to the chatter of the father and +child downstairs. Then she dozed off. When she came downstairs, a great fire +glowed in the grate, the room was hot, the breakfast was roughly laid, and +seated in his armchair, against the chimney-piece, sat Morel, rather timid; and +standing between his legs, the child—cropped like a sheep, with such an +odd round poll—looking wondering at her; and on a newspaper spread out +upon the hearthrug, a myriad of crescent-shaped curls, like the petals of a +marigold scattered in the reddening firelight. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel stood still. It was her first baby. She went very white, and was +unable to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“What dost think o’ ’im?” Morel laughed uneasily. +</p> + +<p> +She gripped her two fists, lifted them, and came forward. Morel shrank back. +</p> + +<p> +“I could kill you, I could!” she said. She choked with rage, her +two fists uplifted. +</p> + +<p> +“Yer non want ter make a wench on ’im,” Morel said, in a +frightened tone, bending his head to shield his eyes from hers. His attempt at +laughter had vanished. +</p> + +<p> +The mother looked down at the jagged, close-clipped head of her child. She put +her hands on his hair, and stroked and fondled his head. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—my boy!” she faltered. Her lip trembled, her face broke, +and, snatching up the child, she buried her face in his shoulder and cried +painfully. She was one of those women who cannot cry; whom it hurts as it hurts +a man. It was like ripping something out of her, her sobbing. +</p> + +<p> +Morel sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped together till the +knuckles were white. He gazed in the fire, feeling almost stunned, as if he +could not breathe. +</p> + +<p> +Presently she came to an end, soothed the child and cleared away the +breakfast-table. She left the newspaper, littered with curls, spread upon the +hearthrug. At last her husband gathered it up and put it at the back of the +fire. She went about her work with closed mouth and very quiet. Morel was +subdued. He crept about wretchedly, and his meals were a misery that day. She +spoke to him civilly, and never alluded to what he had done. But he felt +something final had happened. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards she said she had been silly, that the boy’s hair would have +had to be cut, sooner or later. In the end, she even brought herself to say to +her husband it was just as well he had played barber when he did. But she knew, +and Morel knew, that that act had caused something momentous to take place in +her soul. She remembered the scene all her life, as one in which she had +suffered the most intensely. +</p> + +<p> +This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her love for +Morel. Before, while she had striven against him bitterly, she had fretted +after him, as if he had gone astray from her. Now she ceased to fret for his +love: he was an outsider to her. This made life much more bearable. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, she still continued to strive with him. She still had her high +moral sense, inherited from generations of Puritans. It was now a religious +instinct, and she was almost a fanatic with him, because she loved him, or had +loved him. If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a +poltroon, sometimes a knave, she wielded the lash unmercifully. +</p> + +<p> +The pity was, she was too much his opposite. She could not be content with the +little he might be; she would have him the much that he ought to be. So, in +seeking to make him nobler than he could be, she destroyed him. She injured and +hurt and scarred herself, but she lost none of her worth. She also had the +children. +</p> + +<p> +He drank rather heavily, though not more than many miners, and always beer, so +that whilst his health was affected, it was never injured. The week-end was his +chief carouse. He sat in the Miners’ Arms until turning-out time every +Friday, every Saturday, and every Sunday evening. On Monday and Tuesday he had +to get up and reluctantly leave towards ten o’clock. Sometimes he stayed +at home on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, or was only out for an hour. He +practically never had to miss work owing to his drinking. +</p> + +<p> +But although he was very steady at work, his wages fell off. He was +blab-mouthed, a tongue-wagger. Authority was hateful to him, therefore he could +only abuse the pit-managers. He would say, in the Palmerston: +</p> + +<p> +“Th’ gaffer come down to our stall this morning, an’ ’e +says, ‘You know, Walter, this ’ere’ll not do. What about +these props?’ An’ I says to him, ‘Why, what art talkin’ +about? What d’st mean about th’ props?’ ‘It’ll +never do, this ’ere,’ ’e says. ‘You’ll be +havin’ th’ roof in, one o’ these days.’ An’ I +says, ‘Tha’d better stan’ on a bit o’ clunch, then, +an’ hold it up wi’ thy ’ead.’ So ’e wor that mad, +’e cossed an’ ’e swore, an’ t’other chaps they +did laugh.” Morel was a good mimic. He imitated the manager’s fat, +squeaky voice, with its attempt at good English. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I shan’t have it, Walter. Who knows more about it, me or +you?’ So I says, ‘I’ve niver fun out how much tha’ +knows, Alfred. It’ll ’appen carry thee ter bed an’ +back.’” +</p> + +<p> +So Morel would go on to the amusement of his boon companions. And some of this +would be true. The pit-manager was not an educated man. He had been a boy along +with Morel, so that, while the two disliked each other, they more or less took +each other for granted. But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive the butty these +public-house sayings. Consequently, although Morel was a good miner, sometimes +earning as much as five pounds a week when he married, he came gradually to +have worse and worse stalls, where the coal was thin, and hard to get, and +unprofitable. +</p> + +<p> +Also, in summer, the pits are slack. Often, on bright sunny mornings, the men +are seen trooping home again at ten, eleven, or twelve o’clock. No empty +trucks stand at the pit-mouth. The women on the hillside look across as they +shake the hearthrug against the fence, and count the wagons the engine is +taking along the line up the valley. And the children, as they come from school +at dinner-time, looking down the fields and seeing the wheels on the headstocks +standing, say: +</p> + +<p> +“Minton’s knocked off. My dad’ll be at home.” +</p> + +<p> +And there is a sort of shadow over all, women and children and men, because +money will be short at the end of the week. +</p> + +<p> +Morel was supposed to give his wife thirty shillings a week, to provide +everything—rent, food, clothes, clubs, insurance, doctors. Occasionally, +if he were flush, he gave her thirty-five. But these occasions by no means +balanced those when he gave her twenty-five. In winter, with a decent stall, +the miner might earn fifty or fifty-five shillings a week. Then he was happy. +On Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, he spent royally, getting rid of his +sovereign or thereabouts. And out of so much, he scarcely spared the children +an extra penny or bought them a pound of apples. It all went in drink. In the +bad times, matters were more worrying, but he was not so often drunk, so that +Mrs. Morel used to say: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather be short, for when he’s +flush, there isn’t a minute of peace.” +</p> + +<p> +If he earned forty shillings he kept ten; from thirty-five he kept five; from +thirty-two he kept four; from twenty-eight he kept three; from twenty-four he +kept two; from twenty he kept one-and-six; from eighteen he kept a shilling; +from sixteen he kept sixpence. He never saved a penny, and he gave his wife no +opportunity of saving; instead, she had occasionally to pay his debts; not +public-house debts, for those never were passed on to the women, but debts when +he had bought a canary, or a fancy walking-stick. +</p> + +<p> +At the wakes time Morel was working badly, and Mrs. Morel was trying to save +against her confinement. So it galled her bitterly to think he should be out +taking his pleasure and spending money, whilst she remained at home, harassed. +There were two days holiday. On the Tuesday morning Morel rose early. He was in +good spirits. Quite early, before six o’clock, she heard him whistling +away to himself downstairs. He had a pleasant way of whistling, lively and +musical. He nearly always whistled hymns. He had been a choir-boy with a +beautiful voice, and had taken solos in Southwell cathedral. His morning +whistling alone betrayed it. +</p> + +<p> +His wife lay listening to him tinkering away in the garden, his whistling +ringing out as he sawed and hammered away. It always gave her a sense of warmth +and peace to hear him thus as she lay in bed, the children not yet awake, in +the bright early morning, happy in his man’s fashion. +</p> + +<p> +At nine o’clock, while the children with bare legs and feet were sitting +playing on the sofa, and the mother was washing up, he came in from his +carpentry, his sleeves rolled up, his waistcoat hanging open. He was still a +good-looking man, with black, wavy hair, and a large black moustache. His face +was perhaps too much inflamed, and there was about him a look almost of +peevishness. But now he was jolly. He went straight to the sink where his wife +was washing up. +</p> + +<p> +“What, are thee there!” he said boisterously. “Sluthe off +an’ let me wesh mysen.” +</p> + +<p> +“You may wait till I’ve finished,” said his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mun I? An’ what if I shonna?” +</p> + +<p> +This good-humoured threat amused Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you can go and wash yourself in the soft-water tub.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! I can’ an’ a’, tha mucky little +’ussy.” +</p> + +<p> +With which he stood watching her a moment, then went away to wait for her. +</p> + +<p> +When he chose he could still make himself again a real gallant. Usually he +preferred to go out with a scarf round his neck. Now, however, he made a +toilet. There seemed so much gusto in the way he puffed and swilled as he +washed himself, so much alacrity with which he hurried to the mirror in the +kitchen, and, bending because it was too low for him, scrupulously parted his +wet black hair, that it irritated Mrs. Morel. He put on a turn-down collar, a +black bow, and wore his Sunday tail-coat. As such, he looked spruce, and what +his clothes would not do, his instinct for making the most of his good looks +would. +</p> + +<p> +At half-past nine Jerry Purdy came to call for his pal. Jerry was Morel’s +bosom friend, and Mrs. Morel disliked him. He was a tall, thin man, with a +rather foxy face, the kind of face that seems to lack eyelashes. He walked with +a stiff, brittle dignity, as if his head were on a wooden spring. His nature +was cold and shrewd. Generous where he intended to be generous, he seemed to be +very fond of Morel, and more or less to take charge of him. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel hated him. She had known his wife, who had died of consumption, and +who had, at the end, conceived such a violent dislike of her husband, that if +he came into her room it caused her hæmorrhage. None of which Jerry had seemed +to mind. And now his eldest daughter, a girl of fifteen, kept a poor house for +him, and looked after the two younger children. +</p> + +<p> +“A mean, wizzen-hearted stick!” Mrs. Morel said of him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve never known Jerry mean in <i>my</i> life,” protested +Morel. “A opener-handed and more freer chap you couldn’t find +anywhere, accordin’ to my knowledge.” +</p> + +<p> +“Open-handed to you,” retorted Mrs. Morel. “But his fist is +shut tight enough to his children, poor things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor things! And what for are they poor things, I should like to +know.” +</p> + +<p> +But Mrs. Morel would not be appeased on Jerry’s score. +</p> + +<p> +The subject of argument was seen, craning his thin neck over the scullery +curtain. He caught Mrs. Morel’s eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Mornin’, missis! Mester in?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—he is.” +</p> + +<p> +Jerry entered unasked, and stood by the kitchen doorway. He was not invited to +sit down, but stood there, coolly asserting the rights of men and husbands. +</p> + +<p> +“A nice day,” he said to Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. +</p> + +<p> +“Grand out this morning—grand for a walk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean <i>you’re</i> going for a walk?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. We mean walkin’ to Nottingham,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +The two men greeted each other, both glad: Jerry, however, full of assurance, +Morel rather subdued, afraid to seem too jubilant in presence of his wife. But +he laced his boots quickly, with spirit. They were going for a ten-mile walk +across the fields to Nottingham. Climbing the hillside from the Bottoms, they +mounted gaily into the morning. At the Moon and Stars they had their first +drink, then on to the Old Spot. Then a long five miles of drought to carry them +into Bulwell to a glorious pint of bitter. But they stayed in a field with some +haymakers whose gallon bottle was full, so that, when they came in sight of the +city, Morel was sleepy. The town spread upwards before them, smoking vaguely in +the midday glare, fridging the crest away to the south with spires and factory +bulks and chimneys. In the last field Morel lay down under an oak tree and +slept soundly for over an hour. When he rose to go forward he felt queer. +</p> + +<p> +The two had dinner in the Meadows, with Jerry’s sister, then repaired to +the Punch Bowl, where they mixed in the excitement of pigeon-racing. Morel +never in his life played cards, considering them as having some occult, +malevolent power—“the devil’s pictures,” he called +them! But he was a master of skittles and of dominoes. He took a challenge from +a Newark man, on skittles. All the men in the old, long bar took sides, betting +either one way or the other. Morel took off his coat. Jerry held the hat +containing the money. The men at the tables watched. Some stood with their mugs +in their hands. Morel felt his big wooden ball carefully, then launched it. He +played havoc among the nine-pins, and won half a crown, which restored him to +solvency. +</p> + +<p> +By seven o’clock the two were in good condition. They caught the 7.30 +train home. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon the Bottoms was intolerable. Every inhabitant remaining was +out of doors. The women, in twos and threes, bareheaded and in white aprons, +gossiped in the alley between the blocks. Men, having a rest between drinks, +sat on their heels and talked. The place smelled stale; the slate roofs +glistered in the arid heat. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel took the little girl down to the brook in the meadows, which were +not more than two hundred yards away. The water ran quickly over stones and +broken pots. Mother and child leaned on the rail of the old sheep-bridge, +watching. Up at the dipping-hole, at the other end of the meadow, Mrs. Morel +could see the naked forms of boys flashing round the deep yellow water, or an +occasional bright figure dart glittering over the blackish stagnant meadow. She +knew William was at the dipping-hole, and it was the dread of her life lest he +should get drowned. Annie played under the tall old hedge, picking up alder +cones, that she called currants. The child required much attention, and the +flies were teasing. +</p> + +<p> +The children were put to bed at seven o’clock. Then she worked awhile. +</p> + +<p> +When Walter Morel and Jerry arrived at Bestwood they felt a load off their +minds; a railway journey no longer impended, so they could put the finishing +touches to a glorious day. They entered the Nelson with the satisfaction of +returned travellers. +</p> + +<p> +The next day was a work-day, and the thought of it put a damper on the +men’s spirits. Most of them, moreover, had spent their money. Some were +already rolling dismally home, to sleep in preparation for the morrow. Mrs. +Morel, listening to their mournful singing, went indoors. Nine o’clock +passed, and ten, and still “the pair” had not returned. On a +doorstep somewhere a man was singing loudly, in a drawl: “Lead, kindly +Light.” Mrs. Morel was always indignant with the drunken men that they +must sing that hymn when they got maudlin. +</p> + +<p> +“As if ‘Genevieve’ weren’t good enough,” she +said. +</p> + +<p> +The kitchen was full of the scent of boiled herbs and hops. On the hob a large +black saucepan steamed slowly. Mrs. Morel took a panchion, a great bowl of +thick red earth, streamed a heap of white sugar into the bottom, and then, +straining herself to the weight, was pouring in the liquor. +</p> + +<p> +Just then Morel came in. He had been very jolly in the Nelson, but coming home +had grown irritable. He had not quite got over the feeling of irritability and +pain, after having slept on the ground when he was so hot; and a bad conscience +afflicted him as he neared the house. He did not know he was angry. But when +the garden gate resisted his attempts to open it, he kicked it and broke the +latch. He entered just as Mrs. Morel was pouring the infusion of herbs out of +the saucepan. Swaying slightly, he lurched against the table. The boiling +liquor pitched. Mrs. Morel started back. +</p> + +<p> +“Good gracious,” she cried, “coming home in his +drunkenness!” +</p> + +<p> +“Comin’ home in his what?” he snarled, his hat over his eye. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly her blood rose in a jet. +</p> + +<p> +“Say you’re <i>not</i> drunk!” she flashed. +</p> + +<p> +She had put down her saucepan, and was stirring the sugar into the beer. He +dropped his two hands heavily on the table, and thrust his face forwards at +her. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Say you’re not drunk,’” he repeated. +“Why, nobody but a nasty little bitch like you ’ud ’ave such +a thought.” +</p> + +<p> +He thrust his face forward at her. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s money to bezzle with, if there’s money for nothing +else.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not spent a two-shillin’ bit this day,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t get as drunk as a lord on nothing,” she replied. +“And,” she cried, flashing into sudden fury, “if you’ve +been sponging on your beloved Jerry, why, let him look after his children, for +they need it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a lie, it’s a lie. Shut your face, woman.” +</p> + +<p> +They were now at battle-pitch. Each forgot everything save the hatred of the +other and the battle between them. She was fiery and furious as he. They went +on till he called her a liar. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried, starting up, scarce able to breathe. +“Don’t call me that—you, the most despicable liar that ever +walked in shoe-leather.” She forced the last words out of suffocated +lungs. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a liar!” he yelled, banging the table with his fist. +“You’re a liar, you’re a liar.” +</p> + +<p> +She stiffened herself, with clenched fists. +</p> + +<p> +“The house is filthy with you,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Then get out on it—it’s mine. Get out on it!” he +shouted. “It’s me as brings th’ money whoam, not thee. +It’s my house, not thine. Then ger out on’t—ger out +on’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“And I would,” she cried, suddenly shaken into tears of impotence. +“Ah, wouldn’t I, wouldn’t I have gone long ago, but for those +children. Ay, haven’t I repented not going years ago, when I’d only +the one”—suddenly drying into rage. “Do you think it’s +for <i>you</i> I stop—do you think I’d stop one minute for +<i>you?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Go, then,” he shouted, beside himself. “Go!” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” She faced round. “No,” she cried loudly, +“you shan’t have it <i>all</i> your own way; you shan’t do +<i>all</i> you like. I’ve got those children to see to. My word,” +she laughed, “I should look well to leave them to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go,” he cried thickly, lifting his fist. He was afraid of her. +“Go!” +</p> + +<p> +“I should be only too glad. I should laugh, laugh, my lord, if I could +get away from you,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He came up to her, his red face, with its bloodshot eyes, thrust forward, and +gripped her arms. She cried in fear of him, struggled to be free. Coming +slightly to himself, panting, he pushed her roughly to the outer door, and +thrust her forth, slotting the bolt behind her with a bang. Then he went back +into the kitchen, dropped into his armchair, his head, bursting full of blood, +sinking between his knees. Thus he dipped gradually into a stupor, from +exhaustion and intoxication. +</p> + +<p> +The moon was high and magnificent in the August night. Mrs. Morel, seared with +passion, shivered to find herself out there in a great white light, that fell +cold on her, and gave a shock to her inflamed soul. She stood for a few moments +helplessly staring at the glistening great rhubarb leaves near the door. Then +she got the air into her breast. She walked down the garden path, trembling in +every limb, while the child boiled within her. For a while she could not +control her consciousness; mechanically she went over the last scene, then over +it again, certain phrases, certain moments coming each time like a brand +red-hot down on her soul; and each time she enacted again the past hour, each +time the brand came down at the same points, till the mark was burnt in, and +the pain burnt out, and at last she came to herself. She must have been half an +hour in this delirious condition. Then the presence of the night came again to +her. She glanced round in fear. She had wandered to the side garden, where she +was walking up and down the path beside the currant bushes under the long wall. +The garden was a narrow strip, bounded from the road, that cut transversely +between the blocks, by a thick thorn hedge. +</p> + +<p> +She hurried out of the side garden to the front, where she could stand as if in +an immense gulf of white light, the moon streaming high in face of her, the +moonlight standing up from the hills in front, and filling the valley where the +Bottoms crouched, almost blindingly. There, panting and half weeping in +reaction from the stress, she murmured to herself over and over again: +“The nuisance! the nuisance!” +</p> + +<p> +She became aware of something about her. With an effort she roused herself to +see what it was that penetrated her consciousness. The tall white lilies were +reeling in the moonlight, and the air was charged with their perfume, as with a +presence. Mrs. Morel gasped slightly in fear. She touched the big, pallid +flowers on their petals, then shivered. They seemed to be stretching in the +moonlight. She put her hand into one white bin: the gold scarcely showed on her +fingers by moonlight. She bent down to look at the binful of yellow pollen; but +it only appeared dusky. Then she drank a deep draught of the scent. It almost +made her dizzy. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel leaned on the garden gate, looking out, and she lost herself awhile. +She did not know what she thought. Except for a slight feeling of sickness, and +her consciousness in the child, herself melted out like scent into the shiny, +pale air. After a time the child, too, melted with her in the mixing-pot of +moonlight, and she rested with the hills and lilies and houses, all swum +together in a kind of swoon. +</p> + +<p> +When she came to herself she was tired for sleep. Languidly she looked about +her; the clumps of white phlox seemed like bushes spread with linen; a moth +ricochetted over them, and right across the garden. Following it with her eye +roused her. A few whiffs of the raw, strong scent of phlox invigorated her. She +passed along the path, hesitating at the white rose-bush. It smelled sweet and +simple. She touched the white ruffles of the roses. Their fresh scent and cool, +soft leaves reminded her of the morning-time and sunshine. She was very fond of +them. But she was tired, and wanted to sleep. In the mysterious out-of-doors +she felt forlorn. +</p> + +<p> +There was no noise anywhere. Evidently the children had not been wakened, or +had gone to sleep again. A train, three miles away, roared across the valley. +The night was very large, and very strange, stretching its hoary distances +infinitely. And out of the silver-grey fog of darkness came sounds vague and +hoarse: a corncrake not far off, sound of a train like a sigh, and distant +shouts of men. +</p> + +<p> +Her quietened heart beginning to beat quickly again, she hurried down the side +garden to the back of the house. Softly she lifted the latch; the door was +still bolted, and hard against her. She rapped gently, waited, then rapped +again. She must not rouse the children, nor the neighbours. He must be asleep, +and he would not wake easily. Her heart began to burn to be indoors. She clung +to the door-handle. Now it was cold; she would take a chill, and in her present +condition! +</p> + +<p> +Putting her apron over her head and her arms, she hurried again to the side +garden, to the window of the kitchen. Leaning on the sill, she could just see, +under the blind, her husband’s arms spread out on the table, and his +black head on the board. He was sleeping with his face lying on the table. +Something in his attitude made her feel tired of things. The lamp was burning +smokily; she could tell by the copper colour of the light. She tapped at the +window more and more noisily. Almost it seemed as if the glass would break. +Still he did not wake up. +</p> + +<p> +After vain efforts, she began to shiver, partly from contact with the stone, +and from exhaustion. Fearful always for the unborn child, she wondered what she +could do for warmth. She went down to the coal-house, where there was an old +hearthrug she had carried out for the rag-man the day before. This she wrapped +over her shoulders. It was warm, if grimy. Then she walked up and down the +garden path, peeping every now and then under the blind, knocking, and telling +herself that in the end the very strain of his position must wake him. +</p> + +<p> +At last, after about an hour, she rapped long and low at the window. Gradually +the sound penetrated to him. When, in despair, she had ceased to tap, she saw +him stir, then lift his face blindly. The labouring of his heart hurt him into +consciousness. She rapped imperatively at the window. He started awake. +Instantly she saw his fists set and his eyes glare. He had not a grain of +physical fear. If it had been twenty burglars, he would have gone blindly for +them. He glared round, bewildered, but prepared to fight. +</p> + +<p> +“Open the door, Walter,” she said coldly. +</p> + +<p> +His hands relaxed. It dawned on him what he had done. His head dropped, sullen +and dogged. She saw him hurry to the door, heard the bolt chock. He tried the +latch. It opened—and there stood the silver-grey night, fearful to him, +after the tawny light of the lamp. He hurried back. +</p> + +<p> +When Mrs. Morel entered, she saw him almost running through the door to the +stairs. He had ripped his collar off his neck in his haste to be gone ere she +came in, and there it lay with bursten button-holes. It made her angry. +</p> + +<p> +She warmed and soothed herself. In her weariness forgetting everything, she +moved about at the little tasks that remained to be done, set his breakfast, +rinsed his pit-bottle, put his pit-clothes on the hearth to warm, set his +pit-boots beside them, put him out a clean scarf and snap-bag and two apples, +raked the fire, and went to bed. He was already dead asleep. His narrow black +eyebrows were drawn up in a sort of peevish misery into his forehead while his +cheeks’ down-strokes, and his sulky mouth, seemed to be saying: “I +don’t care who you are nor what you are, I <i>shall</i> have my own +way.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel knew him too well to look at him. As she unfastened her brooch at +the mirror, she smiled faintly to see her face all smeared with the yellow dust +of lilies. She brushed it off, and at last lay down. For some time her mind +continued snapping and jetting sparks, but she was asleep before her husband +awoke from the first sleep of his drunkenness. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II<br/> +THE BIRTH OF PAUL, AND ANOTHER BATTLE</h2> + +<p> +After such a scene as the last, Walter Morel was for some days abashed and +ashamed, but he soon regained his old bullying indifference. Yet there was a +slight shrinking, a diminishing in his assurance. Physically even, he shrank, +and his fine full presence waned. He never grew in the least stout, so that, as +he sank from his erect, assertive bearing, his physique seemed to contract +along with his pride and moral strength. +</p> + +<p> +But now he realised how hard it was for his wife to drag about at her work, +and, his sympathy quickened by penitence, hastened forward with his help. He +came straight home from the pit, and stayed in at evening till Friday, and then +he could not remain at home. But he was back again by ten o’clock, almost +quite sober. +</p> + +<p> +He always made his own breakfast. Being a man who rose early and had plenty of +time he did not, as some miners do, drag his wife out of bed at six +o’clock. At five, sometimes earlier, he woke, got straight out of bed, +and went downstairs. When she could not sleep, his wife lay waiting for this +time, as for a period of peace. The only real rest seemed to be when he was out +of the house. +</p> + +<p> +He went downstairs in his shirt and then struggled into his pit-trousers, which +were left on the hearth to warm all night. There was always a fire, because +Mrs. Morel raked. And the first sound in the house was the bang, bang of the +poker against the raker, as Morel smashed the remainder of the coal to make the +kettle, which was filled and left on the hob, finally boil. His cup and knife +and fork, all he wanted except just the food, was laid ready on the table on a +newspaper. Then he got his breakfast, made the tea, packed the bottom of the +doors with rugs to shut out the draught, piled a big fire, and sat down to an +hour of joy. He toasted his bacon on a fork and caught the drops of fat on his +bread; then he put the rasher on his thick slice of bread, and cut off chunks +with a clasp-knife, poured his tea into his saucer, and was happy. With his +family about, meals were never so pleasant. He loathed a fork: it is a modern +introduction which has still scarcely reached common people. What Morel +preferred was a clasp-knife. Then, in solitude, he ate and drank, often +sitting, in cold weather, on a little stool with his back to the warm +chimney-piece, his food on the fender, his cup on the hearth. And then he read +the last night’s newspaper—what of it he could—spelling it +over laboriously. He preferred to keep the blinds down and the candle lit even +when it was daylight; it was the habit of the mine. +</p> + +<p> +At a quarter to six he rose, cut two thick slices of bread and butter, and put +them in the white calico snap-bag. He filled his tin bottle with tea. Cold tea +without milk or sugar was the drink he preferred for the pit. Then he pulled +off his shirt, and put on his pit-singlet, a vest of thick flannel cut low +round the neck, and with short sleeves like a chemise. +</p> + +<p> +Then he went upstairs to his wife with a cup of tea because she was ill, and +because it occurred to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve brought thee a cup o’ tea, lass,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you needn’t, for you know I don’t like it,” she +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Drink it up; it’ll pop thee off to sleep again.” +</p> + +<p> +She accepted the tea. It pleased him to see her take it and sip it. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll back my life there’s no sugar in,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yi—there’s one big un,” he replied, injured. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a wonder,” she said, sipping again. +</p> + +<p> +She had a winsome face when her hair was loose. He loved her to grumble at him +in this manner. He looked at her again, and went, without any sort of +leave-taking. He never took more than two slices of bread and butter to eat in +the pit, so an apple or an orange was a treat to him. He always liked it when +she put one out for him. He tied a scarf round his neck, put on his great, +heavy boots, his coat, with the big pocket, that carried his snap-bag and his +bottle of tea, and went forth into the fresh morning air, closing, without +locking, the door behind him. He loved the early morning, and the walk across +the fields. So he appeared at the pit-top, often with a stalk from the hedge +between his teeth, which he chewed all day to keep his mouth moist, down the +mine, feeling quite as happy as when he was in the field. +</p> + +<p> +Later, when the time for the baby grew nearer, he would bustle round in his +slovenly fashion, poking out the ashes, rubbing the fireplace, sweeping the +house before he went to work. Then, feeling very self-righteous, he went +upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Now I’m cleaned up for thee: tha’s no ’casions ter +stir a peg all day, but sit and read thy books.” +</p> + +<p> +Which made her laugh, in spite of her indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“And the dinner cooks itself?” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, I know nowt about th’ dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d know if there weren’t any.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ’appen so,” he answered, departing. +</p> + +<p> +When she got downstairs, she would find the house tidy, but dirty. She could +not rest until she had thoroughly cleaned; so she went down to the ash-pit with +her dustpan. Mrs. Kirk, spying her, would contrive to have to go to her own +coal-place at that minute. Then, across the wooden fence, she would call: +</p> + +<p> +“So you keep wagging on, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” answered Mrs. Morel deprecatingly. “There’s +nothing else for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you seen Hose?” called a very small woman from across the +road. It was Mrs. Anthony, a black-haired, strange little body, who always wore +a brown velvet dress, tight fitting. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, I wish he’d come. I’ve got a copperful of clothes, +an’ I’m sure I heered his bell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hark! He’s at the end.” +</p> + +<p> +The two women looked down the alley. At the end of the Bottoms a man stood in a +sort of old-fashioned trap, bending over bundles of cream-coloured stuff; while +a cluster of women held up their arms to him, some with bundles. Mrs. Anthony +herself had a heap of creamy, undyed stockings hanging over her arm. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve done ten dozen this week,” she said proudly to Mrs. +Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“T-t-t!” went the other. “I don’t know how you can find +time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh!” said Mrs. Anthony. “You can find time if you make +time.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know how you do it,” said Mrs. Morel. “And how +much shall you get for those many?” +</p> + +<p> +“Tuppence-ha’penny a dozen,” replied the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mrs. Morel. “I’d starve before I’d +sit down and seam twenty-four stockings for twopence ha’penny.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Anthony. “You can rip +along with ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +Hose was coming along, ringing his bell. Women were waiting at the yard-ends +with their seamed stockings hanging over their arms. The man, a common fellow, +made jokes with them, tried to swindle them, and bullied them. Mrs. Morel went +up her yard disdainfully. +</p> + +<p> +It was an understood thing that if one woman wanted her neighbour, she should +put the poker in the fire and bang at the back of the fireplace, which, as the +fires were back to back, would make a great noise in the adjoining house. One +morning Mrs. Kirk, mixing a pudding, nearly started out of her skin as she +heard the thud, thud, in her grate. With her hands all floury, she rushed to +the fence. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you knock, Mrs. Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Kirk.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Kirk climbed on to her copper, got over the wall on to Mrs. Morel’s +copper, and ran in to her neighbour. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, dear, how are you feeling?” she cried in concern. +</p> + +<p> +“You might fetch Mrs. Bower,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Kirk went into the yard, lifted up her strong, shrill voice, and called: +</p> + +<p> +“Ag-gie—Ag-gie!” +</p> + +<p> +The sound was heard from one end of the Bottoms to the other. At last Aggie +came running up, and was sent for Mrs. Bower, whilst Mrs. Kirk left her pudding +and stayed with her neighbour. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel went to bed. Mrs. Kirk had Annie and William for dinner. Mrs. Bower, +fat and waddling, bossed the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Hash some cold meat up for the master’s dinner, and make him an +apple-charlotte pudding,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“He may go without pudding <i>this</i> day,” said Mrs. Bower. +</p> + +<p> +Morel was not as a rule one of the first to appear at the bottom of the pit, +ready to come up. Some men were there before four o’clock, when the +whistle blew loose-all; but Morel, whose stall, a poor one, was at this time +about a mile and a half away from the bottom, worked usually till the first +mate stopped, then he finished also. This day, however, the miner was sick of +the work. At two o’clock he looked at his watch, by the light of the +green candle—he was in a safe working—and again at half-past two. +He was hewing at a piece of rock that was in the way for the next day’s +work. As he sat on his heels, or kneeled, giving hard blows with his pick, +“Uszza—uszza!” he went. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall ter finish, Sorry?” cried Barker, his fellow butty. +</p> + +<p> +“Finish? Niver while the world stands!” growled Morel. +</p> + +<p> +And he went on striking. He was tired. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a heart-breaking job,” said Barker. +</p> + +<p> +But Morel was too exasperated, at the end of his tether, to answer. Still he +struck and hacked with all his might. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha might as well leave it, Walter,” said Barker. +“It’ll do to-morrow, without thee hackin’ thy guts +out.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll lay no b—— finger on this to-morrow, +Isr’el!” cried Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, if tha wunna, somebody else’ll ha’e to,” +said Israel. +</p> + +<p> +Then Morel continued to strike. +</p> + +<p> +“Hey-up there—<i>loose-a’!</i>” cried the men, leaving +the next stall. +</p> + +<p> +Morel continued to strike. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha’ll happen catch me up,” said Barker, departing. +</p> + +<p> +When he had gone, Morel, left alone, felt savage. He had not finished his job. +He had overworked himself into a frenzy. Rising, wet with sweat, he threw his +tool down, pulled on his coat, blew out his candle, took his lamp, and went. +Down the main road the lights of the other men went swinging. There was a +hollow sound of many voices. It was a long, heavy tramp underground. +</p> + +<p> +He sat at the bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water fell plash. +Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up, talking noisily. Morel gave +his answers short and disagreeable. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s rainin’, Sorry,” said old Giles, who had had the +news from the top. +</p> + +<p> +Morel found one comfort. He had his old umbrella, which he loved, in the lamp +cabin. At last he took his stand on the chair, and was at the top in a moment. +Then he handed in his lamp and got his umbrella, which he had bought at an +auction for one-and-six. He stood on the edge of the pit-bank for a moment, +looking out over the fields; grey rain was falling. The trucks stood full of +wet, bright coal. Water ran down the sides of the waggons, over the white +“C.W. and Co.” Colliers, walking indifferent to the rain, were +streaming down the line and up the field, a grey, dismal host. Morel put up his +umbrella, and took pleasure from the peppering of the drops thereon. +</p> + +<p> +All along the road to Bestwood the miners tramped, wet and grey and dirty, but +their red mouths talking with animation. Morel also walked with a gang, but he +said nothing. He frowned peevishly as he went. Many men passed into the Prince +of Wales or into Ellen’s. Morel, feeling sufficiently disagreeable to +resist temptation, trudged along under the dripping trees that overhung the +park wall, and down the mud of Greenhill Lane. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel lay in bed, listening to the rain, and the feet of the colliers from +Minton, their voices, and the bang, bang of the gates as they went through the +stile up the field. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s some herb beer behind the pantry door,” she said. +“Th’ master’ll want a drink, if he doesn’t stop.” +</p> + +<p> +But he was late, so she concluded he had called for a drink, since it was +raining. What did he care about the child or her? +</p> + +<p> +She was very ill when her children were born. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she asked, feeling sick to death. +</p> + +<p> +“A boy.” +</p> + +<p> +And she took consolation in that. The thought of being the mother of men was +warming to her heart. She looked at the child. It had blue eyes, and a lot of +fair hair, and was bonny. Her love came up hot, in spite of everything. She had +it in bed with her. +</p> + +<p> +Morel, thinking nothing, dragged his way up the garden path, wearily and +angrily. He closed his umbrella, and stood it in the sink; then he sluthered +his heavy boots into the kitchen. Mrs. Bower appeared in the inner doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, “she’s about as bad as she can be. +It’s a boy childt.” +</p> + +<p> +The miner grunted, put his empty snap-bag and his tin bottle on the dresser, +went back into the scullery and hung up his coat, then came and dropped into +his chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Han yer got a drink?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +The woman went into the pantry. There was heard the pop of a cork. She set the +mug, with a little, disgusted rap, on the table before Morel. He drank, gasped, +wiped his big moustache on the end of his scarf, drank, gasped, and lay back in +his chair. The woman would not speak to him again. She set his dinner before +him, and went upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Was that the master?” asked Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve gave him his dinner,” replied Mrs. Bower. +</p> + +<p> +After he had sat with his arms on the table—he resented the fact that +Mrs. Bower put no cloth on for him, and gave him a little plate, instead of a +full-sized dinner-plate—he began to eat. The fact that his wife was ill, +that he had another boy, was nothing to him at that moment. He was too tired; +he wanted his dinner; he wanted to sit with his arms lying on the board; he did +not like having Mrs. Bower about. The fire was too small to please him. +</p> + +<p> +After he had finished his meal, he sat for twenty minutes; then he stoked up a +big fire. Then, in his stockinged feet, he went reluctantly upstairs. It was a +struggle to face his wife at this moment, and he was tired. His face was black, +and smeared with sweat. His singlet had dried again, soaking the dirt in. He +had a dirty woollen scarf round his throat. So he stood at the foot of the bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, how are ter, then?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll be all right,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +He stood at a loss what to say next. He was tired, and this bother was rather a +nuisance to him, and he didn’t quite know where he was. +</p> + +<p> +“A lad, tha says,” he stammered. +</p> + +<p> +She turned down the sheet and showed the child. +</p> + +<p> +“Bless him!” he murmured. Which made her laugh, because he blessed +by rote—pretending paternal emotion, which he did not feel just then. +</p> + +<p> +“Go now,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I will, my lass,” he answered, turning away. +</p> + +<p> +Dismissed, he wanted to kiss her, but he dared not. She half wanted him to kiss +her, but could not bring herself to give any sign. She only breathed freely +when he was gone out of the room again, leaving behind him a faint smell of +pit-dirt. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel had a visit every day from the Congregational clergyman. Mr. Heaton +was young, and very poor. His wife had died at the birth of his first baby, so +he remained alone in the manse. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Cambridge, very +shy, and no preacher. Mrs. Morel was fond of him, and he depended on her. For +hours he talked to her, when she was well. He became the god-parent of the +child. +</p> + +<p> +Occasionally the minister stayed to tea with Mrs. Morel. Then she laid the +cloth early, got out her best cups, with a little green rim, and hoped Morel +would not come too soon; indeed, if he stayed for a pint, she would not mind +this day. She had always two dinners to cook, because she believed children +should have their chief meal at midday, whereas Morel needed his at five +o’clock. So Mr. Heaton would hold the baby, whilst Mrs. Morel beat up a +batter-pudding or peeled the potatoes, and he, watching her all the time, would +discuss his next sermon. His ideas were quaint and fantastic. She brought him +judiciously to earth. It was a discussion of the wedding at Cana. +</p> + +<p> +“When He changed the water into wine at Cana,” he said, “that +is a symbol that the ordinary life, even the blood, of the married husband and +wife, which had before been uninspired, like water, became filled with the +Spirit, and was as wine, because, when love enters, the whole spiritual +constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his +form is altered.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel thought to herself: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, poor fellow, his young wife is dead; that is why he makes his love +into the Holy Ghost.” +</p> + +<p> +They were halfway down their first cup of tea when they heard the sluther of +pit-boots. +</p> + +<p> +“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel, in spite of herself. +</p> + +<p> +The minister looked rather scared. Morel entered. He was feeling rather savage. +He nodded a “How d’yer do” to the clergyman, who rose to +shake hands with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” said Morel, showing his hand, “look thee at it! Tha +niver wants ter shake hands wi’ a hand like that, does ter? There’s +too much pick-haft and shovel-dirt on it.” +</p> + +<p> +The minister flushed with confusion, and sat down again. Mrs. Morel rose, +carried out the steaming saucepan. Morel took off his coat, dragged his +armchair to table, and sat down heavily. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you tired?” asked the clergyman. +</p> + +<p> +“Tired? I ham that,” replied Morel. “<i>You</i> don’t +know what it is to be tired, as <i>I’m</i> tired.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” replied the clergyman. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, look yer ’ere,” said the miner, showing the shoulders +of his singlet. “It’s a bit dry now, but it’s wet as a clout +with sweat even yet. Feel it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness!” cried Mrs. Morel. “Mr. Heaton doesn’t want +to feel your nasty singlet.” +</p> + +<p> +The clergyman put out his hand gingerly. +</p> + +<p> +“No, perhaps he doesn’t,” said Morel; “but it’s +all come out of <i>me</i>, whether or not. An’ iv’ry day alike my +singlet’s wringin’ wet. ’Aven’t you got a drink, +Missis, for a man when he comes home barkled up from the pit?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know you drank all the beer,” said Mrs. Morel, pouring out his +tea. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ was there no more to be got?” Turning to the +clergyman—“A man gets that caked up wi’ th’ dust, you +know,—that clogged up down a coal-mine, he <i>needs</i> a drink when he +comes home.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure he does,” said the clergyman. +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s ten to one if there’s owt for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s water—and there’s tea,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Water! It’s not water as’ll clear his throat.” +</p> + +<p> +He poured out a saucerful of tea, blew it, and sucked it up through his great +black moustache, sighing afterwards. Then he poured out another saucerful, and +stood his cup on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“My cloth!” said Mrs. Morel, putting it on a plate. +</p> + +<p> +“A man as comes home as I do ’s too tired to care about +cloths,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Pity!” exclaimed his wife, sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +The room was full of the smell of meat and vegetables and pit-clothes. +</p> + +<p> +He leaned over to the minister, his great moustache thrust forward, his mouth +very red in his black face. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Heaton,” he said, “a man as has been down the black hole +all day, dingin’ away at a coal-face, yi, a sight harder than that +wall—” +</p> + +<p> +“Needn’t make a moan of it,” put in Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +She hated her husband because, whenever he had an audience, he whined and +played for sympathy. William, sitting nursing the baby, hated him, with a +boy’s hatred for false sentiment, and for the stupid treatment of his +mother. Annie had never liked him; she merely avoided him. +</p> + +<p> +When the minister had gone, Mrs. Morel looked at her cloth. +</p> + +<p> +“A fine mess!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Dos’t think I’m goin’ to sit wi’ my arms +danglin’, cos tha’s got a parson for tea wi’ thee?” he +bawled. +</p> + +<p> +They were both angry, but she said nothing. The baby began to cry, and Mrs. +Morel, picking up a saucepan from the hearth, accidentally knocked Annie on the +head, whereupon the girl began to whine, and Morel to shout at her. In the +midst of this pandemonium, William looked up at the big glazed text over the +mantelpiece and read distinctly: +</p> + +<p> +“God Bless Our Home!” +</p> + +<p> +Whereupon Mrs. Morel, trying to soothe the baby, jumped up, rushed at him, +boxed his ears, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“What are <i>you</i> putting in for?” +</p> + +<p> +And then she sat down and laughed, till tears ran over her cheeks, while +William kicked the stool he had been sitting on, and Morel growled: +</p> + +<p> +“I canna see what there is so much to laugh at.” +</p> + +<p> +One evening, directly after the parson’s visit, feeling unable to bear +herself after another display from her husband, she took Annie and the baby and +went out. Morel had kicked William, and the mother would never forgive him. +</p> + +<p> +She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the meadow to the +cricket-ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe, evening light, whispering +with the distant mill-race. She sat on a seat under the alders in the +cricket-ground, and fronted the evening. Before her, level and solid, spread +the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of light. Children played in +the bluish shadow of the pavilion. Many rooks, high up, came cawing home across +the softly-woven sky. They stooped in a long curve down into the golden glow, +concentrating, cawing, wheeling, like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a +tree clump that made a dark boss among the pasture. +</p> + +<p> +A few gentlemen were practising, and Mrs. Morel could hear the chock of the +ball, and the voices of men suddenly roused; could see the white forms of men +shifting silently over the green, upon which already the under shadows were +smouldering. Away at the grange, one side of the haystacks was lit up, the +other sides blue-grey. A waggon of sheaves rocked small across the melting +yellow light. +</p> + +<p> +The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of Derbyshire were blazed +over with red sunset. Mrs. Morel watched the sun sink from the glistening sky, +leaving a soft flower-blue overhead, while the western space went red, as if +all the fire had swum down there, leaving the bell cast flawless blue. The +mountain-ash berries across the field stood fierily out from the dark leaves, +for a moment. A few shocks of corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if +alive; she imagined them bowing; perhaps her son would be a Joseph. In the +east, a mirrored sunset floated pink opposite the west’s scarlet. The big +haystacks on the hillside, that butted into the glare, went cold. +</p> + +<p> +With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the small frets vanish, +and the beauty of things stands out, and she had the peace and the strength to +see herself. Now and again, a swallow cut close to her. Now and again, Annie +came up with a handful of alder-currants. The baby was restless on his +mother’s knee, clambering with his hands at the light. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel looked down at him. She had dreaded this baby like a catastrophe, +because of her feeling for her husband. And now she felt strangely towards the +infant. Her heart was heavy because of the child, almost as if it were +unhealthy, or malformed. Yet it seemed quite well. But she noticed the peculiar +knitting of the baby’s brows, and the peculiar heaviness of its eyes, as +if it were trying to understand something that was pain. She felt, when she +looked at her child’s dark, brooding pupils, as if a burden were on her +heart. +</p> + +<p> +“He looks as if he was thinking about something—quite +sorrowful,” said Mrs. Kirk. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, looking at him, the heavy feeling at the mother’s heart melted +into passionate grief. She bowed over him, and a few tears shook swiftly out of +her very heart. The baby lifted his fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“My lamb!” she cried softly. +</p> + +<p> +And at that moment she felt, in some far inner place of her soul, that she and +her husband were guilty. +</p> + +<p> +The baby was looking up at her. It had blue eyes like her own, but its look was +heavy, steady, as if it had realised something that had stunned some point of +its soul. +</p> + +<p> +In her arms lay the delicate baby. Its deep blue eyes, always looking up at her +unblinking, seemed to draw her innermost thoughts out of her. She no longer +loved her husband; she had not wanted this child to come, and there it lay in +her arms and pulled at her heart. She felt as if the navel string that had +connected its frail little body with hers had not been broken. A wave of hot +love went over her to the infant. She held it close to her face and breast. +With all her force, with all her soul she would make up to it for having +brought it into the world unloved. She would love it all the more now it was +here; carry it in her love. Its clear, knowing eyes gave her pain and fear. Did +it know all about her? When it lay under her heart, had it been listening then? +Was there a reproach in the look? She felt the marrow melt in her bones, with +fear and pain. +</p> + +<p> +Once more she was aware of the sun lying red on the rim of the hill opposite. +She suddenly held up the child in her hands. +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” she said. “Look, my pretty!” +</p> + +<p> +She thrust the infant forward to the crimson, throbbing sun, almost with +relief. She saw him lift his little fist. Then she put him to her bosom again, +ashamed almost of her impulse to give him back again whence he came. +</p> + +<p> +“If he lives,” she thought to herself, “what will become of +him—what will he be?” +</p> + +<p> +Her heart was anxious. +</p> + +<p> +“I will call him Paul,” she said suddenly; she knew not why. +</p> + +<p> +After a while she went home. A fine shadow was flung over the deep green +meadow, darkening all. +</p> + +<p> +As she expected, she found the house empty. But Morel was home by ten +o’clock, and that day, at least, ended peacefully. +</p> + +<p> +Walter Morel was, at this time, exceedingly irritable. His work seemed to +exhaust him. When he came home he did not speak civilly to anybody. If the fire +were rather low he bullied about that; he grumbled about his dinner; if the +children made a chatter he shouted at them in a way that made their +mother’s blood boil, and made them hate him. +</p> + +<p> +On the Friday, he was not home by eleven o’clock. The baby was unwell, +and was restless, crying if he were put down. Mrs. Morel, tired to death, and +still weak, was scarcely under control. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish the nuisance would come,” she said wearily to herself. +</p> + +<p> +The child at last sank down to sleep in her arms. She was too tired to carry +him to the cradle. +</p> + +<p> +“But I’ll say nothing, whatever time he comes,” she said. +“It only works me up; I won’t say anything. But I know if he does +anything it’ll make my blood boil,” she added to herself. +</p> + +<p> +She sighed, hearing him coming, as if it were something she could not bear. He, +taking his revenge, was nearly drunk. She kept her head bent over the child as +he entered, not wishing to see him. But it went through her like a flash of hot +fire when, in passing, he lurched against the dresser, setting the tins +rattling, and clutched at the white pot knobs for support. He hung up his hat +and coat, then returned, stood glowering from a distance at her, as she sat +bowed over the child. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there nothing to eat in the house?” he asked, insolently, as if +to a servant. In certain stages of his intoxication he affected the clipped, +mincing speech of the towns. Mrs. Morel hated him most in this condition. +</p> + +<p> +“You know what there is in the house,” she said, so coldly, it +sounded impersonal. +</p> + +<p> +He stood and glared at her without moving a muscle. +</p> + +<p> +“I asked a civil question, and I expect a civil answer,” he said +affectedly. +</p> + +<p> +“And you got it,” she said, still ignoring him. +</p> + +<p> +He glowered again. Then he came unsteadily forward. He leaned on the table with +one hand, and with the other jerked at the table drawer to get a knife to cut +bread. The drawer stuck because he pulled sideways. In a temper he dragged it, +so that it flew out bodily, and spoons, forks, knives, a hundred metallic +things, splashed with a clatter and a clang upon the brick floor. The baby gave +a little convulsed start. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing, clumsy, drunken fool?” the mother cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Then tha should get the flamin’ thing thysen. Tha should get up, +like other women have to, an’ wait on a man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wait on you—wait on you?” she cried. “Yes, I see +myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yis, an’ I’ll learn thee tha’s got to. Wait on +<i>me</i>, yes tha sh’lt wait on me—” +</p> + +<p> +“Never, milord. I’d wait on a dog at the door first.” +</p> + +<p> +“What—what?” +</p> + +<p> +He was trying to fit in the drawer. At her last speech he turned round. His +face was crimson, his eyes bloodshot. He stared at her one silent second in +threat. +</p> + +<p> +“P-h!” she went quickly, in contempt. +</p> + +<p> +He jerked at the drawer in his excitement. It fell, cut sharply on his shin, +and on the reflex he flung it at her. +</p> + +<p> +One of the corners caught her brow as the shallow drawer crashed into the +fireplace. She swayed, almost fell stunned from her chair. To her very soul she +was sick; she clasped the child tightly to her bosom. A few moments elapsed; +then, with an effort, she brought herself to. The baby was crying plaintively. +Her left brow was bleeding rather profusely. As she glanced down at the child, +her brain reeling, some drops of blood soaked into its white shawl; but the +baby was at least not hurt. She balanced her head to keep equilibrium, so that +the blood ran into her eye. +</p> + +<p> +Walter Morel remained as he had stood, leaning on the table with one hand, +looking blank. When he was sufficiently sure of his balance, he went across to +her, swayed, caught hold of the back of her rocking-chair, almost tipping her +out; then leaning forward over her, and swaying as he spoke, he said, in a tone +of wondering concern: +</p> + +<p> +“Did it catch thee?” +</p> + +<p> +He swayed again, as if he would pitch on to the child. With the catastrophe he +had lost all balance. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away,” she said, struggling to keep her presence of mind. +</p> + +<p> +He hiccoughed. “Let’s—let’s look at it,” he said, +hiccoughing again. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Lemme—lemme look at it, lass.” +</p> + +<p> +She smelled him of drink, felt the unequal pull of his swaying grasp on the +back of her rocking-chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away,” she said, and weakly she pushed him off. +</p> + +<p> +He stood, uncertain in balance, gazing upon her. Summoning all her strength she +rose, the baby on one arm. By a cruel effort of will, moving as if in sleep, +she went across to the scullery, where she bathed her eye for a minute in cold +water; but she was too dizzy. Afraid lest she should swoon, she returned to her +rocking-chair, trembling in every fibre. By instinct, she kept the baby +clasped. +</p> + +<p> +Morel, bothered, had succeeded in pushing the drawer back into its cavity, and +was on his knees, groping, with numb paws, for the scattered spoons. +</p> + +<p> +Her brow was still bleeding. Presently Morel got up and came craning his neck +towards her. +</p> + +<p> +“What has it done to thee, lass?” he asked, in a very wretched, +humble tone. +</p> + +<p> +“You can see what it’s done,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +He stood, bending forward, supported on his hands, which grasped his legs just +above the knee. He peered to look at the wound. She drew away from the thrust +of his face with its great moustache, averting her own face as much as +possible. As he looked at her, who was cold and impassive as stone, with mouth +shut tight, he sickened with feebleness and hopelessness of spirit. He was +turning drearily away, when he saw a drop of blood fall from the averted wound +into the baby’s fragile, glistening hair. Fascinated, he watched the +heavy dark drop hang in the glistening cloud, and pull down the gossamer. +Another drop fell. It would soak through to the baby’s scalp. He watched, +fascinated, feeling it soak in; then, finally, his manhood broke. +</p> + +<p> +“What of this child?” was all his wife said to him. But her low, +intense tones brought his head lower. She softened: “Get me some wadding +out of the middle drawer,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He stumbled away very obediently, presently returning with a pad, which she +singed before the fire, then put on her forehead, as she sat with the baby on +her lap. +</p> + +<p> +“Now that clean pit-scarf.” +</p> + +<p> +Again he rummaged and fumbled in the drawer, returning presently with a red, +narrow scarf. She took it, and with trembling fingers proceeded to bind it +round her head. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me tie it for thee,” he said humbly. +</p> + +<p> +“I can do it myself,” she replied. When it was done she went +upstairs, telling him to rake the fire and lock the door. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning Mrs. Morel said: +</p> + +<p> +“I knocked against the latch of the coal-place, when I was getting a +raker in the dark, because the candle blew out.” Her two small children +looked up at her with wide, dismayed eyes. They said nothing, but their parted +lips seemed to express the unconscious tragedy they felt. +</p> + +<p> +Walter Morel lay in bed next day until nearly dinner-time. He did not think of +the previous evening’s work. He scarcely thought of anything, but he +would not think of that. He lay and suffered like a sulking dog. He had hurt +himself most; and he was the more damaged because he would never say a word to +her, or express his sorrow. He tried to wriggle out of it. “It was her +own fault,” he said to himself. Nothing, however, could prevent his inner +consciousness inflicting on him the punishment which ate into his spirit like +rust, and which he could only alleviate by drinking. +</p> + +<p> +He felt as if he had not the initiative to get up, or to say a word, or to +move, but could only lie like a log. Moreover, he had himself violent pains in +the head. It was Saturday. Towards noon he rose, cut himself food in the +pantry, ate it with his head dropped, then pulled on his boots, and went out, +to return at three o’clock slightly tipsy and relieved; then once more +straight to bed. He rose again at six in the evening, had tea and went straight +out. +</p> + +<p> +Sunday was the same: bed till noon, the Palmerston Arms till 2.30, dinner, and +bed; scarcely a word spoken. When Mrs. Morel went upstairs, towards four +o’clock, to put on her Sunday dress, he was fast asleep. She would have +felt sorry for him, if he had once said, “Wife, I’m sorry.” +But no; he insisted to himself it was her fault. And so he broke himself. So +she merely left him alone. There was this deadlock of passion between them, and +she was stronger. +</p> + +<p> +The family began tea. Sunday was the only day when all sat down to meals +together. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t my father going to get up?” asked William. +</p> + +<p> +“Let him lie,” the mother replied. +</p> + +<p> +There was a feeling of misery over all the house. The children breathed the air +that was poisoned, and they felt dreary. They were rather disconsolate, did not +know what to do, what to play at. +</p> + +<p> +Immediately Morel woke he got straight out of bed. That was characteristic of +him all his life. He was all for activity. The prostrated inactivity of two +mornings was stifling him. +</p> + +<p> +It was near six o’clock when he got down. This time he entered without +hesitation, his wincing sensitiveness having hardened again. He did not care +any longer what the family thought or felt. +</p> + +<p> +The tea-things were on the table. William was reading aloud from “The +Child’s Own”, Annie listening and asking eternally +“why?” Both children hushed into silence as they heard the +approaching thud of their father’s stockinged feet, and shrank as he +entered. Yet he was usually indulgent to them. +</p> + +<p> +Morel made the meal alone, brutally. He ate and drank more noisily than he had +need. No one spoke to him. The family life withdrew, shrank away, and became +hushed as he entered. But he cared no longer about his alienation. +</p> + +<p> +Immediately he had finished tea he rose with alacrity to go out. It was this +alacrity, this haste to be gone, which so sickened Mrs. Morel. As she heard him +sousing heartily in cold water, heard the eager scratch of the steel comb on +the side of the bowl, as he wetted his hair, she closed her eyes in disgust. As +he bent over, lacing his boots, there was a certain vulgar gusto in his +movement that divided him from the reserved, watchful rest of the family. He +always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart’s +privacy, he excused himself, saying, “If she hadn’t said so-and-so, +it would never have happened. She asked for what she’s got.” The +children waited in restraint during his preparations. When he had gone, they +sighed with relief. +</p> + +<p> +He closed the door behind him, and was glad. It was a rainy evening. The +Palmerston would be the cosier. He hastened forward in anticipation. All the +slate roofs of the Bottoms shone black with wet. The roads, always dark with +coal-dust, were full of blackish mud. He hastened along. The Palmerston windows +were steamed over. The passage was paddled with wet feet. But the air was warm, +if foul, and full of the sound of voices and the smell of beer and smoke. +</p> + +<p> +“What shollt ha’e, Walter?” cried a voice, as soon as Morel +appeared in the doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Jim, my lad, wheriver has thee sprung frae?” +</p> + +<p> +The men made a seat for him, and took him in warmly. He was glad. In a minute +or two they had thawed all responsibility out of him, all shame, all trouble, +and he was clear as a bell for a jolly night. +</p> + +<p> +On the Wednesday following, Morel was penniless. He dreaded his wife. Having +hurt her, he hated her. He did not know what to do with himself that evening, +having not even twopence with which to go to the Palmerston, and being already +rather deeply in debt. So, while his wife was down the garden with the child, +he hunted in the top drawer of the dresser where she kept her purse, found it, +and looked inside. It contained a half-crown, two halfpennies, and a sixpence. +So he took the sixpence, put the purse carefully back, and went out. +</p> + +<p> +The next day, when she wanted to pay the greengrocer, she looked in the purse +for her sixpence, and her heart sank to her shoes. Then she sat down and +thought: “<i>Was</i> there a sixpence? I hadn’t spent it, had I? +And I hadn’t left it anywhere else?” +</p> + +<p> +She was much put about. She hunted round everywhere for it. And, as she sought, +the conviction came into her heart that her husband had taken it. What she had +in her purse was all the money she possessed. But that he should sneak it from +her thus was unbearable. He had done so twice before. The first time she had +not accused him, and at the week-end he had put the shilling again into her +purse. So that was how she had known he had taken it. The second time he had +not paid back. +</p> + +<p> +This time she felt it was too much. When he had had his dinner—he came +home early that day—she said to him coldly: +</p> + +<p> +“Did you take sixpence out of my purse last night?” +</p> + +<p> +“Me!” he said, looking up in an offended way. “No, I didna! I +niver clapped eyes on your purse.” +</p> + +<p> +But she could detect the lie. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you know you did,” she said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you I didna,” he shouted. “Yer at me again, are yer? +I’ve had about enough on’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you filch sixpence out of my purse while I’m taking the clothes +in.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll may yer pay for this,” he said, pushing back his chair +in desperation. He bustled and got washed, then went determinedly upstairs. +Presently he came down dressed, and with a big bundle in a blue-checked, +enormous handkerchief. +</p> + +<p> +“And now,” he said, “you’ll see me again when you +do.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll be before I want to,” she replied; and at that he +marched out of the house with his bundle. She sat trembling slightly, but her +heart brimming with contempt. What would she do if he went to some other pit, +obtained work, and got in with another woman? But she knew him too +well—he couldn’t. She was dead sure of him. Nevertheless her heart +was gnawed inside her. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s my dad?” said William, coming in from school. +</p> + +<p> +“He says he’s run away,” replied the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Where to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, I don’t know. He’s taken a bundle in the blue +handkerchief, and says he’s not coming back.” +</p> + +<p> +“What shall we do?” cried the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, never trouble, he won’t go far.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if he doesn’t come back,” wailed Annie. +</p> + +<p> +And she and William retired to the sofa and wept. Mrs. Morel sat and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“You pair of gabeys!” she exclaimed. “You’ll see him +before the night’s out.” +</p> + +<p> +But the children were not to be consoled. Twilight came on. Mrs. Morel grew +anxious from very weariness. One part of her said it would be a relief to see +the last of him; another part fretted because of keeping the children; and +inside her, as yet, she could not quite let him go. At the bottom, she knew +very well he could <i>not</i> go. +</p> + +<p> +When she went down to the coal-place at the end of the garden, however, she +felt something behind the door. So she looked. And there in the dark lay the +big blue bundle. She sat on a piece of coal and laughed. Every time she saw it, +so fat and yet so ignominious, slunk into its corner in the dark, with its ends +flopping like dejected ears from the knots, she laughed again. She was +relieved. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel sat waiting. He had not any money, she knew, so if he stopped he was +running up a bill. She was very tired of him—tired to death. He had not +even the courage to carry his bundle beyond the yard-end. +</p> + +<p> +As she meditated, at about nine o’clock, he opened the door and came in, +slinking, and yet sulky. She said not a word. He took off his coat, and slunk +to his armchair, where he began to take off his boots. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better fetch your bundle before you take your boots +off,” she said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“You may thank your stars I’ve come back to-night,” he said, +looking up from under his dropped head, sulkily, trying to be impressive. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, where should you have gone? You daren’t even get your parcel +through the yard-end,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He looked such a fool she was not even angry with him. He continued to take his +boots off and prepare for bed. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what’s in your blue handkerchief,” she +said. “But if you leave it the children shall fetch it in the +morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Whereupon he got up and went out of the house, returning presently and crossing +the kitchen with averted face, hurrying upstairs. As Mrs. Morel saw him slink +quickly through the inner doorway, holding his bundle, she laughed to herself: +but her heart was bitter, because she had loved him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III<br/> +THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL—THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM</h2> + +<p> +During the next week Morel’s temper was almost unbearable. Like all +miners, he was a great lover of medicines, which, strangely enough, he would +often pay for himself. +</p> + +<p> +“You mun get me a drop o’ laxy vitral,” he said. +“It’s a winder as we canna ha’e a sup i’ th’ +’ouse.” +</p> + +<p> +So Mrs. Morel bought him elixir of vitriol, his favourite first medicine. And +he made himself a jug of wormwood tea. He had hanging in the attic great +bunches of dried herbs: wormwood, rue, horehound, elder-flowers, parsley-purt, +marshmallow, hyssop, dandelion, and centuary. Usually there was a jug of one or +other decoction standing on the hob, from which he drank largely. +</p> + +<p> +“Grand!” he said, smacking his lips after wormwood. +“Grand!” And he exhorted the children to try. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s better than any of your tea or your cocoa stews,” he +vowed. But they were not to be tempted. +</p> + +<p> +This time, however, neither pills nor vitriol nor all his herbs would shift the +“nasty peens in his head”. He was sickening for an attack of an +inflammation of the brain. He had never been well since his sleeping on the +ground when he went with Jerry to Nottingham. Since then he had drunk and +stormed. Now he fell seriously ill, and Mrs. Morel had him to nurse. He was one +of the worst patients imaginable. But, in spite of all, and putting aside the +fact that he was breadwinner, she never quite wanted him to die. Still there +was one part of her wanted him for herself. +</p> + +<p> +The neighbours were very good to her: occasionally some had the children in to +meals, occasionally some would do the downstairs work for her, one would mind +the baby for a day. But it was a great drag, nevertheless. It was not every day +the neighbours helped. Then she had nursing of baby and husband, cleaning and +cooking, everything to do. She was quite worn out, but she did what was wanted +of her. +</p> + +<p> +And the money was just sufficient. She had seventeen shillings a week from +clubs, and every Friday Barker and the other butty put by a portion of the +stall’s profits for Morel’s wife. And the neighbours made broths, +and gave eggs, and such invalids’ trifles. If they had not helped her so +generously in those times, Mrs. Morel would never have pulled through, without +incurring debts that would have dragged her down. +</p> + +<p> +The weeks passed. Morel, almost against hope, grew better. He had a fine +constitution, so that, once on the mend, he went straight forward to recovery. +Soon he was pottering about downstairs. During his illness his wife had spoilt +him a little. Now he wanted her to continue. He often put his band to his head, +pulled down the corners of his mouth, and shammed pains he did not feel. But +there was no deceiving her. At first she merely smiled to herself. Then she +scolded him sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness, man, don’t be so lachrymose.” +</p> + +<p> +That wounded him slightly, but still he continued to feign sickness. +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t be such a mardy baby,” said the wife shortly. +</p> + +<p> +Then he was indignant, and cursed under his breath, like a boy. He was forced +to resume a normal tone, and to cease to whine. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, there was a state of peace in the house for some time. Mrs. Morel +was more tolerant of him, and he, depending on her almost like a child, was +rather happy. Neither knew that she was more tolerant because she loved him +less. Up till this time, in spite of all, he had been her husband and her man. +She had felt that, more or less, what he did to himself he did to her. Her +living depended on him. There were many, many stages in the ebbing of her love +for him, but it was always ebbing. +</p> + +<p> +Now, with the birth of this third baby, her self no longer set towards him, +helplessly, but was like a tide that scarcely rose, standing off from him. +After this she scarcely desired him. And, standing more aloof from him, not +feeling him so much part of herself, but merely part of her circumstances, she +did not mind so much what he did, could leave him alone. +</p> + +<p> +There was the halt, the wistfulness about the ensuing year, which is like +autumn in a man’s life. His wife was casting him off, half regretfully, +but relentlessly; casting him off and turning now for love and life to the +children. Henceforward he was more or less a husk. And he himself acquiesced, +as so many men do, yielding their place to their children. +</p> + +<p> +During his recuperation, when it was really over between them, both made an +effort to come back somewhat to the old relationship of the first months of +their marriage. He sat at home and, when the children were in bed, and she was +sewing—she did all her sewing by hand, made all shirts and +children’s clothing—he would read to her from the newspaper, slowly +pronouncing and delivering the words like a man pitching quoits. Often she +hurried him on, giving him a phrase in anticipation. And then he took her words +humbly. +</p> + +<p> +The silences between them were peculiar. There would be the swift, slight +“cluck” of her needle, the sharp “pop” of his lips as +he let out the smoke, the warmth, the sizzle on the bars as he spat in the +fire. Then her thoughts turned to William. Already he was getting a big boy. +Already he was top of the class, and the master said he was the smartest lad in +the school. She saw him a man, young, full of vigour, making the world glow +again for her. +</p> + +<p> +And Morel sitting there, quite alone, and having nothing to think about, would +be feeling vaguely uncomfortable. His soul would reach out in its blind way to +her and find her gone. He felt a sort of emptiness, almost like a vacuum in his +soul. He was unsettled and restless. Soon he could not live in that atmosphere, +and he affected his wife. Both felt an oppression on their breathing when they +were left together for some time. Then he went to bed and she settled down to +enjoy herself alone, working, thinking, living. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile another infant was coming, fruit of this little peace and tenderness +between the separating parents. Paul was seventeen months old when the new baby +was born. He was then a plump, pale child, quiet, with heavy blue eyes, and +still the peculiar slight knitting of the brows. The last child was also a boy, +fair and bonny. Mrs. Morel was sorry when she knew she was with child, both for +economic reasons and because she did not love her husband; but not for the sake +of the infant. +</p> + +<p> +They called the baby Arthur. He was very pretty, with a mop of gold curls, and +he loved his father from the first. Mrs. Morel was glad this child loved the +father. Hearing the miner’s footsteps, the baby would put up his arms and +crow. And if Morel were in a good temper, he called back immediately, in his +hearty, mellow voice: +</p> + +<p> +“What then, my beauty? I sh’ll come to thee in a minute.” +</p> + +<p> +And as soon as he had taken off his pit-coat, Mrs. Morel would put an apron +round the child, and give him to his father. +</p> + +<p> +“What a sight the lad looks!” she would exclaim sometimes, taking +back the baby, that was smutted on the face from his father’s kisses and +play. Then Morel laughed joyfully. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a little collier, bless his bit o’ mutton!” he +exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +And these were the happy moments of her life now, when the children included +the father in her heart. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile William grew bigger and stronger and more active, while Paul, always +rather delicate and quiet, got slimmer, and trotted after his mother like her +shadow. He was usually active and interested, but sometimes he would have fits +of depression. Then the mother would find the boy of three or four crying on +the sofa. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” she asked, and got no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” she insisted, getting cross. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” sobbed the child. +</p> + +<p> +So she tried to reason him out of it, or to amuse him, but without effect. It +made her feel beside herself. Then the father, always impatient, would jump +from his chair and shout: +</p> + +<p> +“If he doesn’t stop, I’ll smack him till he does.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said the mother coldly. And +then she carried the child into the yard, plumped him into his little chair, +and said: “Now cry there, Misery!” +</p> + +<p> +And then a butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye, or at last +he cried himself to sleep. These fits were not often, but they caused a shadow +in Mrs. Morel’s heart, and her treatment of Paul was different from that +of the other children. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly one morning as she was looking down the alley of the Bottoms for the +barm-man, she heard a voice calling her. It was the thin little Mrs. Anthony in +brown velvet. +</p> + +<p> +“Here, Mrs. Morel, I want to tell you about your Willie.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, do you?” replied Mrs. Morel. “Why, what’s the +matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“A lad as gets ’old of another an’ rips his clothes +off’n ’is back,” Mrs. Anthony said, “wants showing +something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your Alfred’s as old as my William,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“’Appen ’e is, but that doesn’t give him a right to get +hold of the boy’s collar, an’ fair rip it clean off his +back.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mrs. Morel, “I don’t thrash my children, +and even if I did, I should want to hear their side of the tale.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’d happen be a bit better if they did get a good +hiding,” retorted Mrs. Anthony. “When it comes ter rippin’ a +lad’s clean collar off’n ’is back a-purpose—” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Make me a liar!” shouted Mrs. Anthony. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel moved away and closed her gate. Her hand trembled as she held her +mug of barm. +</p> + +<p> +“But I s’ll let your mester know,” Mrs. Anthony cried after +her. +</p> + +<p> +At dinner-time, when William had finished his meal and wanted to be off +again—he was then eleven years old—his mother said to him: +</p> + +<p> +“What did you tear Alfred Anthony’s collar for?” +</p> + +<p> +“When did I tear his collar?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know when, but his mother says you did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why—it was yesterday—an’ it was torn +a’ready.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you tore it more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’d got a cobbler as ’ad licked +seventeen—an’ Alfy Ant’ny ’e says: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘Adam an’ Eve an’ pinch-me,<br /> + Went down to a river to bade.<br /> +Adam an’ Eve got drownded,<br /> + Who do yer think got saved?’ +</p> + +<p> +An’ so I says: ‘Oh, Pinch-<i>you</i>,’ an’ so I pinched +’im, an’ ’e was mad, an’ so he snatched my cobbler +an’ run off with it. An’ so I run after ’im, an’ when I +was gettin’ hold of him, ’e dodged, an’ it ripped ’is +collar. But I got my cobbler—” +</p> + +<p> +He pulled from his pocket a black old horse-chestnut hanging on a string. This +old cobbler had “cobbled”—hit and smashed—seventeen +other cobblers on similar strings. So the boy was proud of his veteran. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mrs. Morel, “you know you’ve got no right +to rip his collar.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, our mother!” he answered. “I never meant tr’a +done it—an’ it was on’y an old indirrubber collar as was torn +a’ready.” +</p> + +<p> +“Next time,” said his mother, “<i>you</i> be more careful. I +shouldn’t like it if you came home with <i>your</i> collar torn +off.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care, our mother; I never did it a-purpose.” +</p> + +<p> +The boy was rather miserable at being reprimanded. +</p> + +<p> +“No—well, you be more careful.” +</p> + +<p> +William fled away, glad to be exonerated. And Mrs. Morel, who hated any bother +with the neighbours, thought she would explain to Mrs. Anthony, and the +business would be over. +</p> + +<p> +But that evening Morel came in from the pit looking very sour. He stood in the +kitchen and glared round, but did not speak for some minutes. Then: +</p> + +<p> +“Wheer’s that Willy?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want <i>him</i> for?” asked Mrs. Morel, who had +guessed. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll let ’im know when I get him,” said Morel, banging +his pit-bottle on to the dresser. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose Mrs. Anthony’s got hold of you and been yarning to you +about Alfy’s collar,” said Mrs. Morel, rather sneering. +</p> + +<p> +“Niver mind who’s got hold of me,” said Morel. “When I +get hold of ’<i>im</i> I’ll make his bones rattle.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a poor tale,” said Mrs. Morel, “that you’re +so ready to side with any snipey vixen who likes to come telling tales against +your own children.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll learn ’im!” said Morel. “It none matters to +me whose lad ’e is; ’e’s none goin’ rippin’ +an’ tearin’ about just as he’s a mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ripping and tearing about!’” repeated Mrs. Morel. +“He was running after that Alfy, who’d taken his cobbler, and he +accidentally got hold of his collar, because the other dodged—as an +Anthony would.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know!” shouted Morel threateningly. +</p> + +<p> +“You would, before you’re told,” replied his wife bitingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Niver you mind,” stormed Morel. “I know my business.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s more than doubtful,” said Mrs. Morel, +“supposing some loud-mouthed creature had been getting you to thrash your +own children.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” repeated Morel. +</p> + +<p> +And he said no more, but sat and nursed his bad temper. Suddenly William ran +in, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Can I have my tea, mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Tha can ha’e more than that!” shouted Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Hold your noise, man,” said Mrs. Morel; “and don’t +look so ridiculous.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll look ridiculous before I’ve done wi’ him!” +shouted Morel, rising from his chair and glaring at his son. +</p> + +<p> +William, who was a tall lad for his years, but very sensitive, had gone pale, +and was looking in a sort of horror at his father. +</p> + +<p> +“Go out!” Mrs. Morel commanded her son. +</p> + +<p> +William had not the wit to move. Suddenly Morel clenched his fist, and +crouched. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll <i>gi’e</i> him ‘go out’!” he shouted +like an insane thing. +</p> + +<p> +“What!” cried Mrs. Morel, panting with rage. “You shall not +touch him for <i>her</i> telling, you shall not!” +</p> + +<p> +“Shonna I?” shouted Morel. “Shonna I?” +</p> + +<p> +And, glaring at the boy, he ran forward. Mrs. Morel sprang in between them, +with her fist lifted. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you <i>dare!</i>” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“What!” he shouted, baffled for the moment. “What!” +</p> + +<p> +She spun round to her son. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Go</i> out of the house!” she commanded him in fury. +</p> + +<p> +The boy, as if hypnotised by her, turned suddenly and was gone. Morel rushed to +the door, but was too late. He returned, pale under his pit-dirt with fury. But +now his wife was fully roused. +</p> + +<p> +“Only dare!” she said in a loud, ringing voice. “Only dare, +milord, to lay a finger on that child! You’ll regret it for ever.” +</p> + +<p> +He was afraid of her. In a towering rage, he sat down. +</p> + +<p> +When the children were old enough to be left, Mrs. Morel joined the +Women’s Guild. It was a little club of women attached to the Co-operative +Wholesale Society, which met on Monday night in the long room over the grocery +shop of the Bestwood “Co-op”. The women were supposed to discuss +the benefits to be derived from co-operation, and other social questions. +Sometimes Mrs. Morel read a paper. It seemed queer to the children to see their +mother, who was always busy about the house, sitting writing in her rapid +fashion, thinking, referring to books, and writing again. They felt for her on +such occasions the deepest respect. +</p> + +<p> +But they loved the Guild. It was the only thing to which they did not grudge +their mother—and that partly because she enjoyed it, partly because of +the treats they derived from it. The Guild was called by some hostile husbands, +who found their wives getting too independent, the “clat-fart” +shop—that is, the gossip-shop. It is true, from off the basis of the +Guild, the women could look at their homes, at the conditions of their own +lives, and find fault. So the colliers found their women had a new standard of +their own, rather disconcerting. And also, Mrs. Morel always had a lot of news +on Monday nights, so that the children liked William to be in when their mother +came home, because she told him things. +</p> + +<p> +Then, when the lad was thirteen, she got him a job in the “Co-op.” +office. He was a very clever boy, frank, with rather rough features and real +viking blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“What dost want ter ma’e a stool-harsed Jack on ’im +for?” said Morel. “All he’ll do is to wear his britches +behind out an’ earn nowt. What’s ’e startin’ +wi’?” +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter what he’s starting with,” said Mrs. +Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“It wouldna! Put ’im i’ th’ pit we me, an’ +’ell earn a easy ten shillin’ a wik from th’ start. But six +shillin’ wearin’ his truck-end out on a stool’s better than +ten shillin’ i’ th’ pit wi’me, I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is <i>not</i> going in the pit,” said Mrs. Morel, “and +there’s an end of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It wor good enough for me, but it’s non good enough for +’im.” +</p> + +<p> +“If your mother put you in the pit at twelve, it’s no reason why I +should do the same with my lad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Twelve! It wor a sight afore that!” +</p> + +<p> +“Whenever it was,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +She was very proud of her son. He went to the night school, and learned +shorthand, so that by the time he was sixteen he was the best shorthand clerk +and book-keeper on the place, except one. Then he taught in the night schools. +But he was so fiery that only his good-nature and his size protected him. +</p> + +<p> +All the things that men do—the decent things—William did. He could +run like the wind. When he was twelve he won a first prize in a race; an +inkstand of glass, shaped like an anvil. It stood proudly on the dresser, and +gave Mrs. Morel a keen pleasure. The boy only ran for her. He flew home with +his anvil, breathless, with a “Look, mother!” That was the first +real tribute to herself. She took it like a queen. +</p> + +<p> +“How pretty!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +Then he began to get ambitious. He gave all his money to his mother. When he +earned fourteen shillings a week, she gave him back two for himself, and, as he +never drank, he felt himself rich. He went about with the bourgeois of +Bestwood. The townlet contained nothing higher than the clergyman. Then came +the bank manager, then the doctors, then the tradespeople, and after that the +hosts of colliers. Willam began to consort with the sons of the chemist, the +schoolmaster, and the tradesmen. He played billiards in the Mechanics’ +Hall. Also he danced—this in spite of his mother. All the life that +Bestwood offered he enjoyed, from the sixpenny-hops down Church Street, to +sports and billiards. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was treated to dazzling descriptions of all kinds of flower-like ladies, +most of whom lived like cut blooms in William’s heart for a brief +fortnight. +</p> + +<p> +Occasionally some flame would come in pursuit of her errant swain. Mrs. Morel +would find a strange girl at the door, and immediately she sniffed the air. +</p> + +<p> +“Is Mr. Morel in?” the damsel would ask appealingly. +</p> + +<p> +“My husband is at home,” Mrs. Morel replied. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I mean <i>young</i> Mr. Morel,” repeated the maiden +painfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Which one? There are several.” +</p> + +<p> +Whereupon much blushing and stammering from the fair one. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I met Mr. Morel—at Ripley,” she explained. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—at a dance!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t approve of the girls my son meets at dances. And he is +<i>not</i> at home.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he came home angry with his mother for having turned the girl away so +rudely. He was a careless, yet eager-looking fellow, who walked with long +strides, sometimes frowning, often with his cap pushed jollily to the back of +his head. Now he came in frowning. He threw his cap on to the sofa, and took +his strong jaw in his hand, and glared down at his mother. She was small, with +her hair taken straight back from her forehead. She had a quiet air of +authority, and yet of rare warmth. Knowing her son was angry, she trembled +inwardly. +</p> + +<p> +“Did a lady call for me yesterday, mother?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know about a lady. There was a girl came.” +</p> + +<p> +“And why didn’t you tell me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I forgot, simply.” +</p> + +<p> +He fumed a little. +</p> + +<p> +“A good-looking girl—seemed a lady?” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t look at her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Big brown eyes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I did <i>not</i> look. And tell your girls, my son, that when +they’re running after you, they’re not to come and ask your mother +for you. Tell them that—brazen baggages you meet at +dancing-classes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure she was a nice girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I’m sure she wasn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +There ended the altercation. Over the dancing there was a great strife between +the mother and the son. The grievance reached its height when William said he +was going to Hucknall Torkard—considered a low town—to a +fancy-dress ball. He was to be a Highlander. There was a dress he could hire, +which one of his friends had had, and which fitted him perfectly. The Highland +suit came home. Mrs. Morel received it coldly and would not unpack it. +</p> + +<p> +“My suit come?” cried William. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a parcel in the front room.” +</p> + +<p> +He rushed in and cut the string. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you fancy your son in this!” he said, enraptured, showing +her the suit. +</p> + +<p> +“You know I don’t want to fancy you in it.” +</p> + +<p> +On the evening of the dance, when he had come home to dress, Mrs. Morel put on +her coat and bonnet. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you going to stop and see me, mother?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I don’t want to see you,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +She was rather pale, and her face was closed and hard. She was afraid of her +son’s going the same way as his father. He hesitated a moment, and his +heart stood still with anxiety. Then he caught sight of the Highland bonnet +with its ribbons. He picked it up gleefully, forgetting her. She went out. +</p> + +<p> +When he was nineteen he suddenly left the Co-op. office and got a situation in +Nottingham. In his new place he had thirty shillings a week instead of +eighteen. This was indeed a rise. His mother and his father were brimmed up +with pride. Everybody praised William. It seemed he was going to get on +rapidly. Mrs. Morel hoped, with his aid, to help her younger sons. Annie was +now studying to be a teacher. Paul, also very clever, was getting on well, +having lessons in French and German from his godfather, the clergyman who was +still a friend to Mrs. Morel. Arthur, a spoilt and very good-looking boy, was +at the Board-school, but there was talk of his trying to get a scholarship for +the High School in Nottingham. +</p> + +<p> +William remained a year at his new post in Nottingham. He was studying hard, +and growing serious. Something seemed to be fretting him. Still he went out to +the dances and the river parties. He did not drink. The children were all rabid +teetotallers. He came home very late at night, and sat yet longer studying. His +mother implored him to take more care, to do one thing or another. +</p> + +<p> +“Dance, if you want to dance, my son; but don’t think you can work +in the office, and then amuse yourself, and <i>then</i> study on top of all. +You can’t; the human frame won’t stand it. Do one thing or the +other—amuse yourself or learn Latin; but don’t try to do +both.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he got a place in London, at a hundred and twenty a year. This seemed a +fabulous sum. His mother doubted almost whether to rejoice or to grieve. +</p> + +<p> +“They want me in Lime Street on Monday week, mother,” he cried, his +eyes blazing as he read the letter. Mrs. Morel felt everything go silent inside +her. He read the letter: “‘And will you reply by Thursday whether +you accept. Yours faithfully—’ They want me, mother, at a hundred +and twenty a year, and don’t even ask to see me. Didn’t I tell you +I could do it! Think of me in London! And I can give you twenty pounds a year, +mater. We s’ll all be rolling in money.” +</p> + +<p> +“We shall, my son,” she answered sadly. +</p> + +<p> +It never occurred to him that she might be more hurt at his going away than +glad of his success. Indeed, as the days drew near for his departure, her heart +began to close and grow dreary with despair. She loved him so much! More than +that, she hoped in him so much. Almost she lived by him. She liked to do things +for him: she liked to put a cup for his tea and to iron his collars, of which +he was so proud. It was a joy to her to have him proud of his collars. There +was no laundry. So she used to rub away at them with her little convex iron, to +polish them, till they shone from the sheer pressure of her arm. Now she would +not do it for him. Now he was going away. She felt almost as if he were going +as well out of her heart. He did not seem to leave her inhabited with himself. +That was the grief and the pain to her. He took nearly all himself away. +</p> + +<p> +A few days before his departure—he was just twenty—he burned his +love-letters. They had hung on a file at the top of the kitchen cupboard. From +some of them he had read extracts to his mother. Some of them she had taken the +trouble to read herself. But most were too trivial. +</p> + +<p> +Now, on the Saturday morning he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Come on, ’Postle, let’s go through my letters, and you can +have the birds and flowers.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel had done her Saturday’s work on the Friday, because he was +having a last day’s holiday. She was making him a rice cake, which he +loved, to take with him. He was scarcely conscious that she was so miserable. +</p> + +<p> +He took the first letter off the file. It was mauve-tinted, and had purple and +green thistles. William sniffed the page. +</p> + +<p> +“Nice scent! Smell.” +</p> + +<p> +And he thrust the sheet under Paul’s nose. +</p> + +<p> +“Um!” said Paul, breathing in. “What d’you call it? +Smell, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +His mother ducked her small, fine nose down to the paper. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t want to smell their rubbish,” she said, +sniffing. +</p> + +<p> +“This girl’s father,” said William, “is as rich as +Crœsus. He owns property without end. She calls me Lafayette, because I know +French. ‘You will see, I’ve forgiven you’—I like +<i>her</i> forgiving me. ‘I told mother about you this morning, and she +will have much pleasure if you come to tea on Sunday, but she will have to get +father’s consent also. I sincerely hope he will agree. I will let you +know how it transpires. If, however, you—’” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Let you know how it’ what?” interrupted Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Transpires’—oh yes!” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Transpires!’” repeated Mrs. Morel mockingly. “I +thought she was so well educated!” +</p> + +<p> +William felt slightly uncomfortable, and abandoned this maiden, giving Paul the +corner with the thistles. He continued to read extracts from his letters, some +of which amused his mother, some of which saddened her and made her anxious for +him. +</p> + +<p> +“My lad,” she said, “they’re very wise. They know +they’ve only got to flatter your vanity, and you press up to them like a +dog that has its head scratched.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, they can’t go on scratching for ever,” he replied. +“And when they’ve done, I trot away.” +</p> + +<p> +“But one day you’ll find a string round your neck that you +can’t pull off,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Not me! I’m equal to any of ’em, mater, they needn’t +flatter themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“You flatter <i>yourself</i>,” she said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +Soon there was a heap of twisted black pages, all that remained of the file of +scented letters, except that Paul had thirty or forty pretty tickets from the +corners of the notepaper—swallows and forget-me-nots and ivy sprays. And +William went to London, to start a new life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV<br/> +THE YOUNG LIFE OF PAUL</h2> + +<p> +Paul would be built like his mother, slightly and rather small. His fair hair +went reddish, and then dark brown; his eyes were grey. He was a pale, quiet +child, with eyes that seemed to listen, and with a full, dropping underlip. +</p> + +<p> +As a rule he seemed old for his years. He was so conscious of what other people +felt, particularly his mother. When she fretted he understood, and could have +no peace. His soul seemed always attentive to her. +</p> + +<p> +As he grew older he became stronger. William was too far removed from him to +accept him as a companion. So the smaller boy belonged at first almost entirely +to Annie. She was a tomboy and a “flybie-skybie”, as her mother +called her. But she was intensely fond of her second brother. So Paul was towed +round at the heels of Annie, sharing her game. She raced wildly at lerky with +the other young wild-cats of the Bottoms. And always Paul flew beside her, +living her share of the game, having as yet no part of his own. He was quiet +and not noticeable. But his sister adored him. He always seemed to care for +things if she wanted him to. +</p> + +<p> +She had a big doll of which she was fearfully proud, though not so fond. So she +laid the doll on the sofa, and covered it with an antimacassar, to sleep. Then +she forgot it. Meantime Paul must practise jumping off the sofa arm. So he +jumped crash into the face of the hidden doll. Annie rushed up, uttered a loud +wail, and sat down to weep a dirge. Paul remained quite still. +</p> + +<p> +“You couldn’t tell it was there, mother; you couldn’t tell it +was there,” he repeated over and over. So long as Annie wept for the doll +he sat helpless with misery. Her grief wore itself out. She forgave her +brother—he was so much upset. But a day or two afterwards she was +shocked. +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s make a sacrifice of Arabella,” he said. +“Let’s burn her.” +</p> + +<p> +She was horrified, yet rather fascinated. She wanted to see what the boy would +do. He made an altar of bricks, pulled some of the shavings out of +Arabella’s body, put the waxen fragments into the hollow face, poured on +a little paraffin, and set the whole thing alight. He watched with wicked +satisfaction the drops of wax melt off the broken forehead of Arabella, and +drop like sweat into the flame. So long as the stupid big doll burned he +rejoiced in silence. At the end he poked among the embers with a stick, fished +out the arms and legs, all blackened, and smashed them under stones. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the sacrifice of Missis Arabella,” he said. +“An’ I’m glad there’s nothing left of her.” +</p> + +<p> +Which disturbed Annie inwardly, although she could say nothing. He seemed to +hate the doll so intensely, because he had broken it. +</p> + +<p> +All the children, but particularly Paul, were peculiarly <i>against</i> their +father, along with their mother. Morel continued to bully and to drink. He had +periods, months at a time, when he made the whole life of the family a misery. +Paul never forgot coming home from the Band of Hope one Monday evening and +finding his mother with her eye swollen and discoloured, his father standing on +the hearthrug, feet astride, his head down, and William, just home from work, +glaring at his father. There was a silence as the young children entered, but +none of the elders looked round. +</p> + +<p> +William was white to the lips, and his fists were clenched. He waited until the +children were silent, watching with children’s rage and hate; then he +said: +</p> + +<p> +“You coward, you daren’t do it when I was in.” +</p> + +<p> +But Morel’s blood was up. He swung round on his son. William was bigger, +but Morel was hard-muscled, and mad with fury. +</p> + +<p> +“Dossn’t I?” he shouted. “Dossn’t I? Ha’e +much more o’ thy chelp, my young jockey, an’ I’ll rattle my +fist about thee. Ay, an’ I sholl that, dost see?” +</p> + +<p> +Morel crouched at the knees and showed his fist in an ugly, almost beast-like +fashion. William was white with rage. +</p> + +<p> +“Will yer?” he said, quiet and intense. “It ’ud be the +last time, though.” +</p> + +<p> +Morel danced a little nearer, crouching, drawing back his fist to strike. +William put his fists ready. A light came into his blue eyes, almost like a +laugh. He watched his father. Another word, and the men would have begun to +fight. Paul hoped they would. The three children sat pale on the sofa. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop it, both of you,” cried Mrs. Morel in a hard voice. +“We’ve had enough for <i>one</i> night. And <i>you</i>,” she +said, turning on to her husband, “look at your children!” +</p> + +<p> +Morel glanced at the sofa. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at the children, you nasty little bitch!” he sneered. +“Why, what have <i>I</i> done to the children, I should like to know? But +they’re like yourself; you’ve put ’em up to your own tricks +and nasty ways—you’ve learned ’em in it, you +’ave.” +</p> + +<p> +She refused to answer him. No one spoke. After a while he threw his boots under +the table and went to bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why didn’t you let me have a go at him?” said William, when +his father was upstairs. “I could easily have beaten him.” +</p> + +<p> +“A nice thing—your own father,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“‘<i>Father!</i>’” repeated William. “Call <i>him +my</i> father!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he is—and so—” +</p> + +<p> +“But why don’t you let me settle him? I could do, easily.” +</p> + +<p> +“The idea!” she cried. “It hasn’t come to <i>that</i> +yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “it’s come to worse. Look at yourself. +<i>Why</i> didn’t you let me give it him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I couldn’t bear it, so never think of it,” she cried +quickly. +</p> + +<p> +And the children went to bed, miserably. +</p> + +<p> +When William was growing up, the family moved from the Bottoms to a house on +the brow of the hill, commanding a view of the valley, which spread out like a +convex cockle-shell, or a clamp-shell, before it. In front of the house was a +huge old ash-tree. The west wind, sweeping from Derbyshire, caught the houses +with full force, and the tree shrieked again. Morel liked it. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s music,” he said. “It sends me to sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +But Paul and Arthur and Annie hated it. To Paul it became almost a demoniacal +noise. The winter of their first year in the new house their father was very +bad. The children played in the street, on the brim of the wide, dark valley, +until eight o’clock. Then they went to bed. Their mother sat sewing +below. Having such a great space in front of the house gave the children a +feeling of night, of vastness, and of terror. This terror came in from the +shrieking of the tree and the anguish of the home discord. Often Paul would +wake up, after he had been asleep a long time, aware of thuds downstairs. +Instantly he was wide awake. Then he heard the booming shouts of his father, +come home nearly drunk, then the sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, +bang of his father’s fist on the table, and the nasty snarling shout as +the man’s voice got higher. And then the whole was drowned in a piercing +medley of shrieks and cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree. The children +lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear what their +father was doing. He might hit their mother again. There was a feeling of +horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay +with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through the +tree fiercer and fiercer. All the chords of the great harp hummed, whistled, +and shrieked. And then came the horror of the sudden silence, silence +everywhere, outside and downstairs. What was it? Was it a silence of blood? +What had he done? +</p> + +<p> +The children lay and breathed the darkness. And then, at last, they heard their +father throw down his boots and tramp upstairs in his stockinged feet. Still +they listened. Then at last, if the wind allowed, they heard the water of the +tap drumming into the kettle, which their mother was filling for morning, and +they could go to sleep in peace. +</p> + +<p> +So they were happy in the morning—happy, very happy playing, dancing at +night round the lonely lamp-post in the midst of the darkness. But they had one +tight place of anxiety in their hearts, one darkness in their eyes, which +showed all their lives. +</p> + +<p> +Paul hated his father. As a boy he had a fervent private religion. +</p> + +<p> +“Make him stop drinking,” he prayed every night. “Lord, let +my father die,” he prayed very often. “Let him not be killed at +pit,” he prayed when, after tea, the father did not come home from work. +</p> + +<p> +That was another time when the family suffered intensely. The children came +from school and had their teas. On the hob the big black saucepan was +simmering, the stew-jar was in the oven, ready for Morel’s dinner. He was +expected at five o’clock. But for months he would stop and drink every +night on his way from work. +</p> + +<p> +In the winter nights, when it was cold, and grew dark early, Mrs. Morel would +put a brass candlestick on the table, light a tallow candle to save the gas. +The children finished their bread-and-butter, or dripping, and were ready to go +out to play. But if Morel had not come they faltered. The sense of his sitting +in all his pit-dirt, drinking, after a long day’s work, not coming home +and eating and washing, but sitting, getting drunk, on an empty stomach, made +Mrs. Morel unable to bear herself. From her the feeling was transmitted to the +other children. She never suffered alone any more: the children suffered with +her. +</p> + +<p> +Paul went out to play with the rest. Down in the great trough of twilight, tiny +clusters of lights burned where the pits were. A few last colliers straggled up +the dim field path. The lamplighter came along. No more colliers came. Darkness +shut down over the valley; work was done. It was night. +</p> + +<p> +Then Paul ran anxiously into the kitchen. The one candle still burned on the +table, the big fire glowed red. Mrs. Morel sat alone. On the hob the saucepan +steamed; the dinner-plate lay waiting on the table. All the room was full of +the sense of waiting, waiting for the man who was sitting in his pit-dirt, +dinnerless, some mile away from home, across the darkness, drinking himself +drunk. Paul stood in the doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“Has my dad come?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“You can see he hasn’t,” said Mrs. Morel, cross with the +futility of the question. +</p> + +<p> +Then the boy dawdled about near his mother. They shared the same anxiety. +Presently Mrs. Morel went out and strained the potatoes. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re ruined and black,” she said; “but what do I +care?” +</p> + +<p> +Not many words were spoken. Paul almost hated his mother for suffering because +his father did not come home from work. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you bother yourself for?” he said. “If he wants to +stop and get drunk, why don’t you let him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let him!” flashed Mrs. Morel. “You may well say ‘let +him’.” +</p> + +<p> +She knew that the man who stops on the way home from work is on a quick way to +ruining himself and his home. The children were yet young, and depended on the +breadwinner. William gave her the sense of relief, providing her at last with +someone to turn to if Morel failed. But the tense atmosphere of the room on +these waiting evenings was the same. +</p> + +<p> +The minutes ticked away. At six o’clock still the cloth lay on the table, +still the dinner stood waiting, still the same sense of anxiety and expectation +in the room. The boy could not stand it any longer. He could not go out and +play. So he ran in to Mrs. Inger, next door but one, for her to talk to him. +She had no children. Her husband was good to her but was in a shop, and came +home late. So, when she saw the lad at the door, she called: +</p> + +<p> +“Come in, Paul.” +</p> + +<p> +The two sat talking for some time, when suddenly the boy rose, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll be going and seeing if my mother wants an errand +doing.” +</p> + +<p> +He pretended to be perfectly cheerful, and did not tell his friend what ailed +him. Then he ran indoors. +</p> + +<p> +Morel at these times came in churlish and hateful. +</p> + +<p> +“This is a nice time to come home,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Wha’s it matter to yo’ what time I come whoam?” he +shouted. +</p> + +<p> +And everybody in the house was still, because he was dangerous. He ate his food +in the most brutal manner possible, and, when he had done, pushed all the pots +in a heap away from him, to lay his arms on the table. Then he went to sleep. +</p> + +<p> +Paul hated his father so. The collier’s small, mean head, with its black +hair slightly soiled with grey, lay on the bare arms, and the face, dirty and +inflamed, with a fleshy nose and thin, paltry brows, was turned sideways, +asleep with beer and weariness and nasty temper. If anyone entered suddenly, or +a noise were made, the man looked up and shouted: +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll lay my fist about thy y’ead, I’m tellin’ +thee, if tha doesna stop that clatter! Dost hear?” +</p> + +<p> +And the two last words, shouted in a bullying fashion, usually at Annie, made +the family writhe with hate of the man. +</p> + +<p> +He was shut out from all family affairs. No one told him anything. The +children, alone with their mother, told her all about the day’s +happenings, everything. Nothing had really taken place in them until it was +told to their mother. But as soon as the father came in, everything stopped. He +was like the scotch in the smooth, happy machinery of the home. And he was +always aware of this fall of silence on his entry, the shutting off of life, +the unwelcome. But now it was gone too far to alter. +</p> + +<p> +He would dearly have liked the children to talk to him, but they could not. +Sometimes Mrs. Morel would say: +</p> + +<p> +“You ought to tell your father.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul won a prize in a competition in a child’s paper. Everybody was +highly jubilant. +</p> + +<p> +“Now you’d better tell your father when he comes in,” said +Mrs. Morel. “You know how he carries on and says he’s never told +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Paul. But he would almost rather have forfeited +the prize than have to tell his father. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve won a prize in a competition, dad,” he said. Morel +turned round to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you, my boy? What sort of a competition?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nothing—about famous women.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how much is the prize, then, as you’ve got?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a book.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed!” +</p> + +<p> +“About birds.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hm—hm!” +</p> + +<p> +And that was all. Conversation was impossible between the father and any other +member of the family. He was an outsider. He had denied the God in him. +</p> + +<p> +The only times when he entered again into the life of his own people was when +he worked, and was happy at work. Sometimes, in the evening, he cobbled the +boots or mended the kettle or his pit-bottle. Then he always wanted several +attendants, and the children enjoyed it. They united with him in the work, in +the actual doing of something, when he was his real self again. +</p> + +<p> +He was a good workman, dexterous, and one who, when he was in a good humour, +always sang. He had whole periods, months, almost years, of friction and nasty +temper. Then sometimes he was jolly again. It was nice to see him run with a +piece of red-hot iron into the scullery, crying: +</p> + +<p> +“Out of my road—out of my road!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he hammered the soft, red-glowing stuff on his iron goose, and made the +shape he wanted. Or he sat absorbed for a moment, soldering. Then the children +watched with joy as the metal sank suddenly molten, and was shoved about +against the nose of the soldering-iron, while the room was full of a scent of +burnt resin and hot tin, and Morel was silent and intent for a minute. He +always sang when he mended boots because of the jolly sound of hammering. And +he was rather happy when he sat putting great patches on his moleskin pit +trousers, which he would often do, considering them too dirty, and the stuff +too hard, for his wife to mend. +</p> + +<p> +But the best time for the young children was when he made fuses. Morel fetched +a sheaf of long sound wheat-straws from the attic. These he cleaned with his +hand, till each one gleamed like a stalk of gold, after which he cut the straws +into lengths of about six inches, leaving, if he could, a notch at the bottom +of each piece. He always had a beautifully sharp knife that could cut a straw +clean without hurting it. Then he set in the middle of the table a heap of +gunpowder, a little pile of black grains upon the white-scrubbed board. He made +and trimmed the straws while Paul and Annie rifled and plugged them. Paul loved +to see the black grains trickle down a crack in his palm into the mouth of the +straw, peppering jollily downwards till the straw was full. Then he bunged up +the mouth with a bit of soap—which he got on his thumb-nail from a pat in +a saucer—and the straw was finished. +</p> + +<p> +“Look, dad!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right, my beauty,” replied Morel, who was peculiarly +lavish of endearments to his second son. Paul popped the fuse into the +powder-tin, ready for the morning, when Morel would take it to the pit, and use +it to fire a shot that would blast the coal down. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime Arthur, still fond of his father, would lean on the arm of +Morel’s chair and say: +</p> + +<p> +“Tell us about down pit, daddy.” +</p> + +<p> +This Morel loved to do. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, there’s one little ’oss—we call ’im +Taffy,” he would begin. “An’ he’s a fawce +un!” +</p> + +<p> +Morel had a warm way of telling a story. He made one feel Taffy’s +cunning. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a brown un,” he would answer, “an’ not very +high. Well, he comes i’ th’ stall wi’ a rattle, an’ +then yo’ ’ear ’im sneeze. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ello, Taff,’ you say, ‘what art sneezin’ for? +Bin ta’ein’ some snuff?’ +</p> + +<p> +“An’ ’e sneezes again. Then he slives up an’ shoves +’is ’ead on yer, that cadin’. +</p> + +<p> +“‘What’s want, Taff?’ yo’ say.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what does he?” Arthur always asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He wants a bit o’ bacca, my duckey.” +</p> + +<p> +This story of Taffy would go on interminably, and everybody loved it. +</p> + +<p> +Or sometimes it was a new tale. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ what dost think, my darlin’? When I went to put my coat +on at snap-time, what should go runnin’ up my arm but a mouse. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Hey up, theer!’ I shouts. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ I wor just in time ter get ’im by th’ tail.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did you kill it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I did, for they’re a nuisance. The place is fair snied wi’ +’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“An’ what do they live on?” +</p> + +<p> +“The corn as the ’osses drops—an’ they’ll get in +your pocket an’ eat your snap, if you’ll let ’em—no +matter where yo’ hing your coat—the slivin’, nibblin’ +little nuisances, for they are.” +</p> + +<p> +These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel had some job to do. And +then he always went to bed very early, often before the children. There was +nothing remaining for him to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and +had skimmed the headlines of the newspaper. +</p> + +<p> +And the children felt secure when their father was in bed. They lay and talked +softly awhile. Then they started as the lights went suddenly sprawling over the +ceiling from the lamps that swung in the hands of the colliers tramping by +outside, going to take the nine o’clock shift. They listened to the +voices of the men, imagined them dipping down into the dark valley. Sometimes +they went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing tinier and +tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness. Then it was a joy to rush back +to bed and cuddle closely in the warmth. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis. The others were all +quite strong; so this was another reason for his mother’s difference in +feeling for him. One day he came home at dinner-time feeling ill. But it was +not a family to make any fuss. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter with <i>you?</i>” his mother asked +sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +But he ate no dinner. +</p> + +<p> +“If you eat no dinner, you’re not going to school,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s why.” +</p> + +<p> +So after dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the +children loved. Then he fell into a kind of doze. That afternoon Mrs. Morel was +ironing. She listened to the small, restless noise the boy made in his throat +as she worked. Again rose in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards +him. She had never expected him to live. And yet he had a great vitality in his +young body. Perhaps it would have been a little relief to her if he had died. +She always felt a mixture of anguish in her love for him. +</p> + +<p> +He, in his semi-conscious sleep, was vaguely aware of the clatter of the iron +on the iron-stand, of the faint thud, thud on the ironing-board. Once roused, +he opened his eyes to see his mother standing on the hearthrug with the hot +iron near her cheek, listening, as it were, to the heat. Her still face, with +the mouth closed tight from suffering and disillusion and self-denial, and her +nose the smallest bit on one side, and her blue eyes so young, quick, and warm, +made his heart contract with love. When she was quiet, so, she looked brave and +rich with life, but as if she had been done out of her rights. It hurt the boy +keenly, this feeling about her that she had never had her life’s +fulfilment: and his own incapability to make up to her hurt him with a sense of +impotence, yet made him patiently dogged inside. It was his childish aim. +</p> + +<p> +She spat on the iron, and a little ball of spit bounded, raced off the dark, +glossy surface. Then, kneeling, she rubbed the iron on the sack lining of the +hearthrug vigorously. She was warm in the ruddy firelight. Paul loved the way +she crouched and put her head on one side. Her movements were light and quick. +It was always a pleasure to watch her. Nothing she ever did, no movement she +ever made, could have been found fault with by her children. The room was warm +and full of the scent of hot linen. Later on the clergyman came and talked +softly with her. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was laid up with an attack of bronchitis. He did not mind much. What +happened happened, and it was no good kicking against the pricks. He loved the +evenings, after eight o’clock, when the light was put out, and he could +watch the fire-flames spring over the darkness of the walls and ceiling; could +watch huge shadows waving and tossing, till the room seemed full of men who +battled silently. +</p> + +<p> +On retiring to bed, the father would come into the sickroom. He was always very +gentle if anyone were ill. But he disturbed the atmosphere for the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Are ter asleep, my darlin’?” Morel asked softly. +</p> + +<p> +“No; is my mother comin’?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s just finishin’ foldin’ the clothes. Do you want +anything?” Morel rarely “thee’d” his son. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want nothing. But how long will she be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not long, my duckie.” +</p> + +<p> +The father waited undecidedly on the hearthrug for a moment or two. He felt his +son did not want him. Then he went to the top of the stairs and said to his +wife: +</p> + +<p> +“This childt’s axin’ for thee; how long art goin’ to +be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Until I’ve finished, good gracious! Tell him to go to +sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“She says you’re to go to sleep,” the father repeated gently +to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I want <i>her</i> to come,” insisted the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“He says he can’t go off till you come,” Morel called +downstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, dear! I shan’t be long. And do stop shouting downstairs. +There’s the other children—” +</p> + +<p> +Then Morel came again and crouched before the bedroom fire. He loved a fire +dearly. +</p> + +<p> +“She says she won’t be long,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He loitered about indefinitely. The boy began to get feverish with irritation. +His father’s presence seemed to aggravate all his sick impatience. At +last Morel, after having stood looking at his son awhile, said softly: +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night, my darling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” Paul replied, turning round in relief to be alone. +</p> + +<p> +Paul loved to sleep with his mother. Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of +hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and +peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, +so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing. Paul lay against +her and slept, and got better; whilst she, always a bad sleeper, fell later on +into a profound sleep that seemed to give her faith. +</p> + +<p> +In convalescence he would sit up in bed, see the fluffy horses feeding at the +troughs in the field, scattering their hay on the trodden yellow snow; watch +the miners troop home—small, black figures trailing slowly in gangs +across the white field. Then the night came up in dark blue vapour from the +snow. +</p> + +<p> +In convalescence everything was wonderful. The snowflakes, suddenly arriving on +the window-pane, clung there a moment like swallows, then were gone, and a drop +of water was crawling down the glass. The snowflakes whirled round the corner +of the house, like pigeons dashing by. Away across the valley the little black +train crawled doubtfully over the great whiteness. +</p> + +<p> +While they were so poor, the children were delighted if they could do anything +to help economically. Annie and Paul and Arthur went out early in the morning, +in summer, looking for mushrooms, hunting through the wet grass, from which the +larks were rising, for the white-skinned, wonderful naked bodies crouched +secretly in the green. And if they got half a pound they felt exceedingly +happy: there was the joy of finding something, the joy of accepting something +straight from the hand of Nature, and the joy of contributing to the family +exchequer. +</p> + +<p> +But the most important harvest, after gleaning for frumenty, was the +blackberries. Mrs. Morel must buy fruit for puddings on the Saturdays; also she +liked blackberries. So Paul and Arthur scoured the coppices and woods and old +quarries, so long as a blackberry was to be found, every week-end going on +their search. In that region of mining villages blackberries became a +comparative rarity. But Paul hunted far and wide. He loved being out in the +country, among the bushes. But he also could not bear to go home to his mother +empty. That, he felt, would disappoint her, and he would have died rather. +</p> + +<p> +“Good gracious!” she would exclaim as the lads came in, late, and +tired to death, and hungry, “wherever have you been?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” replied Paul, “there wasn’t any, so we went +over Misk Hills. And look here, our mother!” +</p> + +<p> +She peeped into the basket. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, those are fine ones!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“And there’s over two pounds—isn’t there over two +pounds”? +</p> + +<p> +She tried the basket. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +Then Paul fished out a little spray. He always brought her one spray, the best +he could find. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty!” she said, in a curious tone, of a woman accepting a +love-token. +</p> + +<p> +The boy walked all day, went miles and miles, rather than own himself beaten +and come home to her empty-handed. She never realised this, whilst he was +young. She was a woman who waited for her children to grow up. And William +occupied her chiefly. +</p> + +<p> +But when William went to Nottingham, and was not so much at home, the mother +made a companion of Paul. The latter was unconsciously jealous of his brother, +and William was jealous of him. At the same time, they were good friends. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel’s intimacy with her second son was more subtle and fine, +perhaps not so passionate as with her eldest. It was the rule that Paul should +fetch the money on Friday afternoons. The colliers of the five pits were paid +on Fridays, but not individually. All the earnings of each stall were put down +to the chief butty, as contractor, and he divided the wages again, either in +the public-house or in his own home. So that the children could fetch the +money, school closed early on Friday afternoons. Each of the Morel +children—William, then Annie, then Paul—had fetched the money on +Friday afternoons, until they went themselves to work. Paul used to set off at +half-past three, with a little calico bag in his pocket. Down all the paths, +women, girls, children, and men were seen trooping to the offices. +</p> + +<p> +These offices were quite handsome: a new, red-brick building, almost like a +mansion, standing in its own grounds at the end of Greenhill Lane. The +waiting-room was the hall, a long, bare room paved with blue brick, and having +a seat all round, against the wall. Here sat the colliers in their pit-dirt. +They had come up early. The women and children usually loitered about on the +red gravel paths. Paul always examined the grass border, and the big grass +bank, because in it grew tiny pansies and tiny forget-me-nots. There was a +sound of many voices. The women had on their Sunday hats. The girls chattered +loudly. Little dogs ran here and there. The green shrubs were silent all +around. +</p> + +<p> +Then from inside came the cry “Spinney Park—Spinney Park.” +All the folk for Spinney Park trooped inside. When it was time for Bretty to be +paid, Paul went in among the crowd. The pay-room was quite small. A counter +went across, dividing it into half. Behind the counter stood two men—Mr. +Braithwaite and his clerk, Mr. Winterbottom. Mr. Braithwaite was large, +somewhat of the stern patriarch in appearance, having a rather thin white +beard. He was usually muffled in an enormous silk neckerchief, and right up to +the hot summer a huge fire burned in the open grate. No window was open. +Sometimes in winter the air scorched the throats of the people, coming in from +the freshness. Mr. Winterbottom was rather small and fat, and very bald. He +made remarks that were not witty, whilst his chief launched forth patriarchal +admonitions against the colliers. +</p> + +<p> +The room was crowded with miners in their pit-dirt, men who had been home and +changed, and women, and one or two children, and usually a dog. Paul was quite +small, so it was often his fate to be jammed behind the legs of the men, near +the fire which scorched him. He knew the order of the names—they went +according to stall number. +</p> + +<p> +“Holliday,” came the ringing voice of Mr. Braithwaite. Then Mrs. +Holliday stepped silently forward, was paid, drew aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Bower—John Bower.” +</p> + +<p> +A boy stepped to the counter. Mr. Braithwaite, large and irascible, glowered at +him over his spectacles. +</p> + +<p> +“John Bower!” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s me,” said the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you used to ’ave a different nose than that,” said +glossy Mr. Winterbottom, peering over the counter. The people tittered, +thinking of John Bower senior. +</p> + +<p> +“How is it your father’s not come!” said Mr. Braithwaite, in +a large and magisterial voice. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s badly,” piped the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“You should tell him to keep off the drink,” pronounced the great +cashier. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ niver mind if he puts his foot through yer,” said a +mocking voice from behind. +</p> + +<p> +All the men laughed. The large and important cashier looked down at his next +sheet. +</p> + +<p> +“Fred Pilkington!” he called, quite indifferent. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Braithwaite was an important shareholder in the firm. +</p> + +<p> +Paul knew his turn was next but one, and his heart began to beat. He was pushed +against the chimney-piece. His calves were burning. But he did not hope to get +through the wall of men. +</p> + +<p> +“Walter Morel!” came the ringing voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Here!” piped Paul, small and inadequate. +</p> + +<p> +“Morel—Walter Morel!” the cashier repeated, his finger and +thumb on the invoice, ready to pass on. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was suffering convulsions of self-consciousness, and could not or would +not shout. The backs of the men obliterated him. Then Mr. Winterbottom came to +the rescue. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s here. Where is he? Morel’s lad?” +</p> + +<p> +The fat, red, bald little man peered round with keen eyes. He pointed at the +fireplace. The colliers looked round, moved aside, and disclosed the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Here he is!” said Mr. Winterbottom. +</p> + +<p> +Paul went to the counter. +</p> + +<p> +“Seventeen pounds eleven and fivepence. Why don’t you shout up when +you’re called?” said Mr. Braithwaite. He banged on to the invoice a +five-pound bag of silver, then in a delicate and pretty movement, picked up a +little ten-pound column of gold, and plumped it beside the silver. The gold +slid in a bright stream over the paper. The cashier finished counting off the +money; the boy dragged the whole down the counter to Mr. Winterbottom, to whom +the stoppages for rent and tools must be paid. Here he suffered again. +</p> + +<p> +“Sixteen an’ six,” said Mr. Winterbottom. +</p> + +<p> +The lad was too much upset to count. He pushed forward some loose silver and +half a sovereign. +</p> + +<p> +“How much do you think you’ve given me?” asked Mr. +Winterbottom. +</p> + +<p> +The boy looked at him, but said nothing. He had not the faintest notion. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t you got a tongue in your head?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul bit his lip, and pushed forward some more silver. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t they teach you to count at the Board-school?” he +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nowt but algibbra an’ French,” said a collier. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ cheek an’ impidence,” said another. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was keeping someone waiting. With trembling fingers he got his money into +the bag and slid out. He suffered the tortures of the damned on these +occasions. +</p> + +<p> +His relief, when he got outside, and was walking along the Mansfield Road, was +infinite. On the park wall the mosses were green. There were some gold and some +white fowls pecking under the apple trees of an orchard. The colliers were +walking home in a stream. The boy went near the wall, self-consciously. He knew +many of the men, but could not recognise them in their dirt. And this was a new +torture to him. +</p> + +<p> +When he got down to the New Inn, at Bretty, his father was not yet come. Mrs. +Wharmby, the landlady, knew him. His grandmother, Morel’s mother, had +been Mrs. Wharmby’s friend. +</p> + +<p> +“Your father’s not come yet,” said the landlady, in the +peculiar half-scornful, half-patronising voice of a woman who talks chiefly to +grown men. “Sit you down.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul sat down on the edge of the bench in the bar. Some colliers were +“reckoning”—sharing out their money—in a corner; others +came in. They all glanced at the boy without speaking. At last Morel came; +brisk, and with something of an air, even in his blackness. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he said rather tenderly to his son. “Have you bested +me? Shall you have a drink of something?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul and all the children were bred up fierce anti-alcoholists, and he would +have suffered more in drinking a lemonade before all the men than in having a +tooth drawn. +</p> + +<p> +The landlady looked at him <i>de haut en bas</i>, rather pitying, and at the +same time, resenting his clear, fierce morality. Paul went home, glowering. He +entered the house silently. Friday was baking day, and there was usually a hot +bun. His mother put it before him. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he turned on her in a fury, his eyes flashing: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m <i>not</i> going to the office any more,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what’s the matter?” his mother asked in surprise. His +sudden rages rather amused her. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m <i>not</i> going any more,” he declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well, tell your father so.” +</p> + +<p> +He chewed his bun as if he hated it. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not—I’m not going to fetch the money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then one of Carlin’s children can go; they’d be glad enough +of the sixpence,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +This sixpence was Paul’s only income. It mostly went in buying birthday +presents; but it <i>was</i> an income, and he treasured it. But— +</p> + +<p> +“They can have it, then!” he said. “I don’t want +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well,” said his mother. “But you needn’t +bully <i>me</i> about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re hateful, and common, and hateful, they are, and I’m +not going any more. Mr. Braithwaite drops his ‘h’s’, +an’ Mr. Winterbottom says ‘You was’.” +</p> + +<p> +“And is that why you won’t go any more?” smiled Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +The boy was silent for some time. His face was pale, his eyes dark and furious. +His mother moved about at her work, taking no notice of him. +</p> + +<p> +“They always stan’ in front of me, so’s I can’t get +out,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my lad, you’ve only to <i>ask</i> them,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ then Alfred Winterbottom says, ‘What do they teach you +at the Board-school?’” +</p> + +<p> +“They never taught <i>him</i> much,” said Mrs. Morel, “that +is a fact—neither manners nor wit—and his cunning he was born +with.” +</p> + +<p> +So, in her own way, she soothed him. His ridiculous hypersensitiveness made her +heart ache. And sometimes the fury in his eyes roused her, made her sleeping +soul lift up its head a moment, surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“What was the cheque?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Seventeen pounds eleven and fivepence, and sixteen and six +stoppages,” replied the boy. “It’s a good week; and only five +shillings stoppages for my father.” +</p> + +<p> +So she was able to calculate how much her husband had earned, and could call +him to account if he gave her short money. Morel always kept to himself the +secret of the week’s amount. +</p> + +<p> +Friday was the baking night and market night. It was the rule that Paul should +stay at home and bake. He loved to stop in and draw or read; he was very fond +of drawing. Annie always “gallivanted” on Friday nights; Arthur was +enjoying himself as usual. So the boy remained alone. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel loved her marketing. In the tiny market-place on the top of the +hill, where four roads, from Nottingham and Derby, Ilkeston and Mansfield, +meet, many stalls were erected. Brakes ran in from surrounding villages. The +market-place was full of women, the streets packed with men. It was amazing to +see so many men everywhere in the streets. Mrs. Morel usually quarrelled with +her lace woman, sympathised with her fruit man—who was a gabey, but his +wife was a bad un—laughed with the fish man—who was a scamp but so +droll—put the linoleum man in his place, was cold with the odd-wares man, +and only went to the crockery man when she was driven—or drawn by the +cornflowers on a little dish; then she was coldly polite. +</p> + +<p> +“I wondered how much that little dish was,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Sevenpence to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +She put the dish down and walked away; but she could not leave the market-place +without it. Again she went by where the pots lay coldly on the floor, and she +glanced at the dish furtively, pretending not to. +</p> + +<p> +She was a little woman, in a bonnet and a black costume. Her bonnet was in its +third year; it was a great grievance to Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” the girl implored, “don’t wear that nubbly +little bonnet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what else shall I wear,” replied the mother tartly. +“And I’m sure it’s right enough.” +</p> + +<p> +It had started with a tip; then had had flowers; now was reduced to black lace +and a bit of jet. +</p> + +<p> +“It looks rather come down,” said Paul. “Couldn’t you +give it a pick-me-up?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll jowl your head for impudence,” said Mrs. Morel, and she +tied the strings of the black bonnet valiantly under her chin. +</p> + +<p> +She glanced at the dish again. Both she and her enemy, the pot man, had an +uncomfortable feeling, as if there were something between them. Suddenly he +shouted: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want it for fivepence?” +</p> + +<p> +She started. Her heart hardened; but then she stooped and took up her dish. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll have it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yer’ll do me the favour, like?” he said. “Yer’d +better spit in it, like yer do when y’ave something give yer.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel paid him the fivepence in a cold manner. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see you give it me,” she said. “You +wouldn’t let me have it for fivepence if you didn’t want to.” +</p> + +<p> +“In this flamin’, scrattlin’ place you may count yerself +lucky if you can give your things away,” he growled. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; there are bad times, and good,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +But she had forgiven the pot man. They were friends. She dare now finger his +pots. So she was happy. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was waiting for her. He loved her home-coming. She was always her best +so—triumphant, tired, laden with parcels, feeling rich in spirit. He +heard her quick, light step in the entry and looked up from his drawing. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she sighed, smiling at him from the doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“My word, you <i>are</i> loaded!” he exclaimed, putting down his +brush. +</p> + +<p> +“I am!” she gasped. “That brazen Annie said she’d meet +me. <i>Such</i> a weight!” +</p> + +<p> +She dropped her string bag and her packages on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Is the bread done?” she asked, going to the oven. +</p> + +<p> +“The last one is soaking,” he replied. “You needn’t +look, I’ve not forgotten it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that pot man!” she said, closing the oven door. “You +know what a wretch I’ve said he was? Well, I don’t think he’s +quite so bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +The boy was attentive to her. She took off her little black bonnet. +</p> + +<p> +“No. I think he can’t make any money—well, it’s +everybody’s cry alike nowadays—and it makes him +disagreeable.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would <i>me</i>,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, one can’t wonder at it. And he let me have—how much do +you think he let me have <i>this</i> for?” +</p> + +<p> +She took the dish out of its rag of newspaper, and stood looking on it with +joy. +</p> + +<p> +“Show me!” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +The two stood together gloating over the dish. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>love</i> cornflowers on things,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and I thought of the teapot you bought me—” +</p> + +<p> +“One and three,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Fivepence!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not enough, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Do you know, I fairly sneaked off with it. But I’d been +extravagant, I couldn’t afford any more. And he needn’t have let me +have it if he hadn’t wanted to.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, he needn’t, need he,” said Paul, and the two comforted +each other from the fear of having robbed the pot man. +</p> + +<p> +“We c’n have stewed fruit in it,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Or custard, or a jelly,” said his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Or radishes and lettuce,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t forget that bread,” she said, her voice bright with +glee. +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked in the oven; tapped the loaf on the base. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s done,” he said, giving it to her. +</p> + +<p> +She tapped it also. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she replied, going to unpack her bag. “Oh, and +I’m a wicked, extravagant woman. I know I s’ll come to want.” +</p> + +<p> +He hopped to her side eagerly, to see her latest extravagance. She unfolded +another lump of newspaper and disclosed some roots of pansies and of crimson +daisies. +</p> + +<p> +“Four penn’orth!” she moaned. +</p> + +<p> +“How <i>cheap!</i>” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I couldn’t afford it <i>this</i> week of all +weeks.” +</p> + +<p> +“But lovely!” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they!” she exclaimed, giving way to pure joy. +“Paul, look at this yellow one, isn’t it—and a face just like +an old man!” +</p> + +<p> +“Just!” cried Paul, stooping to sniff. “And smells that nice! +But he’s a bit splashed.” +</p> + +<p> +He ran in the scullery, came back with the flannel, and carefully washed the +pansy. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Now</i> look at him now he’s wet!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” she exclaimed, brimful of satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +The children of Scargill Street felt quite select. At the end where the Morels +lived there were not many young things. So the few were more united. Boys and +girls played together, the girls joining in the fights and the rough games, the +boys taking part in the dancing games and rings and make-belief of the girls. +</p> + +<p> +Annie and Paul and Arthur loved the winter evenings, when it was not wet. They +stayed indoors till the colliers were all gone home, till it was thick dark, +and the street would be deserted. Then they tied their scarves round their +necks, for they scorned overcoats, as all the colliers’ children did, and +went out. The entry was very dark, and at the end the whole great night opened +out, in a hollow, with a little tangle of lights below where Minton pit lay, +and another far away opposite for Selby. The farthest tiny lights seemed to +stretch out the darkness for ever. The children looked anxiously down the road +at the one lamp-post, which stood at the end of the field path. If the little, +luminous space were deserted, the two boys felt genuine desolation. They stood +with their hands in their pockets under the lamp, turning their backs on the +night, quite miserable, watching the dark houses. Suddenly a pinafore under a +short coat was seen, and a long-legged girl came flying up. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s Billy Pillins an’ your Annie an’ Eddie +Dakin?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +But it did not matter so much—there were three now. They set up a game +round the lamp-post, till the others rushed up, yelling. Then the play went +fast and furious. +</p> + +<p> +There was only this one lamp-post. Behind was the great scoop of darkness, as +if all the night were there. In front, another wide, dark way opened over the +hill brow. Occasionally somebody came out of this way and went into the field +down the path. In a dozen yards the night had swallowed them. The children +played on. +</p> + +<p> +They were brought exceedingly close together owing to their isolation. If a +quarrel took place, the whole play was spoilt. Arthur was very touchy, and +Billy Pillins—really Philips—was worse. Then Paul had to side with +Arthur, and on Paul’s side went Alice, while Billy Pillins always had +Emmie Limb and Eddie Dakin to back him up. Then the six would fight, hate with +a fury of hatred, and flee home in terror. Paul never forgot, after one of +these fierce internecine fights, seeing a big red moon lift itself up, slowly, +between the waste road over the hilltop, steadily, like a great bird. And he +thought of the Bible, that the moon should be turned to blood. And the next day +he made haste to be friends with Billy Pillins. And then the wild, intense +games went on again under the lamp-post, surrounded by so much darkness. Mrs. +Morel, going into her parlour, would hear the children singing away: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“My shoes are made of Spanish leather,<br /> + My socks are made of silk;<br /> +I wear a ring on every finger,<br /> + I wash myself in milk.” +</p> + +<p> +They sounded so perfectly absorbed in the game as their voices came out of the +night, that they had the feel of wild creatures singing. It stirred the mother; +and she understood when they came in at eight o’clock, ruddy, with +brilliant eyes, and quick, passionate speech. +</p> + +<p> +They all loved the Scargill Street house for its openness, for the great +scallop of the world it had in view. On summer evenings the women would stand +against the field fence, gossiping, facing the west, watching the sunsets flare +quickly out, till the Derbyshire hills ridged across the crimson far away, like +the black crest of a newt. +</p> + +<p> +In this summer season the pits never turned full time, particularly the soft +coal. Mrs. Dakin, who lived next door to Mrs. Morel, going to the field fence +to shake her hearthrug, would spy men coming slowly up the hill. She saw at +once they were colliers. Then she waited, a tall, thin, shrew-faced woman, +standing on the hill brow, almost like a menace to the poor colliers who were +toiling up. It was only eleven o’clock. From the far-off wooded hills the +haze that hangs like fine black crape at the back of a summer morning had not +yet dissipated. The first man came to the stile. “Chock-chock!” +went the gate under his thrust. +</p> + +<p> +“What, han’ yer knocked off?” cried Mrs. Dakin. +</p> + +<p> +“We han, missis.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a pity as they letn yer goo,” she said sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“It is that,” replied the man. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, you know you’re flig to come up again,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And the man went on. Mrs. Dakin, going up her yard, spied Mrs. Morel taking the +ashes to the ash-pit. +</p> + +<p> +“I reckon Minton’s knocked off, missis,” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it sickenin’!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel in wrath. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! But I’n just seed Jont Hutchby.” +</p> + +<p> +“They might as well have saved their shoe-leather,” said Mrs. +Morel. And both women went indoors disgusted. +</p> + +<p> +The colliers, their faces scarcely blackened, were trooping home again. Morel +hated to go back. He loved the sunny morning. But he had gone to pit to work, +and to be sent home again spoilt his temper. +</p> + +<p> +“Good gracious, at this time!” exclaimed his wife, as he entered. +</p> + +<p> +“Can I help it, woman?” he shouted. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’ve not done half enough dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ll eat my bit o’ snap as I took with me,” he +bawled pathetically. He felt ignominious and sore. +</p> + +<p> +And the children, coming home from school, would wonder to see their father +eating with his dinner the two thick slices of rather dry and dirty +bread-and-butter that had been to pit and back. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s my dad eating his snap for now?” asked Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +“I should ha’e it holled at me if I didna,” snorted Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“What a story!” exclaimed his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ is it goin’ to be wasted?” said Morel. +“I’m not such a extravagant mortal as you lot, with your waste. If +I drop a bit of bread at pit, in all the dust an’ dirt, I pick it up +an’ eat it.” +</p> + +<p> +“The mice would eat it,” said Paul. “It wouldn’t be +wasted.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good bread-an’-butter’s not for mice, either,” said +Morel. “Dirty or not dirty, I’d eat it rather than it should be +wasted.” +</p> + +<p> +“You might leave it for the mice and pay for it out of your next +pint,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, might I?” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +They were very poor that autumn. William had just gone away to London, and his +mother missed his money. He sent ten shillings once or twice, but he had many +things to pay for at first. His letters came regularly once a week. He wrote a +good deal to his mother, telling her all his life, how he made friends, and was +exchanging lessons with a Frenchman, how he enjoyed London. His mother felt +again he was remaining to her just as when he was at home. She wrote to him +every week her direct, rather witty letters. All day long, as she cleaned the +house, she thought of him. He was in London: he would do well. Almost, he was +like her knight who wore <i>her</i> favour in the battle. +</p> + +<p> +He was coming at Christmas for five days. There had never been such +preparations. Paul and Arthur scoured the land for holly and evergreens. Annie +made the pretty paper hoops in the old-fashioned way. And there was unheard-of +extravagance in the larder. Mrs. Morel made a big and magnificent cake. Then, +feeling queenly, she showed Paul how to blanch almonds. He skinned the long +nuts reverently, counting them all, to see not one was lost. It was said that +eggs whisked better in a cold place. So the boy stood in the scullery, where +the temperature was nearly at freezing-point, and whisked and whisked, and flew +in excitement to his mother as the white of egg grew stiffer and more snowy. +</p> + +<p> +“Just look, mother! Isn’t it lovely?” +</p> + +<p> +And he balanced a bit on his nose, then blew it in the air. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, don’t waste it,” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody was mad with excitement. William was coming on Christmas Eve. Mrs. +Morel surveyed her pantry. There was a big plum cake, and a rice cake, jam +tarts, lemon tarts, and mince-pies—two enormous dishes. She was finishing +cooking—Spanish tarts and cheese-cakes. Everywhere was decorated. The +kissing-bunch of berried holly hung with bright and glittering things, spun +slowly over Mrs. Morel’s head as she trimmed her little tarts in the +kitchen. A great fire roared. There was a scent of cooked pastry. He was due at +seven o’clock, but he would be late. The three children had gone to meet +him. She was alone. But at a quarter to seven Morel came in again. Neither wife +nor husband spoke. He sat in his armchair, quite awkward with excitement, and +she quietly went on with her baking. Only by the careful way in which she did +things could it be told how much moved she was. The clock ticked on. +</p> + +<p> +“What time dost say he’s coming?” Morel asked for the fifth +time. +</p> + +<p> +“The train gets in at half-past six,” she replied emphatically. +</p> + +<p> +“Then he’ll be here at ten past seven.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, bless you, it’ll be hours late on the Midland,” she said +indifferently. But she hoped, by expecting him late, to bring him early. Morel +went down the entry to look for him. Then he came back. +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness, man!” she said. “You’re like an ill-sitting +hen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hadna you better be gettin’ him summat t’ eat ready?” +asked the father. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s plenty of time,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s not so much as <i>I</i> can see on,” he answered, +turning crossly in his chair. She began to clear her table. The kettle was +singing. They waited and waited. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime the three children were on the platform at Sethley Bridge, on the +Midland main line, two miles from home. They waited one hour. A train +came—he was not there. Down the line the red and green lights shone. It +was very dark and very cold. +</p> + +<p> +“Ask him if the London train’s come,” said Paul to Annie, +when they saw a man in a tip cap. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not,” said Annie. “You be quiet—he might +send us off.” +</p> + +<p> +But Paul was dying for the man to know they were expecting someone by the +London train: it sounded so grand. Yet he was much too much scared of broaching +any man, let alone one in a peaked cap, to dare to ask. The three children +could scarcely go into the waiting-room for fear of being sent away, and for +fear something should happen whilst they were off the platform. Still they +waited in the dark and cold. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s an hour an’ a half late,” said Arthur +pathetically. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Annie, “it’s Christmas Eve.” +</p> + +<p> +They all grew silent. He wasn’t coming. They looked down the darkness of +the railway. There was London! It seemed the utter-most of distance. They +thought anything might happen if one came from London. They were all too +troubled to talk. Cold, and unhappy, and silent, they huddled together on the +platform. +</p> + +<p> +At last, after more than two hours, they saw the lights of an engine peering +round, away down the darkness. A porter ran out. The children drew back with +beating hearts. A great train, bound for Manchester, drew up. Two doors opened, +and from one of them, William. They flew to him. He handed parcels to them +cheerily, and immediately began to explain that this great train had stopped +for <i>his</i> sake at such a small station as Sethley Bridge: it was not +booked to stop. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile the parents were getting anxious. The table was set, the chop was +cooked, everything was ready. Mrs. Morel put on her black apron. She was +wearing her best dress. Then she sat, pretending to read. The minutes were a +torture to her. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” said Morel. “It’s an hour an’ a +ha’ef.” +</p> + +<p> +“And those children waiting!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Th’ train canna ha’ come in yet,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you, on Christmas Eve they’re <i>hours</i> wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +They were both a bit cross with each other, so gnawed with anxiety. The +ash-tree moaned outside in a cold, raw wind. And all that space of night from +London home! Mrs. Morel suffered. The slight click of the works inside the +clock irritated her. It was getting so late; it was getting unbearable. +</p> + +<p> +At last there was a sound of voices, and a footstep in the entry. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha’s here!” cried Morel, jumping up. +</p> + +<p> +Then he stood back. The mother ran a few steps towards the door and waited. +There was a rush and a patter of feet, the door burst open. William was there. +He dropped his Gladstone bag and took his mother in his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“Mater!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“My boy!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +And for two seconds, no longer, she clasped him and kissed him. Then she +withdrew and said, trying to be quite normal: +</p> + +<p> +“But how late you are!” +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t I!” he cried, turning to his father. “Well, +dad!” +</p> + +<p> +The two men shook hands. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my lad!” +</p> + +<p> +Morel’s eyes were wet. +</p> + +<p> +“We thought tha’d niver be commin’,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’d come!” exclaimed William. +</p> + +<p> +Then the son turned round to his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“But you look well,” she said proudly, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Well!” he exclaimed. “I should think so—coming +home!” +</p> + +<p> +He was a fine fellow, big, straight, and fearless-looking. He looked round at +the evergreens and the kissing-bunch, and the little tarts that lay in their +tins on the hearth. +</p> + +<p> +“By jove! mother, it’s not different!” he said, as if in +relief. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody was still for a second. Then he suddenly sprang forward, picked a +tart from the hearth, and pushed it whole into his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, did iver you see such a parish oven!” the father exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +He had brought them endless presents. Every penny he had he had spent on them. +There was a sense of luxury overflowing in the house. For his mother there was +an umbrella with gold on the pale handle. She kept it to her dying day, and +would have lost anything rather than that. Everybody had something gorgeous, +and besides, there were pounds of unknown sweets: Turkish delight, crystallised +pineapple, and such-like things which, the children thought, only the splendour +of London could provide. And Paul boasted of these sweets among his friends. +</p> + +<p> +“Real pineapple, cut off in slices, and then turned into +crystal—fair grand!” +</p> + +<p> +Everybody was mad with happiness in the family. Home was home, and they loved +it with a passion of love, whatever the suffering had been. There were parties, +there were rejoicings. People came in to see William, to see what difference +London had made to him. And they all found him “such a gentleman, and +<i>such</i> a fine fellow, my word!” +</p> + +<p> +When he went away again the children retired to various places to weep alone. +Morel went to bed in misery, and Mrs. Morel felt as if she were numbed by some +drug, as if her feelings were paralysed. She loved him passionately. +</p> + +<p> +He was in the office of a lawyer connected with a large shipping firm, and at +the midsummer his chief offered him a trip in the Mediterranean on one of the +boats, for quite a small cost. Mrs. Morel wrote: “Go, go, my boy. You may +never have a chance again, and I should love to think of you cruising there in +the Mediterranean almost better than to have you at home.” But William +came home for his fortnight’s holiday. Not even the Mediterranean, which +pulled at all his young man’s desire to travel, and at his poor +man’s wonder at the glamorous south, could take him away when he might +come home. That compensated his mother for much. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V<br/> +PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE</h2> + +<p> +Morel was rather a heedless man, careless of danger. So he had endless +accidents. Now, when Mrs. Morel heard the rattle of an empty coal-cart cease at +her entry-end, she ran into the parlour to look, expecting almost to see her +husband seated in the waggon, his face grey under his dirt, his body limp and +sick with some hurt or other. If it were he, she would run out to help. +</p> + +<p> +About a year after William went to London, and just after Paul had left school, +before he got work, Mrs. Morel was upstairs and her son was painting in the +kitchen—he was very clever with his brush—when there came a knock +at the door. Crossly he put down his brush to go. At the same moment his mother +opened a window upstairs and looked down. +</p> + +<p> +A pit-lad in his dirt stood on the threshold. +</p> + +<p> +“Is this Walter Morel’s?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel. “What is it?” +</p> + +<p> +But she had guessed already. +</p> + +<p> +“Your mester’s got hurt,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, dear me!” she exclaimed. “It’s a wonder if he +hadn’t, lad. And what’s he done this time?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know for sure, but it’s ’is leg somewhere. +They ta’ein’ ’im ter th’ ’ospital.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good gracious me!” she exclaimed. “Eh, dear, what a one he +is! There’s not five minutes of peace, I’ll be hanged if there is! +His thumb’s nearly better, and now—Did you see him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I seed him at th’ bottom. An’ I seed ’em bring +’im up in a tub, an’ ’e wor in a dead faint. But he shouted +like anythink when Doctor Fraser examined him i’ th’ lamp +cabin—an’ cossed an’ swore, an’ said as ’e wor +goin’ to be ta’en whoam—’e worn’t goin’ ter +th’ ’ospital.” +</p> + +<p> +The boy faltered to an end. +</p> + +<p> +“He <i>would</i> want to come home, so that I can have all the bother. +Thank you, my lad. Eh, dear, if I’m not sick—sick and surfeited, I +am!” +</p> + +<p> +She came downstairs. Paul had mechanically resumed his painting. +</p> + +<p> +“And it must be pretty bad if they’ve taken him to the +hospital,” she went on. “But what a <i>careless</i> creature he is! +<i>Other</i> men don’t have all these accidents. Yes, he <i>would</i> +want to put all the burden on me. Eh, dear, just as we <i>were</i> getting easy +a bit at last. Put those things away, there’s no time to be painting now. +What time is there a train? I know I s’ll have to go trailing to Keston. +I s’ll have to leave that bedroom.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can finish it,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t. I shall catch the seven o’clock back, I should +think. Oh, my blessed heart, the fuss and commotion he’ll make! And those +granite setts at Tinder Hill—he might well call them kidney +pebbles—they’ll jolt him almost to bits. I wonder why they +can’t mend them, the state they’re in, an’ all the men as go +across in that ambulance. You’d think they’d have a hospital here. +The men bought the ground, and, my sirs, there’d be accidents enough to +keep it going. But no, they must trail them ten miles in a slow ambulance to +Nottingham. It’s a crying shame! Oh, and the fuss he’ll make! I +know he will! I wonder who’s with him. Barker, I s’d think. Poor +beggar, he’ll wish himself anywhere rather. But he’ll look after +him, I know. Now there’s no telling how long he’ll be stuck in that +hospital—and <i>won’t</i> he hate it! But if it’s only his +leg it’s not so bad.” +</p> + +<p> +All the time she was getting ready. Hurriedly taking off her bodice, she +crouched at the boiler while the water ran slowly into her lading-can. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish this boiler was at the bottom of the sea!” she exclaimed, +wriggling the handle impatiently. She had very handsome, strong arms, rather +surprising on a smallish woman. +</p> + +<p> +Paul cleared away, put on the kettle, and set the table. +</p> + +<p> +“There isn’t a train till four-twenty,” he said. +“You’ve time enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, I haven’t!” she cried, blinking at him over the towel +as she wiped her face. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you have. You must drink a cup of tea at any rate. Should I come +with you to Keston?” +</p> + +<p> +“Come with me? What for, I should like to know? Now, what have I to take +him? Eh, dear! His clean shirt—and it’s a blessing it <i>is</i> +clean. But it had better be aired. And stockings—he won’t want +them—and a towel, I suppose; and handkerchiefs. Now what else?” +</p> + +<p> +“A comb, a knife and fork and spoon,” said Paul. His father had +been in the hospital before. +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness knows what sort of state his feet were in,” continued +Mrs. Morel, as she combed her long brown hair, that was fine as silk, and was +touched now with grey. “He’s very particular to wash himself to the +waist, but below he thinks doesn’t matter. But there, I suppose they see +plenty like it.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul had laid the table. He cut his mother one or two pieces of very thin bread +and butter. +</p> + +<p> +“Here you are,” he said, putting her cup of tea in her place. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t be bothered!” she exclaimed crossly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you’ve got to, so there, now it’s put out +ready,” he insisted. +</p> + +<p> +So she sat down and sipped her tea, and ate a little, in silence. She was +thinking. +</p> + +<p> +In a few minutes she was gone, to walk the two and a half miles to Keston +Station. All the things she was taking him she had in her bulging string bag. +Paul watched her go up the road between the hedges—a little, +quick-stepping figure, and his heart ached for her, that she was thrust forward +again into pain and trouble. And she, tripping so quickly in her anxiety, felt +at the back of her her son’s heart waiting on her, felt him bearing what +part of the burden he could, even supporting her. And when she was at the +hospital, she thought: “It <i>will</i> upset that lad when I tell him how +bad it is. I’d better be careful.” And when she was trudging home +again, she felt he was coming to share her burden. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it bad?” asked Paul, as soon as she entered the house. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s bad enough,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +She sighed and sat down, undoing her bonnet-strings. Her son watched her face +as it was lifted, and her small, work-hardened hands fingering at the bow under +her chin. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she answered, “it’s not really dangerous, but +the nurse says it’s a dreadful smash. You see, a great piece of rock fell +on his leg—here—and it’s a compound fracture. There are +pieces of bone sticking through—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ugh—how horrid!” exclaimed the children. +</p> + +<p> +“And,” she continued, “of course he says he’s going to +die—it wouldn’t be him if he didn’t. ‘I’m done +for, my lass!’ he said, looking at me. ‘Don’t be so +silly,’ I said to him. ‘You’re not going to die of a broken +leg, however badly it’s smashed.’ ‘I s’ll niver come +out of ’ere but in a wooden box,’ he groaned. ‘Well,’ I +said, ‘if you want them to carry you into the garden in a wooden box, +when you’re better, I’ve no doubt they will.’ ‘If we +think it’s good for him,’ said the Sister. She’s an awfully +nice Sister, but rather strict.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel took off her bonnet. The children waited in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, he <i>is</i> bad,” she continued, “and he will +be. It’s a great shock, and he’s lost a lot of blood; and, of +course, it <i>is</i> a very dangerous smash. It’s not at all sure that it +will mend so easily. And then there’s the fever and the +mortification—if it took bad ways he’d quickly be gone. But there, +he’s a clean-blooded man, with wonderful healing flesh, and so I see no +reason why it <i>should</i> take bad ways. Of course there’s a +wound—” +</p> + +<p> +She was pale now with emotion and anxiety. The three children realised that it +was very bad for their father, and the house was silent, anxious. +</p> + +<p> +“But he always gets better,” said Paul after a while. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I tell him,” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody moved about in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“And he really looked nearly done for,” she said. “But the +Sister says that is the pain.” +</p> + +<p> +Annie took away her mother’s coat and bonnet. +</p> + +<p> +“And he looked at me when I came away! I said: ‘I s’ll have +to go now, Walter, because of the train—and the children.’ And he +looked at me. It seems hard.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul took up his brush again and went on painting. Arthur went outside for some +coal. Annie sat looking dismal. And Mrs. Morel, in her little rocking-chair +that her husband had made for her when the first baby was coming, remained +motionless, brooding. She was grieved, and bitterly sorry for the man who was +hurt so much. But still, in her heart of hearts, where the love should have +burned, there was a blank. Now, when all her woman’s pity was roused to +its full extent, when she would have slaved herself to death to nurse him and +to save him, when she would have taken the pain herself, if she could, +somewhere far away inside her, she felt indifferent to him and to his +suffering. It hurt her most of all, this failure to love him, even when he +roused her strong emotions. She brooded awhile. +</p> + +<p> +“And there,” she said suddenly, “when I’d got halfway +to Keston, I found I’d come out in my working boots—and <i>look</i> +at them.” They were an old pair of Paul’s, brown and rubbed through +at the toes. “I didn’t know what to do with myself, for +shame,” she added. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning, when Annie and Arthur were at school, Mrs. Morel talked again +to her son, who was helping her with her housework. +</p> + +<p> +“I found Barker at the hospital. He did look bad, poor little fellow! +‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘what sort of a journey did you have +with him?’ ‘Dunna ax me, missis!’ he said. ‘Ay,’ +I said, ‘I know what he’d be.’ ‘But it <i>wor</i> bad +for him, Mrs. Morel, it <i>wor</i> that!’ he said. ‘I know,’ +I said. ‘At ivry jolt I thought my ’eart would ha’ flown +clean out o’ my mouth,’ he said. ‘An’ the scream +’e gives sometimes! Missis, not for a fortune would I go through +wi’ it again.’ ‘I can quite understand it,’ I said. +‘It’s a nasty job, though,’ he said, ‘an’ one +as’ll be a long while afore it’s right again.’ +‘I’m afraid it will,’ I said. I like Mr. Barker—I +<i>do</i> like him. There’s something so manly about him.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul resumed his task silently. +</p> + +<p> +“And of course,” Mrs. Morel continued, “for a man like your +father, the hospital <i>is</i> hard. He <i>can’t</i> understand rules and +regulations. And he won’t let anybody else touch him, not if he can help +it. When he smashed the muscles of his thigh, and it had to be dressed four +times a day, <i>would</i> he let anybody but me or his mother do it? He +wouldn’t. So, of course, he’ll suffer in there with the nurses. And +I didn’t like leaving him. I’m sure, when I kissed him an’ +came away, it seemed a shame.” +</p> + +<p> +So she talked to her son, almost as if she were thinking aloud to him, and he +took it in as best he could, by sharing her trouble to lighten it. And in the +end she shared almost everything with him without knowing. +</p> + +<p> +Morel had a very bad time. For a week he was in a critical condition. Then he +began to mend. And then, knowing he was going to get better, the whole family +sighed with relief, and proceeded to live happily. +</p> + +<p> +They were not badly off whilst Morel was in the hospital. There were fourteen +shillings a week from the pit, ten shillings from the sick club, and five +shillings from the Disability Fund; and then every week the butties had +something for Mrs. Morel—five or seven shillings—so that she was +quite well to do. And whilst Morel was progressing favourably in the hospital, +the family was extraordinarily happy and peaceful. On Saturdays and Wednesdays +Mrs. Morel went to Nottingham to see her husband. Then she always brought back +some little thing: a small tube of paints for Paul, or some thick paper; a +couple of postcards for Annie, that the whole family rejoiced over for days +before the girl was allowed to send them away; or a fret-saw for Arthur, or a +bit of pretty wood. She described her adventures into the big shops with joy. +Soon the folk in the picture-shop knew her, and knew about Paul. The girl in +the book-shop took a keen interest in her. Mrs. Morel was full of information +when she got home from Nottingham. The three sat round till bed-time, +listening, putting in, arguing. Then Paul often raked the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m the man in the house now,” he used to say to his mother +with joy. They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they +almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such +callousness—that their father was soon coming back. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was now fourteen, and was looking for work. He was a rather small and +rather finely-made boy, with dark brown hair and light blue eyes. His face had +already lost its youthful chubbiness, and was becoming somewhat like +William’s—rough-featured, almost rugged—and it was +extraordinarily mobile. Usually he looked as if he saw things, was full of +life, and warm; then his smile, like his mother’s, came suddenly and was +very lovable; and then, when there was any clog in his soul’s quick +running, his face went stupid and ugly. He was the sort of boy that becomes a +clown and a lout as soon as he is not understood, or feels himself held cheap; +and, again, is adorable at the first touch of warmth. +</p> + +<p> +He suffered very much from the first contact with anything. When he was seven, +the starting school had been a nightmare and a torture to him. But afterwards +he liked it. And now that he felt he had to go out into life, he went through +agonies of shrinking self-consciousness. He was quite a clever painter for a +boy of his years, and he knew some French and German and mathematics that Mr. +Heaton had taught him. But nothing he had was of any commercial value. He was +not strong enough for heavy manual work, his mother said. He did not care for +making things with his hands, preferred racing about, or making excursions into +the country, or reading, or painting. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want to be?” his mother asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is no answer,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +But it was quite truthfully the only answer he could give. His ambition, as far +as this world’s gear went, was quietly to earn his thirty or thirty-five +shillings a week somewhere near home, and then, when his father died, have a +cottage with his mother, paint and go out as he liked, and live happy ever +after. That was his programme as far as doing things went. But he was proud +within himself, measuring people against himself, and placing them, inexorably. +And he thought that <i>perhaps</i> he might also make a painter, the real +thing. But that he left alone. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said his mother, “you must look in the paper for the +advertisements.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her. It seemed to him a bitter humiliation and an anguish to go +through. But he said nothing. When he got up in the morning, his whole being +was knotted up over this one thought: +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got to go and look for advertisements for a job.” +</p> + +<p> +It stood in front of the morning, that thought, killing all joy and even life, +for him. His heart felt like a tight knot. +</p> + +<p> +And then, at ten o’clock, he set off. He was supposed to be a queer, +quiet child. Going up the sunny street of the little town, he felt as if all +the folk he met said to themselves: “He’s going to the Co-op. +reading-room to look in the papers for a place. He can’t get a job. I +suppose he’s living on his mother.” Then he crept up the stone +stairs behind the drapery shop at the Co-op., and peeped in the reading-room. +Usually one or two men were there, either old, useless fellows, or colliers +“on the club”. So he entered, full of shrinking and suffering when +they looked up, seated himself at the table, and pretended to scan the news. He +knew they would think: “What does a lad of thirteen want in a +reading-room with a newspaper?” and he suffered. +</p> + +<p> +Then he looked wistfully out of the window. Already he was a prisoner of +industrialism. Large sunflowers stared over the old red wall of the garden +opposite, looking in their jolly way down on the women who were hurrying with +something for dinner. The valley was full of corn, brightening in the sun. Two +collieries, among the fields, waved their small white plumes of steam. Far off +on the hills were the woods of Annesley, dark and fascinating. Already his +heart went down. He was being taken into bondage. His freedom in the beloved +home valley was going now. +</p> + +<p> +The brewers’ waggons came rolling up from Keston with enormous barrels, +four a side, like beans in a burst bean-pod. The waggoner, throned aloft, +rolling massively in his seat, was not so much below Paul’s eye. The +man’s hair, on his small, bullet head, was bleached almost white by the +sun, and on his thick red arms, rocking idly on his sack apron, the white hairs +glistened. His red face shone and was almost asleep with sunshine. The horses, +handsome and brown, went on by themselves, looking by far the masters of the +show. +</p> + +<p> +Paul wished he were stupid. “I wish,” he thought to himself, +“I was fat like him, and like a dog in the sun. I wish I was a pig and a +brewer’s waggoner.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, the room being at last empty, he would hastily copy an advertisement on a +scrap of paper, then another, and slip out in immense relief. His mother would +scan over his copies. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “you may try.” +</p> + +<p> +William had written out a letter of application, couched in admirable business +language, which Paul copied, with variations. The boy’s handwriting was +execrable, so that William, who did all things well, got into a fever of +impatience. +</p> + +<p> +The elder brother was becoming quite swanky. In London he found that he could +associate with men far above his Bestwood friends in station. Some of the +clerks in the office had studied for the law, and were more or less going +through a kind of apprenticeship. William always made friends among men +wherever he went, he was so jolly. Therefore he was soon visiting and staying +in houses of men who, in Bestwood, would have looked down on the unapproachable +bank manager, and would merely have called indifferently on the Rector. So he +began to fancy himself as a great gun. He was, indeed, rather surprised at the +ease with which he became a gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +His mother was glad, he seemed so pleased. And his lodging in Walthamstow was +so dreary. But now there seemed to come a kind of fever into the young +man’s letters. He was unsettled by all the change, he did not stand firm +on his own feet, but seemed to spin rather giddily on the quick current of the +new life. His mother was anxious for him. She could feel him losing himself. He +had danced and gone to the theatre, boated on the river, been out with friends; +and she knew he sat up afterwards in his cold bedroom grinding away at Latin, +because he intended to get on in his office, and in the law as much as he +could. He never sent his mother any money now. It was all taken, the little he +had, for his own life. And she did not want any, except sometimes, when she was +in a tight corner, and when ten shillings would have saved her much worry. She +still dreamed of William, and of what he would do, with herself behind him. +Never for a minute would she admit to herself how heavy and anxious her heart +was because of him. +</p> + +<p> +Also he talked a good deal now of a girl he had met at a dance, a handsome +brunette, quite young, and a lady, after whom the men were running thick and +fast. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder if you would run, my boy,” his mother wrote to him, +“unless you saw all the other men chasing her too. You feel safe enough +and vain enough in a crowd. But take care, and see how you feel when you find +yourself alone, and in triumph.” William resented these things, and +continued the chase. He had taken the girl on the river. “If you saw her, +mother, you would know how I feel. Tall and elegant, with the clearest of +clear, transparent olive complexions, hair as black as jet, and such grey +eyes—bright, mocking, like lights on water at night. It is all very well +to be a bit satirical till you see her. And she dresses as well as any woman in +London. I tell you, your son doesn’t half put his head up when she goes +walking down Piccadilly with him.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel wondered, in her heart, if her son did not go walking down +Piccadilly with an elegant figure and fine clothes, rather than with a woman +who was near to him. But she congratulated him in her doubtful fashion. And, as +she stood over the washing-tub, the mother brooded over her son. She saw him +saddled with an elegant and expensive wife, earning little money, dragging +along and getting draggled in some small, ugly house in a suburb. “But +there,” she told herself, “I am very likely a silly—meeting +trouble halfway.” Nevertheless, the load of anxiety scarcely ever left +her heart, lest William should do the wrong thing by himself. +</p> + +<p> +Presently, Paul was bidden call upon Thomas Jordan, Manufacturer of Surgical +Appliances, at 21, Spaniel Row, Nottingham. Mrs. Morel was all joy. +</p> + +<p> +“There, you see!” she cried, her eyes shining. “You’ve +only written four letters, and the third is answered. You’re lucky, my +boy, as I always said you were.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked at the picture of a wooden leg, adorned with elastic stockings and +other appliances, that figured on Mr. Jordan’s notepaper, and he felt +alarmed. He had not known that elastic stockings existed. And he seemed to feel +the business world, with its regulated system of values, and its impersonality, +and he dreaded it. It seemed monstrous also that a business could be run on +wooden legs. +</p> + +<p> +Mother and son set off together one Tuesday morning. It was August and blazing +hot. Paul walked with something screwed up tight inside him. He would have +suffered much physical pain rather than this unreasonable suffering at being +exposed to strangers, to be accepted or rejected. Yet he chattered away with +his mother. He would never have confessed to her how he suffered over these +things, and she only partly guessed. She was gay, like a sweetheart. She stood +in front of the ticket-office at Bestwood, and Paul watched her take from her +purse the money for the tickets. As he saw her hands in their old black kid +gloves getting the silver out of the worn purse, his heart contracted with pain +of love of her. +</p> + +<p> +She was quite excited, and quite gay. He suffered because she <i>would</i> talk +aloud in presence of the other travellers. +</p> + +<p> +“Now look at that silly cow!” she said, “careering round as +if it thought it was a circus.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s most likely a bottfly,” he said very low. +</p> + +<p> +“A what?” she asked brightly and unashamed. +</p> + +<p> +They thought awhile. He was sensible all the time of having her opposite him. +Suddenly their eyes met, and she smiled to him—a rare, intimate smile, +beautiful with brightness and love. Then each looked out of the window. +</p> + +<p> +The sixteen slow miles of railway journey passed. The mother and son walked +down Station Street, feeling the excitement of lovers having an adventure +together. In Carrington Street they stopped to hang over the parapet and look +at the barges on the canal below. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just like Venice,” he said, seeing the sunshine on the +water that lay between high factory walls. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” she answered, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +They enjoyed the shops immensely. +</p> + +<p> +“Now you see that blouse,” she would say, “wouldn’t +that just suit our Annie? And for one-and-eleven-three. Isn’t that +cheap?” +</p> + +<p> +“And made of needlework as well,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +They had plenty of time, so they did not hurry. The town was strange and +delightful to them. But the boy was tied up inside in a knot of apprehension. +He dreaded the interview with Thomas Jordan. +</p> + +<p> +It was nearly eleven o’clock by St. Peter’s Church. They turned up +a narrow street that led to the Castle. It was gloomy and old-fashioned, having +low dark shops and dark green house doors with brass knockers, and +yellow-ochred doorsteps projecting on to the pavement; then another old shop +whose small window looked like a cunning, half-shut eye. Mother and son went +cautiously, looking everywhere for “Thomas Jordan and Son”. It was +like hunting in some wild place. They were on tiptoe of excitement. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly they spied a big, dark archway, in which were names of various firms, +Thomas Jordan among them. +</p> + +<p> +“Here it is!” said Mrs. Morel. “But now <i>where</i> is +it?” +</p> + +<p> +They looked round. On one side was a queer, dark, cardboard factory, on the +other a Commercial Hotel. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s up the entry,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +And they ventured under the archway, as into the jaws of the dragon. They +emerged into a wide yard, like a well, with buildings all round. It was +littered with straw and boxes, and cardboard. The sunshine actually caught one +crate whose straw was streaming on to the yard like gold. But elsewhere the +place was like a pit. There were several doors, and two flights of steps. +Straight in front, on a dirty glass door at the top of a staircase, loomed the +ominous words “Thomas Jordan and Son—Surgical Appliances.” +Mrs. Morel went first, her son followed her. Charles I. mounted his scaffold +with a lighter heart than had Paul Morel as he followed his mother up the dirty +steps to the dirty door. +</p> + +<p> +She pushed open the door, and stood in pleased surprise. In front of her was a +big warehouse, with creamy paper parcels everywhere, and clerks, with their +shirt-sleeves rolled back, were going about in an at-home sort of way. The +light was subdued, the glossy cream parcels seemed luminous, the counters were +of dark brown wood. All was quiet and very homely. Mrs. Morel took two steps +forward, then waited. Paul stood behind her. She had on her Sunday bonnet and a +black veil; he wore a boy’s broad white collar and a Norfolk suit. +</p> + +<p> +One of the clerks looked up. He was thin and tall, with a small face. His way +of looking was alert. Then he glanced round to the other end of the room, where +was a glass office. And then he came forward. He did not say anything, but +leaned in a gentle, inquiring fashion towards Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Can I see Mr. Jordan?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll fetch him,” answered the young man. +</p> + +<p> +He went down to the glass office. A red-faced, white-whiskered old man looked +up. He reminded Paul of a pomeranian dog. Then the same little man came up the +room. He had short legs, was rather stout, and wore an alpaca jacket. So, with +one ear up, as it were, he came stoutly and inquiringly down the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-morning!” he said, hesitating before Mrs. Morel, in doubt as +to whether she were a customer or not. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-morning. I came with my son, Paul Morel. You asked him to call this +morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come this way,” said Mr. Jordan, in a rather snappy little manner +intended to be businesslike. +</p> + +<p> +They followed the manufacturer into a grubby little room, upholstered in black +American leather, glossy with the rubbing of many customers. On the table was a +pile of trusses, yellow wash-leather hoops tangled together. They looked new +and living. Paul sniffed the odour of new wash-leather. He wondered what the +things were. By this time he was so much stunned that he only noticed the +outside things. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down!” said Mr. Jordan, irritably pointing Mrs. Morel to a +horse-hair chair. She sat on the edge in an uncertain fashion. Then the little +old man fidgeted and found a paper. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you write this letter?” he snapped, thrusting what Paul +recognised as his own notepaper in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +At that moment he was occupied in two ways: first, in feeling guilty for +telling a lie, since William had composed the letter; second, in wondering why +his letter seemed so strange and different, in the fat, red hand of the man, +from what it had been when it lay on the kitchen table. It was like part of +himself, gone astray. He resented the way the man held it. +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you learn to write?” said the old man crossly. +</p> + +<p> +Paul merely looked at him shamedly, and did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“He <i>is</i> a bad writer,” put in Mrs. Morel apologetically. Then +she pushed up her veil. Paul hated her for not being prouder with this common +little man, and he loved her face clear of the veil. +</p> + +<p> +“And you say you know French?” inquired the little man, still +sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“What school did you go to?” +</p> + +<p> +“The Board-school.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did you learn it there?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I—” The boy went crimson and got no farther. +</p> + +<p> +“His godfather gave him lessons,” said Mrs. Morel, half pleading +and rather distant. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Jordan hesitated. Then, in his irritable manner—he always seemed to +keep his hands ready for action—he pulled another sheet of paper from his +pocket, unfolded it. The paper made a crackling noise. He handed it to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Read that,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +It was a note in French, in thin, flimsy foreign handwriting that the boy could +not decipher. He stared blankly at the paper. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Monsieur,’” he began; then he looked in great +confusion at Mr. Jordan. “It’s the—it’s +the—” +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to say “handwriting”, but his wits would no longer work +even sufficiently to supply him with the word. Feeling an utter fool, and +hating Mr. Jordan, he turned desperately to the paper again. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Sir,—Please send me’—er—er—I +can’t tell the—er—‘two pairs—<i>gris fil +bas</i>—grey thread +stockings’—er—er—‘<i>sans</i>—without’—er—I +can’t tell the words—er—‘<i>doigts</i>—fingers’—er—I +can’t tell the—” +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to say “handwriting”, but the word still refused to come. +Seeing him stuck, Mr. Jordan snatched the paper from him. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Please send by return two pairs grey thread stockings without +<i>toes</i>.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” flashed Paul, “‘<i>doigts</i>’ means +‘fingers’—as well—as a rule—” +</p> + +<p> +The little man looked at him. He did not know whether “<i>doigts</i>” +meant “fingers”; he knew that for all <i>his</i> purposes it meant +“toes”. +</p> + +<p> +“Fingers to stockings!” he snapped. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it <i>does</i> mean fingers,” the boy persisted. +</p> + +<p> +He hated the little man, who made such a clod of him. Mr. Jordan looked at the +pale, stupid, defiant boy, then at the mother, who sat quiet and with that +peculiar shut-off look of the poor who have to depend on the favour of others. +</p> + +<p> +“And when could he come?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mrs. Morel, “as soon as you wish. He has +finished school now.” +</p> + +<p> +“He would live in Bestwood?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but he could be in—at the station—at quarter to +eight.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +It ended by Paul’s being engaged as junior spiral clerk at eight +shillings a week. The boy did not open his mouth to say another word, after +having insisted that “<i>doigts</i>” meant “fingers”. +He followed his mother down the stairs. She looked at him with her bright blue +eyes full of love and joy. +</p> + +<p> +“I think you’ll like it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“‘<i>Doigts</i>’ does mean ‘fingers’, mother, and +it was the writing. I couldn’t read the writing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, my boy. I’m sure he’ll be all right, and you +won’t see much of him. Wasn’t that first young fellow nice? +I’m sure you’ll like them.” +</p> + +<p> +“But wasn’t Mr. Jordan common, mother? Does he own it all?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose he was a workman who has got on,” she said. “You +mustn’t mind people so much. They’re not being disagreeable to +<i>you</i>—it’s their way. You always think people are meaning +things for you. But they don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +It was very sunny. Over the big desolate space of the market-place the blue sky +shimmered, and the granite cobbles of the paving glistened. Shops down the Long +Row were deep in obscurity, and the shadow was full of colour. Just where the +horse trams trundled across the market was a row of fruit stalls, with fruit +blazing in the sun—apples and piles of reddish oranges, small green-gage +plums and bananas. There was a warm scent of fruit as mother and son passed. +Gradually his feeling of ignominy and of rage sank. +</p> + +<p> +“Where should we go for dinner?” asked the mother. +</p> + +<p> +It was felt to be a reckless extravagance. Paul had only been in an +eating-house once or twice in his life, and then only to have a cup of tea and +a bun. Most of the people of Bestwood considered that tea and bread-and-butter, +and perhaps potted beef, was all they could afford to eat in Nottingham. Real +cooked dinner was considered great extravagance. Paul felt rather guilty. +</p> + +<p> +They found a place that looked quite cheap. But when Mrs. Morel scanned the +bill of fare, her heart was heavy, things were so dear. So she ordered +kidney-pies and potatoes as the cheapest available dish. +</p> + +<p> +“We oughtn’t to have come here, mother,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” she said. “We won’t come again.” +</p> + +<p> +She insisted on his having a small currant tart, because he liked sweets. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want it, mother,” he pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she insisted; “you’ll have it.” +</p> + +<p> +And she looked round for the waitress. But the waitress was busy, and Mrs. +Morel did not like to bother her then. So the mother and son waited for the +girl’s pleasure, whilst she flirted among the men. +</p> + +<p> +“Brazen hussy!” said Mrs. Morel to Paul. “Look now, +she’s taking that man <i>his</i> pudding, and he came long after +us.” +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter, mother,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel was angry. But she was too poor, and her orders were too meagre, so +that she had not the courage to insist on her rights just then. They waited and +waited. +</p> + +<p> +“Should we go, mother?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Then Mrs. Morel stood up. The girl was passing near. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you bring one currant tart?” said Mrs. Morel clearly. +</p> + +<p> +The girl looked round insolently. +</p> + +<p> +“Directly,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“We have waited quite long enough,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +In a moment the girl came back with the tart. Mrs. Morel asked coldly for the +bill. Paul wanted to sink through the floor. He marvelled at his mother’s +hardness. He knew that only years of battling had taught her to insist even so +little on her rights. She shrank as much as he. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the last time I go <i>there</i> for anything!” she +declared, when they were outside the place, thankful to be clear. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll go,” she said, “and look at Keep’s and +Boot’s, and one or two places, shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +They had discussions over the pictures, and Mrs. Morel wanted to buy him a +little sable brush that he hankered after. But this indulgence he refused. He +stood in front of milliners’ shops and drapers’ shops almost bored, +but content for her to be interested. They wandered on. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, just look at those black grapes!” she said. “They make +your mouth water. I’ve wanted some of those for years, but I s’ll +have to wait a bit before I get them.” +</p> + +<p> +Then she rejoiced in the florists, standing in the doorway sniffing. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! oh! Isn’t it simply lovely!” +</p> + +<p> +Paul saw, in the darkness of the shop, an elegant young lady in black peering +over the counter curiously. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re looking at you,” he said, trying to draw his mother +away. +</p> + +<p> +“But what is it?” she exclaimed, refusing to be moved. +</p> + +<p> +“Stocks!” he answered, sniffing hastily. “Look, there’s +a tubful.” +</p> + +<p> +“So there is—red and white. But really, I never knew stocks to +smell like it!” And, to his great relief, she moved out of the doorway, +but only to stand in front of the window. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul!” she cried to him, who was trying to get out of sight of the +elegant young lady in black—the shop-girl. “Paul! Just look +here!” +</p> + +<p> +He came reluctantly back. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, just look at that fuchsia!” she exclaimed, pointing. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” He made a curious, interested sound. +“You’d think every second as the flowers was going to fall off, +they hang so big an’ heavy.” +</p> + +<p> +“And such an abundance!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“And the way they drop downwards with their threads and knots!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Lovely!” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder who’ll buy it!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder!” she answered. “Not us.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would die in our parlour.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, beastly cold, sunless hole; it kills every bit of a plant you put +in, and the kitchen chokes them to death.” +</p> + +<p> +They bought a few things, and set off towards the station. Looking up the +canal, through the dark pass of the buildings, they saw the Castle on its bluff +of brown, green-bushed rock, in a positive miracle of delicate sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t it be nice for me to come out at dinner-times?” said +Paul. “I can go all round here and see everything. I s’ll love +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will,” assented his mother. +</p> + +<p> +He had spent a perfect afternoon with his mother. They arrived home in the +mellow evening, happy, and glowing, and tired. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning he filled in the form for his season-ticket and took it to the +station. When he got back, his mother was just beginning to wash the floor. He +sat crouched up on the sofa. +</p> + +<p> +“He says it’ll be here on Saturday,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And how much will it be?” +</p> + +<p> +“About one pound eleven,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She went on washing her floor in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it a lot?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no more than I thought,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ I s’ll earn eight shillings a week,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer, but went on with her work. At last she said: +</p> + +<p> +“That William promised me, when he went to London, as he’d give me +a pound a month. He has given me ten shillings—twice; and now I know he +hasn’t a farthing if I asked him. Not that I want it. Only just now +you’d think he might be able to help with this ticket, which I’d +never expected.” +</p> + +<p> +“He earns a lot,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“He earns a hundred and thirty pounds. But they’re all alike. +They’re large in promises, but it’s precious little fulfilment you +get.” +</p> + +<p> +“He spends over fifty shillings a week on himself,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“And I keep this house on less than thirty,” she replied; +“and am supposed to find money for extras. But they don’t care +about helping you, once they’ve gone. He’d rather spend it on that +dressed-up creature.” +</p> + +<p> +“She should have her own money if she’s so grand,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“She should, but she hasn’t. I asked him. And I know he +doesn’t buy her a gold bangle for nothing. I wonder whoever bought +<i>me</i> a gold bangle.” +</p> + +<p> +William was succeeding with his “Gipsy”, as he called her. He asked +the girl—her name was Louisa Lily Denys Western—for a photograph to +send to his mother. The photo came—a handsome brunette, taken in profile, +smirking slightly—and, it might be, quite naked, for on the photograph +not a scrap of clothing was to be seen, only a naked bust. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” wrote Mrs. Morel to her son, “the photograph of Louie +is very striking, and I can see she must be attractive. But do you think, my +boy, it was very good taste of a girl to give her young man that photo to send +to his mother—the first? Certainly the shoulders are beautiful, as you +say. But I hardly expected to see so much of them at the first view.” +</p> + +<p> +Morel found the photograph standing on the chiffonier in the parlour. He came +out with it between his thick thumb and finger. +</p> + +<p> +“Who dost reckon this is?” he asked of his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the girl our William is going with,” replied Mrs. +Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m! ’Er’s a bright spark, from th’ look on +’er, an’ one as wunna do him owermuch good neither. Who is +she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Her name is Louisa Lily Denys Western.” +</p> + +<p> +“An’ come again to-morrer!” exclaimed the miner. +“An’ is ’er an actress?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is not. She’s supposed to be a lady.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll bet!” he exclaimed, still staring at the photo. +“A lady, is she? An’ how much does she reckon ter keep up this sort +o’ game on?” +</p> + +<p> +“On nothing. She lives with an old aunt, whom she hates, and takes what +bit of money’s given her.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” said Morel, laying down the photograph. “Then +he’s a fool to ha’ ta’en up wi’ such a one as +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Mater,” William replied. “I’m sorry you +didn’t like the photograph. It never occurred to me when I sent it, that +you mightn’t think it decent. However, I told Gyp that it didn’t +quite suit your prim and proper notions, so she’s going to send you +another, that I hope will please you better. She’s always being +photographed; in fact, the photographers <i>ask</i> her if they may take her +for nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +Presently the new photograph came, with a little silly note from the girl. This +time the young lady was seen in a black satin evening bodice, cut square, with +little puff sleeves, and black lace hanging down her beautiful arms. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder if she ever wears anything except evening clothes,” said +Mrs. Morel sarcastically. “I’m sure I <i>ought</i> to be +impressed.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are disagreeable, mother,” said Paul. “I think the first +one with bare shoulders is lovely.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” answered his mother. “Well, I don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +On the Monday morning the boy got up at six to start work. He had the +season-ticket, which had cost such bitterness, in his waistcoat pocket. He +loved it with its bars of yellow across. His mother packed his dinner in a +small, shut-up basket, and he set off at a quarter to seven to catch the 7.15 +train. Mrs. Morel came to the entry-end to see him off. +</p> + +<p> +It was a perfect morning. From the ash-tree the slender green fruits that the +children call “pigeons” were twinkling gaily down on a little +breeze, into the front gardens of the houses. The valley was full of a lustrous +dark haze, through which the ripe corn shimmered, and in which the steam from +Minton pit melted swiftly. Puffs of wind came. Paul looked over the high woods +of Aldersley, where the country gleamed, and home had never pulled at him so +powerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-morning, mother,” he said, smiling, but feeling very unhappy. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-morning,” she replied cheerfully and tenderly. +</p> + +<p> +She stood in her white apron on the open road, watching him as he crossed the +field. He had a small, compact body that looked full of life. She felt, as she +saw him trudging over the field, that where he determined to go he would get. +She thought of William. He would have leaped the fence instead of going round +the stile. He was away in London, doing well. Paul would be working in +Nottingham. Now she had two sons in the world. She could think of two places, +great centres of industry, and feel that she had put a man into each of them, +that these men would work out what <i>she</i> wanted; they were derived from +her, they were of her, and their works also would be hers. All the morning long +she thought of Paul. +</p> + +<p> +At eight o’clock he climbed the dismal stairs of Jordan’s Surgical +Appliance Factory, and stood helplessly against the first great parcel-rack, +waiting for somebody to pick him up. The place was still not awake. Over the +counters were great dust sheets. Two men only had arrived, and were heard +talking in a corner, as they took off their coats and rolled up their +shirt-sleeves. It was ten past eight. Evidently there was no rush of +punctuality. Paul listened to the voices of the two clerks. Then he heard +someone cough, and saw in the office at the end of the room an old, decaying +clerk, in a round smoking-cap of black velvet embroidered with red and green, +opening letters. He waited and waited. One of the junior clerks went to the old +man, greeted him cheerily and loudly. Evidently the old “chief” was +deaf. Then the young fellow came striding importantly down to his counter. He +spied Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he said. “You the new lad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m! What’s your name?” +</p> + +<p> +“Paul Morel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Paul Morel? All right, you come on round here.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul followed him round the rectangle of counters. The room was second storey. +It had a great hole in the middle of the floor, fenced as with a wall of +counters, and down this wide shaft the lifts went, and the light for the bottom +storey. Also there was a corresponding big, oblong hole in the ceiling, and one +could see above, over the fence of the top floor, some machinery; and right +away overhead was the glass roof, and all light for the three storeys came +downwards, getting dimmer, so that it was always night on the ground floor and +rather gloomy on the second floor. The factory was the top floor, the warehouse +the second, the storehouse the ground floor. It was an insanitary, ancient +place. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was led round to a very dark corner. +</p> + +<p> +“This is the ‘Spiral’ corner,” said the clerk. +“You’re Spiral, with Pappleworth. He’s your boss, but +he’s not come yet. He doesn’t get here till half-past eight. So you +can fetch the letters, if you like, from Mr. Melling down there.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man pointed to the old clerk in the office. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s a peg to hang your cap on. Here are your entry ledgers. Mr. +Pappleworth won’t be long.” +</p> + +<p> +And the thin young man stalked away with long, busy strides over the hollow +wooden floor. +</p> + +<p> +After a minute or two Paul went down and stood in the door of the glass office. +The old clerk in the smoking-cap looked down over the rim of his spectacles. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-morning,” he said, kindly and impressively. “You want +the letters for the Spiral department, Thomas?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul resented being called “Thomas”. But he took the letters and +returned to his dark place, where the counter made an angle, where the great +parcel-rack came to an end, and where there were three doors in the corner. He +sat on a high stool and read the letters—those whose handwriting was not +too difficult. They ran as follows: +</p> + +<p> +“Will you please send me at once a pair of lady’s silk spiral +thigh-hose, without feet, such as I had from you last year; length, thigh to +knee, etc.” Or, “Major Chamberlain wishes to repeat his previous +order for a silk non-elastic suspensory bandage.” +</p> + +<p> +Many of these letters, some of them in French or Norwegian, were a great puzzle +to the boy. He sat on his stool nervously awaiting the arrival of his +“boss”. He suffered tortures of shyness when, at half-past eight, +the factory girls for upstairs trooped past him. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pappleworth arrived, chewing a chlorodyne gum, at about twenty to nine, +when all the other men were at work. He was a thin, sallow man with a red nose, +quick, staccato, and smartly but stiffly dressed. He was about thirty-six years +old. There was something rather “doggy”, rather smart, rather +’cute and shrewd, and something warm, and something slightly contemptible +about him. +</p> + +<p> +“You my new lad?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul stood up and said he was. +</p> + +<p> +“Fetched the letters?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pappleworth gave a chew to his gum. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Copied ’em?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, come on then, let’s look slippy. Changed your coat?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“You want to bring an old coat and leave it here.” He pronounced +the last words with the chlorodyne gum between his side teeth. He vanished into +the darkness behind the great parcel-rack, reappeared coatless, turning up a +smart striped shirt-cuff over a thin and hairy arm. Then he slipped into his +coat. Paul noticed how thin he was, and that his trousers were in folds behind. +He seized a stool, dragged it beside the boy’s, and sat down. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul took a seat. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pappleworth was very close to him. The man seized the letters, snatched a +long entry-book out of a rack in front of him, flung it open, seized a pen, and +said: +</p> + +<p> +“Now look here. You want to copy these letters in here.” He sniffed +twice, gave a quick chew at his gum, stared fixedly at a letter, then went very +still and absorbed, and wrote the entry rapidly, in a beautiful flourishing +hand. He glanced quickly at Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“See that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Think you can do it all right?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right then, let’s see you.” +</p> + +<p> +He sprang off his stool. Paul took a pen. Mr. Pappleworth disappeared. Paul +rather liked copying the letters, but he wrote slowly, laboriously, and +exceedingly badly. He was doing the fourth letter, and feeling quite busy and +happy, when Mr. Pappleworth reappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Now then, how’r’ yer getting on? Done ’em?” +</p> + +<p> +He leaned over the boy’s shoulder, chewing, and smelling of chlorodyne. +</p> + +<p> +“Strike my bob, lad, but you’re a beautiful writer!” he +exclaimed satirically. “Ne’er mind, how many h’yer done? Only +three! I’d ’a eaten ’em. Get on, my lad, an’ put +numbers on ’em. Here, look! Get on!” +</p> + +<p> +Paul ground away at the letters, whilst Mr. Pappleworth fussed over various +jobs. Suddenly the boy started as a shrill whistle sounded near his ear. Mr. +Pappleworth came, took a plug out of a pipe, and said, in an amazingly cross +and bossy voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul heard a faint voice, like a woman’s, out of the mouth of the tube. +He gazed in wonder, never having seen a speaking-tube before. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mr. Pappleworth disagreeably into the tube, +“you’d better get some of your back work done, then.” +</p> + +<p> +Again the woman’s tiny voice was heard, sounding pretty and cross. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not time to stand here while you talk,” said Mr. +Pappleworth, and he pushed the plug into the tube. +</p> + +<p> +“Come, my lad,” he said imploringly to Paul, “there’s +Polly crying out for them orders. Can’t you buck up a bit? Here, come +out!” +</p> + +<p> +He took the book, to Paul’s immense chagrin, and began the copying +himself. He worked quickly and well. This done, he seized some strips of long +yellow paper, about three inches wide, and made out the day’s orders for +the work-girls. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better watch me,” he said to Paul, working all the +while rapidly. Paul watched the weird little drawings of legs, and thighs, and +ankles, with the strokes across and the numbers, and the few brief directions +which his chief made upon the yellow paper. Then Mr. Pappleworth finished and +jumped up. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on with me,” he said, and the yellow papers flying in his +hands, he dashed through a door and down some stairs, into the basement where +the gas was burning. They crossed the cold, damp storeroom, then a long, dreary +room with a long table on trestles, into a smaller, cosy apartment, not very +high, which had been built on to the main building. In this room a small woman +with a red serge blouse, and her black hair done on top of her head, was +waiting like a proud little bantam. +</p> + +<p> +“Here y’are!” said Pappleworth. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is ‘here you are’!” exclaimed Polly. +“The girls have been here nearly half an hour waiting. Just think of the +time wasted!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> think of getting your work done and not talking so +much,” said Mr. Pappleworth. “You could ha’ been finishing +off.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know quite well we finished everything off on Saturday!” cried +Polly, flying at him, her dark eyes flashing. +</p> + +<p> +“Tu-tu-tu-tu-terterter!” he mocked. “Here’s your new +lad. Don’t ruin him as you did the last.” +</p> + +<p> +“As we did the last!” repeated Polly. “Yes, <i>we</i> do a +lot of ruining, we do. My word, a lad would <i>take</i> some ruining after +he’d been with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s time for work now, not for talk,” said Mr. Pappleworth +severely and coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“It was time for work some time back,” said Polly, marching away +with her head in the air. She was an erect little body of forty. +</p> + +<p> +In that room were two round spiral machines on the bench under the window. +Through the inner doorway was another longer room, with six more machines. A +little group of girls, nicely dressed in white aprons, stood talking together. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you nothing else to do but talk?” said Mr. Pappleworth. +</p> + +<p> +“Only wait for you,” said one handsome girl, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, get on, get on,” he said. “Come on, my lad. +You’ll know your road down here again.” +</p> + +<p> +And Paul ran upstairs after his chief. He was given some checking and invoicing +to do. He stood at the desk, labouring in his execrable handwriting. Presently +Mr. Jordan came strutting down from the glass office and stood behind him, to +the boy’s great discomfort. Suddenly a red and fat finger was thrust on +the form he was filling in. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Mr.</i> J. A. Bates, Esquire!” exclaimed the cross voice just +behind his ear. +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked at “Mr. J. A. Bates, Esquire” in his own vile writing, +and wondered what was the matter now. +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t they teach you any better than <i>that</i> while they were +at it? If you put ‘Mr.’ you don’t put +‘Esquire’—a man can’t be both at once.” +</p> + +<p> +The boy regretted his too-much generosity in disposing of honours, hesitated, +and with trembling fingers, scratched out the “Mr.” Then all at +once Mr. Jordan snatched away the invoice. +</p> + +<p> +“Make another! Are you going to send <i>that</i> to a gentleman?” +And he tore up the blue form irritably. +</p> + +<p> +Paul, his ears red with shame, began again. Still Mr. Jordan watched. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what they <i>do</i> teach in schools. You’ll +have to write better than that. Lads learn nothing nowadays, but how to recite +poetry and play the fiddle. Have you seen his writing?” he asked of Mr. +Pappleworth. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; prime, isn’t it?” replied Mr. Pappleworth +indifferently. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Jordan gave a little grunt, not unamiable. Paul divined that his +master’s bark was worse than his bite. Indeed, the little manufacturer, +although he spoke bad English, was quite gentleman enough to leave his men +alone and to take no notice of trifles. But he knew he did not look like the +boss and owner of the show, so he had to play his role of proprietor at first, +to put things on a right footing. +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s see, <i>what’s</i> your name?” asked Mr. +Pappleworth of the boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul Morel.” +</p> + +<p> +It is curious that children suffer so much at having to pronounce their own +names. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul Morel, is it? All right, you Paul-Morel through them things there, +and then—” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pappleworth subsided on to a stool, and began writing. A girl came up from +out of a door just behind, put some newly-pressed elastic web appliances on the +counter, and returned. Mr. Pappleworth picked up the whitey-blue knee-band, +examined it, and its yellow order-paper quickly, and put it on one side. Next +was a flesh-pink “leg”. He went through the few things, wrote out a +couple of orders, and called to Paul to accompany him. This time they went +through the door whence the girl had emerged. There Paul found himself at the +top of a little wooden flight of steps, and below him saw a room with windows +round two sides, and at the farther end half a dozen girls sitting bending over +the benches in the light from the window, sewing. They were singing together +“Two Little Girls in Blue”. Hearing the door opened, they all +turned round, to see Mr. Pappleworth and Paul looking down on them from the far +end of the room. They stopped singing. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you make a bit less row?” said Mr. Pappleworth. +“Folk’ll think we keep cats.” +</p> + +<p> +A hunchback woman on a high stool turned her long, rather heavy face towards +Mr. Pappleworth, and said, in a contralto voice: +</p> + +<p> +“They’re all tom-cats then.” +</p> + +<p> +In vain Mr. Pappleworth tried to be impressive for Paul’s benefit. He +descended the steps into the finishing-off room, and went to the hunchback +Fanny. She had such a short body on her high stool that her head, with its +great bands of bright brown hair, seemed over large, as did her pale, heavy +face. She wore a dress of green-black cashmere, and her wrists, coming out of +the narrow cuffs, were thin and flat, as she put down her work nervously. He +showed her something that was wrong with a knee-cap. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, “you needn’t come blaming it on to +me. It’s not my fault.” Her colour mounted to her cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“I never said it <i>was</i> your fault. Will you do as I tell you?” +replied Mr. Pappleworth shortly. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t say it’s my fault, but you’d like to make +out as it was,” the hunchback woman cried, almost in tears. Then she +snatched the knee-cap from her “boss”, saying: “Yes, +I’ll do it for you, but you needn’t be snappy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s your new lad,” said Mr. Pappleworth. +</p> + +<p> +Fanny turned, smiling very gently on Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; don’t make a softy of him between you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not us as ’ud make a softy of him,” she said +indignantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on then, Paul,” said Mr. Pappleworth. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Au revoy</i>, Paul,” said one of the girls. +</p> + +<p> +There was a titter of laughter. Paul went out, blushing deeply, not having +spoken a word. +</p> + +<p> +The day was very long. All morning the work-people were coming to speak to Mr. +Pappleworth. Paul was writing or learning to make up parcels, ready for the +midday post. At one o’clock, or, rather, at a quarter to one, Mr. +Pappleworth disappeared to catch his train: he lived in the suburbs. At one +o’clock, Paul, feeling very lost, took his dinner-basket down into the +stockroom in the basement, that had the long table on trestles, and ate his +meal hurriedly, alone in that cellar of gloom and desolation. Then he went out +of doors. The brightness and the freedom of the streets made him feel +adventurous and happy. But at two o’clock he was back in the corner of +the big room. Soon the work-girls went trooping past, making remarks. It was +the commoner girls who worked upstairs at the heavy tasks of truss-making and +the finishing of artificial limbs. He waited for Mr. Pappleworth, not knowing +what to do, sitting scribbling on the yellow order-paper. Mr. Pappleworth came +at twenty minutes to three. Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating the +boy entirely as an equal, even in age. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless it were near the +week-end, and the accounts had to be made up. At five o’clock all the men +went down into the dungeon with the table on trestles, and there they had tea, +eating bread-and-butter on the bare, dirty boards, talking with the same kind +of ugly haste and slovenliness with which they ate their meal. And yet upstairs +the atmosphere among them was always jolly and clear. The cellar and the +trestles affected them. +</p> + +<p> +After tea, when all the gases were lighted, <i>work</i> went more briskly. +There was the big evening post to get off. The hose came up warm and newly +pressed from the workrooms. Paul had made out the invoices. Now he had the +packing up and addressing to do, then he had to weigh his stock of parcels on +the scales. Everywhere voices were calling weights, there was the chink of +metal, the rapid snapping of string, the hurrying to old Mr. Melling for +stamps. And at last the postman came with his sack, laughing and jolly. Then +everything slacked off, and Paul took his dinner-basket and ran to the station +to catch the eight-twenty train. The day in the factory was just twelve hours +long. +</p> + +<p> +His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously. He had to walk from Keston, so +was not home until about twenty past nine. And he left the house before seven +in the morning. Mrs. Morel was rather anxious about his health. But she herself +had had to put up with so much that she expected her children to take the same +odds. They must go through with what came. And Paul stayed at Jordan’s, +although all the time he was there his health suffered from the darkness and +lack of air and the long hours. +</p> + +<p> +He came in pale and tired. His mother looked at him. She saw he was rather +pleased, and her anxiety all went. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, and how was it?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Ever so funny, mother,” he replied. “You don’t have to +work a bit hard, and they’re nice with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did you get on all right?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes: they only say my writing’s bad. But Mr. +Pappleworth—he’s my man—said to Mr. Jordan I should be all +right. I’m Spiral, mother; you must come and see. It’s ever so +nice.” +</p> + +<p> +Soon he liked Jordan’s. Mr. Pappleworth, who had a certain “saloon +bar” flavour about him, was always natural, and treated him as if he had +been a comrade. Sometimes the “Spiral boss” was irritable, and +chewed more lozenges than ever. Even then, however, he was not offensive, but +one of those people who hurt themselves by their own irritability more than +they hurt other people. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t you done that <i>yet?</i>” he would cry. “Go +on, be a month of Sundays.” +</p> + +<p> +Again, and Paul could understand him least then, he was jocular and in high +spirits. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to bring my little Yorkshire terrier bitch +to-morrow,” he said jubilantly to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a Yorkshire terrier?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Don’t</i> know what a Yorkshire terrier is? <i>Don’t know +a Yorkshire</i>—” Mr. Pappleworth was aghast. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it a little silky one—colours of iron and rusty silver?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>That’s</i> it, my lad. She’s a gem. She’s had five +pounds’ worth of pups already, and she’s worth over seven pounds +herself; and she doesn’t weigh twenty ounces.” +</p> + +<p> +The next day the bitch came. She was a shivering, miserable morsel. Paul did +not care for her; she seemed so like a wet rag that would never dry. Then a man +called for her, and began to make coarse jokes. But Mr. Pappleworth nodded his +head in the direction of the boy, and the talk went on <i>sotto voce</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Jordan only made one more excursion to watch Paul, and then the only fault +he found was seeing the boy lay his pen on the counter. +</p> + +<p> +“Put your pen in your ear, if you’re going to be a clerk. Pen in +your ear!” And one day he said to the lad: “Why don’t you +hold your shoulders straighter? Come down here,” when he took him into +the glass office and fitted him with special braces for keeping the shoulders +square. +</p> + +<p> +But Paul liked the girls best. The men seemed common and rather dull. He liked +them all, but they were uninteresting. Polly, the little brisk overseer +downstairs, finding Paul eating in the cellar, asked him if she could cook him +anything on her little stove. Next day his mother gave him a dish that could be +heated up. He took it into the pleasant, clean room to Polly. And very soon it +grew to be an established custom that he should have dinner with her. When he +came in at eight in the morning he took his basket to her, and when he came +down at one o’clock she had his dinner ready. +</p> + +<p> +He was not very tall, and pale, with thick chestnut hair, irregular features, +and a wide, full mouth. She was like a small bird. He often called her a +“robinet”. Though naturally rather quiet, he would sit and chatter +with her for hours telling her about his home. The girls all liked to hear him +talk. They often gathered in a little circle while he sat on a bench, and held +forth to them, laughing. Some of them regarded him as a curious little +creature, so serious, yet so bright and jolly, and always so delicate in his +way with them. They all liked him, and he adored them. Polly he felt he +belonged to. Then Connie, with her mane of red hair, her face of apple-blossom, +her murmuring voice, such a lady in her shabby black frock, appealed to his +romantic side. +</p> + +<p> +“When you sit winding,” he said, “it looks as if you were +spinning at a spinning-wheel—it looks ever so nice. You remind me of +Elaine in the ‘Idylls of the King’. I’d draw you if I +could.” +</p> + +<p> +And she glanced at him blushing shyly. And later on he had a sketch he prized +very much: Connie sitting on the stool before the wheel, her flowing mane of +red hair on her rusty black frock, her red mouth shut and serious, running the +scarlet thread off the hank on to the reel. +</p> + +<p> +With Louie, handsome and brazen, who always seemed to thrust her hip at him, he +usually joked. +</p> + +<p> +Emma was rather plain, rather old, and condescending. But to condescend to him +made her happy, and he did not mind. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you put needles in?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away and don’t bother.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I ought to know how to put needles in.” +</p> + +<p> +She ground at her machine all the while steadily. +</p> + +<p> +“There are many things you ought to know,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me, then, how to stick needles in the machine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the boy, what a nuisance he is! Why, <i>this</i> is how you do +it.” +</p> + +<p> +He watched her attentively. Suddenly a whistle piped. Then Polly appeared, and +said in a clear voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Pappleworth wants to know how much longer you’re going to be +down here playing with the girls, Paul.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul flew upstairs, calling “Good-bye!” and Emma drew herself up. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t <i>me</i> who wanted him to play with the +machine,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +As a rule, when all the girls came back at two o’clock, he ran upstairs +to Fanny, the hunchback, in the finishing-off room. Mr. Pappleworth did not +appear till twenty to three, and he often found his boy sitting beside Fanny, +talking, or drawing, or singing with the girls. +</p> + +<p> +Often, after a minute’s hesitation, Fanny would begin to sing. She had a +fine contralto voice. Everybody joined in the chorus, and it went well. Paul +was not at all embarrassed, after a while, sitting in the room with the half a +dozen work-girls. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of the song Fanny would say: +</p> + +<p> +“I know you’ve been laughing at me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be so soft, Fanny!” cried one of the girls. +</p> + +<p> +Once there was mention of Connie’s red hair. +</p> + +<p> +“Fanny’s is better, to my fancy,” said Emma. +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t try to make a fool of me,” said Fanny, flushing +deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“No, but she has, Paul; she’s got beautiful hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a treat of a colour,” said he. “That coldish +colour like earth, and yet shiny. It’s like bog-water.” +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness me!” exclaimed one girl, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“How I do but get criticised,” said Fanny. +</p> + +<p> +“But you should see it down, Paul,” cried Emma earnestly. +“It’s simply beautiful. Put it down for him, Fanny, if he wants +something to paint.” +</p> + +<p> +Fanny would not, and yet she wanted to. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ll take it down myself,” said the lad. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you can if you like,” said Fanny. +</p> + +<p> +And he carefully took the pins out of the knot, and the rush of hair, of +uniform dark brown, slid over the humped back. +</p> + +<p> +“What a lovely lot!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +The girls watched. There was silence. The youth shook the hair loose from the +coil. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s splendid!” he said, smelling its perfume. +“I’ll bet it’s worth pounds.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll leave it you when I die, Paul,” said Fanny, half +joking. +</p> + +<p> +“You look just like anybody else, sitting drying their hair,” said +one of the girls to the long-legged hunchback. +</p> + +<p> +Poor Fanny was morbidly sensitive, always imagining insults. Polly was curt and +businesslike. The two departments were for ever at war, and Paul was always +finding Fanny in tears. Then he was made the recipient of all her woes, and he +had to plead her case with Polly. +</p> + +<p> +So the time went along happily enough. The factory had a homely feel. No one +was rushed or driven. Paul always enjoyed it when the work got faster, towards +post-time, and all the men united in labour. He liked to watch his +fellow-clerks at work. The man was the work and the work was the man, one +thing, for the time being. It was different with the girls. The real woman +never seemed to be there at the task, but as if left out, waiting. +</p> + +<p> +From the train going home at night he used to watch the lights of the town, +sprinkled thick on the hills, fusing together in a blaze in the valleys. He +felt rich in life and happy. Drawing farther off, there was a patch of lights +at Bulwell like myriad petals shaken to the ground from the shed stars; and +beyond was the red glare of the furnaces, playing like hot breath on the +clouds. +</p> + +<p> +He had to walk two and more miles from Keston home, up two long hills, down two +short hills. He was often tired, and he counted the lamps climbing the hill +above him, how many more to pass. And from the hilltop, on pitch-dark nights, +he looked round on the villages five or six miles away, that shone like swarms +of glittering living things, almost a heaven against his feet. Marlpool and +Heanor scattered the far-off darkness with brilliance. And occasionally the +black valley space between was traced, violated by a great train rushing south +to London or north to Scotland. The trains roared by like projectiles level on +the darkness, fuming and burning, making the valley clang with their passage. +They were gone, and the lights of the towns and villages glittered in silence. +</p> + +<p> +And then he came to the corner at home, which faced the other side of the +night. The ash-tree seemed a friend now. His mother rose with gladness as he +entered. He put his eight shillings proudly on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll help, mother?” he asked wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s precious little left,” she answered, “after +your ticket and dinners and such are taken off.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he told her the budget of the day. His life-story, like an Arabian Nights, +was told night after night to his mother. It was almost as if it were her own +life. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI<br/> +DEATH IN THE FAMILY</h2> + +<p> +Arthur Morel was growing up. He was a quick, careless, impulsive boy, a good +deal like his father. He hated study, made a great moan if he had to work, and +escaped as soon as possible to his sport again. +</p> + +<p> +In appearance he remained the flower of the family, being well made, graceful, +and full of life. His dark brown hair and fresh colouring, and his exquisite +dark blue eyes shaded with long lashes, together with his generous manner and +fiery temper, made him a favourite. But as he grew older his temper became +uncertain. He flew into rages over nothing, seemed unbearably raw and +irritable. +</p> + +<p> +His mother, whom he loved, wearied of him sometimes. He thought only of +himself. When he wanted amusement, all that stood in his way he hated, even if +it were she. When he was in trouble he moaned to her ceaselessly. +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness, boy!” she said, when he groaned about a master who, he +said, hated him, “if you don’t like it, alter it, and if you +can’t alter it, put up with it.” +</p> + +<p> +And his father, whom he had loved and who had worshipped him, he came to +detest. As he grew older Morel fell into a slow ruin. His body, which had been +beautiful in movement and in being, shrank, did not seem to ripen with the +years, but to get mean and rather despicable. There came over him a look of +meanness and of paltriness. And when the mean-looking elderly man bullied or +ordered the boy about, Arthur was furious. Moreover, Morel’s manners got +worse and worse, his habits somewhat disgusting. When the children were growing +up and in the crucial stage of adolescence, the father was like some ugly +irritant to their souls. His manners in the house were the same as he used +among the colliers down pit. +</p> + +<p> +“Dirty nuisance!” Arthur would cry, jumping up and going straight +out of the house when his father disgusted him. And Morel persisted the more +because his children hated it. He seemed to take a kind of satisfaction in +disgusting them, and driving them nearly mad, while they were so irritably +sensitive at the age of fourteen or fifteen. So that Arthur, who was growing up +when his father was degenerate and elderly, hated him worst of all. +</p> + +<p> +Then, sometimes, the father would seem to feel the contemptuous hatred of his +children. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s not a man tries harder for his family!” he would +shout. “He does his best for them, and then gets treated like a dog. But +I’m not going to stand it, I tell you!” +</p> + +<p> +But for the threat and the fact that he did not try so hard as he imagined, +they would have felt sorry. As it was, the battle now went on nearly all +between father and children, he persisting in his dirty and disgusting ways, +just to assert his independence. They loathed him. +</p> + +<p> +Arthur was so inflamed and irritable at last, that when he won a scholarship +for the Grammar School in Nottingham, his mother decided to let him live in +town, with one of her sisters, and only come home at week-ends. +</p> + +<p> +Annie was still a junior teacher in the Board-school, earning about four +shillings a week. But soon she would have fifteen shillings, since she had +passed her examination, and there would be financial peace in the house. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel clung now to Paul. He was quiet and not brilliant. But still he +stuck to his painting, and still he stuck to his mother. Everything he did was +for her. She waited for his coming home in the evening, and then she unburdened +herself of all she had pondered, or of all that had occurred to her during the +day. He sat and listened with his earnestness. The two shared lives. +</p> + +<p> +William was engaged now to his brunette, and had bought her an engagement ring +that cost eight guineas. The children gasped at such a fabulous price. +</p> + +<p> +“Eight guineas!” said Morel. “More fool him! If he’d +gen me some on’t, it ’ud ha’ looked better on +’im.” +</p> + +<p> +“Given <i>you</i> some of it!” cried Mrs. Morel. “Why give +<i>you</i> some of it!” +</p> + +<p> +She remembered <i>he</i> had bought no engagement ring at all, and she +preferred William, who was not mean, if he were foolish. But now the young man +talked only of the dances to which he went with his betrothed, and the +different resplendent clothes she wore; or he told his mother with glee how +they went to the theatre like great swells. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to bring the girl home. Mrs. Morel said she should come at the +Christmas. This time William arrived with a lady, but with no presents. Mrs. +Morel had prepared supper. Hearing footsteps, she rose and went to the door. +William entered. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, mother!” He kissed her hastily, then stood aside to present +a tall, handsome girl, who was wearing a costume of fine black-and-white check, +and furs. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s Gyp!” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Western held out her hand and showed her teeth in a small smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Morel!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid you will be hungry,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, we had dinner in the train. Have you got my gloves, +Chubby?” +</p> + +<p> +William Morel, big and raw-boned, looked at her quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“How should I?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ve lost them. Don’t be cross with me.” +</p> + +<p> +A frown went over his face, but he said nothing. She glanced round the kitchen. +It was small and curious to her, with its glittering kissing-bunch, its +evergreens behind the pictures, its wooden chairs and little deal table. At +that moment Morel came in. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, dad!” +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, my son! Tha’s let on me!” +</p> + +<p> +The two shook hands, and William presented the lady. She gave the same smile +that showed her teeth. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Mr. Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +Morel bowed obsequiously. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m very well, and I hope so are you. You must make yourself very +welcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, thank you,” she replied, rather amused. +</p> + +<p> +“You will like to go upstairs,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“If you don’t mind; but not if it is any trouble to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is no trouble. Annie will take you. Walter, carry up this box.” +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t be an hour dressing yourself up,” said William to +his betrothed. +</p> + +<p> +Annie took a brass candlestick, and, too shy almost to speak, preceded the +young lady to the front bedroom, which Mr. and Mrs. Morel had vacated for her. +It, too, was small and cold by candlelight. The colliers’ wives only lit +fires in bedrooms in case of extreme illness. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I unstrap the box?” asked Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, thank you very much!” +</p> + +<p> +Annie played the part of maid, then went downstairs for hot water. +</p> + +<p> +“I think she’s rather tired, mother,” said William. +“It’s a beastly journey, and we had such a rush.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there anything I can give her?” asked Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, she’ll be all right.” +</p> + +<p> +But there was a chill in the atmosphere. After half an hour Miss Western came +down, having put on a purplish-coloured dress, very fine for the +collier’s kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +“I told you you’d no need to change,” said William to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Chubby!” Then she turned with that sweetish smile to Mrs. +Morel. “Don’t you think he’s always grumbling, Mrs. +Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he?” said Mrs. Morel. “That’s not very nice of +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t, really!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are cold,” said the mother. “Won’t you come near +the fire?” +</p> + +<p> +Morel jumped out of his armchair. +</p> + +<p> +“Come and sit you here!” he cried. “Come and sit you +here!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dad, keep your own chair. Sit on the sofa, Gyp,” said William. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” cried Morel. “This cheer’s warmest. Come and +sit here, Miss Wesson.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you <i>so</i> much,” said the girl, seating herself in the +collier’s armchair, the place of honour. She shivered, feeling the warmth +of the kitchen penetrate her. +</p> + +<p> +“Fetch me a hanky, Chubby dear!” she said, putting up her mouth to +him, and using the same intimate tone as if they were alone; which made the +rest of the family feel as if they ought not to be present. The young lady +evidently did not realise them as people: they were creatures to her for the +present. William winced. +</p> + +<p> +In such a household, in Streatham, Miss Western would have been a lady +condescending to her inferiors. These people were to her, certainly +clownish—in short, the working classes. How was she to adjust herself? +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll go,” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Western took no notice, as if a servant had spoken. But when the girl came +downstairs again with the handkerchief, she said: “Oh, thank you!” +in a gracious way. +</p> + +<p> +She sat and talked about the dinner on the train, which had been so poor; about +London, about dances. She was really very nervous, and chattered from fear. +Morel sat all the time smoking his thick twist tobacco, watching her, and +listening to her glib London speech, as he puffed. Mrs. Morel, dressed up in +her best black silk blouse, answered quietly and rather briefly. The three +children sat round in silence and admiration. Miss Western was the princess. +Everything of the best was got out for her: the best cups, the best spoons, the +best table cloth, the best coffee-jug. The children thought she must find it +quite grand. She felt strange, not able to realise the people, not knowing how +to treat them. William joked, and was slightly uncomfortable. +</p> + +<p> +At about ten o’clock he said to her: +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you tired, Gyp?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather, Chubby,” she answered, at once in the intimate tones and +putting her head slightly on one side. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll light her the candle, mother,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” replied the mother. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Western stood up, held out her hand to Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night, Mrs. Morel,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul sat at the boiler, letting the water run from the tap into a stone +beer-bottle. Annie swathed the bottle in an old flannel pit-singlet, and kissed +her mother good-night. She was to share the room with the lady, because the +house was full. +</p> + +<p> +“You wait a minute,” said Mrs. Morel to Annie. And Annie sat +nursing the hot-water bottle. Miss Western shook hands all round, to +everybody’s discomfort, and took her departure, preceded by William. In +five minutes he was downstairs again. His heart was rather sore; he did not +know why. He talked very little till everybody had gone to bed, but himself and +his mother. Then he stood with his legs apart, in his old attitude on the +hearthrug, and said hesitatingly: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my son?” +</p> + +<p> +She sat in the rocking-chair, feeling somehow hurt and humiliated, for his +sake. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” came the slow answer. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s shy yet, mother. She’s not used to it. It’s +different from her aunt’s house, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it is, my boy; and she must find it difficult.” +</p> + +<p> +“She does.” Then he frowned swiftly. “If only she +wouldn’t put on her <i>blessed</i> airs!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s only her first awkwardness, my boy. She’ll be all +right.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it, mother,” he replied gratefully. But his brow was +gloomy. “You know, she’s not like you, mother. She’s not +serious, and she can’t think.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s young, my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and she’s had no sort of show. Her mother died when she was a +child. Since then she’s lived with her aunt, whom she can’t bear. +And her father was a rake. She’s had no love.” +</p> + +<p> +“No! Well, you must make up to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so—you have to forgive her a lot of things.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>What</i> do you have to forgive her, my boy?” +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno. When she seems shallow, you have to remember she’s never +had anybody to bring her deeper side out. And she’s <i>fearfully</i> fond +of me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anybody can see that.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you know, mother—she’s—she’s different from +us. Those sort of people, like those she lives amongst, they don’t seem +to have the same principles.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mustn’t judge too hastily,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +But he seemed uneasy within himself. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning, however, he was up singing and larking round the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he called, sitting on the stairs. “Are you getting +up?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” her voice called faintly. +</p> + +<p> +“Merry Christmas!” he shouted to her. +</p> + +<p> +Her laugh, pretty and tinkling, was heard in the bedroom. She did not come down +in half an hour. +</p> + +<p> +“Was she <i>really</i> getting up when she said she was?” he asked +of Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she was,” replied Annie. +</p> + +<p> +He waited a while, then went to the stairs again. +</p> + +<p> +“Happy New Year,” he called. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Chubby dear!” came the laughing voice, far away. +</p> + +<p> +“Buck up!” he implored. +</p> + +<p> +It was nearly an hour, and still he was waiting for her. Morel, who always rose +before six, looked at the clock. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s a winder!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +The family had breakfasted, all but William. He went to the foot of the stairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I have to send you an Easter egg up there?” he called, +rather crossly. She only laughed. The family expected, after that time of +preparation, something like magic. At last she came, looking very nice in a +blouse and skirt. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you <i>really</i> been all this time getting ready?” he +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Chubby dear! That question is not permitted, is it, Mrs. Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +She played the grand lady at first. When she went with William to chapel, he in +his frock-coat and silk hat, she in her furs and London-made costume, Paul and +Arthur and Annie expected everybody to bow to the ground in admiration. And +Morel, standing in his Sunday suit at the end of the road, watching the gallant +pair go, felt he was the father of princes and princesses. +</p> + +<p> +And yet she was not so grand. For a year now she had been a sort of secretary +or clerk in a London office. But while she was with the Morels she queened it. +She sat and let Annie or Paul wait on her as if they were her servants. She +treated Mrs. Morel with a certain glibness and Morel with patronage. But after +a day or so she began to change her tune. +</p> + +<p> +William always wanted Paul or Annie to go along with them on their walks. It +was so much more interesting. And Paul really <i>did</i> admire +“Gipsy” wholeheartedly; in fact, his mother scarcely forgave the +boy for the adulation with which he treated the girl. +</p> + +<p> +On the second day, when Lily said: “Oh, Annie, do you know where I left +my muff?” William replied: +</p> + +<p> +“You know it is in your bedroom. Why do you ask Annie?” +</p> + +<p> +And Lily went upstairs with a cross, shut mouth. But it angered the young man +that she made a servant of his sister. +</p> + +<p> +On the third evening William and Lily were sitting together in the parlour by +the fire in the dark. At a quarter to eleven Mrs. Morel was heard raking the +fire. William came out to the kitchen, followed by his beloved. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it as late as that, mother?” he said. She had been sitting +alone. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not <i>late</i>, my boy, but it is as late as I usually sit +up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you go to bed, then?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“And leave you two? No, my boy, I don’t believe in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you trust us, mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Whether I can or not, I won’t do it. You can stay till eleven if +you like, and I can read.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go to bed, Gyp,” he said to his girl. “We won’t keep +mater waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Annie has left the candle burning, Lily,” said Mrs. Morel; +“I think you will see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, thank you. Good-night, Mrs. Morel.” +</p> + +<p> +William kissed his sweetheart at the foot of the stairs, and she went. He +returned to the kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you trust us, mother?” he repeated, rather offended. +</p> + +<p> +“My boy, I tell you I don’t <i>believe</i> in leaving two young +things like you alone downstairs when everyone else is in bed.” +</p> + +<p> +And he was forced to take this answer. He kissed his mother good-night. +</p> + +<p> +At Easter he came over alone. And then he discussed his sweetheart endlessly +with his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“You know, mother, when I’m away from her I don’t care for +her a bit. I shouldn’t care if I never saw her again. But, then, when +I’m with her in the evenings I am awfully fond of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a queer sort of love to marry on,” said Mrs. Morel, +“if she holds you no more than that!” +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>is</i> funny!” he exclaimed. It worried and perplexed him. +“But yet—there’s so much between us now I couldn’t give +her up.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know best,” said Mrs. Morel. “But if it is as you say, I +wouldn’t call it <i>love</i>—at any rate, it doesn’t look +much like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know, mother. She’s an orphan, and—” +</p> + +<p> +They never came to any sort of conclusion. He seemed puzzled and rather +fretted. She was rather reserved. All his strength and money went in keeping +this girl. He could scarcely afford to take his mother to Nottingham when he +came over. +</p> + +<p> +Paul’s wages had been raised at Christmas to ten shillings, to his great +joy. He was quite happy at Jordan’s, but his health suffered from the +long hours and the confinement. His mother, to whom he became more and more +significant, thought how to help. +</p> + +<p> +His half-day holiday was on Monday afternoon. On a Monday morning in May, as +the two sat alone at breakfast, she said: +</p> + +<p> +“I think it will be a fine day.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up in surprise. This meant something. +</p> + +<p> +“You know Mr. Leivers has gone to live on a new farm. Well, he asked me +last week if I wouldn’t go and see Mrs. Leivers, and I promised to bring +you on Monday if it’s fine. Shall we go?” +</p> + +<p> +“I say, little woman, how lovely!” he cried. “And we’ll +go this afternoon?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul hurried off to the station jubilant. Down Derby Road was a cherry-tree +that glistened. The old brick wall by the Statutes ground burned scarlet, +spring was a very flame of green. And the steep swoop of highroad lay, in its +cool morning dust, splendid with patterns of sunshine and shadow, perfectly +still. The trees sloped their great green shoulders proudly; and inside the +warehouse all the morning, the boy had a vision of spring outside. +</p> + +<p> +When he came home at dinner-time his mother was rather excited. +</p> + +<p> +“Are we going?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“When I’m ready,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he got up. +</p> + +<p> +“Go and get dressed while I wash up,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She did so. He washed the pots, straightened, and then took her boots. They +were quite clean. Mrs. Morel was one of those naturally exquisite people who +can walk in mud without dirtying their shoes. But Paul had to clean them for +her. They were kid boots at eight shillings a pair. He, however, thought them +the most dainty boots in the world, and he cleaned them with as much reverence +as if they had been flowers. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she appeared in the inner doorway rather shyly. She had got a new +cotton blouse on. Paul jumped up and went forward. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my stars!” he exclaimed. “What a bobby-dazzler!” +</p> + +<p> +She sniffed in a little haughty way, and put her head up. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not a bobby-dazzler at all!” she replied. +“It’s very quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +She walked forward, whilst he hovered round her. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she asked, quite shy, but pretending to be high and mighty, +“do you like it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Awfully! You <i>are</i> a fine little woman to go jaunting out +with!” +</p> + +<p> +He went and surveyed her from the back. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “if I was walking down the street behind +you, I should say: ‘Doesn’t <i>that</i> little person fancy +herself!”’ +</p> + +<p> +“Well, she doesn’t,” replied Mrs. Morel. “She’s +not sure it suits her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no! she wants to be in dirty black, looking as if she was wrapped in +burnt paper. It <i>does</i> suit you, and <i>I</i> say you look nice.” +</p> + +<p> +She sniffed in her little way, pleased, but pretending to know better. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, “it’s cost me just three shillings. +You couldn’t have got it ready-made for that price, could you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think you couldn’t,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“And, you know, it’s good stuff.” +</p> + +<p> +“Awfully pretty,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The blouse was white, with a little sprig of heliotrope and black. +</p> + +<p> +“Too young for me, though, I’m afraid,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Too young for you!” he exclaimed in disgust. “Why +don’t you buy some false white hair and stick it on your head.” +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll soon have no need,” she replied. “I’m +going white fast enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you’ve no business to,” he said. “What do I want +with a white-haired mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with one, my lad,” +she said rather strangely. +</p> + +<p> +They set off in great style, she carrying the umbrella William had given her, +because of the sun. Paul was considerably taller than she, though he was not +big. He fancied himself. +</p> + +<p> +On the fallow land the young wheat shone silkily. Minton pit waved its plumes +of white steam, coughed, and rattled hoarsely. +</p> + +<p> +“Now look at that!” said Mrs. Morel. Mother and son stood on the +road to watch. Along the ridge of the great pit-hill crawled a little group in +silhouette against the sky, a horse, a small truck, and a man. They climbed the +incline against the heavens. At the end the man tipped the wagon. There was an +undue rattle as the waste fell down the sheer slope of the enormous bank. +</p> + +<p> +“You sit a minute, mother,” he said, and she took a seat on a bank, +whilst he sketched rapidly. She was silent whilst he worked, looking round at +the afternoon, the red cottages shining among their greenness. +</p> + +<p> +“The world is a wonderful place,” she said, “and wonderfully +beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so’s the pit,” he said. “Look how it heaps +together, like something alive almost—a big creature that you don’t +know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps!” +</p> + +<p> +“And all the trucks standing waiting, like a string of beasts to be +fed,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And very thankful I am they <i>are</i> standing,” she said, +“for that means they’ll turn middling time this week.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I like the feel of <i>men</i> on things, while they’re alive. +There’s a feel of men about trucks, because they’ve been handled +with men’s hands, all of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +They went along under the trees of the highroad. He was constantly informing +her, but she was interested. They passed the end of Nethermere, that was +tossing its sunshine like petals lightly in its lap. Then they turned on a +private road, and in some trepidation approached a big farm. A dog barked +furiously. A woman came out to see. +</p> + +<p> +“Is this the way to Willey Farm?” Mrs. Morel asked. +</p> + +<p> +Paul hung behind in terror of being sent back. But the woman was amiable, and +directed them. The mother and son went through the wheat and oats, over a +little bridge into a wild meadow. Peewits, with their white breasts glistening, +wheeled and screamed about them. The lake was still and blue. High overhead a +heron floated. Opposite, the wood heaped on the hill, green and still. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a wild road, mother,” said Paul. “Just like +Canada.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it beautiful!” said Mrs. Morel, looking round. +</p> + +<p> +“See that heron—see—see her legs?” +</p> + +<p> +He directed his mother, what she must see and what not. And she was quite +content. +</p> + +<p> +“But now,” she said, “which way? He told me through the +wood.” +</p> + +<p> +The wood, fenced and dark, lay on their left. +</p> + +<p> +“I can feel a bit of a path this road,” said Paul. +“You’ve got town feet, somehow or other, you have.” +</p> + +<p> +They found a little gate, and soon were in a broad green alley of the wood, +with a new thicket of fir and pine on one hand, an old oak glade dipping down +on the other. And among the oaks the bluebells stood in pools of azure, under +the new green hazels, upon a pale fawn floor of oak-leaves. He found flowers +for her. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s a bit of new-mown hay,” he said; then, again, he +brought her forget-me-nots. And, again, his heart hurt with love, seeing her +hand, used with work, holding the little bunch of flowers he gave her. She was +perfectly happy. +</p> + +<p> +But at the end of the riding was a fence to climb. Paul was over in a second. +</p> + +<p> +“Come,” he said, “let me help you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, go away. I will do it in my own way.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood below with his hands up ready to help her. She climbed cautiously. +</p> + +<p> +“What a way to climb!” he exclaimed scornfully, when she was safely +to earth again. +</p> + +<p> +“Hateful stiles!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Duffer of a little woman,” he replied, “who can’t get +over ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +In front, along the edge of the wood, was a cluster of low red farm buildings. +The two hastened forward. Flush with the wood was the apple orchard, where +blossom was falling on the grindstone. The pond was deep under a hedge and +overhanging oak trees. Some cows stood in the shade. The farm and buildings, +three sides of a quadrangle, embraced the sunshine towards the wood. It was +very still. +</p> + +<p> +Mother and son went into the small railed garden, where was a scent of red +gillivers. By the open door were some floury loaves, put out to cool. A hen was +just coming to peck them. Then, in the doorway suddenly appeared a girl in a +dirty apron. She was about fourteen years old, had a rosy dark face, a bunch of +short black curls, very fine and free, and dark eyes; shy, questioning, a +little resentful of the strangers, she disappeared. In a minute another figure +appeared, a small, frail woman, rosy, with great dark brown eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she exclaimed, smiling with a little glow, +“you’ve come, then. I <i>am</i> glad to see you.” Her voice +was intimate and rather sad. +</p> + +<p> +The two women shook hands. +</p> + +<p> +“Now are you sure we’re not a bother to you?” said Mrs. +Morel. “I know what a farming life is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no! We’re only too thankful to see a new face, it’s so +lost up here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +They were taken through into the parlour—a long, low room, with a great +bunch of guelder-roses in the fireplace. There the women talked, whilst Paul +went out to survey the land. He was in the garden smelling the gillivers and +looking at the plants, when the girl came out quickly to the heap of coal which +stood by the fence. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose these are cabbage-roses?” he said to her, pointing to +the bushes along the fence. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with startled, big brown eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose they are cabbage-roses when they come out?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she faltered. “They’re white with +pink middles.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then they’re maiden-blush.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam flushed. She had a beautiful warm colouring. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t have <i>much</i> in your garden,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“This is our first year here,” she answered, in a distant, rather +superior way, drawing back and going indoors. He did not notice, but went his +round of exploration. Presently his mother came out, and they went through the +buildings. Paul was hugely delighted. +</p> + +<p> +“And I suppose you have the fowls and calves and pigs to look +after?” said Mrs. Morel to Mrs. Leivers. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” replied the little woman. “I can’t find time to +look after cattle, and I’m not used to it. It’s as much as I can do +to keep going in the house.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I suppose it is,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +Presently the girl came out. +</p> + +<p> +“Tea is ready, mother,” she said in a musical, quiet voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, thank you, Miriam, then we’ll come,” replied her mother, +almost ingratiatingly. “Would you <i>care</i> to have tea now, Mrs. +Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Mrs. Morel. “Whenever it’s +ready.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul and his mother and Mrs. Leivers had tea together. Then they went out into +the wood that was flooded with bluebells, while fumy forget-me-nots were in the +paths. The mother and son were in ecstasy together. +</p> + +<p> +When they got back to the house, Mr. Leivers and Edgar, the eldest son, were in +the kitchen. Edgar was about eighteen. Then Geoffrey and Maurice, big lads of +twelve and thirteen, were in from school. Mr. Leivers was a good-looking man in +the prime of life, with a golden-brown moustache, and blue eyes screwed up +against the weather. +</p> + +<p> +The boys were condescending, but Paul scarcely observed it. They went round for +eggs, scrambling into all sorts of places. As they were feeding the fowls +Miriam came out. The boys took no notice of her. One hen, with her yellow +chickens, was in a coop. Maurice took his hand full of corn and let the hen +peck from it. +</p> + +<p> +“Durst you do it?” he asked of Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s see,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +He had a small hand, warm, and rather capable-looking. Miriam watched. He held +the corn to the hen. The bird eyed it with her hard, bright eye, and suddenly +made a peck into his hand. He started, and laughed. “Rap, rap, +rap!” went the bird’s beak in his palm. He laughed again, and the +other boys joined. +</p> + +<p> +“She knocks you, and nips you, but she never hurts,” said Paul, +when the last corn had gone. “Now, Miriam,” said Maurice, +“you come an ’ave a go.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried, shrinking back. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! baby. The mardy-kid!” said her brothers. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t hurt a bit,” said Paul. “It only just nips +rather nicely.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she still cried, shaking her black curls and shrinking. +</p> + +<p> +“She dursn’t,” said Geoffrey. “She niver durst do +anything except recite poitry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dursn’t jump off a gate, dursn’t tweedle, dursn’t go +on a slide, dursn’t stop a girl hittin’ her. She can do nowt but go +about thinkin’ herself somebody. ‘The Lady of the Lake.’ +Yah!” cried Maurice. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam was crimson with shame and misery. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare do more than you,” she cried. “You’re never +anything but cowards and bullies.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, cowards and bullies!” they repeated mincingly, mocking her +speech. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Not such a clown shall anger me,<br /> +A boor is answered silently” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +he quoted against her, shouting with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +She went indoors. Paul went with the boys into the orchard, where they had +rigged up a parallel bar. They did feats of strength. He was more agile than +strong, but it served. He fingered a piece of apple-blossom that hung low on a +swinging bough. +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t get the apple-blossom,” said Edgar, the eldest +brother. “There’ll be no apples next year.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wasn’t going to get it,” replied Paul, going away. +</p> + +<p> +The boys felt hostile to him; they were more interested in their own pursuits. +He wandered back to the house to look for his mother. As he went round the +back, he saw Miriam kneeling in front of the hen-coop, some maize in her hand, +biting her lip, and crouching in an intense attitude. The hen was eyeing her +wickedly. Very gingerly she put forward her hand. The hen bobbed for her. She +drew back quickly with a cry, half of fear, half of chagrin. +</p> + +<p> +“It won’t hurt you,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +She flushed crimson and started up. +</p> + +<p> +“I only wanted to try,” she said in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +“See, it doesn’t hurt,” he said, and, putting only two corns +in his palm, he let the hen peck, peck, peck at his bare hand. “It only +makes you laugh,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She put her hand forward and dragged it away, tried again, and started back +with a cry. He frowned. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, I’d let her take corn from my face,” said Paul, +“only she bumps a bit. She’s ever so neat. If she wasn’t, +look how much ground she’d peck up every day.” +</p> + +<p> +He waited grimly, and watched. At last Miriam let the bird peck from her hand. +She gave a little cry—fear, and pain because of fear—rather +pathetic. But she had done it, and she did it again. +</p> + +<p> +“There, you see,” said the boy. “It doesn’t hurt, does +it?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with dilated dark eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she laughed, trembling. +</p> + +<p> +Then she rose and went indoors. She seemed to be in some way resentful of the +boy. +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks I’m only a common girl,” she thought, and she +wanted to prove she was a grand person like the “Lady of the Lake”. +</p> + +<p> +Paul found his mother ready to go home. She smiled on her son. He took the +great bunch of flowers. Mr. and Mrs. Leivers walked down the fields with them. +The hills were golden with evening; deep in the woods showed the darkening +purple of bluebells. It was everywhere perfectly stiff, save for the rustling +of leaves and birds. +</p> + +<p> +“But it is a beautiful place,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Mr. Leivers; “it’s a nice little place, +if only it weren’t for the rabbits. The pasture’s bitten down to +nothing. I dunno if ever I s’ll get the rent off it.” +</p> + +<p> +He clapped his hands, and the field broke into motion near the woods, brown +rabbits hopping everywhere. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you believe it!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +She and Paul went on alone together. +</p> + +<p> +“Wasn’t it lovely, mother?” he said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +A thin moon was coming out. His heart was full of happiness till it hurt. His +mother had to chatter, because she, too, wanted to cry with happiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Now <i>wouldn’t</i> I help that man!” she said. +“<i>Wouldn’t</i> I see to the fowls and the young stock! And +<i>I’d</i> learn to milk, and <i>I’d</i> talk with him, and +<i>I’d</i> plan with him. My word, if I were his wife, the farm would be +run, I know! But there, she hasn’t the strength—she simply +hasn’t the strength. She ought never to have been burdened like it, you +know. I’m sorry for her, and I’m sorry for him too. My word, if +<i>I’d</i> had him, I shouldn’t have thought him a bad husband! Not +that she does either; and she’s very lovable.” +</p> + +<p> +William came home again with his sweetheart at the Whitsuntide. He had one week +of his holidays then. It was beautiful weather. As a rule, William and Lily and +Paul went out in the morning together for a walk. William did not talk to his +beloved much, except to tell her things from his boyhood. Paul talked endlessly +to both of them. They lay down, all three, in a meadow by Minton Church. On one +side, by the Castle Farm, was a beautiful quivering screen of poplars. Hawthorn +was dropping from the hedges; penny daisies and ragged robin were in the field, +like laughter. William, a big fellow of twenty-three, thinner now and even a +bit gaunt, lay back in the sunshine and dreamed, while she fingered with his +hair. Paul went gathering the big daisies. She had taken off her hat; her hair +was black as a horse’s mane. Paul came back and threaded daisies in her +jet-black hair—big spangles of white and yellow, and just a pink touch of +ragged robin. +</p> + +<p> +“Now you look like a young witch-woman,” the boy said to her. +“Doesn’t she, William?” +</p> + +<p> +Lily laughed. William opened his eyes and looked at her. In his gaze was a +certain baffled look of misery and fierce appreciation. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he made a sight of me?” she asked, laughing down on her lover. +</p> + +<p> +“That he has!” said William, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her. Her beauty seemed to hurt him. He glanced at her +flower-decked head and frowned. +</p> + +<p> +“You look nice enough, if that’s what you want to know,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +And she walked without her hat. In a little while William recovered, and was +rather tender to her. Coming to a bridge, he carved her initials and his in a +heart. +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:35%;"> +<img src="images/heart.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="heart " /><br /><br /> +</div> + +<p> +She watched his strong, nervous hand, with its glistening hairs and freckles, +as he carved, and she seemed fascinated by it. +</p> + +<p> +All the time there was a feeling of sadness and warmth, and a certain +tenderness in the house, whilst William and Lily were at home. But often he got +irritable. She had brought, for an eight-days’ stay, five dresses and six +blouses. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, would you mind,” she said to Annie, “washing me these +two blouses, and these things?” +</p> + +<p> +And Annie stood washing when William and Lily went out the next morning. Mrs. +Morel was furious. And sometimes the young man, catching a glimpse of his +sweetheart’s attitude towards his sister, hated her. +</p> + +<p> +On Sunday morning she looked very beautiful in a dress of foulard, silky and +sweeping, and blue as a jay-bird’s feather, and in a large cream hat +covered with many roses, mostly crimson. Nobody could admire her enough. But in +the evening, when she was going out, she asked again: +</p> + +<p> +“Chubby, have you got my gloves?” +</p> + +<p> +“Which?” asked William. +</p> + +<p> +“My new black <i>suède</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a hunt. She had lost them. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here, mother,” said William, “that’s the fourth +pair she’s lost since Christmas—at five shillings a pair!” +</p> + +<p> +“You only gave me <i>two</i> of them,” she remonstrated. +</p> + +<p> +And in the evening, after supper, he stood on the hearthrug whilst she sat on +the sofa, and he seemed to hate her. In the afternoon he had left her whilst he +went to see some old friend. She had sat looking at a book. After supper +William wanted to write a letter. +</p> + +<p> +“Here is your book, Lily,” said Mrs. Morel. “Would you care +to go on with it for a few minutes?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank you,” said the girl. “I will sit still.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it is so dull.” +</p> + +<p> +William scribbled irritably at a great rate. As he sealed the envelope he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Read a book! Why, she’s never read a book in her life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, go along!” said Mrs. Morel, cross with the exaggeration, +</p> + +<p> +“It’s true, mother—she hasn’t,” he cried, jumping +up and taking his old position on the hearthrug. “She’s never read +a book in her life.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Er’s like me,” chimed in Morel. “’Er +canna see what there is i’ books, ter sit borin’ your nose in +’em for, nor more can I.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you shouldn’t say these things,” said Mrs. Morel to her +son. +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s true, mother—she <i>can’t</i> read. What did +you give her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I gave her a little thing of Annie Swan’s. Nobody wants to +read dry stuff on Sunday afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll bet she didn’t read ten lines of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are mistaken,” said his mother. +</p> + +<p> +All the time Lily sat miserably on the sofa. He turned to her swiftly. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Did</i> you read any?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I did,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“How much?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know how many pages.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me <i>one thing</i> you read.” +</p> + +<p> +She could not. +</p> + +<p> +She never got beyond the second page. He read a great deal, and had a quick, +active intelligence. She could understand nothing but love-making and chatter. +He was accustomed to having all his thoughts sifted through his mother’s +mind; so, when he wanted companionship, and was asked in reply to be the +billing and twittering lover, he hated his betrothed. +</p> + +<p> +“You know, mother,” he said, when he was alone with her at night, +“she’s no idea of money, she’s so wessel-brained. When +she’s paid, she’ll suddenly buy such rot as <i>marrons glacés</i>, +and then <i>I</i> have to buy her season-ticket, and her extras, even her +underclothing. And she wants to get married, and I think myself we might as +well get married next year. But at this rate—” +</p> + +<p> +“A fine mess of a marriage it would be,” replied his mother. +“I should consider it again, my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, I’ve gone too far to break off now,” he said, +“and so I shall get married as soon as I can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, my boy. If you will, you will, and there’s no stopping +you; but I tell you, I can’t sleep when I think about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, she’ll be all right, mother. We shall manage.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she lets you buy her underclothing?” asked the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he began apologetically, “she didn’t ask me; +but one morning—and it <i>was</i> cold—I found her on the station +shivering, not able to keep still; so I asked her if she was well wrapped up. +She said: ‘I think so.’ So I said: ‘Have you got warm +underthings on?’ And she said: ‘No, they were cotton.’ I +asked her why on earth she hadn’t got something thicker on in weather +like that, and she said because she <i>had</i> nothing. And there she +is—a bronchial subject! I <i>had</i> to take her and get some warm +things. Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind the money if we had any. And, you +know, she <i>ought</i> to keep enough to pay for her season-ticket; but no, she +comes to me about that, and I have to find the money.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a poor lookout,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +He was pale, and his rugged face, that used to be so perfectly careless and +laughing, was stamped with conflict and despair. +</p> + +<p> +“But I can’t give her up now; it’s gone too far,” he +said. “And, besides, for <i>some</i> things I couldn’t do without +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“My boy, remember you’re taking your life in your hands,” +said Mrs. Morel. “<i>Nothing</i> is as bad as a marriage that’s a +hopeless failure. Mine was bad enough, God knows, and ought to teach you +something; but it might have been worse by a long chalk.” +</p> + +<p> +He leaned with his back against the side of the chimney-piece, his hands in his +pockets. He was a big, raw-boned man, who looked as if he would go to the +world’s end if he wanted to. But she saw the despair on his face. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t give her up now,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, “remember there are worse wrongs than +breaking off an engagement.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t give her up <i>now</i>,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The clock ticked on; mother and son remained in silence, a conflict between +them; but he would say no more. At last she said: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, go to bed, my son. You’ll feel better in the morning, and +perhaps you’ll know better.” +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her, and went. She raked the fire. Her heart was heavy now as it had +never been. Before, with her husband, things had seemed to be breaking down in +her, but they did not destroy her power to live. Now her soul felt lamed in +itself. It was her hope that was struck. +</p> + +<p> +And so often William manifested the same hatred towards his betrothed. On the +last evening at home he was railing against her. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “if you don’t believe me, what +she’s like, would you believe she has been confirmed three times?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” laughed Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense or not, she <i>has!</i> That’s what confirmation means +for her—a bit of a theatrical show where she can cut a figure.” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t, Mrs. Morel!” cried the girl—“I +haven’t! it is not true!” +</p> + +<p> +“What!” he cried, flashing round on her. “Once in Bromley, +once in Beckenham, and once somewhere else.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nowhere else!” she said, in tears—“nowhere +else!” +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>was!</i> And if it wasn’t why were you confirmed +<i>twice?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Once I was only fourteen, Mrs. Morel,” she pleaded, tears in her +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel; “I can quite understand it, child. +Take no notice of him. You ought to be ashamed, William, saying such +things.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s true. She’s religious—she had blue velvet +Prayer-Books—and she’s not as much religion, or anything else, in +her than that table-leg. Gets confirmed three times for show, to show herself +off, and that’s how she is in +<i>everything</i>—<i>everything!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +The girl sat on the sofa, crying. She was not strong. +</p> + +<p> +“As for <i>love!</i>” he cried, “you might as well ask a fly +to love you! It’ll love settling on you—” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, say no more,” commanded Mrs. Morel. “If you want to say +these things, you must find another place than this. I am ashamed of you, +William! Why don’t you be more manly. To do nothing but find fault with a +girl, and then pretend you’re engaged to her!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel subsided in wrath and indignation. +</p> + +<p> +William was silent, and later he repented, kissed and comforted the girl. Yet +it was true, what he had said. He hated her. +</p> + +<p> +When they were going away, Mrs. Morel accompanied them as far as Nottingham. It +was a long way to Keston station. +</p> + +<p> +“You know, mother,” he said to her, “Gyp’s shallow. +Nothing goes deep with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“William, I <i>wish</i> you wouldn’t say these things,” said +Mrs. Morel, very uncomfortable for the girl who walked beside her. +</p> + +<p> +“But it doesn’t, mother. She’s very much in love with me now, +but if I died she’d have forgotten me in three months.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel was afraid. Her heart beat furiously, hearing the quiet bitterness +of her son’s last speech. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” she replied. “You <i>don’t</i> know, +and therefore you’ve no right to say such a thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s always saying these things!” cried the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“In three months after I was buried you’d have somebody else, and I +should be forgotten,” he said. “And that’s your love!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel saw them into the train in Nottingham, then she returned home. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s one comfort,” she said to +Paul—“he’ll never have any money to marry on, that I +<i>am</i> sure of. And so she’ll save him that way.” +</p> + +<p> +So she took cheer. Matters were not yet very desperate. She firmly believed +William would never marry his Gipsy. She waited, and she kept Paul near to her. +</p> + +<p> +All summer long William’s letters had a feverish tone; he seemed +unnatural and intense. Sometimes he was exaggeratedly jolly, usually he was +flat and bitter in his letter. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” his mother said, “I’m afraid he’s ruining +himself against that creature, who isn’t worthy of his love—no, no +more than a rag doll.” +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to come home. The midsummer holiday was gone; it was a long while to +Christmas. He wrote in wild excitement, saying he could come for Saturday and +Sunday at Goose Fair, the first week in October. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not well, my boy,” said his mother, when she saw him. She +was almost in tears at having him to herself again. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’ve not been well,” he said. “I’ve seemed +to have a dragging cold all the last month, but it’s going, I +think.” +</p> + +<p> +It was sunny October weather. He seemed wild with joy, like a schoolboy +escaped; then again he was silent and reserved. He was more gaunt than ever, +and there was a haggard look in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You are doing too much,” said his mother to him. +</p> + +<p> +He was doing extra work, trying to make some money to marry on, he said. He +only talked to his mother once on the Saturday night; then he was sad and +tender about his beloved. +</p> + +<p> +“And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she’d be +broken-hearted for two months, and then she’d start to forget me. +You’d see, she’d never come home here to look at my grave, not even +once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, William,” said his mother, “you’re not going to +die, so why talk about it?” +</p> + +<p> +“But whether or not—” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“And she can’t help it. She is like that, and if you choose +her—well, you can’t grumble,” said his mother. +</p> + +<p> +On the Sunday morning, as he was putting his collar on: +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” he said to his mother, holding up his chin, “what a +rash my collar’s made under my chin!” +</p> + +<p> +Just at the junction of chin and throat was a big red inflammation. +</p> + +<p> +“It ought not to do that,” said his mother. “Here, put a bit +of this soothing ointment on. You should wear different collars.” +</p> + +<p> +He went away on Sunday midnight, seeming better and more solid for his two days +at home. +</p> + +<p> +On Tuesday morning came a telegram from London that he was ill. Mrs. Morel got +off her knees from washing the floor, read the telegram, called a neighbour, +went to her landlady and borrowed a sovereign, put on her things, and set off. +She hurried to Keston, caught an express for London in Nottingham. She had to +wait in Nottingham nearly an hour. A small figure in her black bonnet, she was +anxiously asking the porters if they knew how to get to Elmers End. The journey +was three hours. She sat in her corner in a kind of stupor, never moving. At +King’s Cross still no one could tell her how to get to Elmers End. +Carrying her string bag, that contained her nightdress, a comb and brush, she +went from person to person. At last they sent her underground to Cannon Street. +</p> + +<p> +It was six o’clock when she arrived at William’s lodging. The +blinds were not down. +</p> + +<p> +“How is he?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No better,” said the landlady. +</p> + +<p> +She followed the woman upstairs. William lay on the bed, with bloodshot eyes, +his face rather discoloured. The clothes were tossed about, there was no fire +in the room, a glass of milk stood on the stand at his bedside. No one had been +with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my son!” said the mother bravely. +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer. He looked at her, but did not see her. Then he began to say, +in a dull voice, as if repeating a letter from dictation: “Owing to a +leakage in the hold of this vessel, the sugar had set, and become converted +into rock. It needed hacking—” +</p> + +<p> +He was quite unconscious. It had been his business to examine some such cargo +of sugar in the Port of London. +</p> + +<p> +“How long has he been like this?” the mother asked the landlady. +</p> + +<p> +“He got home at six o’clock on Monday morning, and he seemed to +sleep all day; then in the night we heard him talking, and this morning he +asked for you. So I wired, and we fetched the doctor.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you have a fire made?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor came. It was pneumonia, and, he said, a peculiar erysipelas, which +had started under the chin where the collar chafed, and was spreading over the +face. He hoped it would not get to the brain. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse. She prayed for William, prayed that he would +recognise her. But the young man’s face grew more discoloured. In the +night she struggled with him. He raved, and raved, and would not come to +consciousness. At two o’clock, in a dreadful paroxysm, he died. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel sat perfectly still for an hour in the lodging bedroom; then she +roused the household. +</p> + +<p> +At six o’clock, with the aid of the charwoman, she laid him out; then she +went round the dreary London village to the registrar and the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +At nine o’clock to the cottage on Scargill Street came another wire: +</p> + +<p> +“William died last night. Let father come, bring money.” +</p> + +<p> +Annie, Paul, and Arthur were at home; Mr. Morel was gone to work. The three +children said not a word. Annie began to whimper with fear; Paul set off for +his father. +</p> + +<p> +It was a beautiful day. At Brinsley pit the white steam melted slowly in the +sunshine of a soft blue sky; the wheels of the headstocks twinkled high up; the +screen, shuffling its coal into the trucks, made a busy noise. +</p> + +<p> +“I want my father; he’s got to go to London,” said the boy to +the first man he met on the bank. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha wants Walter Morel? Go in theer an’ tell Joe Ward.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul went into the little top office. +</p> + +<p> +“I want my father; he’s got to go to London.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thy feyther? Is he down? What’s his name?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Morel.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, Walter? Is owt amiss?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s got to go to London.” +</p> + +<p> +The man went to the telephone and rang up the bottom office. +</p> + +<p> +“Walter Morel’s wanted, number 42, Hard. Summat’s amiss; +there’s his lad here.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he turned round to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll be up in a few minutes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul wandered out to the pit-top. He watched the chair come up, with its wagon +of coal. The great iron cage sank back on its rest, a full carfle was hauled +off, an empty tram run on to the chair, a bell ting’ed somewhere, the +chair heaved, then dropped like a stone. +</p> + +<p> +Paul did not realise William was dead; it was impossible, with such a bustle +going on. The puller-off swung the small truck on to the turn-table, another +man ran with it along the bank down the curving lines. +</p> + +<p> +“And William is dead, and my mother’s in London, and what will she +be doing?” the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum. +</p> + +<p> +He watched chair after chair come up, and still no father. At last, standing +beside a wagon, a man’s form! the chair sank on its rests, Morel stepped +off. He was slightly lame from an accident. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it thee, Paul? Is ’e worse?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to go to London.” +</p> + +<p> +The two walked off the pit-bank, where men were watching curiously. As they +came out and went along the railway, with the sunny autumn field on one side +and a wall of trucks on the other, Morel said in a frightened voice: +</p> + +<p> +“’E’s niver gone, child?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“When wor’t?” +</p> + +<p> +“Last night. We had a telegram from my mother.” +</p> + +<p> +Morel walked on a few strides, then leaned up against a truck-side, his hand +over his eyes. He was not crying. Paul stood looking round, waiting. On the +weighing machine a truck trundled slowly. Paul saw everything, except his +father leaning against the truck as if he were tired. +</p> + +<p> +Morel had only once before been to London. He set off, scared and peaked, to +help his wife. That was on Tuesday. The children were left alone in the house. +Paul went to work, Arthur went to school, and Annie had in a friend to be with +her. +</p> + +<p> +On Saturday night, as Paul was turning the corner, coming home from Keston, he +saw his mother and father, who had come to Sethley Bridge Station. They were +walking in silence in the dark, tired, straggling apart. The boy waited. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” he said, in the darkness. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel’s small figure seemed not to observe. He spoke again. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul!” she said, uninterestedly. +</p> + +<p> +She let him kiss her, but she seemed unaware of him. +</p> + +<p> +In the house she was the same—small, white, and mute. She noticed +nothing, she said nothing, only: +</p> + +<p> +“The coffin will be here to-night, Walter. You’d better see about +some help.” Then, turning to the children: “We’re bringing +him home.” +</p> + +<p> +Then she relapsed into the same mute looking into space, her hands folded on +her lap. Paul, looking at her, felt he could not breathe. The house was dead +silent. +</p> + +<p> +“I went to work, mother,” he said plaintively. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you?” she answered, dully. +</p> + +<p> +After half an hour Morel, troubled and bewildered, came in again. +</p> + +<p> +“Wheer s’ll we ha’e him when he <i>does</i> come?” he +asked his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“In the front-room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’d better shift th’ table?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“An’ ha’e him across th’ chairs?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know there—Yes, I suppose so.” +</p> + +<p> +Morel and Paul went, with a candle, into the parlour. There was no gas there. +The father unscrewed the top of the big mahogany oval table, and cleared the +middle of the room; then he arranged six chairs opposite each other, so that +the coffin could stand on their beds. +</p> + +<p> +“You niver seed such a length as he is!” said the miner, and +watching anxiously as he worked. +</p> + +<p> +Paul went to the bay window and looked out. The ash-tree stood monstrous and +black in front of the wide darkness. It was a faintly luminous night. Paul went +back to his mother. +</p> + +<p> +At ten o’clock Morel called: +</p> + +<p> +“He’s here!” +</p> + +<p> +Everyone started. There was a noise of unbarring and unlocking the front door, +which opened straight from the night into the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Bring another candle,” called Morel. +</p> + +<p> +Annie and Arthur went. Paul followed with his mother. He stood with his arm +round her waist in the inner doorway. Down the middle of the cleared room +waited six chairs, face to face. In the window, against the lace curtains, +Arthur held up one candle, and by the open door, against the night, Annie stood +leaning forward, her brass candlestick glittering. +</p> + +<p> +There was the noise of wheels. Outside in the darkness of the street below Paul +could see horses and a black vehicle, one lamp, and a few pale faces; then some +men, miners, all in their shirt-sleeves, seemed to struggle in the obscurity. +Presently two men appeared, bowed beneath a great weight. It was Morel and his +neighbour. +</p> + +<p> +“Steady!” called Morel, out of breath. +</p> + +<p> +He and his fellow mounted the steep garden step, heaved into the candlelight +with their gleaming coffin-end. Limbs of other men were seen struggling behind. +Morel and Burns, in front, staggered; the great dark weight swayed. +</p> + +<p> +“Steady, steady!” cried Morel, as if in pain. +</p> + +<p> +All the six bearers were up in the small garden, holding the great coffin +aloft. There were three more steps to the door. The yellow lamp of the carriage +shone alone down the black road. +</p> + +<p> +“Now then!” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +The coffin swayed, the men began to mount the three steps with their load. +Annie’s candle flickered, and she whimpered as the first men appeared, +and the limbs and bowed heads of six men struggled to climb into the room, +bearing the coffin that rode like sorrow on their living flesh. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my son—my son!” Mrs. Morel sang softly, and each time +the coffin swung to the unequal climbing of the men: “Oh, my son—my +son—my son!” +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” Paul whimpered, his hand round her waist. +</p> + +<p> +She did not hear. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my son—my son!” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +Paul saw drops of sweat fall from his father’s brow. Six men were in the +room—six coatless men, with yielding, struggling limbs, filling the room +and knocking against the furniture. The coffin veered, and was gently lowered +on to the chairs. The sweat fell from Morel’s face on its boards. +</p> + +<p> +“My word, he’s a weight!” said a man, and the five miners +sighed, bowed, and, trembling with the struggle, descended the steps again, +closing the door behind them. +</p> + +<p> +The family was alone in the parlour with the great polished box. William, when +laid out, was six feet four inches long. Like a monument lay the bright brown, +ponderous coffin. Paul thought it would never be got out of the room again. His +mother was stroking the polished wood. +</p> + +<p> +They buried him on the Monday in the little cemetery on the hillside that looks +over the fields at the big church and the houses. It was sunny, and the white +chrysanthemums frilled themselves in the warmth. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel could not be persuaded, after this, to talk and take her old bright +interest in life. She remained shut off. All the way home in the train she had +said to herself: “If only it could have been me!” +</p> + +<p> +When Paul came home at night he found his mother sitting, her day’s work +done, with hands folded in her lap upon her coarse apron. She always used to +have changed her dress and put on a black apron, before. Now Annie set his +supper, and his mother sat looking blankly in front of her, her mouth shut +tight. Then he beat his brains for news to tell her. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother, Miss Jordan was down to-day, and she said my sketch of a +colliery at work was beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +But Mrs. Morel took no notice. Night after night he forced himself to tell her +things, although she did not listen. It drove him almost insane to have her +thus. At last: +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a-matter, mother?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She did not hear. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a-matter?” he persisted. “Mother, what’s +a-matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know what’s the matter,” she said irritably, turning +away. +</p> + +<p> +The lad—he was sixteen years old—went to bed drearily. He was cut +off and wretched through October, November and December. His mother tried, but +she could not rouse herself. She could only brood on her dead son; he had been +let to die so cruelly. +</p> + +<p> +At last, on December 23, with his five shillings Christmas-box in his pocket, +Paul wandered blindly home. His mother looked at him, and her heart stood +still. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m badly, mother!” he replied. “Mr. Jordan gave me +five shillings for a Christmas-box!” +</p> + +<p> +He handed it to her with trembling hands. She put it on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“You aren’t glad!” he reproached her; but he trembled +violently. +</p> + +<p> +“Where hurts you?” she said, unbuttoning his overcoat. +</p> + +<p> +It was the old question. +</p> + +<p> +“I feel badly, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +She undressed him and put him to bed. He had pneumonia dangerously, the doctor +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Might he never have had it if I’d kept him at home, not let him go +to Nottingham?” was one of the first things she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He might not have been so bad,” said the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel stood condemned on her own ground. +</p> + +<p> +“I should have watched the living, not the dead,” she told herself. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was very ill. His mother lay in bed at nights with him; they could not +afford a nurse. He grew worse, and the crisis approached. One night he tossed +into consciousness in the ghastly, sickly feeling of dissolution, when all the +cells in the body seem in intense irritability to be breaking down, and +consciousness makes a last flare of struggle, like madness. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll die, mother!” he cried, heaving for breath on the +pillow. +</p> + +<p> +She lifted him up, crying in a small voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my son—my son!” +</p> + +<p> +That brought him to. He realised her. His whole will rose up and arrested him. +He put his head on her breast, and took ease of her for love. +</p> + +<p> +“For some things,” said his aunt, “it was a good thing Paul +was ill that Christmas. I believe it saved his mother.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul was in bed for seven weeks. He got up white and fragile. His father had +bought him a pot of scarlet and gold tulips. They used to flame in the window +in the March sunshine as he sat on the sofa chattering to his mother. The two +knitted together in perfect intimacy. Mrs. Morel’s life now rooted itself +in Paul. +</p> + +<p> +William had been a prophet. Mrs. Morel had a little present and a letter from +Lily at Christmas. Mrs. Morel’s sister had a letter at the New Year. +</p> + +<p> +“I was at a ball last night. Some delightful people were there, and I +enjoyed myself thoroughly,” said the letter. “I had every +dance—did not sit out one.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel never heard any more of her. +</p> + +<p> +Morel and his wife were gentle with each other for some time after the death of +their son. He would go into a kind of daze, staring wide-eyed and blank across +the room. Then he got up suddenly and hurried out to the Three Spots, returning +in his normal state. But never in his life would he go for a walk up Shepstone, +past the office where his son had worked, and he always avoided the cemetery. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part02"></a>PART TWO</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII<br/> +LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam appeared in the doorway. She was nearly sixteen, very beautiful, with +her warm colouring, her gravity, her eyes dilating suddenly like an ecstasy. +</p> + +<p> +“I say,” said Paul, turning shyly aside, “your daffodils are +nearly out. Isn’t it early? But don’t they look cold?” +</p> + +<p> +“Cold!” said Miriam, in her musical, caressing voice. +</p> + +<p> +“The green on their buds—” and he faltered into silence +timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me take the rug,” said Miriam over-gently. +</p> + +<p> +“I can carry it,” he answered, rather injured. But he yielded it to +her. +</p> + +<p> +Then Mrs. Leivers appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure you’re tired and cold,” she said. “Let +me take your coat. It <i>is</i> heavy. You mustn’t walk far in it.” +</p> + +<p> +She helped him off with his coat. He was quite unused to such attention. She +was almost smothered under its weight. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She beat up the sofa cushions for the youth. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you lie down?” said Mrs. Leivers. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can I give you anything to eat or to drink?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +“How’s your mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Mrs. Leivers. “It’s a wonder she +isn’t ill herself.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh <i>dear</i>, Miriam,” she cried, “these potatoes have +boiled dry!” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam started as if she had been stung. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Have</i> they, mother?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t care, Miriam,” said the mother, “if I +hadn’t trusted them to you.” She peered into the pan. +</p> + +<p> +The girl stiffened as if from a blow. Her dark eyes dilated; she remained +standing in the same spot. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she answered, gripped tight in self-conscious shame, +“I’m sure I looked at them five minutes since.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said the mother, “I know it’s easily +done.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re not much burned,” said Paul. “It doesn’t +matter, does it?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Leivers looked at the youth with her brown, hurt eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” thought Paul to himself, “you shouldn’t let +them make a trouble.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Dinner ready?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nearly, Edgar,” replied the mother apologetically. +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“These potatoes are burnt, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Edgar. I forgot them for a minute. Perhaps you’ll have bread +if you can’t eat them.” +</p> + +<p> +Edgar looked in anger across at Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“What was Miriam doing that she couldn’t attend to them?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure she was trying hard,” said the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“She hasn’t got sense even to boil the potatoes,” said Edgar. +“What is she kept at home for?” +</p> + +<p> +“On’y for eating everything that’s left in th’ +pantry,” said Maurice. +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t forget that potato-pie against our Miriam,” +laughed the father. +</p> + +<p> +She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence, suffering, like some +saint out of place at the brutal board. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely. Later in the afternoon, when they +had gone away again, her mother said: +</p> + +<p> +“You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl dropped her head. +</p> + +<p> +“They are such <i>brutes!</i>” she suddenly cried, looking up with +flashing eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“But hadn’t you promised not to answer them?” said the +mother. “And I believed in you. I <i>can’t</i> stand it when you +wrangle.” +</p> + +<p> +“But they’re so hateful!” cried Miriam, “and—and +<i>low</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, dear. But how often have I asked you not to answer Edgar back? +Can’t you let him say what he likes?” +</p> + +<p> +“But why should he say what he likes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you strong enough to bear it, Miriam, if even for my sake? +Are you so weak that you must wrangle with them?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>do</i> want you to see this,” said Mrs. Leivers. +</p> + +<p> +He crouched down and carefully put his finger through the thorns into the round +door of the nest. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I like them,” he said, “when their petals go flat back with +the sunshine. They seemed to be pressing themselves at the sun.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +So it was in this atmosphere of subtle intimacy, this meeting in their common +feeling for something in Nature, that their love started. +</p> + +<p> +Personally, he was a long time before he realised 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you come with me on to the fallow?” asked Edgar, rather +hesitatingly. +</p> + +<p> +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 “<i>les derniers +fils d’une race épuisée</i>”. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Have you seen the swing?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he answered. “Where?” +</p> + +<p> +“In the cowshed,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on, then,” he replied, jumping up. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s something like a rope!” he exclaimed appreciatively; +and he sat down on it, anxious to try it. Then immediately he rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on, then, and have first go,” he said to the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on, then,” he said to her. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I won’t go first,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +She stood aside in her still, aloof fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“You go,” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, sitting down. “Mind out!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a treat of a swing,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know a bird was watching,” he called. +</p> + +<p> +He swung negligently. She could feel him falling and lifting through the air, +as if he were lying on some force. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had a long turn,” he said. “But it’s a +treat of a swing—it’s a real treat of a swing!” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam was amused that he took a swing so seriously and felt so warmly over it. +</p> + +<p> +“No; you go on,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, don’t you want one?” he asked, astonished. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, not much. I’ll have just a little.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat down, whilst he kept the bags in place for her. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s so ripping!” he said, setting her in motion. +“Keep your heels up, or they’ll bang the manger-wall.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” she laughed in fear. “No higher!” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’re not a <i>bit</i> high,” he remonstrated. +</p> + +<p> +“But no higher.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you really go any farther?” he asked. “Should I +keep you there?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; let me go by myself,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +He moved aside and watched her. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you’re scarcely moving,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed slightly with shame, and in a moment got down. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Why do I like this so?” +</p> + +<p> +Always something in his breast shrank from these close, intimate, dazzled looks +of hers. +</p> + +<p> +“Why <i>do</i> you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. It seems so true.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you always sad?” he asked her. +</p> + +<p> +“Sad!” she exclaimed, looking up at him with startled, wonderful +brown eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied. “You are always sad.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not—oh, not a bit!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“But even your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness,” he +persisted. “You’re never jolly, or even just all right.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she pondered. “I wonder—why?” +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, my Hubert!” she sang, in a voice heavy and surcharged with +love. “Eh, my Hubert!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t!” said the child, uneasy—“don’t, +Miriam!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t!” repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow. +</p> + +<p> +“You love me, don’t you?” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you make such a <i>fuss</i> for?” cried Paul, all in +suffering because of her extreme emotion. “Why can’t you be +ordinary with him?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>the</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she cried, half laughing in terror—“no!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +She was very much dissatisfied with her lot. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you like being at home?” Paul asked her, surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>want</i> to be at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>have</i> I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Chance of what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of knowing anything—of learning, of doing anything. It’s not +fair, because I’m a woman.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s as well to be a woman as a man,” he said, frowning. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! Is it? Men have everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as men are to be +men,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“No!”—she shook her head—“no! Everything the men +have.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what do you want?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to learn. Why <i>should</i> it be that I know nothing?” +</p> + +<p> +“What! such as mathematics and French?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why <i>shouldn’t</i> I know mathematics? Yes!” she cried, +her eye expanding in a kind of defiance. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you can learn as much as I know,” he said. “I’ll +teach you, if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes dilated. She mistrusted him as teacher. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Her head had dropped, and she was sucking her finger broodingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said hesitatingly. +</p> + +<p> +He used to tell his mother all these things. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to teach Miriam algebra,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” replied Mrs. Morel, “I hope she’ll get fat on +it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” she said, soft and musical. “I knew it was +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” +</p> + +<p> +“I knew your step. Nobody treads so quick and firm.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat down, sighing. +</p> + +<p> +“Ready to do some algebra?” he asked, drawing a little book from +his pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“But—” +</p> + +<p> +He could feel her backing away. +</p> + +<p> +“You said you wanted,” he insisted. +</p> + +<p> +“To-night, though?” she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +“But I came on purpose. And if you want to learn it, you must +begin.” +</p> + +<p> +She took up her ashes in the dustpan and looked at him, half tremulously, +laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but to-night! You see, I haven’t thought of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my goodness! Take the ashes and come.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You know you like them,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He took a bite. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down,” he said, with his mouth full. +</p> + +<p> +She was short-sighted, and peered over his shoulder. It irritated him. He gave +her the book quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Here,” he said. “It’s only letters for figures. You +put down ‘<i>a</i>’ instead of ‘2’ or +‘6’.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he said. “What are you doing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Algebra,” replied Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t give me time to learn it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you tremble your <i>soul</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would look at him +reproachfully, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Paul, don’t be so hard on Miriam. She may not be quick, but +I’m sure she tries.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help it,” he said rather pitiably. “I go off +like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mind me, Miriam, do you?” he asked of the girl +later. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she reassured him in her beautiful deep +tones—“no, I don’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t mind me; it’s my fault.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“After all,” she said within herself, “if the land were +nationalised, Edgar and Paul and I would be just the same.” So she waited +for the youth to come back to her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I can do my best things when you sit there in your rocking-chair, +mother,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at his watch. +</p> + +<p> +“Nine o’clock!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The pair stood, loth to part, hugging their books. +</p> + +<p> +“The wood is so lovely now,” she said. “I wanted you to see +it.” +</p> + +<p> +He followed her slowly across the road to the white gate. +</p> + +<p> +“They grumble so if I’m late,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But you’re not doing anything wrong,” she answered +impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Down the middle path,” she murmured, quivering. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” she cried, hastening forward. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +There was a cool scent of ivory roses—a white, virgin scent. Something +made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The two walked in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather tired: +</p> + +<p> +“You have been far enough to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl, shrank. +</p> + +<p> +“You must have been right home with her,” his mother continued. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can’t get away from +her, but must go trailing eight miles at this time of night.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>do</i> like to talk to her,” he answered irritably. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there nobody else to talk to?” +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t say anything if I went with Edgar.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is <i>not</i> courting,” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what else you call it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not! Do you think we <i>spoon</i> and do? We only +talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Till goodness knows what time and distance,” was the sarcastic +rejoinder. +</p> + +<p> +Paul snapped at the laces of his boots angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you so mad about?” he asked. “Because you +don’t like her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t say I don’t like her. But I don’t hold with +children keeping company, and never did.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t mind our Annie going out with Jim Inger.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ve more sense than you two.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Our Annie’s not one of the deep sort.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I ought to have been in bed a long time ago,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, mother, you know you wouldn’t have gone before quarter-past +ten.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, I should!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, little woman, you’d say anything now you’re disagreeable +with me, wouldn’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then the next time he saw Miriam he said to her: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t let me be late to-night—not later than ten +o’clock. My mother gets so upset.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam dropped her bead, brooding. +</p> + +<p> +“Why does she get upset?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Because she says I oughtn’t to be out late when I have to get up +early.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well!” said Miriam, rather quietly, with just a touch of a +sneer. +</p> + +<p> +He resented that. And he was usually late again. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Paul! Paul! come and look!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked down the garden for his mother. Her head appeared among the young +currant-bushes. +</p> + +<p> +“Come here!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“What for?” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Come and see.” +</p> + +<p> +She had been looking at the buds on the currant trees. Paul went up. +</p> + +<p> +“To think,” she said, “that here I might never have seen +them!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s a marvel, now! I <i>thought</i> I knew every weed and +blade in this garden. But <i>haven’t</i> they done well? You see, that +gooseberry-bush just shelters them. Not nipped, not touched!” +</p> + +<p> +He crouched down and turned up the bells of the little blue flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re a glorious colour!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>blown</i> +here, can they?” +</p> + +<p> +Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash of bulbs to mature. +</p> + +<p> +“And you never told me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No! I thought I’d leave it till they might flower.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“See,” said Paul to Miriam, “what a quiet garden!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last he looked up. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” he exclaimed gratefully, “have you waited for +me!” +</p> + +<p> +She saw a deep shadow in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“The spring broken here;” and he showed her where his umbrella was +injured. +</p> + +<p> +Instantly, with some shame, she knew he had not done the damage himself, but +that Geoffrey was responsible. +</p> + +<p> +“It is only an old umbrella, isn’t it?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +She wondered why he, who did not usually trouble over trifles, made such a +mountain of this molehill. +</p> + +<p> +“But it was William’s an’ my mother can’t help but +know,” he said quietly, still patiently working at the umbrella. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on,” he said. “I can’t do it;” and they +went in silence along the road. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said, with an effort, “if one person loves, +the other does.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” she answered. “Like mother said to me when I was +little, ‘Love begets love.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, something like that, I think it <i>must</i> be.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope so, because, if it were not, love might be a very terrible +thing,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but it <i>is</i>—at least with most people,” he +answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam very rarely talked to the other lads. They at once became awkward in +conversation with her. So usually she was silent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Think of the Queen going up here!” said Miriam in a low voice, as +she climbed the hollow stairs. +</p> + +<p> +“If she could get up,” said Paul, “for she had rheumatism +like anything. I reckon they treated her rottenly.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t think she deserved it?” asked Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t. She was only lively.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They set off again gaily, looking round on their beloved manor that stood so +clean and big on its hill. +</p> + +<p> +“Supposing you could have <i>that</i> farm,” said Paul to Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” +</p> + +<p> +“Wouldn’t it be lovely to come and see you!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They had an hour to wait at Ambergate Station. Trains came, crowded with +excursionists returning to Manchester, Birmingham, and London. +</p> + +<p> +“We might be going there—folk easily might think we’re going +that far,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul’s come!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you glad?” said Agatha cuttingly. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam stood still in amazement and bewilderment. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, aren’t you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I’m not going to let him see it, and think I wanted +him.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Jimmy my lad, how are ter? Nobbut sick an’ sadly, like? Why, +then, it’s a shame, my owd lad.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“O Lord, let me not love Paul Morel. Keep me from loving him, if I ought +not to love him.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he asked, very short. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. Only I’d rather not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she faltered, “if you’d care to meet me, we +could still go together.” +</p> + +<p> +“Meet you where?” +</p> + +<p> +“Somewhere—where you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We aren’t lovers, we are friends,” he said to her. +“<i>We</i> know it. Let them talk. What does it matter what they +say.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come and look at the sweet-peas,” he said to the girl. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was rather offended at her laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“Some women do—those who look decent,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t let mater know,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evening, Mrs. Morel,” she said, in a deferential way. She +sounded as if she felt she had no right to be there. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, is it you, Miriam?” replied Mrs. Morel coolly. +</p> + +<p> +But Paul insisted on everybody’s accepting his friendship with the girl, +and Mrs. Morel was too wise to have any open rupture. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” interrupted Mrs. Morel, “what <i>is</i> the +‘Bride of Enderby’ that the bells are supposed to ring?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“And the people knew what that tune meant?” said his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—just like the Scotch when they heard ‘The Flowers +o’ the Forest’—and when they used to ring the bells backward +for alarm.” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” said Annie. “A bell sounds the same whether it’s +rung backwards or forwards.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +He ran up the scale. Everybody thought it clever. He thought so too. Then, +waiting a minute, he continued the poem. +</p> + +<p> +“Hm!” said Mrs. Morel curiously, when he finished. “But I +wish everything that’s written weren’t so sad.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> canna see what they want drownin’ theirselves for,” +said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. Annie got up to clear the table. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam rose to help with the pots. +</p> + +<p> +“Let <i>me</i> help to wash up,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly not,” cried Annie. “You sit down again. There +aren’t many.” +</p> + +<p> +And Miriam, who could not be familiar and insist, sat down again to look at the +book with Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Here!” she cried to a man. “Here!” +</p> + +<p> +Paul and Annie got behind the rest, convulsed with shamed laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“How much will it be to drive to Brook Cottage?” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Two shillings.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, how far is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“A good way.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +But she scrambled in. There were eight crowded in one old seaside carriage. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” said Mrs. Morel, “it’s only threepence each, +and if it were a tram-car—” +</p> + +<p> +They drove along. Each cottage they came to, Mrs. Morel cried: +</p> + +<p> +“Is it this? Now, this is it!” +</p> + +<p> +Everybody sat breathless. They drove past. There was a universal sigh. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m thankful it wasn’t that brute,” said Mrs. Morel. +“I <i>was</i> frightened.” They drove on and on. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You, Paul,” his mother called from the bedroom, “eat a piece +of bread-and-butter.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you said you’d have a real holiday,” said Paul, +“and now you work.” +</p> + +<p> +“Work!” she exclaimed. “What are you talking about!” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>her</i> man. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Come down lover’s lane<br /> +For a walk with me, talk with me.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” cried Miriam, when she saw it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” murmured Miriam, waiting for him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she murmured again. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the moon,” he answered, frowning. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she assented. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She +was curious about him. The crisis was past. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He loved to think of his mother, and the other jolly people. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, everybody else has been in long ago!” said his mother as +they entered. +</p> + +<p> +“What does that matter!” he cried irritably. “I can go a walk +if I like, can’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +“And I should have thought you could get in to supper with the +rest,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall please myself,” he retorted. “It’s not +<i>late</i>. I shall do as I like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said his mother cuttingly, “then <i>do</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +And Paul hated her because, somehow, she spoilt his ease and naturalness. And +he writhed himself with a feeling of humiliation. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br/> +STRIFE IN LOVE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He had not been at his work many months when again he did not come home one +night. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know where Arthur is?” asked Paul at breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not,” replied his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“He is a fool,” said Paul. “And if he <i>did</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know that it would make it any better if he did something +to make us all ashamed,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, <i>I</i> should respect him more,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“I very much doubt it,” said his mother coldly. +</p> + +<p> +They went on with breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you fearfully fond of him?” Paul asked his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you ask that for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because they say a woman always like the youngest best.” +</p> + +<p> +“She may do—but I don’t. No, he wearies me.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’d actually rather he was good?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather he showed some of a man’s common sense.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul was raw and irritable. He also wearied his mother very often. She saw the +sunshine going out of him, and she resented it. +</p> + +<p> +As they were finishing breakfast came the postman with a letter from Derby. +Mrs. Morel screwed up her eyes to look at the address. +</p> + +<p> +“Give it here, blind eye!” exclaimed her son, snatching it away +from her. +</p> + +<p> +She started, and almost boxed his ears. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s from your son, Arthur,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What now—!” cried Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. . . .’” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel sat down in her rocking-chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, <i>now</i>,” she cried, “let him stop!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Paul, “let him stop.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence. The mother sat with her hands folded in her apron, her face +set, thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“If I’m not <i>sick!</i>” she cried suddenly. +“Sick!” +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said Paul, beginning to frown, “you’re not going +to worry your soul out about this, do you hear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I’m to take it as a blessing,” she flashed, +turning on her son. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not going to mount it up to a tragedy, so there,” he +retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“The <i>fool!</i>—the young fool!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll look well in uniform,” said Paul irritatingly. +</p> + +<p> +His mother turned on him like a fury. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, will he!” she cried. “Not in my eyes!” +</p> + +<p> +“He should get in a cavalry regiment; he’ll have the time of his +life, and will look an awful swell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Swell!—<i>swell!</i>—a mighty swell idea indeed!—a +common soldier!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Paul, “what am I but a common clerk?” +</p> + +<p> +“A good deal, my boy!” cried his mother, stung. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, a <i>man</i>, and not a thing in a red coat.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +But his mother had ceased to listen. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>this?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“It may lick him into shape beautifully,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Lick him into shape!—lick what marrow there <i>was</i> out of his +bones. A <i>soldier!</i>—a common <i>soldier!</i>—nothing but a +body that makes movements when it hears a shout! It’s a fine +thing!” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t understand why it upsets you,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“No, perhaps you can’t. But <i>I</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. +</p> + +<p> +“And shall you go to Derby?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no good.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll see for myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And why on earth don’t you let him stop. It’s just what he +wants.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” cried the mother, “<i>you</i> know what he +wants!” +</p> + +<p> +She got ready and went by the first train to Derby, where she saw her son and +the sergeant. It was, however, no good. +</p> + +<p> +When Morel was having his dinner in the evening, she said suddenly: +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had to go to Derby to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +The miner turned up his eyes, showing the whites in his black face. +</p> + +<p> +“Has ter, lass. What took thee there?” +</p> + +<p> +“That Arthur!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—an’ what’s agate now?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s only enlisted.” +</p> + +<p> +Morel put down his knife and leaned back in his chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” he said, “that he niver ’as!” +</p> + +<p> +“And is going down to Aldershot to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“The idea!” cried Mrs. Morel. “Saying such a thing!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“A fat sight you have done as it is,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And Morel was almost ashamed to go to his public-house that evening. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, did you go?” said Paul to his mother when he came home. +</p> + +<p> +“I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“And could you see him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what did he say?” +</p> + +<p> +“He blubbered when I came away.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +“And so did I, so you needn’t ‘h’m’!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel fretted after her son. She knew he would not like the army. He did +not. The discipline was intolerable to him. +</p> + +<p> +“But the doctor,” she said with some pride to Paul, “said he +was perfectly proportioned—almost exactly; all his measurements were +correct. He <i>is</i> good-looking, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s awfully nice-looking. But he doesn’t fetch the girls +like William, does he?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; it’s a different character. He’s a good deal like his +father, irresponsible.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, how should I know, my boy!” +</p> + +<p> +“A first prize for those glass jars—” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +“And a first prize for that sketch up at Willey Farm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Both first?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +There was a rosy, bright look about her, though she said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nice,” he said, “isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you praise me up to the skies?” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“I should have the trouble of dragging you down again,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Name—Paul Morel—First Prize.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But she felt a proud woman. When she met well-dressed ladies going home to the +Park, she thought to herself: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you look very well—but I wonder if <i>your</i> son has two +first prizes in the Castle.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he said, “you didn’t tell me you were coming +to town.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” replied Miriam, half apologetically. “I drove in to +Cattle Market with father.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her companion. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve told you about Mrs. Dawes,” said Miriam huskily; she +was nervous. “Clara, do you know Paul?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you seen me?” Paul asked of the woman. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him as if she would not trouble to answer. Then: +</p> + +<p> +“Walking with Louie Travers,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Louie was one of the “Spiral” girls. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, do you know her?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer. He turned to Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“To the Castle.” +</p> + +<p> +“What train are you going home by?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am driving with father. I wish you could come too. What time are you +free?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know not till eight to-night, damn it!” +</p> + +<p> +And directly the two women moved on. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What are yer lookin’ at?” he sneered, bullying. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What’r yer lookin’ at, three hap’orth o’ +pap?” he snarled. +</p> + +<p> +The boy shrugged his shoulders slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why yer—!” shouted Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?” she asked quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“She doesn’t look very amiable,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“No, but don’t you think she’s a fine woman?” she said, +in a deep tone, +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—in stature. But without a grain of taste. I like her for some +things. <i>Is</i> she disagreeable?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so. I think she’s dissatisfied.” +</p> + +<p> +“What with?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—how would <i>you</i> like to be tied for life to a man like +that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did she marry him, then, if she was to have revulsions so +soon?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, why did she!” repeated Miriam bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“And I should have thought she had enough fight in her to match +him,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam bowed her head. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay?” she queried satirically. “What makes you think +so?” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at her mouth—made for passion—and the very setback of +her throat—” He threw his head back in Clara’s defiant +manner. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam bowed a little lower. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence for some moments, while he thought of Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“And what were the things you liked about her?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +He wondered why Miriam crouched there brooding in that strange way. It +irritated him. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t really like her, do you?” he asked the girl. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with her great, dazzled dark eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t—you can’t—not really.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what?” she asked slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, I don’t know—perhaps you like her because she’s +got a grudge against men.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +There were some crimson berries among the leaves in the bowl. He reached over +and pulled out a bunch. +</p> + +<p> +“If you put red berries in your hair,” he said, “why would +you look like some witch or priestess, and never like a reveller?” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed with a naked, painful sound. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +His vigorous warm hands were playing excitedly with the berries. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She bowed her head as if he were scolding her. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you could laugh at me just for one minute—just for one +minute. I feel as if it would set something free.” +</p> + +<p> +“But”—and she looked up at him with eyes frightened and +struggling—“I do laugh at you—I <i>do</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Slowly she shook her head despairingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I don’t want to,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so damned spiritual with <i>you</i> always!” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But, there, it’s autumn,” he said, “and everybody +feels like a disembodied spirit then.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You make me so spiritual!” he lamented. “And I don’t +want to be spiritual.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He gave a brief laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “get that French and we’ll do +some—some Verlaine.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 he 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. +</p> + +<p> +When he went into the barn for his bicycle he found the front wheel punctured. +</p> + +<p> +“Fetch me a drop of water in a bowl,” he said to her. “I +shall be late, and then I s’ll catch it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“There!” he said, rising suddenly. “Now, could you have done +it quicker?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +He straightened himself. His back was towards her. She put her two hands on his +sides, and ran them quickly down. +</p> + +<p> +“You are so <i>fine!</i>” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed, hating her voice, but his blood roused to a wave of flame by her +hands. She did not seem to realise <i>him</i> in all this. He might have been +an object. She never realised the male he was. +</p> + +<p> +He lighted his bicycle-lamp, bounced the machine on the barn floor to see that +the tyres were sound, and buttoned his coat. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all right!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She was trying the brakes, that she knew were broken. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you have them mended?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” +</p> + +<p> +“But why didn’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“The back one goes on a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s not safe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can use my toe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you’d had them mended,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t worry—come to tea to-morrow, with Edgar.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do—about four. I’ll come to meet you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Till to-morrow,” he said, jumping on his bicycle. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll take care, won’t you?” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“See, mother!” he said, as he threw her the berries and leaves on +to the table. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” she said, glancing at them, then away again. She sat +reading, alone, as she always did. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they pretty?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +He knew she was cross with him. After a few minutes he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Edgar and Miriam are coming to tea to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mind?” +</p> + +<p> +Still she did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“You know whether I mind or not.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see why you should. I have plenty of meals there.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why do you begrudge them tea?” +</p> + +<p> +“I begrudge whom tea?” +</p> + +<p> +“What are you so horrid for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, say no more! You’ve asked her to tea, it’s quite +sufficient. She’ll come.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam talked books a little. That was her unfailing topic. But Mrs. Morel was +not cordial, and turned soon to Edgar. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 hat 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you like her, mother?” he cried in despair. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +And he felt dreary and hopeless between the two. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t talk any more,” she pleaded softly, laying her hand on +his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +He lay quite still, almost unable to move. His body was somewhere discarded. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not? Are you tired?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and it wears you out.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed shortly, realising. +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you always make me like it,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t wish to,” she said, very low. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He went on, in his dead fashion: +</p> + +<p> +“If only you could want <i>me</i>, and not want what I can reel off for +you!” +</p> + +<p> +“I!” she cried bitterly—“I! Why, when would you let me +take you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +There was to be a little party at his house the next day, at which she was to +attend. +</p> + +<p> +“I shan’t come and meet you,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well; it’s not very nice out,” she replied slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Shut that doo-er!” bawled Morel furiously. +</p> + +<p> +Annie banged it behind her, and was gone. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he came running out of the scullery, with the soapy water dripping +from him, dithering with cold. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my sirs!” he said. “Wheer’s my towel?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“F-ff-f!” he went, pretending to shudder with cold. +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness, man, don’t be such a kid!” said Mrs. Morel. +“It’s <i>not</i> cold.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“And I shouldn’t make that fuss,” replied his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“No, tha’d drop down stiff, as dead as a door-knob, wi’ thy +nesh sides.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?” asked Paul, +curious. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would have some difficulty in blowing through yours,” said Mrs. +Morel. +</p> + +<p> +Morel looked down ruefully at his sides. +</p> + +<p> +“Me!” he exclaimed. “I’m nowt b’r a skinned +rabbit. My bones fair juts out on me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to know where,” retorted his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“Iv’ry-wheer! I’m nobbut a sack o’ faggots.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” he said to his father, “you had a good figure +once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh!” exclaimed the miner, glancing round, startled and timid, like +a child. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Me!” exclaimed Morel—“me a good figure! I wor niver +much more n’r a skeleton.” +</p> + +<p> +“Man!” cried his wife, “don’t be such a +pulamiter!” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Strewth!” he said. “Tha’s niver knowed me but +what I looked as if I wor goin’ off in a rapid decline.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Gi’e my back a bit of a wesh,” he asked her. +</p> + +<p> +His wife brought a well-soaped flannel and clapped it on his shoulders. He gave +a jump. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, tha mucky little ’ussy!” he cried. “Cowd as +death!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“The next world won’t be half hot enough for you,” she added. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said; “tha’lt see as it’s draughty for +me.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness, man!” cried Mrs. Morel, “get dressed!” +</p> + +<p> +“Should thee like to clap thysen into britches as cowd as a tub o’ +water?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Evenin’, missis,” he nodded to Mrs. Morel, and he seated +himself with a sigh. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evening,” she replied cordially. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha’s made thy heels crack,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno as I have,” said Barker. +</p> + +<p> +He sat, as the men always did in Morel’s kitchen, effacing himself +rather. +</p> + +<p> +“How’s missis?” she asked of him. +</p> + +<p> +He had told her some time back: +</p> + +<p> +“We’re expectin’ us third just now, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he answered, rubbing his head, “she keeps pretty +middlin’, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s see—when?” asked Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised any time now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! And she’s kept fairly?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, tidy.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a blessing, for she’s none too strong.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. An’ I’ve done another silly trick.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel knew Barker wouldn’t do anything very silly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m come be-out th’ market-bag.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can have mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, you’ll be wantin’ that yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shan’t. I take a string bag always.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I see you’ve kested me,” he said, smiling rather vapidly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Barker. +</p> + +<p> +The newcomer took off his cap and his big woollen muffler. His nose was pointed +and red. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you’re cold, Mr. Wesson,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a bit nippy,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Then come to the fire.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, I s’ll do where I am.” +</p> + +<p> +Both colliers sat away back. They could not be induced to come on to the +hearth. The hearth is sacred to the family. +</p> + +<p> +“Go thy ways i’ th’ armchair,” cried Morel cheerily. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, thank yer; I’m very nicely here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, come, of course,” insisted Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And how’s that chest of yours?” demanded Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +He smiled again, with his blue eyes rather sunny. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it’s very middlin’,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Wi’ a rattle in it like a kettle-drum,” said Barker shortly. +</p> + +<p> +“T-t-t-t!” went Mrs. Morel rapidly with her tongue. “Did you +have that flannel singlet made?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not yet,” he smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Then, why didn’t you?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll come,” he smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, an’ Doomsday!” exclaimed Barker. +</p> + +<p> +Barker and Morel were both impatient of Wesson. But, then, they were both as +hard as nails, physically. +</p> + +<p> +When Morel was nearly ready he pushed the bag of money to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Count it, boy,” he asked humbly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ Bill Naylor’s?” +</p> + +<p> +This money also was taken from the pack. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“T-t-t-t-t!” went her tongue. +</p> + +<p> +He frowned. He could not work when she was cross. She counted again. +</p> + +<p> +“A measly twenty-five shillings!” she exclaimed. “How much +was the cheque?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ten pounds eleven,” said Paul irritably. He dreaded what was +coming. +</p> + +<p> +“And he gives me a scrattlin’ twenty-five, an’ his club this +week! But I know him. He thinks because <i>you’re</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mother, don’t!” cried Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t what, I should like to know?” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t carry on again. I can’t work.” +</p> + +<p> +She went very quiet. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it’s all very well,” she said; “but how do you +think I’m going to manage?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it won’t make it any better to whittle about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to know what you’d do if you had it to put up +with.” +</p> + +<p> +“It won’t be long. You can have my money. Let him go to +hell.” +</p> + +<p> +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 recognising +him. +</p> + +<p> +“The two loaves at the top,” she said, “will be done in +twenty minutes. Don’t forget them.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he answered; and she went to market. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“All alone?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Still design, for decorating stuffs, and for embroidery.” +</p> + +<p> +She bent short-sightedly over the drawings. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>portière</i>, beautifully stencilled with a design on roses. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, how beautiful!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why does it seem cruel?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“There seems a feeling of cruelty about it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s jolly good, whether or not,” he replied, folding up his +work with a lover’s hands. +</p> + +<p> +She rose slowly, pondering. +</p> + +<p> +“And what will you do with it?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Send it to Liberty’s. I did it for my mother, but I think +she’d rather have the money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Miriam. He had spoken with a touch of bitterness, and +Miriam sympathised. Money would have been nothing to <i>her</i>. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I did that for you,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She fingered the work with trembling hands, and did not speak. He became +embarrassed. +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove, the bread!” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You do like it?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Take your things off,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’m not stopping.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t have expected to see you here to-night, Miriam +Leivers,” said Beatrice wickedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” murmured Miriam huskily. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, let’s look at your shoes.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam remained uncomfortably still. +</p> + +<p> +“If tha doesna tha durs’na,” laughed Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Glory! You’re a positive muck-heap,” exclaimed Beatrice. +“Who cleans your boots?” +</p> + +<p> +“I clean them myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Inter alia</i>,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Lord! are you going to spout foreign languages? What does it mean, +Miriam?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a fine sarcasm in the last question, but Miriam did not see it. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Among other things,’ I believe,” she said humbly. +</p> + +<p> +Beatrice put her tongue between her teeth and laughed wickedly. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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?” +</p> + +<p> +She affected a great innocence. +</p> + +<p> +“In fact, it’s one big smile,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Up its sleeve, ’Postle Morel—you believe me,” she +said; and she went off into another burst of wicked, silent laughter. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you still at school?” asked Miriam of Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve not had your notice, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I expect it at Easter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it an awful shame, to turn you off merely because you +didn’t pass the exam?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Beatrice coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Agatha says you’re as good as any teacher anywhere. It seems to me +ridiculous. I wonder why you didn’t pass.” +</p> + +<p> +“Short of brains, eh, ’Postle?” said Beatrice briefly. +</p> + +<p> +“Only brains to bite with,” replied Paul, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Beat!” he said, as he pulled his hair straight with his fingers. +“I hate you!” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed with glee. +</p> + +<p> +“Mind!” she said. “I want to sit next to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d as lief be neighbours with a vixen,” he said, +nevertheless making place for her between him and Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +He pulled his cigarette-case from his pocket. Beatrice looked inside it. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks so much, darling,” she said mockingly. +</p> + +<p> +It gave her a wicked delight. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think he does it nicely, Miriam?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very!” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +He took a cigarette for himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Light, old boy?” said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Sweet boy!” said Beatrice, tipping up his chin and giving him a +little kiss on the cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll kiss thee back, Beat,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha wunna!” she giggled, jumping up and going away. +“Isn’t he shameless, Miriam?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” said Miriam. “By the way, aren’t you +forgetting the bread?” +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove!” he cried, flinging open the oven door. +</p> + +<p> +Out puffed the bluish smoke and a smell of burned bread. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul was ruefully removing the loaves. One was burnt black on the hot side; +another was hard as a brick. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor mater!” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You want to grate it,” said Beatrice. “Fetch me the +nutmeg-grater.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My word, Miriam! you’re in for it this time,” said Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“I!” exclaimed Miriam in amazement. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better be gone when his mother comes in. <i>I</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.” +</p> + +<p> +She giggled as she scraped the loaf. Even Miriam laughed in spite of herself. +Paul mended the fire ruefully. +</p> + +<p> +The garden gate was heard to bang. +</p> + +<p> +“Quick!” cried Beatrice, giving Paul the scraped loaf. “Wrap +it up in a damp towel.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Smell of burning!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the cigarettes,” replied Beatrice demurely. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s Paul?” +</p> + +<p> +Leonard had followed Annie. He had a long comic face and blue eyes, very sad. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose he’s left you to settle it between you,” he said. +He nodded sympathetically to Miriam, and became gently sarcastic to Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Beatrice, “he’s gone off with number +nine.” +</p> + +<p> +“I just met number five inquiring for him,” said Leonard. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—we’re going to share him up like Solomon’s +baby,” said Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +Annie laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ay,” said Leonard. “And which bit should you +have?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Beatrice. “I’ll let all the +others pick first.” +</p> + +<p> +“An’ you’d have the leavings, like?” said Leonard, +twisting up a comic face. +</p> + +<p> +Annie was looking in the oven. Miriam sat ignored. Paul entered. +</p> + +<p> +“This bread’s a fine sight, our Paul,” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you should stop an’ look after it,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean <i>you</i> should do what you’re reckoning to do,” +replied Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“He should, shouldn’t he!” cried Beatrice. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’d think he’d got plenty on hand,” said Leonard. +</p> + +<p> +“You had a nasty walk, didn’t you, Miriam?” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—but I’d been in all week—” +</p> + +<p> +“And you wanted a bit of a change, like,” insinuated Leonard +kindly. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t forget that bread, our Paul,” cried Annie. +“Good-night, Miriam. I don’t think it will rain.” +</p> + +<p> +When they had all gone, Paul fetched the swathed loaf, unwrapped it, and +surveyed it sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a mess!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” answered Miriam impatiently, “what is it, after +all—twopence, ha’penny.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but—it’s the mater’s precious baking, and +she’ll take it to heart. However, it’s no good bothering.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Half-past eight!” he said. “We’d better buck up. +Where’s your French?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘<i>Ce matin les oiseaux m’ont éveillé</i>,’” he +read. “‘<i>Il faisait encore un crépuscule. Mais la petite fenêtre de +ma chambre était blême, et puis, jaûne, et tous les oiseaux du bois éclatèrent +dans un chanson vif et résonnant. Toute l’aûbe tressaillit. J’avais +rêvé de vous. Est-ce que vous voyez aussi l’aûbe? Les oiseaux +m’éveillent presque tous les matins, et toujours il y a quelque chose de +terreur dans le cri des grives. Il est si clair</i>—’” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” he said quietly, “the past participle conjugated with +<i>avoir</i> agrees with the direct object when it precedes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He returned and finished the exercise. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve done well this week,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She saw he was flattered by her diary. It did not repay her entirely. +</p> + +<p> +“You really do blossom out sometimes,” he said. “You ought to +write poetry.” +</p> + +<p> +She lifted her head with joy, then she shook it mistrustfully. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t trust myself,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You should try!” +</p> + +<p> +Again she shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we read, or is it too late?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It is late—but we can read just a little,” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Behold her singing in the field<br /> +Yon solitary highland lass.” +</p> + +<p> +That nourished her heart. So did “Fair Ines”. And— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“It was a beauteous evening, calm and pure,<br /> +And breathing holy quiet like a nun.” +</p> + +<p> +These were like herself. And there was he, saying in his throat bitterly: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Tu te rappelleras la beaûté des caresses</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mater needn’t know till morning,” he said. “It +won’t upset her so much then as at night.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“I forgot that bread, mother,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +There was no answer from either woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “it’s only twopence ha’penny. I +can pay you for that.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Annie, “you don’t know how badly my mother +is!” +</p> + +<p> +The girl sat staring glumly into the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Why is she badly?” asked Paul, in his overbearing way. +</p> + +<p> +“Well!” said Annie. “She could scarcely get home.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked closely at his mother. She looked ill. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Why</i> could you scarcely get home?” he asked her, still +sharply. She would not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“I found her as white as a sheet sitting here,” said Annie, with a +suggestion of tears in her voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, <i>why?</i>” insisted Paul. His brows were knitting, his +eyes dilating passionately. +</p> + +<p> +“It was enough to upset anybody,” said Mrs. Morel, “hugging +those parcels—meat, and green-groceries, and a pair of +curtains—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, why <i>did</i> you hug them; you needn’t have done.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then who would?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let Annie fetch the meat.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and I <i>would</i> fetch the meat, but how was I to know. You were +off with Miriam, instead of being in when my mother came.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what was the matter with you?” asked Paul of his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it’s my heart,” she replied. Certainly she looked +bluish round the mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“And have you felt it before?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—often enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why haven’t you told me?—and why haven’t you seen +a doctor?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel shifted in her chair, angry with him for his hectoring. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d never notice anything,” said Annie. +“You’re too eager to be off with Miriam.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, am I—and any worse than you with Leonard?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> was in at a quarter to ten.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence in the room for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Beatrice was here as well as she.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very likely. But we know why the bread is spoilt.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he flashed. +</p> + +<p> +“Because you were engrossed with Miriam,” replied Mrs. Morel hotly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well—then it was <i>not!</i>” he replied angrily. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want anything.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“If I <i>wanted</i> 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 +<i>she</i> will come for you. Nay, you neither want to eat nor drink +then.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t let her go alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you? And why does she come?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not because I ask her.” +</p> + +<p> +“She doesn’t come without you want her—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what if I <i>do</i> want her—” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“If I hadn’t, you’d be just the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I do like her,” he said, “but—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Like</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What nonsense, mother—you know I don’t love +her—I—I tell you I <i>don’t</i> love her—she +doesn’t even walk with my arm, because I don’t want her to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why do you fly to her so often?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>do</i> like to talk to her—I never said I didn’t. But I +<i>don’t</i> love her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there nobody else to talk to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not about the things we talk of. There’s a lot of things that +you’re not interested in, that—” +</p> + +<p> +“What things?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant. +</p> + +<p> +“Why—painting—and books. <i>You</i> don’t care about +Herbert Spencer.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” was the sad reply. “And <i>you</i> won’t at my +age.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, but I do now—and Miriam does—” +</p> + +<p> +“And how do you know,” Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly, “that +<i>I</i> shouldn’t. Do you ever try me!” +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t, mother, you know you don’t care whether a +picture’s decorative or not; you don’t care what <i>manner</i> it +is in.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know I don’t care? Do you ever try me? Do you ever talk +to me about these things, to try?” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s not that that matters to you, mother, you know it’s +not.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, then—what is it, then, that matters to me?” she +flashed. He knitted his brows with pain. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re old, mother, and we’re young.” +</p> + +<p> +He only meant that the interests of <i>her</i> age were not the interests of +his. But he realised the moment he had spoken that he had said the wrong thing. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You know it isn’t, mother, you know it isn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +She was moved to pity by his cry. +</p> + +<p> +“It looks a great deal like it,” she said, half putting aside her +despair. +</p> + +<p> +“No, mother—I really <i>don’t</i> love her. I talk to her, +but I want to come home to you.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t bear it. I could let another woman—but not her. +She’d leave me no room, not a bit of room—” +</p> + +<p> +And immediately he hated Miriam bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’ve never—you know, Paul—I’ve never had a +husband—not really—” +</p> + +<p> +He stroked his mother’s hair, and his mouth was on her throat. +</p> + +<p> +“And she exults so in taking you from me—she’s not like +ordinary girls.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“My boy!” she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love. +</p> + +<p> +Without knowing, he gently stroked her face. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +His mother looked so strange, Paul kissed her, trembling. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha—mother!” he said softly. +</p> + +<p> +Morel came in, walking unevenly. His hat was over one corner of his eye. He +balanced in the doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“At your mischief again?” he said venomously. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel’s emotion turned into sudden hate of the drunkard who had come +in thus upon her. +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, it is sober,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Paul started to his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Waste your own stuff!” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +“What—what!” suddenly shouted Morel, jumping up and clenching +his fist. “I’ll show yer, yer young jockey!” +</p> + +<p> +“All right!” said Paul viciously, putting his head on one side. +“Show me!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Father!” said Paul, so that the word rang. +</p> + +<p> +Morel started, and stood at attention. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” moaned the boy. “Mother!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a-matter with ’er?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Faint!” replied Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +The elderly man began to unlace his boots. He stumbled off to bed. His last +fight was fought in that home. +</p> + +<p> +Paul kneeled there, stroking his mother’s hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be poorly, mother—don’t be poorly!” he +said time after time. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nothing, my boy,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you go to bed, mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I’ll come.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sleep with Annie, mother, not with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I’ll sleep in my own bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t sleep with him, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll sleep in my own bed.” +</p> + +<p> +She rose, and he turned out the gas, then followed her closely upstairs, +carrying her candle. On the landing he kissed her close. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The efforts of his father to conciliate him next day were a great humiliation +to him. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody tried to forget the scene. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX<br/> +DEFEAT OF MIRIAM</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When the men went out to milk, she ventured to address him personally. +</p> + +<p> +“You were late,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Was I?” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for a while. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it rough riding?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t notice it.” +</p> + +<p> +She continued quickly to lay the table. When she had finished— +</p> + +<p> +“Tea won’t be for a few minutes. Will you come and look at the +daffodils?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Has the wind made you tired?” she asked. She detected an +underneath feeling of weariness about him. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I think not,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“It must be rough on the road—the wood moans so.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can see by the clouds it’s a south-west wind; that helps me +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see, I don’t cycle, so I don’t understand,” she +murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there need to cycle to know that!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they magnificent?” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Magnificent! It’s a bit thick—they’re pretty!” +</p> + +<p> +She bowed again to her flowers at his censure of her praise. He watched her +crouching, sipping the flowers with fervid kisses. +</p> + +<p> +“Why must you always be fondling things?” he said irritably. +</p> + +<p> +“But I love to touch them,” she replied, hurt. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You wheedle the soul out of things,” he said. “I would never +wheedle—at any rate, I’d go straight.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go through the wood a little way?” she asked him, knowing +he never refused a direct request. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it dreadful?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +He was taking the bitterness of life badly. She was rather sorry for him. +</p> + +<p> +“We will go back to the house,” he said. “I don’t want +to walk out.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us sit here a minute,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it beautiful?” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +But he only scowled. He would rather have had it ugly just then. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Get out,” said the lad, “or I’ll dot thee one.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Bill, I’ve had enough o’ thee,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said—“no—I’ve had enough.” +</p> + +<p> +And in a minute the dog trotted off happily, to vary the fun. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you sad?” she asked humbly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sad; why should I be,” he answered. “I’m +only normal.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered why he always claimed to be normal when he was disagreeable. +</p> + +<p> +“But what is the matter?” she pleaded, coaxing him soothingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay!” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +He picked up a stick and began to stab the earth with it. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d far better not talk,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“But I wish to know—” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed resentfully. +</p> + +<p> +“You always do,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not fair to me,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t!” she said. “Put it away.” +</p> + +<p> +He flung the stick into the currant-bushes, and leaned back. Now he was bottled +up. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she pleaded softly. +</p> + +<p> +He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said at length, rather wearily—“you +know—we’d better break off.” +</p> + +<p> +It was what she dreaded. Swiftly everything seemed to darken before her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Why!” she murmured. “What has happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing has happened. We only realise where we are. It’s no +good—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We agreed on friendship,” he went on in a dull, monotonous voice. +“How often <i>have</i> we agreed for friendship! And yet—it neither +stops there, nor gets anywhere else.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But what has happened?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing—it’s all in myself—it only comes out just now. +We’re always like this towards Easter-time.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want?” she asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>he</i> deficient in something? Perhaps he was. +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t understand,” she said huskily. +“Yesterday—” +</p> + +<p> +The night was turning jangled and hateful to him as the twilight faded. And she +bowed under her suffering. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” she murmured. Now she dreaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Love you.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What have they been saying at home?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not that,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +And then she knew it was. She despised them for their commonness, his people. +They did not know what things were really worth. +</p> + +<p> +He and she talked very little more that night. After all he left her to cycle +with Edgar. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>doing</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He met her with the young children in the front garden. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At the bottom of the Mow Close they found a thrush’s nest. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I show you the eggs?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Do!” replied Mrs. Leivers. “They seem <i>such</i> a sign of +spring, and so hopeful.” +</p> + +<p> +He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding them in the palm of his +hand. +</p> + +<p> +“They are quite hot—I think we frightened her off them,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, poor thing!” said Mrs. Leivers. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand which, it seemed to her, +cradled them so well. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it a strange warmth!” she murmured, to get near him. +</p> + +<p> +“Blood heat,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Go away, Bill,” he said. “I don’t want you.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could not see him, he began, +speaking slowly and painfully: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think—if I didn’t come up so much—you might get +to like somebody else—another man?” +</p> + +<p> +So this was what he was still harping on. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” he blurted, “because they say I’ve no right to +come up like this—without we mean to marry—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Who says?” she asked, wondering if her people had anything to do +with it. They had not. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>you</i> think about +it?” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam bowed her head moodily. She was angry at having this struggle. People +should leave him and her alone. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think we love each other enough to marry?” he asked +definitely. It made her tremble. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she answered truthfully. “I don’t think +so—we’re too young.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Now Miriam wanted to cry. And she was angry, too. He was always such a child +for people to do as they liked with. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t think so,” she said firmly. +</p> + +<p> +He pondered a minute. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” he said, “with me—I don’t think one +person would ever monopolise me—be everything to me—I think +never.” +</p> + +<p> +This she did not consider. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she murmured. Then, after a pause, she looked at him, and her +dark eyes flashed. +</p> + +<p> +“This is your mother,” she said. “I know she never liked +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer. By this time she was very angry. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see that we need,” he said. “I can give you a +French lesson, surely.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he answered, rather taken aback. “But if I ask +Edgar, he’ll always come with us, and then they can say nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And you won’t think about it, and let it trouble you, will +you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” replied Miriam, without looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent. She thought him unstable. He had no fixity of purpose, no anchor +of righteousness that held him. +</p> + +<p> +“Because,” he continued, “a man gets across his +bicycle—and goes to work—and does all sorts of things. But a woman +broods.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I shan’t bother,” said Miriam. And she meant it. +</p> + +<p> +It had gone rather chilly. They went indoors. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no!” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not going home, are you?” asked Mrs. Leivers +anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied. “I said I’d be early.” He was +very awkward. +</p> + +<p> +“But this <i>is</i> early,” said Mrs. Leivers. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—good-night, all!” he faltered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Two days later he sent her up a book and a little note, urging her to read and +be busy. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Macbeth</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Vie de Jésus</i> 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 realisation. Almost impassive, +she submitted to his argument and expounding. And somehow, because of her, he +gradually realised where he was wrong. And what he realised, she realised. She +felt he could not do without her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hasn’t Clara come?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Miriam in her musical tone. “She’s +reading.” +</p> + +<p> +He wheeled his bicycle into the barn. He had put on a handsome tie, of which he +was rather proud, and socks to match. +</p> + +<p> +“She came this morning?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dash, no!” he said. “But nag at me till you get +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like to nag at you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do it whether or not. And is she any more agreeable?” he +continued. +</p> + +<p> +“You know I always think she is quite agreeable.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You have chosen a fine day,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It happens so,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said; “I am glad.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat down, not thanking him for his politeness. +</p> + +<p> +“What have you been doing all morning?” asked Paul of Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you see,” said Miriam, coughing huskily, “Clara only +came with father—and so—she’s not been here very long.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You were at Margaret Bonford’s meeting the other evening,” +he said to her. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam did not know this courteous Paul. Clara glanced at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” asked Miriam, “how do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I went in for a few minutes before the train came,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +Clara turned away again rather disdainfully. +</p> + +<p> +“I think she’s a lovable little woman,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Margaret Bonford!” exclaimed Clara. “She’s a great +deal cleverer than most men.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I didn’t say she wasn’t,” he said, deprecating. +“She’s lovable for all that.” +</p> + +<p> +“And, of course, that is all that matters,” said Clara witheringly. +</p> + +<p> +He rubbed his head, rather perplexed, rather annoyed. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it matters more than her cleverness,” he said; +“which, after all, would never get her to heaven.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “I thought she was warm, and awfully +nice—only too frail. I wished she was sitting comfortably in +peace—” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Darning her husband’s stockings,’” said Clara +scathingly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +But Clara refused to answer this sally of his. He talked to Miriam for a little +while. The other woman held aloof. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “I think I’ll go and see Edgar. Is he +on the land?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe,” said Miriam, “he’s gone for a load of +coal. He should be back directly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” he said, “I’ll go and meet him.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam dared not propose anything for the three of them. He rose and left them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he said, seeing Paul bareheaded. “Where are you +going?” +</p> + +<p> +“Came to meet you. Can’t stand ‘Nevermore.’” +</p> + +<p> +Edgar’s teeth flashed in a laugh of amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is ‘Nevermore’?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“The lady—Mrs. Dawes—it ought to be Mrs. The Raven that +quothed ‘Nevermore.’” +</p> + +<p> +Edgar laughed with glee. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you like her?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Not a fat lot,” said Paul. “Why, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Edgar considered this speech, failed to make much out of it, and said, +laughing: +</p> + +<p> +“You think she’s a man-hater?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>She</i> thinks she is,” replied Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t think so?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” replied Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Wasn’t she nice with you, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Could you imagine her <i>nice</i> with anybody?” asked the young +man. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know a new song to teach me?” said Edgar. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Mary Morrison’?” suggested the younger. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It was tea-time when they had finished. +</p> + +<p> +“What song was that?” asked Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +Edgar told her. The conversation turned to singing. +</p> + +<p> +“We have such jolly times,” Miriam said to Clara. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Dawes ate her meal in a slow, dignified way. Whenever the men were present +she grew distant. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like singing?” Miriam asked her. +</p> + +<p> +“If it is good,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul, of course, coloured. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean if it is high-class and trained?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I think a voice needs training before the singing is anything,” +she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And it may be for other people’s discomfort.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then the other people should have flaps to their ears,” he +replied. +</p> + +<p> +The boys laughed. There was a silence. He flushed deeply, and ate in silence. +</p> + +<p> +After tea, when all the men had gone but Paul, Mrs. Leivers said to Clara: +</p> + +<p> +“And you find life happier now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Infinitely.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you are satisfied?” +</p> + +<p> +“So long as I can be free and independent.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you don’t <i>miss</i> anything in your life?” asked Mrs. +Leivers gently. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve put all that behind me.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul had been feeling uncomfortable during this discourse. He got up. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The three stood charmed. +</p> + +<p> +“What a treat to be a knight,” he said, “and to have a +pavilion here.” +</p> + +<p> +“And to have us shut up safely?” replied Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have no doubt,” said Clara, “that you would much rather +fight for a woman than let her fight for herself.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>you</i> are the looking-glass?” she asked, with a curl of +the lip. +</p> + +<p> +“Or the shadow,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid,” she said, “that you are too clever.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I leave it to you to be <i>good</i>,” he retorted, laughing. +“Be good, sweet maid, and just let <i>me</i> be clever.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which?” asked Miriam, tremulous. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come along a bit,” replied Limb, “an’ I’ll show +you.” +</p> + +<p> +The man and the stallion went forward. It danced sideways, shaking its white +fetlocks and looking frightened, as it felt itself in the brook. +</p> + +<p> +“No hanky-pankyin’,” said the man affectionately to the +beast. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“There, you see where they got through,” he said. “My +man’s druv ’em back three times.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Miriam, colouring as if she were at fault. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you comin’ in?” asked the man. +</p> + +<p> +“No, thanks; but we should like to go by the pond.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, just as you’ve a mind,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The horse gave little whinneys of pleasure at being so near home. +</p> + +<p> +“He is glad to be back,” said Clara, who was interested in the +creature. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—’e’s been a tidy step to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he splendid!” said Miriam to her. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Limb looked up. Her dark eyes glanced straight at Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, good-evening, Miss Leivers,” she said. “It’s ages +since you’ve been down.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam introduced her friends. +</p> + +<p> +“Your horse <i>is</i> a fine fellow!” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he!” Again she kissed him. “As loving as any +man!” +</p> + +<p> +“More loving than most men, I should think,” replied Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a nice boy!” cried the woman, again embracing the +horse. +</p> + +<p> +Clara, fascinated by the big beast, went up to stroke his neck. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s quite gentle,” said Miss Limb. “Don’t you +think big fellows are?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a beauty!” replied Clara. +</p> + +<p> +She wanted to look in his eyes. She wanted him to look at her. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a pity he can’t talk,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but he can—all but,” replied the other woman. +</p> + +<p> +Then her brother moved on with the horse. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you coming in? <i>Do</i> come in, Mr.—I didn’t catch +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Morel,” said Miriam. “No, we won’t come in, but we +should like to go by the mill-pond.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—yes, do. Do you fish, Mr. Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What fish are there in the pond?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t mind swimming here,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara came up. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a fine depth,” she said, “and so clear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Miss Limb. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you swim?” said Paul. “Miss Limb was just saying we could +come when we liked.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course there’s the farm-hands,” said Miss Limb. +</p> + +<p> +They talked a few moments, then went on up the wild hill, leaving the lonely, +haggard-eyed woman on the bank. +</p> + +<p> +The hillside was all ripe with sunshine. It was wild and tussocky, given over +to rabbits. The three walked in silence. Then: +</p> + +<p> +“She makes me feel uncomfortable,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean Miss Limb?” asked Miriam. “Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a matter with her? Is she going dotty with being too +lonely?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Miriam. “It’s not the right sort of life +for her. I think it’s cruel to bury her there. <i>I</i> really ought to +go and see her more. But—she upsets me.” +</p> + +<p> +“She makes me feel sorry for her—yes, and she bothers me,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” blurted Clara suddenly, “she wants a man.” +</p> + +<p> +The other two were silent for a few moments. +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s the loneliness sends her cracked,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you still think she is disagreeable?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He did not notice that the question was sudden. It ran with his thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“Something’s the matter with her,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you get some?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe in it. They look better growing.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’d like some?” +</p> + +<p> +“They want to be left.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe they do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a stiff, artificial notion,” he said. “They +don’t die any quicker in water than on their roots. And besides, they +<i>look</i> nice in a bowl—they look jolly. And you only call a thing a +corpse because it looks corpse-like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Whether it is one or not?” she argued. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t one to me. A dead flower isn’t a corpse of a +flower.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara now ignored him. +</p> + +<p> +“And even so—what right have you to pull them?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I like them, and want them—and there’s plenty of +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that is sufficient?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Why not? I’m sure they’d smell nice in your room in +Nottingham.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I should have the pleasure of watching them die.” +</p> + +<p> +“But then—it does not matter if they do die.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “But no, you get ’em because you want +’em, and that’s all.” He held out his bunch. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam was silent. He picked some more. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at these!” he continued; “sturdy and lusty like little +trees and like boys with fat legs.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,<br /> +If the Lord won’t have you the devil must.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, standing there above her, he felt awkward. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you wanted a funeral,” he said, ill at ease. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look how they’ve come out of the wood!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of gratitude. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she smiled. +</p> + +<p> +His blood beat up. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think they were?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think the second,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you <i>do</i> feel like one of the open space sort, trying to force +yourself into the dark, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“How should I know?” she answered queerly. +</p> + +<p> +The conversation ended there. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It has been nice, hasn’t it?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam murmured assent. Clara was silent. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think so?” he persisted. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They drew near to the city. Both were at the window looking for the cathedral. +</p> + +<p> +“There she is, mother!” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +They saw the great cathedral lying couchant above the plain. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” she exclaimed. “So she is!” +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>was</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look, mother, how big she is above the town! Think, there are streets +and streets below her! She looks bigger than the city altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t imagine I like it,” she said, as she ate her cutlet. +“I <i>don’t</i> like it, I really don’t! Just <i>think</i> of +your money wasted!” +</p> + +<p> +“You never mind my money,” he said. “You forget I’m a +fellow taking his girl for an outing.” +</p> + +<p> +And he bought her some blue violets. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop it at once, sir!” she commanded. “How can I do +it?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got nothing to do. Stand still!” +</p> + +<p> +And in the middle of High Street he stuck the flowers in her coat. +</p> + +<p> +“An old thing like me!” she said, sniffing. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” he said, “I want people to think we’re awful +swells. So look ikey.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll jowl your head,” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Strut!” he commanded. “Be a fantail pigeon.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A man came up, took off his hat, and bowed to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Can I show you the town, madam?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank you,” she answered. “I’ve got my son.” +</p> + +<p> +Then Paul was cross with her for not answering with more dignity. +</p> + +<p> +“You go away with you!” she exclaimed. “Ha! that’s the +Jew’s House. Now, do you remember that lecture, Paul—?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nothing,” she said. “My heart is only a bit old; +one must expect it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now <i>this</i> is better than I thought it could be!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it is open to anybody?” she asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he replied. “Do you think they’d have the damned +cheek to send us away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m sure,” she exclaimed, “they would if they +heard your language.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards, when they were leaning over the wall, looking at the town below, he +blurted suddenly: +</p> + +<p> +“Why can’t a man have a <i>young</i> mother? What is she old +for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” his mother laughed, “she can scarcely help it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And why wasn’t I the oldest son? Look—they say the young +ones have the advantage—but look, <i>they</i> had the young mother. You +should have had me for your eldest son.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> didn’t arrange it,” she remonstrated. “Come +to consider, you’re as much to blame as me.” +</p> + +<p> +He turned on her, white, his eyes furious. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you old for!” he said, mad with his impotence. +“<i>Why</i> can’t you walk? <i>Why</i> can’t you come with me +to places?” +</p> + +<p> +“At one time,” she replied, “I could have run up that hill a +good deal better than you.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the good of that to <i>me?</i>” he cried, hitting his +fist on the wall. Then he became plaintive. “It’s too bad of you to +be ill. Little, it is—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ill!” she cried. “I’m a bit old, and you’ll have +to put up with it, that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Then who does she live with?” +</p> + +<p> +“With her mother, on Bluebell Hill.” +</p> + +<p> +“And have they enough to keep them?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so. I think they do lace work.” +</p> + +<p> +“And wherein lies her charm, my boy?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But she’s a good deal older than you.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s thirty, I’m going on twenty-three.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t told me what you like her for.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I don’t know—a sort of defiant way she’s +got—a sort of angry way.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t look very well, my lad.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno,” he said. “I feel anyhow or nohow, ma.” +</p> + +<p> +He called her “ma” already in his boyish fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure they’re good lodgings?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“And so it knocks you up?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno. I want to get married,” he blurted, twisting his fingers +and looking down at his boots. There was a silence. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she exclaimed, “I thought you said you’d wait +another year.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I did say so,” he replied stubbornly. +</p> + +<p> +Again she considered. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He coloured up to the ears. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got thirty-three quid,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t go far,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +He said nothing, but twisted his fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“And you know,” she said, “I’ve nothing—” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t want, ma!” he cried, very red, suffering and +remonstrating. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He twisted still, impotent, stubborn, not looking up. +</p> + +<p> +“But do you really want to get married?” she asked. “Do you +feel as if you ought?” +</p> + +<p> +He gave her one straight look from his blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” she replied, “we must all do the best we can for it, +lad.” +</p> + +<p> +The next time he looked up there were tears in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want Annie to feel handicapped,” he said, +struggling. +</p> + +<p> +“My lad,” she said, “you’re steady—you’ve +got a decent place. If a man had <i>needed</i> me I’d have married him on +his last week’s wages. She may find it a bit hard to start humbly. Young +girls <i>are</i> like that. They look forward to the fine home they think +they’ll have. But <i>I</i> had expensive furniture. It’s not +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t cry, child, he’ll be good to you.” +</p> + +<p> +Morel stamped and said she was a fool to go and tie herself up. Leonard looked +white and overwrought. Mrs. Morel said to him: +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll trust her to you, my lad, and hold you responsible for +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can,” he said, nearly dead with the ordeal. And it was all +over. +</p> + +<p> +When Morel and Arthur were in bed, Paul sat talking, as he often did, with his +mother. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not sorry she’s married, mother, are you?” he +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And shall you be miserable about her?” +</p> + +<p> +“When I think of my own wedding day,” his mother answered, “I +can only hope her life will be different.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you can trust him to be good to her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes. They say he’s not good enough for her. But I say if a +man is <i>genuine</i>, as he is, and a girl is fond of him—then—it +should be all right. He’s as good as she.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you don’t mind?” +</p> + +<p> +“I would <i>never</i> have let a daughter of mine marry a man I +didn’t <i>feel</i> to be genuine through and through. And yet, +there’s a gap now she’s gone.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, mother, I s’ll never marry,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, they all say that, my lad. You’ve not met the one yet. Only +wait a year or two.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I shan’t marry, mother. I shall live with you, and we’ll +have a servant.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, my lad, it’s easy to talk. We’ll see when the time +comes.” +</p> + +<p> +“What time? I’m nearly twenty-three.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you’re not one that would marry young. But in three +years’ time—” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be with you just the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll see, my boy, we’ll see.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t want me to marry?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t like to think of you going through your life without +anybody to care for you and do—no.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think I ought to marry?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sooner or later every man ought.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’d rather it were later.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would be hard—and very hard. It’s as they say: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘A son’s my son till he takes him a wife,<br /> +But my daughter’s my daughter the whole of her life.’” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think I’d let a wife take me from you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you wouldn’t ask her to marry your mother as well as +you,” Mrs. Morel smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“She could do what she liked; she wouldn’t have to +interfere.” +</p> + +<p> +“She wouldn’t—till she’d got you—and then +you’d see.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never will see. I’ll never marry while I’ve got +you—I won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I shouldn’t like to leave you with nobody, my boy,” she +cried. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +His mother sat and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Go to bed,” she said—“go to bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you go to bed!” +</p> + +<p> +“And then you s’ll have a pony-carriage. See yourself—a +little Queen Victoria trotting round.” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you to go to bed,” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her and went. His plans for the future were always the same. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>must</i> 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted a whiff, no kiss at all,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, an’ tha s’lt ha’e a whiff,” he said, +“along wi’ t’ kiss.” +</p> + +<p> +“I want a draw at thy fag,” she cried, snatching for the cigarette +between his lips. +</p> + +<p> +He was sitting with his shoulder touching her. She was small and quick as +lightning. He just escaped. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll gi’e thee a smoke kiss,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha’rt a knivey nuisance, Arty Morel,” she said, sitting +back. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha’e a smoke kiss?” +</p> + +<p> +The soldier leaned forward to her, smiling. His face was near hers. +</p> + +<p> +“Shonna!” she replied, turning away her head. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nuisance!” she cried. “Give me my comb!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve non got it,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The cigarette trembled between his lips with laughter as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Liar!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“’S true as I’m here!” he laughed, showing his hands. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Tha tickled me, Beat,” he said thickly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a little cat, Beat,” he said at length, half +apologetically. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you shouldn’t be brazen,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did it, pore fing!” she mocked. +</p> + +<p> +He lifted his face, smiling curiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Kiss?” he invited her. +</p> + +<p> +“Daren’t I?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Go on!” he challenged, his mouth lifted to her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She acted of her own free will. What she would do she did, and made nobody +responsible.<br /><br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You touched!” he cried. “You touched!” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she flashed, turning to Edgar. “I didn’t touch, +did I? Wasn’t I clear?” +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t say,” laughed Edgar. +</p> + +<p> +None of them could say. +</p> + +<p> +“But you touched,” said Paul. “You’re beaten.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did <i>not</i> touch!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“As plain as anything,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Box his ears for me!” she cried to Edgar. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” Edgar laughed. “I daren’t. You must do it +yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And nothing can alter the fact that you touched,” laughed Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I think you are despicable!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And again he laughed, in a way that tortured Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“And I <i>knew</i> you couldn’t jump that heap,” he teased. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And afterwards, he would not own it, but he was rather ashamed of himself, and +prostrated himself before Miriam. Then again he rebelled. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +But Miriam knew that one should be religious in everything, have God, whatever +God might be, present in everything. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe God knows such a lot about Himself,” he +cried. “God doesn’t <i>know</i> things, He <i>is</i> things. And +I’m sure He’s not soulful.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When she was twenty-one he wrote her a letter which could only have been +written to her.<br /><br /> +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ought I to send this letter?—I doubt it. But there—it is +best to understand. Au revoir.”<br /><br /> +</p> + +<p> +Miriam read this letter twice, after which she sealed it up. A year later she +broke the seal to show her mother the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +She answered him two days after the party. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Our intimacy would have been all-beautiful but for one little +mistake,’” she quoted. “Was the mistake mine?” +</p> + +<p> +Almost immediately he replied to her from Nottingham, sending her at the same +time a little “Omar Khayyám.”<br /><br /> +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.”<br /><br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X<br/> +CLARA</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, mother!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +She flew to him, flung her arms round him for a moment, then waved the letter, +crying: +</p> + +<p> +“Hurrah, my boy! I knew we should do it!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“His picture’s got first prize, Fred,” she cried, “and +is sold for twenty guineas.” +</p> + +<p> +“My word, that’s something like!” said the young postman, +whom they had known all his life. +</p> + +<p> +“And Major Moreton has bought it!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t I <i>say</i> we should do it!” she said, pretending +she was not crying. +</p> + +<p> +He took the kettle off the fire and mashed the tea. +</p> + +<p> +“You didn’t think, mother—” he began tentatively. +</p> + +<p> +“No, my son—not so much—but I expected a good deal.” +</p> + +<p> +“But not so much,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No—no—but I knew we should do it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty guineas, mother! That’s just what you wanted to buy Arthur +out. Now you needn’t borrow any. It’ll just do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, I shan’t take it all,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I shan’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—you have twelve pounds, I’ll have nine.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Morel came home at night from the pit, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“They tell me Paul’s got first prize for his picture, and sold it +to Lord Henry Bentley for fifty pound.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, what stories people do tell!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” he answered. “I said I wor sure it wor a lie. But they +said tha’d told Fred Hodgkisson.” +</p> + +<p> +“As if I would tell him such stuff!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” assented the miner. +</p> + +<p> +But he was disappointed nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s true he has got the first prize,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +The miner sat heavily in his chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he, beguy!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +He stared across the room fixedly. +</p> + +<p> +“But as for fifty pounds—such nonsense!” She was silent +awhile. “Major Moreton bought it for twenty guineas, that’s +true.” +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty guineas! Tha niver says!” exclaimed Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and it was worth it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent with conceit of his son. Mrs. Morel sniffed, as if it were +nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“And when does he handle th’ money?” asked the collier. +</p> + +<p> +“That I couldn’t tell you. When the picture is sent home, I +suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, an’ that other lad ’ud ’a done as much if they +hadna ha’ killed ’im,” he said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +The thought of William went through Mrs. Morel like a cold blade. It left her +feeling she was tired, and wanted rest. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was invited to dinner at Mr. Jordan’s. Afterwards he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Mother, I want an evening suit.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Should you like me to wear it, mother?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I think it would fit you—at least the coat. The trousers +would want shortening.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Go along with you!” she said. “What do they want to know me +for?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go along with you, child!” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Paul and his mother now had long discussions about life. Religion was fading +into the background. He had shovelled away all 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if anyone else said so, my son, wouldn’t you be in a tear. +<i>You</i> know you consider yourself equal to any gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“In myself,” he answered, “not in my class or my education or +my manners. But in myself I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, then. Then why talk about the common people?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all very well, my boy. But, then, why don’t you go and +talk to your father’s pals?” +</p> + +<p> +“But they’re rather different.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But—there’s the life—” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>you</i> who +are snobbish about class.” +</p> + +<p> +She frankly <i>wanted</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is happiness!” he cried. “It’s nothing to me! How +<i>am</i> I to be happy?” +</p> + +<p> +The plump question disturbed her. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s for you to judge, my lad. But if you could meet some +<i>good</i> woman who would <i>make</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, do you!” replied his mother. “And do you call yours a +divine discontent?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>ought</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not, my son. Battle—battle—and suffer. +It’s about all you do, as far as I can see.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why not, my dear? I tell you it’s the best—” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t. And one <i>ought</i> to be happy, one +<i>ought</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She pressed him to her. +</p> + +<p> +“But I want you to be happy,” she said pathetically. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, my dear—say rather you want me to live.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 passers-by 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought it couldn’t be your voice,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The room was all lace, and it was so dark and warm that the white, snowy stuff +seemed the more distinct. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara, much embarrassed, gave him a chair against the wall opposite the white +heaps. Then she herself took her place on the sofa, shamedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you drink a bottle of stout?” Mrs. Radford asked. +“Clara, get him a bottle of stout.” +</p> + +<p> +He protested, but Mrs. Radford insisted. +</p> + +<p> +“You look as if you could do with it,” she said. +“Haven’t you never any more colour than that?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s only a thick skin I’ve got that doesn’t show the +blood through,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +Clara, ashamed and chagrined, brought him a bottle of stout and a glass. He +poured out some of the black stuff. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, lifting the glass, “here’s +health!” +</p> + +<p> +“And thank you,” said Mrs. Radford. +</p> + +<p> +He took a drink of stout. +</p> + +<p> +“And light yourself a cigarette, so long as you don’t set the house +on fire,” said Mrs. Radford. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, well, and I can remember when Thomas Jordan used to ask <i>me</i> +for one of my toffies.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he?” laughed Paul. “And did he get it?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he’s very decent,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; well, I’m glad to hear it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And you’ve been going with Miriam Leivers?” the mother asked +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is a bit like that,” he agreed. +</p> + +<p> +“She’ll never be satisfied till she’s got wings and can fly +over everybody’s head, she won’t,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like jennying?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What can a woman do!” she replied bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it sweated?” +</p> + +<p> +“More or less. Isn’t <i>all</i> woman’s work? That’s +another trick the men have played, since we force ourselves into the labour +market.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But they’re all right really, aren’t they?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, they’re a bit different from women,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you care to be back at Jordan’s?” he asked Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And you will go with Mrs. Hodgkisson to Hucknall?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He had an idea that Susan, the overseer of the Spiral girls, was about to be +married. He asked her the next day. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Susan, I heard a whisper of your getting married. What about +it?” +</p> + +<p> +Susan flushed red. +</p> + +<p> +“Who’s been talking to you?” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody. I merely heard a whisper that you <i>were</i> +thinking—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I am, though you needn’t tell anybody. What’s more, I +wish I wasn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, Susan, you won’t make me believe that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shan’t I? You <i>can</i> believe it, though. I’d rather stop +here a thousand times.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul was perturbed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Susan?” +</p> + +<p> +The girl’s colour was high, and her eyes flashed. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s why!” +</p> + +<p> +“And must you?” +</p> + +<p> +For answer, she looked at him. There was about him a candour and gentleness +which made the women trust him. He understood. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I’m sorry,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Tears came to her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ll see it’ll turn out all right. You’ll make +the best of it,” he continued rather wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing else for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yea, there’s making the worst of it. Try and make it all +right.” +</p> + +<p> +He soon made occasion to call again on Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you,” he said, “care to come back to +Jordan’s?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +Paul felt rather awkward. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, because Susan is thinking of leaving,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Have you said anything about it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Except to you, not a word.” +</p> + +<p> +There was again a long silence. +</p> + +<p> +“I will apply when the advertisement is out,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You will apply before that. I will let you know exactly when.” +</p> + +<p> +She went on spinning her little machine, and did not contradict him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes she praised his work; sometimes she was critical and cold. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Again: “What of this?” he would ask enthusiastically. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” She made a small doubtful sound. “It +doesn’t interest me much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because you don’t understand it,” he retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why ask me about it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I thought you would understand.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One day he picked up a copy of <i>Lettres de mon Moulin</i> from her +work-bench. +</p> + +<p> +“You read French, do you?” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What did you say?” she asked, smiling sweetly. +</p> + +<p> +Paul’s eyes glittered at her insolent indifference to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I did not know you read French,” he said, very polite. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you not?” she replied, with a faint, sarcastic smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Rotten swank!” he said, but scarcely loud enough to be heard. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t like Spiral work,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, all work is work,” she answered, as if she knew all +about it. +</p> + +<p> +He marvelled at her coldness. He had to do everything hotly. She must be +something special. +</p> + +<p> +“What would you prefer to do?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed at him indulgently, as she said: +</p> + +<p> +“There is so little likelihood of my ever being given a choice, that I +haven’t wasted time considering.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know me very well,” she replied coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“I know you think you’re terrific great shakes, and that you live +under the eternal insult of working in a factory.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Later on he said to himself: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have one?” he said. “I bought a handful to sweeten me +up.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Would it make any difference?” she said, carefully removing one of +her needles. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what does that mean?” she asked coolly. +</p> + +<p> +“It means I’ve got a right to boss you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there anything you want to complain about?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I say, you needn’t be nasty,” he said angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you want,” she said, continuing her task. +</p> + +<p> +“I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully.” +</p> + +<p> +“Call you ‘sir’, perhaps?” she asked quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, call me ‘sir’. I should love it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +His mouth closed, and a frown came on his face. He jumped suddenly down. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re too blessed superior for anything,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Hey, haven’t you got a chocolate for anybody?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sorry, Pussy,” he replied. “I meant to have offered them; +then I went and forgot ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you did,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll bring you some this afternoon. You don’t want them +after they’ve been lying about, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m not particular,” smiled Pussy. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” he said. “They’ll be dusty.” +</p> + +<p> +He went up to Clara’s bench. +</p> + +<p> +“Sorry I left these things littering about,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She flushed scarlet. He gathered them together in his fist. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He flung them out of the window into the yard below. He just glanced at her. +She winced from his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon he brought another packet. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you take some?” he said, offering them first to Clara. +“These are fresh.” +</p> + +<p> +She accepted one, and put it on to the bench. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, take several—for luck,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Here you are, Pussy,” he said. “Don’t be +greedy!” +</p> + +<p> +“Are they all for her?” cried the others, rushing up. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course they’re not,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The girls clamoured round. Pussy drew back from her mates. +</p> + +<p> +“Come out!” she cried. “I can have first pick, can’t I, +Paul?” +</p> + +<p> +“Be nice with ’em,” he said, and went away. +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>are</i> a dear,” the girls cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Tenpence,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Paul, Paul, I want you.” +</p> + +<p> +It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs, her face +radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +“I want you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He stood, at a loss. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on,” she coaxed. “Come before you begin on the +letters.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You didn’t think we’d forgot you?” she asked, +reproachful. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he asked. He had forgotten his birthday himself. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, kisses for my birthday,” he laughed. “How did you +know?” +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</i> +put.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I know, you’re spooney,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“There you <i>are</i> mistaken!” she cried, indignant. “I +could never be so soft.” Her voice was strong and contralto. +</p> + +<p> +“You always pretend to be such a hard-hearted hussy,” he laughed. +“And you know you’re as sentimental—” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather be called sentimental than frozen meat,” Fanny +blurted. Paul knew she referred to Clara, and he smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you say such nasty things about me?” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, we’re not better than one another, are we?” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“But I’m as good as you, aren’t I, Paul?” she persisted +daringly. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you are. If it comes to goodness, you’re better.” +</p> + +<p> +She was rather afraid of the situation. She might get hysterical. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought I’d get here before the others—won’t they +say I’m deep! Now shut your eyes—” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“No, Fanny,” he said quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“From us all,” she answered hastily. +</p> + +<p> +“No, but—” +</p> + +<p> +“Are they the right sort?” she asked, rocking herself with delight. +</p> + +<p> +“Jove! they’re the best in the catalogue.” +</p> + +<p> +“But they’re the right sorts?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re off the little list I’d made to get when my ship +came in.” He bit his lip. +</p> + +<p> +Fanny was overcome with emotion. She must turn the conversation. +</p> + +<p> +“They was all on thorns to do it; they all paid their shares, all except +the Queen of Sheba.” +</p> + +<p> +The Queen of Sheba was Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“And wouldn’t she join?” Paul asked. +</p> + +<p> +“She didn’t get the chance; we never told her; we wasn’t +going to have <i>her</i> bossing <i>this</i> show. We didn’t <i>want</i> +her to join.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I can give you a kiss to-day,” she said apologetically. +“You’ve looked so white, it’s made my heart ache.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul kissed her, and left her. Her arms were so pitifully thin that his heart +ached also. +</p> + +<p> +That day he met Clara as he ran downstairs to wash his hands at dinner-time. +</p> + +<p> +“You have stayed to dinner!” he exclaimed. It was unusual for her. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and I seem to have dined on old surgical-appliance stock. I +<i>must</i> go out now, or I shall feel stale india-rubber right +through.” +</p> + +<p> +She lingered. He instantly caught at her wish. +</p> + +<p> +“You are going anywhere?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You feel as if you could scoop up the folk like tadpoles, and have a +handful of them,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed, answering: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; it is not necessary to get far off in order to see us +proportionately. The trees are much more significant.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bulk only,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed cynically. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It is comforting,” said Mrs. Dawes, “to think the town goes +no farther. It is only a <i>little</i> sore upon the country yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“A little scab,” Paul said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I feel better,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” he replied. “Great compliment!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my brother!” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m! that’s snatching back with the left hand what you gave +with the right, and no mistake,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed in amusement at him. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I will not tell you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“All right, hug it,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +She flushed and bit her lip. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “it was the girls.” +</p> + +<p> +“What about ’em?” Paul asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do they?” he asked in concern. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just like women,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“It is hateful, their mean gloating,” she said intensely. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was silent. He knew what the girls gloated over. He was sorry to be the +cause of this new dissension. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul thought for a few minutes. He was much perturbed. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that two o’clock striking?” Mrs. Dawes said in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +Paul started, and everything sprang into form, regained its individuality, its +forgetfulness, and its cheerfulness. +</p> + +<p> +They hurried back to work. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Mr. Paul Morel,’” he said, smiling, handing Paul a +package. “A lady’s handwriting! Don’t let the girls see +it.” +</p> + +<p> +The postman, himself a favourite, was pleased to make fun of the girls’ +affection for Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord! Mrs. Dawes. She can’t afford it. Good Lord, who +ever’d have thought it!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How old were you when you married?” he asked quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty-two.” +</p> + +<p> +Her voice was subdued, almost submissive. She would tell him now. +</p> + +<p> +“It is eight years ago?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And when did you leave him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Three years ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Five years! Did you love him when you married him?” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent for some time; then she said slowly: +</p> + +<p> +“I thought I did—more or less. I didn’t think much about it. +And he wanted me. I was very prudish then.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you sort of walked into it without thinking?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I seemed to have been asleep nearly all my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Somnambule?</i> But—when did you wake up?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know that I ever did, or ever have—since I was a +child.” +</p> + +<p> +“You went to sleep as you grew to be a woman? How queer! And he +didn’t wake you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; he never got there,” she replied, in a monotone. +</p> + +<p> +The brown birds dashed over the hedges where the rose-hips stood naked and +scarlet. +</p> + +<p> +“Got where?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“At me. He never really mattered to me.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But why did you leave him? Was he horrid to you?” +</p> + +<p> +She shuddered lightly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not at all see. +</p> + +<p> +“And was he always dirty?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“A bit,” she replied slowly. “And then he seemed as if he +couldn’t get <i>at</i> me, really. And then he got brutal—he +<i>was</i> brutal!” +</p> + +<p> +“And why did you leave him finally?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because—because he was unfaithful to me—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But did you—were you ever—did you ever give him a +chance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Chance? How?” +</p> + +<p> +“To come near to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I married him—and I was willing—” +</p> + +<p> +They both strove to keep their voices steady. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he loves you,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It looks like it,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to take his hand away, and could not. She saved him by removing her +own. After a silence, he began again: +</p> + +<p> +“Did you leave him out of count all along?” +</p> + +<p> +“He left me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And I suppose he couldn’t <i>make</i> himself mean everything to +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“He tried to bully me into it.” +</p> + +<p> +But the conversation had got them both out of their depth. Suddenly Paul jumped +down. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and get some tea.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>knew</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Dawes and he had many periods of coolness, when they saw little of each +other; but they always came together again. +</p> + +<p> +“Were you horrid with Baxter Dawes?” he asked her. It was a thing +that seemed to trouble him. +</p> + +<p> +“In what way?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know. But weren’t you horrid with him? +Didn’t you do something that knocked him to pieces?” +</p> + +<p> +“What, pray?” +</p> + +<p> +“Making him feel as if he were nothing—<i>I</i> know,” Paul +declared. +</p> + +<p> +“You are so clever, my friend,” she said coolly. +</p> + +<p> +The conversation broke off there. But it made her cool with him for some time. +</p> + +<p> +She very rarely saw Miriam now. The friendship between the two women was not +broken off, but considerably weakened. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you come in to the concert on Sunday afternoon?” Clara asked +him just after Christmas. +</p> + +<p> +“I promised to go up to Willey Farm,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I?” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +Which almost annoyed him. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said, “Miriam and I have been a lot to each +other ever since I was sixteen—that’s seven years now.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a long time,” Clara replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but somehow she—it doesn’t go right—” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” asked Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you like to be kept.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if you love her, it couldn’t be normal, like me and +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I should love her better then. She sort of wants me so much that I +can’t give myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wants you how?” +</p> + +<p> +“Wants the soul out of my body. I can’t help shrinking back from +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet you love her!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t love her. I never even kiss her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” Clara asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you’re afraid,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not. Something in me shrinks from her like +hell—she’s so good, when I’m not good.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know what she is?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do! I know she wants a sort of soul union.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how do you know what she wants?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been with her for seven years.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you haven’t found out the very first thing about her.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” +</p> + +<p> +“That she doesn’t want any of your soul communion. That’s +your own imagination. She wants you.” +</p> + +<p> +He pondered over this. Perhaps he was wrong. +</p> + +<p> +“But she seems—” he began. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve never tried,” she answered. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI<br/> +THE TEST ON MIRIAM</h2> + +<p> +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 <i>could</i> do. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“I shall come home when I like,” he said; “I am old +enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Must she keep you till this time?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is I who stay,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“And she lets you? But very well,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“I am twenty-four, almost.” +</p> + +<p> +She had been brooding. She looked up at him suddenly in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. What makes you say it?” +</p> + +<p> +There was something in the charged atmosphere that she dreaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Thomas More says one can marry at twenty-four.” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed quaintly, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Does it need Sir Thomas More’s sanction?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; but one ought to marry about then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” she answered broodingly; and she waited. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t marry you,” he continued slowly, “not now, +because we’ve no money, and they depend on me at home.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat half-guessing what was coming. +</p> + +<p> +“But I want to marry now—” +</p> + +<p> +“You want to marry?” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“A woman—you know what I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, at last, I must,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“And you love me?” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you ashamed of it,” he answered. “You wouldn’t +be ashamed before your God, why are you before people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” she answered deeply, “I am not ashamed.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are,” he replied bitterly; “and it’s my fault. But +you know I can’t help being—as I am—don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know you can’t help it,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you an awful lot—then there is something short.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” she answered, looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” replied Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with startled dark eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You recoiled away from anything of the sort, and I took the motion from +you, and recoiled also, perhaps worse.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence in the room for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, “it is so.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is between us,” he said, “all these years of intimacy. +I feel naked enough before you. Do you understand?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think so,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“And you love me?” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be bitter,” he pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” she said softly, “I am not bitter.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you thinking about?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +The blaze in his eyes shuddered, became uncertain. +</p> + +<p> +“I was thinking, all the while, I love you. I have been obstinate.” +</p> + +<p> +She sank her head on his breast. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all,” he said, and his voice seemed sure, and his +mouth was kissing her throat. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Kiss me,” she whispered. +</p> + +<p> +He shut his eyes, and kissed her, and his arms folded her closer and closer. +</p> + +<p> +When she walked home with him over the fields, he said: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she murmured, and the tears came to her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, and she felt stunned. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Sometime you will have me?” he murmured, hiding his face on her +shoulder. It was so difficult. +</p> + +<p> +“Not now,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +His hopes and his heart sunk. A dreariness came over him. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +His clasp of her slackened. +</p> + +<p> +“I love to feel your arm <i>there!</i>” she said, pressing his arm +against her back, where it went round her waist. “It rests me so.” +</p> + +<p> +He tightened the pressure of his arm upon the small of her back to rest her. +</p> + +<p> +“We belong to each other,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why shouldn’t we belong to each other altogether?” +</p> + +<p> +“But—” she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I can trust you.” The answer came quick and strong. +“It’s not that—it’s not that at +all—but—” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +She hid her face in his neck with a little cry of misery. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +She seemed slightly hysterical, but with a sort of horror. His heart died in +him. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t think it ugly?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not now. You have <i>taught</i> me it isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are afraid?” +</p> + +<p> +She calmed herself hastily. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am only afraid,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her tenderly. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” he said. “You should please yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she gripped his arms round her, and clenched her body stiff. +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>shall</i> have me,” she said, through her shut teeth. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you be late?” she asked gently. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +climbed 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam came out wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” Paul heard her mellow voice call, “isn’t it +wonderful?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked down. There was a faint gold glimmer on her face, that looked very +soft, turned up to him. +</p> + +<p> +“How high you are!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Clouds are on fire,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Beautiful!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t you got enough?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nearly. It is like being on a ship up here.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how long will you stay?” +</p> + +<p> +“While the sunset lasts.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“They are lovely,” said Miriam, fingering the cherries. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve torn my sleeve,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +She took the three-cornered rip, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“I shall have to mend it.” It was near the shoulder. She put her +fingers through the tear. “How warm!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. There was a new, strange note in his voice, one that made her pant. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we stay out?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t it rain?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, let us walk a little way.” +</p> + +<p> +They went down the fields and into the thick plantation of trees and pines. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go in among the trees?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +It was very dark among the firs, and the sharp spines pricked her face. She was +afraid. Paul was silent and strange. +</p> + +<p> +“I like the darkness,” he said. “I wish it were +thicker—good, thick darkness.” +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to be almost unaware of her as a person: she was only to him then a +woman. She was afraid. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The rain!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—is it coming on you?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We must go,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered, but did not move. +</p> + +<p> +To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night, and death, and +stillness, and inaction, this seemed like <i>being</i>. To be alive, to be +urgent and insistent—that was <i>not-to-be</i>. The highest of all was to +melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being. +</p> + +<p> +“The rain is coming in on us,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +He rose, and assisted her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a pity,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“To have to go. I feel so still.” +</p> + +<p> +“Still!” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Stiller than I have ever been in my life.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The fir-trees are like presences on the darkness: each one only a +presence.” +</p> + +<p> +She was afraid, and said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“A sort of hush: the whole night wondering and asleep: I suppose +that’s what we do in death—sleep in wonder.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us stay here awhile,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +There was a sound of rain everywhere, smothering everything. +</p> + +<p> +“I feel so strange and still,” he said; “along with +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” she answered patiently. +</p> + +<p> +He seemed again unaware of her, though he held her hand close. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and very beautiful to have.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t usually say that.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Your face is bright,” he said, “like a +transfiguration.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, questioning. He laughed pleadingly to her, laying his hands +on hers. Then he kissed her fingers, then her face. +</p> + +<p> +The world was all steeped in sunshine, and quite still, yet not asleep, but +quivering with a kind of expectancy. +</p> + +<p> +“I have never seen anything more beautiful than this,” he said. He +held her hand fast all the time. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think it’s a great day?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She murmured her assent. She <i>was</i> happy, and he saw it. +</p> + +<p> +“And our day—just between us,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +They lingered a little while. Then they stood up upon the sweet thyme, and he +looked down at her simply. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you come?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are sure you want me?” he asked, as if a cold shadow had come +over him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, quite sure.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“When I come to you,” he asked her, his eyes dark with pain and +shame, “you don’t really want me, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, yes!” she replied quickly. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She began to tremble. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He lifted her head, and looked at her. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean, now, it is always too much shock?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and—” +</p> + +<p> +“You are always clenched against me.” +</p> + +<p> +She was trembling with agitation. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” she said, “I’m not used to the +thought—” +</p> + +<p> +“You are lately,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And still believe it,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she cried hastily. “I believe, as you do, that loving, +even in <i>that</i> way, is the high-water mark of living.” +</p> + +<p> +“That doesn’t alter the fact that you never <i>want</i> it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“But not me.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you say so? But we must be married to have +children—” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we be married, then? <i>I</i> want you to have my children.” +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her hand reverently. She pondered sadly, watching him. +</p> + +<p> +“We are too young,” she said at length. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty-four and twenty-three—” +</p> + +<p> +“Not yet,” she pleaded, as she rocked herself in distress. +</p> + +<p> +“When you will,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly one Sunday night, just +as they were going to bed: +</p> + +<p> +“I shan’t go so much to Miriam’s, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything. +</p> + +<p> +“You please yourself,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes Miriam said: +</p> + +<p> +“What about Clara? I hear nothing of her lately.” +</p> + +<p> +“I walked with her about twenty minutes yesterday,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“And what did she talk about?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +So he gave the account of himself. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Half a minute,” he cried. “Hold your arm still.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I think Clara has such beautiful arms,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes! When did you draw them?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, turning the leaves of his sketch-book. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Breaking off a pink, he suddenly went indoors. +</p> + +<p> +“Come, my boy,” said his mother. “I’m sure it’s +time you went to bed.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood with the pink against his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall break off with Miriam, mother,” he answered calmly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But I thought—” she began. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he answered, “I don’t love her. I don’t +want to marry her—so I shall have done.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” exclaimed his mother, amazed, “I thought lately you +had made up your mind to have her, and so I said nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know best. You know I said so long ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help that now. I shall break off on Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>don’t</i> think +she is suited to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, my son,” she said. “You will be so much better +when it is all over.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and resentment. He did not want +sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been thinking,” he said, “we ought to break +off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” she cried in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Because it’s no good going on.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why is it no good?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why do you say this now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I’ve made up my mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what about these last months, and the things you told me +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help it! I don’t want to go on.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t want any more of me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want us to break off—you be free of me, I free of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what about these last months?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. I’ve not told you anything but what I thought +was true.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why are you different now?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not—I’m the same—only I know it’s no +good going on.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t told me why it’s no good.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I don’t want to go on—and I don’t want to +marry.” +</p> + +<p> +“How many times have you offered to marry me, and I +wouldn’t?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know; but I want us to break off.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>wring</i> some consistency out +of him. But she was helpless. Then she cried: +</p> + +<p> +“I have said you were only fourteen—you are only +<i>four!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He still dug at the earth viciously. He heard. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a child of four,” she repeated in her anger. +</p> + +<p> +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>I</i> don’t want another +mother.” But he said nothing to her, and there was silence. +</p> + +<p> +“And have you told your people?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I have told my mother.” +</p> + +<p> +There was another long interval of silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Then what do you <i>want?</i>” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>was</i> free of him, +even more than he of her. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want to do?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing—only to be free,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +She, however, knew in her heart that Clara’s influence was over him to +liberate him. But she said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“And what have I to tell my mother?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I told my mother,” he answered, “that I was breaking +off—clean and altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall not tell them at home,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Frowning, “You please yourself,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was leaving her in the lurch. It +angered him. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell them you wouldn’t and won’t marry me, and have broken +off,” he said. “It’s true enough.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Always—it has always been so!” she cried. “It has been +one long battle between us—you fighting away from me.” +</p> + +<p> +It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. The man’s heart +stood still. Was this how she saw it? +</p> + +<p> +“But we’ve had <i>some</i> perfect hours, <i>some</i> perfect +times, when we were together!” he pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Never!” she cried; “never! It has always been you fighting +me off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not always—not at first!” he pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“Always, from the very beginning—always the same!” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” she said. “But don’t advise me to marry +someone else any more. You’ve done it before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” he said; “I will say no more.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of giving one. Their +eight years of friendship and love, <i>the</i> eight years of his life, were +nullified. +</p> + +<p> +“When did you think of this?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought definitely on Thursday night.” +</p> + +<p> +“I knew it was coming,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +That pleased him bitterly. “Oh, very well! If she knew then it +doesn’t come as a surprise to her,” he thought. +</p> + +<p> +“And have you said anything to Clara?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No; but I shall tell her now.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you remember the things you said this time last year, in my +grandmother’s house—nay last month even?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said; “I do! And I meant them! I can’t help +that it’s failed.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has failed because you want something else.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would have failed whether or not. <i>You</i> never believed in +me.” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed strangely. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He hacked at the earth till she was fretted to death. She rose. He sat flinging +lumps of earth in the stream. +</p> + +<p> +“We will go and have tea here?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +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 æsthetics. She was cold and quiet. As they walked home, she +asked: +</p> + +<p> +“And we shall not see each other?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—or rarely,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor write?” she asked, almost sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see!” she answered cuttingly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Have a chocolate?” +</p> + +<p> +The others laughed loudly at her impudence. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Paul. “Give me a hard one—nut. I +don’t like creams.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here you are, then,” said the girl; “here’s an almond +for you.” +</p> + +<p> +She held the sweet between her fingers. He opened his mouth. She popped it in, +and blushed. +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>are</i> nice!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she answered, “we thought you looked overcast, and +they dared me offer you a chocolate.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind if I have another—another sort,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +And presently they were all laughing together. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I told her,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad,” replied the mother, with great relief. +</p> + +<p> +He hung up his cap wearily. +</p> + +<p> +“I said we’d have done altogether,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed shakily as he sat down. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had such a lark with some girls in a pub,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now have some supper,” she said very gently. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards he said wistfully: +</p> + +<p> +“She never thought she’d have me, mother, not from the first, and +so she’s not disappointed.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid,” said his mother, “she doesn’t give +up hopes of you yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, “perhaps not.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll find it’s better to have done,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t know,” he said desperately. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII<br/> +PASSION</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was twenty-four when he said his first confident thing to his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother,” he said, “I s’ll make a painter that +they’ll attend to.” +</p> + +<p> +She sniffed in her quaint fashion. It was like a half-pleased shrug of the +shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, my boy, we’ll see,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You shall see, my pigeon! You see if you’re not swanky one of +these days!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m quite content, my boy,” she smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ll have to alter. Look at you with Minnie!” +</p> + +<p> +Minnie was the small servant, a girl of fourteen. +</p> + +<p> +“And what about Minnie?” asked Mrs. Morel, with dignity. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it was only the child’s niceness,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“And you apologising to her: ‘You can’t do two things at +once, can you?’” +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>was</i> busy washing up,” replied Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“And what did she say? ‘It could easy have waited a bit. Now look +how your feet paddle!’” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—brazen young baggage!” said Mrs. Morel, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Queen of Sheba!” he said, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it suits you. You’ve got a new frock on.” +</p> + +<p> +She flushed, asking: +</p> + +<p> +“And what of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Suits you—awfully! <i>I</i> could design you a dress.” +</p> + +<p> +“How would it be?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“More <i>so!</i>” he explained. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” she said. He darted away across the road. +</p> + +<p> +The next day he came again, talking to her. She was rather superior with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go a walk on Monday?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She turned her face aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you tell Miriam?” she replied sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“I have broken off with her,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“When?” +</p> + +<p> +“Last Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +“You quarrelled?” +</p> + +<p> +“No! I had made up my mind. I told her quite definitely I should consider +myself free.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara did not answer, and he returned to his work. She was so quiet and so +superb! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We will walk a little while,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Which way shall we go?” he asked as they walked in darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then we’ll go up the steps.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come along,” he said, penitent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And this afternoon,” he struggled to say. “You will +come?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think so,” she replied, murmuring. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You will meet me at the Fountain at two o’clock,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t be there till half-past.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She saw his dark, mad eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I will try at a quarter past.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are late,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Only five minutes,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d never have done it to you,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her beautiful figure. +</p> + +<p> +“You want some flowers,” he said, going to the nearest +florist’s. +</p> + +<p> +She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch of scarlet, brick-red +carnations. She put them in her coat, flushing. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a fine colour!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather have had something softer,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the street?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As they sat in the tram-car, she leaned her heavy shoulder against him, and he +took her hand. He felt himself coming round from the anæsthetic, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, “did +you leave Miriam?” +</p> + +<p> +He frowned. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I <i>wanted</i> to leave her,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I didn’t want to go on with her. And I didn’t want +to marry.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent for a moment. They picked their way down the muddy path. Drops +of water fell from the elm-trees. +</p> + +<p> +“You didn’t want to marry Miriam, or you didn’t want to marry +at all?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Both,” he answered—“both!” +</p> + +<p> +They had to manœuvre to get to the stile, because of the pools of water. +</p> + +<p> +“And what did she say?” Clara asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Miriam? She said I was a baby of four, and that I always <i>had</i> +battled her off.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara pondered over this for a time. +</p> + +<p> +“But you have really been going with her for some time?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now you don’t want any more of her?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I know it’s no good.” +</p> + +<p> +She pondered again. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think you’ve treated her rather badly?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How old <i>are</i> you?” Clara asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty-five.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I am thirty,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I know you are.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be thirty-one—or <i>am</i> I thirty-one?” +</p> + +<p> +“I neither know nor care. What does it matter!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They went on up the slippery, steep red path. Presently she released his hand +and put it round her waist. +</p> + +<p> +“You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to come,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” he asked at length, “did you hate Baxter Dawes?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you go down to the river?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, leaving herself in his hands. He went over the brim of the +declivity and began to climb down. +</p> + +<p> +“It is slippery,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s risky,” he said; “or messy, at any rate. Shall we +go back?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for my sake,” she said quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“All right. You see, I can’t help you; I should only hinder. Give +me that little parcel and your gloves. Your poor shoes!” +</p> + +<p> +They stood perched on the face of the declivity, under the trees. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll go again,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll be damned!” he cried crossly. Then he laughed. +She was coming perilously down. +</p> + +<p> +“Mind!” he warned her. He stood with his back to the tree, waiting. +“Come now,” he called, opening his arms. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He held her close and kissed her. There was only room for their four feet. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now they ought to be drowned,” said Paul softly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s impossible!” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Your flowers are smashed,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him heavily as she put back her hair. Suddenly he put his +finger-tips on her cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“Why dost look so heavy?” he reproached her. +</p> + +<p> +She smiled sadly, as if she felt alone in herself. He caressed her cheek with +his fingers, and kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay!” he said. “Never thee bother!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But tha shouldna worrit!” he said softly, pleading. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t worry!” she laughed tenderly and resigned. +</p> + +<p> +“Yea, tha does! Dunna thee worrit,” he implored, caressing. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” she consoled him, kissing him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now we’re back at the ordinary level,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She sat down, panting, on the tussocky grass. Her cheeks were flushed pink. He +kissed her, and she gave way to joy. +</p> + +<p> +“And now I’ll clean thy boots and make thee fit for respectable +folk,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What am I supposed to be doing,” he said, looking at her laughing; +“cleaning shoes or dibbling with love? Answer me that!” +</p> + +<p> +“Just whichever I please,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“T-t-t-t!” he went with his tongue, like his mother. “I tell +you, nothing gets done when there’s a woman about.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The old lady at whose house they had tea was roused into gaiety by them. +</p> + +<p> +“I could wish you’d had something of a better day,” she said, +hovering round. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay!” he laughed. “We’ve been saying how nice it +is.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you been saying <i>so!</i>” she exclaimed, a light rousing in +her old eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Truly!” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’m sure the day’s good enough,” said the old +lady. +</p> + +<p> +She fussed about, and did not want to leave them. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know whether you’d like some radishes as +well,” she said to Clara; “but I’ve got some in the +garden—<i>and</i> a cucumber.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara flushed. She looked very handsome. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like some radishes,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +And the old lady pottered off gleefully. +</p> + +<p> +“If she knew!” said Clara quietly to him. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know whether—” and holding the flowers forward +in her old hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, how pretty!” cried Clara, accepting the flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall she have them all?” asked Paul reproachfully of the old +woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she shall have them all,” she replied, beaming with joy. +“You have got enough for your share.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, but I shall ask her to give me one!” he teased. +</p> + +<p> +“Then she does as she pleases,” said the old lady, smiling. And she +bobbed a little curtsey of delight. +</p> + +<p> +Clara was rather quiet and uncomfortable. As they walked along, he said: +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t feel criminal, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with startled grey eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Criminal!” she said. “No.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you seem to feel you have done a wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said. “I only think, ‘If they +knew!’” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +He took her by the arm, held her facing him, holding her eyes with his. +Something fretted him. +</p> + +<p> +“Not sinners, are we?” he said, with an uneasy little frown. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“You like your little bit of guiltiness, I believe,” he said. +“I believe Eve enjoyed it, when she went cowering out of Paradise.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are late!” she said, looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +His eyes were shining; his face seemed to glow. He smiled to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I’ve been down Clifton Grove with Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +His mother looked at him again. +</p> + +<p> +“But won’t people talk?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? They know she’s a suffragette, and so on. And what if they do +talk!” +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I can’t help it. Their jaw isn’t so almighty +important, after all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you ought to consider <i>her</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I <i>do!</i> What can people say?—that we take a walk together. +I believe you’re jealous.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know I should be <i>glad</i> if she weren’t a married +woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, my son. We’ll see how it will end.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, my mother. I’ll abide by the end.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll see!” +</p> + +<p> +“And she’s—she’s <i>awfully</i> nice, mother; she is +really! You don’t know!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s not the same as marrying her.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s perhaps better.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for a while. He wanted to ask his mother something, but was +afraid. +</p> + +<p> +“Should you like to know her?” He hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel coolly. “I should like to know what +she’s like.” +</p> + +<p> +“But she’s nice, mother, she is! And not a bit common!” +</p> + +<p> +“I never suggested she was.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>better</i>, 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!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel flushed. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure I am not mean about her. She may be quite as you say, +but—” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t approve,” he finished. +</p> + +<p> +“And do you expect me to?” she answered coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!—yes!—if you’d anything about you, you’d be +glad! Do you <i>want</i> to see her?” +</p> + +<p> +“I said I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ll bring her—shall I bring her here?” +</p> + +<p> +“You please yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I <i>will</i> bring her here—one Sunday—to tea. If you +think a horrid thing about her, I shan’t forgive you.” +</p> + +<p> +His mother laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“As if it would make any difference!” she said. He knew he had won. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but it feels so fine, when she’s there! She’s such a +queen in her way.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And what have you been doing lately?” +</p> + +<p> +“I—oh, not much! I made a sketch of Bestwood from the garden, that +is nearly right at last. It’s the hundredth try.” +</p> + +<p> +So they went on. Then she said: +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve not been out, then, lately?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was not very nice weather,” said Miriam, “was it?” +</p> + +<p> +“But I wanted to go out, and it was all right. The Trent <i>is</i> +full.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did you go to Barton?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No; we had tea in Clifton.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Did</i> you! That would be nice.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was! The jolliest old woman! She gave us several pom-pom dahlias, as +pretty as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam bowed her head and brooded. He was quite unconscious of concealing +anything from her. +</p> + +<p> +“What made her give them you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Because she liked us—because we were jolly, I should think.” +</p> + +<p> +Miriam put her finger in her mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Were you late home?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +At last he resented her tone. +</p> + +<p> +“I caught the seven-thirty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” +</p> + +<p> +They walked on in silence, and he was angry. +</p> + +<p> +“And how <i>is</i> Clara?” asked Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite all right, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s good!” she said, with a tinge of irony. “By the +way, what of her husband? One never hears anything of him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s got some other woman, and is also quite all right,” he +replied. “At least, so I think.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see—you don’t know for certain. Don’t you think a +position like that is hard on a woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rottenly hard!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s so unjust!” said Miriam. “The man does as he +likes—” +</p> + +<p> +“Then let the woman also,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“How can she? And if she does, look at her position!” +</p> + +<p> +“What of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, it’s impossible! You don’t understand what a woman +forfeits—” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she knew he would act +accordingly. +</p> + +<p> +She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know enough. +</p> + +<p> +Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned to marriage, then to +Clara’s marriage with Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>femme +incomprise</i>, and treated him badly, I’ll bet my boots.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she left him because he didn’t understand her?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>femme incomprise</i>, and she <i>had</i> to be awakened.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what about him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. I rather think he loves her as much as he can, but +he’s a fool.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was something like your mother and father,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but my mother, I believe, got <i>real</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what one <i>must have</i>, 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 <i>had</i> everything that was necessary for her living +and developing. There’s not a tiny bit of feeling of sterility about +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What happened, exactly?” asked Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think your mother had it with your father?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and at the bottom she feels grateful to him for giving it her, even +now, though they are miles apart.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think Clara never had it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you told your mother about Clara?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “and she is coming to tea on Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +“To your house?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I want mater to see her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“I may call in as I go to chapel,” she said. “It is a long +time since I saw Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” he said, astonished, and unconsciously angry. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I <i>feel</i> 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 <i>had</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I was sure you weren’t coming,” he laughed shakily. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed in answer, almost with a little cry. +</p> + +<p> +“And I wondered, when I was in the train, what<i>ever</i> I should do if +you weren’t there!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>seen</i> anything before. Till now, everything had been indistinct. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What a pity there is a coal-pit here where it is so pretty!” said +Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you want to come home?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I want to come,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother—Clara,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel held out her hand and smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“He has told me a good deal about you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The blood flamed in Clara’s cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you don’t mind my coming,” she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +“I was pleased when he said he would bring you,” replied Mrs. +Morel. +</p> + +<p> +Paul, watching, felt his heart contract with pain. His mother looked so small, +and sallow, and done-for beside the luxuriant Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s such a pretty day, mother!” he said. “And we saw +a jay.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you’ll leave your things in the parlour,” said Mrs. +Morel nicely to the young woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, thank you,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>we</i> lived in Minerva Terrace.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, did you!” said Clara. “I have a friend in number +6.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“This is Mrs. Dawes, father,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Then Morel pulled himself together. Clara saw Paul’s manner of bowing and +shaking hands. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara was astonished at this flood of hospitality from the old collier. He was +so courteous, so gallant! She thought him most delightful. +</p> + +<p> +“And may you have come far?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Only from Nottingham,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“From Nottingham! Then you have had a beautiful day for your +journey.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Morel rose. +</p> + +<p> +“You will let me help you wash up,” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, there are so few, it will only take a minute,” said the other. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the end of the run with these chaps.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara stood near him. Over the low red wall in front was the country and the +far-off hills, all golden dim. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Count your money,” laughed Paul, as she broke the flat seeds one +by one from the roll of coin. She looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m well off,” she said, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“How much? Pf!” He snapped his fingers. “Can I turn them into +gold?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid not,” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +They looked into each other’s eyes, laughing. At that moment they became +aware of Miriam. There was a click, and everything had altered. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, Miriam!” he exclaimed. “You said you’d +come!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Had you forgotten?” +</p> + +<p> +She shook hands with Clara, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“It seems strange to see you here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied the other; “it seems strange to be +here.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“This is pretty, isn’t it?” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“I like it very much,” replied Clara. +</p> + +<p> +Then Miriam realised that Clara was accepted as she had never been. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you come down alone?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I went to Agatha’s to tea. We are going to chapel. I only +called in for a moment to see Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +“You should have come in here to tea,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Miriam laughed shortly, and Clara turned impatiently aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like the chrysanthemums?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; they are very fine,” replied Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“Which sort do you like best?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. The bronze, I think.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think you’ve seen all the sorts. Come and look. Come +and see which are <i>your</i> favourites, Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look, Miriam; these are the white ones that came from your garden. They +aren’t so fine here, are they?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Miriam. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What! is that Miriam?” asked his mother coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; she said she’d call and see Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +“You told her, then?” came the sarcastic answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; why shouldn’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve not seen Mrs. Morel before?” Miriam was saying to +Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“No; but she’s <i>so</i> nice!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Miriam, dropping her head; “in some ways +she’s very fine.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Had Paul told you much about her?” +</p> + +<p> +“He had talked a good deal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha!” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence until he returned with the book. +</p> + +<p> +“When will you want it back?” Miriam asked. +</p> + +<p> +“When you like,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +Clara turned to go indoors, whilst he accompanied Miriam to the gate. +</p> + +<p> +“When will you come up to Willey Farm?” the latter asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t say,” replied Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother asked me to say she’d be pleased to see you any time, if +you cared to come.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you; I should like to, but I can’t say when.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, very well!” exclaimed Miriam rather bitterly, turning away. +</p> + +<p> +She went down the path with her mouth to the flowers he had given her. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re sure you won’t come in?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, thanks.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are going to chapel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I shall see you, then!” Miriam was very bitter. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But he did not go straight in. Halting on the plot of grass, he heard his +mother’s voice, then Clara’s answer: +</p> + +<p> +“What I hate is the bloodhound quality in Miriam.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said his mother quickly, “yes; <i>doesn’t</i> it +make you hate her, now!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then: “You still keep on with Miriam,” she said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“Only talk. There never <i>was</i> a great deal more than talk between +us,” he said bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“Your mother doesn’t care for her,” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“No, or I might have married her. But it’s all up really!” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly his voice went passionate with hate. +</p> + +<p> +“If I was with her now, we should be jawing about the ‘Christian +Mystery’, or some such tack. Thank God, I’m not!” +</p> + +<p> +They walked on in silence for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“But you can’t really give her up,” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t give her up, because there’s nothing to give,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“There is for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara drew away from him, leaning away from contact with him. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you drawing away for?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer, but drew farther from him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you want to walk alone?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Still there was no answer. She walked resentfully, hanging her head. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I said I would be friends with Miriam!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +She would not answer him anything. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you it’s only words that go between us,” he +persisted, trying to take her again. +</p> + +<p> +She resisted. Suddenly he strode across in front of her, barring her way. +</p> + +<p> +“Damn it!” he said. “What do you want now?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better run after Miriam,” mocked Clara. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He heard people coming down the hill. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +She sighed and walked dizzily beside him. They went on in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“We will go over the fields,” he said; and then she woke up. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Like treading among the stars,” he said, with a quaky laugh. +</p> + +<p> +Then he took her in his arms, and held her fast. She moved aside her mouth to +ask, dogged and low: +</p> + +<p> +“What time is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter,” he pleaded thickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes it does—yes! I must go!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s early yet,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What time is it?” she insisted. +</p> + +<p> +All round lay the black night, speckled and spangled with lights. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t see,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then don’t bother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I’m going!” she said, turning away. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait! I’ll look!” But he could not see. “I’ll +strike a match.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” she asked, afraid. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t do it,” his voice answered out of the darkness. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. She felt in his power. She had heard the ring in his voice. +It frightened her. +</p> + +<p> +“What time is it?” she asked, quiet, definite, hopeless. +</p> + +<p> +“Two minutes to nine,” he replied, telling the truth with a +struggle. +</p> + +<p> +“And can I get from here to the station in fourteen minutes?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. At any rate—” +</p> + +<p> +She could distinguish his dark form again a yard or so away. She wanted to +escape. +</p> + +<p> +“But can’t I do it?” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I want to catch the train.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do—I want to catch the train.” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly his voice altered. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” he said, dry and hard. “Come along, then.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“There she is!” he cried, breaking into a run. +</p> + +<p> +There was a faint rattling noise. Away to the right the train, like a luminous +caterpillar, was threading across the night. The rattling ceased. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s over the viaduct. You’ll just do it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I must say your boots are in a nice state!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at his feet. Then he took off his overcoat. His mother wondered if he +were drunk. +</p> + +<p> +“She caught the train then?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope <i>her</i> feet weren’t so filthy. Where on earth you +dragged her I don’t know!” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent and motionless for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you like her?” he asked grudgingly at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I liked her. But you’ll tire of her, my son; you know you +will.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not answer. She noticed how he laboured in his breathing. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you been running?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“We had to run for the train.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll go and knock yourself up. You’d better drink hot +milk.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One evening of that week Sarah Bernhardt was at the Theatre Royal in +Nottingham, giving “La Dame aux Camélias”. 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I book seats?” he asked of Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. And put on an evening suit, will you? I’ve never seen you in +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, good Lord, Clara! Think of <i>me</i> in evening suit at the +theatre!” he remonstrated. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you rather not?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I will if you <i>want</i> me to; but I s’ll feel a fool.” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Then feel a fool for my sake, once, won’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +The request made his blood flush up. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I s’ll have to.” +</p> + +<p> +“What are you taking a suitcase for?” his mother asked. +</p> + +<p> +He blushed furiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Clara asked me,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And what seats are you going in?” +</p> + +<p> +“Circle—three-and-six each!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m sure!” exclaimed his mother sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s only once in the bluest of blue moons,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He dressed at Jordan’s, put on an overcoat and a cap, and met Clara in a +café. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When all was over, the lights up, the people clapping, he came to himself and +looked at his watch. His train was gone. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll have to walk home!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Clara looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“It is too late?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded. Then he helped her on with her coat. +</p> + +<p> +“I love you! You look beautiful in that dress,” he murmured over +her shoulder, among the throng of bustling people. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The train had gone. He would have to walk the ten miles home. +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I shall enjoy it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you,” she said, flushing, “come home for the +night? I can sleep with mother.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her. Their eyes met. +</p> + +<p> +“What will your mother say?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“She won’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re sure?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Shall</i> I come?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you will.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will your mother be gone to bed?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“She may be. I hope not.” +</p> + +<p> +They hurried along the silent, dark little street, the only people out of +doors. Clara quickly entered the house. He hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +He leaped up the step and was in the room. Her mother appeared in the inner +doorway, large and hostile. +</p> + +<p> +“Who have you got there?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m,” exclaimed Mrs. Radford. “That’s +<i>your</i> lookout! If you’ve invited him, he’s very welcome as +far as I’m concerned. <i>You</i> keep the house!” +</p> + +<p> +“If you don’t like me, I’ll go away again,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, nay, you needn’t! Come along in! I dunno what you’ll +think of the supper I’d got her.” +</p> + +<p> +It was a little dish of chip potatoes and a piece of bacon. The table was +roughly laid for one. +</p> + +<p> +“You can have some more bacon,” continued Mrs. Radford. “More +chips you can’t have.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a shame to bother you,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t you be apologetic! It doesn’t <i>do</i> wi’ +me! You treated her to the theatre, didn’t you?” There was a +sarcasm in the last question. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” laughed Paul uncomfortably. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, and what’s an inch of bacon! Take your coat off.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My sirs!” exclaimed Mrs. Radford; “but you two’s a +pair of bright beauties, I must say! What’s all that get-up for?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe we don’t know,” he said, feeling a victim. +</p> + +<p> +“There isn’t room in <i>this</i> house for two such bobby-dazzlers, +if you fly your kites <i>that</i> high!” she rallied them. It was a nasty +thrust. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And look at <i>that</i> blossom!” continued Mrs. Radford, pointing +to Clara. “What does she reckon she did it for?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked at Clara. She was rosy; her neck was warm with blushes. There was a +moment of silence. +</p> + +<p> +“You like to see it, don’t you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Me like to see it!” exclaimed the old woman. “What should I +like to see her make a fool of herself for?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve seen people look bigger fools,” he said. Clara was +under his protection now. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ay! and when was that?” came the sarcastic rejoinder. +</p> + +<p> +“When they made frights of themselves,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Radford, large and threatening, stood suspended on the hearthrug, holding +her fork. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re fools either road,” she answered at length, turning +to the Dutch oven. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, fighting stoutly. “Folk ought to look as well +as they can.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you call <i>that</i> looking nice!” cried the mother, +pointing a scornful fork at Clara. “That—that looks as if it +wasn’t properly dressed!” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe you’re jealous that you can’t swank as +well,” he said laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Me! I could have worn evening dress with anybody, if I’d wanted +to!” came the scornful answer. +</p> + +<p> +“And why didn’t you want to?” he asked pertinently. “Or +<i>did</i> you wear it?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause. Mrs. Radford readjusted the bacon in the Dutch oven. +His heart beat fast, for fear he had offended her. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>she</i> was, going to her sixpenny hop!” +</p> + +<p> +“Were you too good to go to a sixpenny hop?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>There’s</i> a nice crozzly bit!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t give me the best!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>She’s</i> got what <i>she</i> wants,” was the answer. +</p> + +<p> +There was a sort of scornful forbearance in the woman’s tone that made +Paul know she was mollified. +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>do</i> have some!” he said to Clara. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at him with her grey eyes, humiliated and lonely. +</p> + +<p> +“No thanks!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why won’t you?” he answered carelessly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“They say Sarah Bernhardt’s fifty,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Fifty! She’s turned sixty!” came the scornful answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “you’d never think it! She made me +want to howl even now.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to see myself howling at <i>that</i> bad old +baggage!” said Mrs. Radford. “It’s time she began to think +herself a grandmother, not a shrieking catamaran—” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“A catamaran is a boat the Malays use,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And it’s a word as <i>I</i> use,” she retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“My mother does sometimes, and it’s no good my telling her,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’d think she boxes your ears,” said Mrs. Radford, +good-humouredly. +</p> + +<p> +“She’d like to, and she says she will, so I give her a little stool +to stand on.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the worst of my mother,” said Clara. “She never +wants a stool for anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“But she often can’t touch <i>that</i> lady with a long +prop,” retorted Mrs. Radford to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’d think she doesn’t want touching with a prop,” he +laughed. “<i>I</i> shouldn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“It might do the pair of you good to give you a crack on the head with +one,” said the mother, laughing suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you so vindictive towards me?” he said. “I’ve +not stolen anything from you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I’ll watch that,” laughed the older woman. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, I’d forgot all about <i>them!</i>” said Mrs. Radford. +“Where have they sprung from?” +</p> + +<p> +“Out of my drawer.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>bear</i> ’em, them pyjama +things.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man sat making rings of smoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s everyone to his taste,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +Then followed a little discussion of the merits of pyjamas. +</p> + +<p> +“My mother loves me in them,” he said. “She says I’m a +pierrot.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can imagine they’d suit you,” said Mrs. Radford. +</p> + +<p> +After a while he glanced at the little clock that was ticking on the +mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve. +</p> + +<p> +“It is funny,” he said, “but it takes hours to settle down to +sleep after the theatre.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s about time you did,” said Mrs. Radford, clearing the +table. +</p> + +<p> +“Are <i>you</i> tired?” he asked of Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Not the least bit,” she answered, avoiding his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we have a game at cribbage?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve forgotten it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll teach you again. May we play crib, Mrs. Radford?” +he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll please yourselves,” she said; “but it’s +pretty late.” +</p> + +<p> +“A game or so will make us sleepy,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and two’s +eight—!” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>she</i>, at any rate, was of his mind. He played on. +</p> + +<p> +At last Mrs. Radford roused herself stiffly, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it nigh on time you two was thinking o’ bed?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul played on without answering. He hated her sufficiently to murder her. +</p> + +<p> +“Half a minute,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll stop, then,” he said, but his voice was still a +challenge. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I shall; I always do,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and so you ought at your age,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Will you unfasten my dress?” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for some time. At last the mother said: +</p> + +<p> +“Now then! aren’t you coming up?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not yet,” replied the daughter calmly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shan’t be long,” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Sorry!” he murmured, realising that his hands were very cold. +</p> + +<p> +Then she looked up at him, frightened, like a thing that is afraid of death. +</p> + +<p> +“My hands are so cold,” he murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“I like it,” she whispered, closing her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come you to my room,” he murmured. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him and shook her head, her mouth pouting disconsolately, her +eyes heavy with passion. He watched her fixedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Again she shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him still heavily, sorrowfully, and again she shook her head. His +eyes hardened, and he gave way. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think you’re going to sleep till Doomsday?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed at once. +</p> + +<p> +“It ought only to be about five o’clock,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she answered, “it’s half-past seven, whether or +not. Here, I’ve brought you a cup of tea.” +</p> + +<p> +He rubbed his face, pushed the tumbled hair off his forehead, and roused +himself. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s it so late for!” he grumbled. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dash the cup!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You should go to bed earlier,” said the woman. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her, laughing with impudence. +</p> + +<p> +“I went to bed before <i>you</i> did,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, my Guyney, you did!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Fancy,” he said, stirring his tea, “having tea brought to +bed to me! My mother’ll think I’m ruined for life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t she never do it?” asked Mrs. Radford. +</p> + +<p> +“She’d as leave think of flying.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I always spoilt my lot! That’s why they’ve turned out +such bad uns,” said the elderly woman. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not bad; I’m only soft,” she said, as she went out +of the bedroom. “I’m only a fool, I am!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the good,” exclaimed the mother, “of your +whittling and worrying and twistin’ and too-in’ at that painting of +yours? What <i>good</i> does it do you, I should like to know? You’d +better be enjoyin’ yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but,” exclaimed Paul, “I made over thirty guineas last +year.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you! Well, that’s a consideration, but it’s nothing to +the time you put in.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay! you know your own uses for your money,” said Mrs. Radford. +</p> + +<p> +“But I’m going to bust this four pounds. Should we go to the +seaside for a day or two?” +</p> + +<p> +“Who?” +</p> + +<p> +“You and Clara and me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, on your money!” she exclaimed, half-wrathful. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> wouldn’t be long in breaking your neck at a hurdle +race!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“So long as I get a good run for my money! Will you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay; you may settle that atween you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’re willing?” he asked, amazed and rejoicing. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll do as you like,” said Mrs. Radford, “whether +I’m willing or not.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br/> +BAXTER DAWES</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Since he was a superior employee at Jordan’s, it was the thing for Paul +to offer Dawes a drink. +</p> + +<p> +“What’ll you have?” he asked of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Nowt wi’ a bleeder like you!” replied the man. +</p> + +<p> +Paul turned away with a slight disdainful movement of the shoulders, very +irritating. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>want</i> war!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes interrupted the young man’s flow of eloquence by asking, in a loud +sneer: +</p> + +<p> +“Did you learn all that at th’ theatre th’ other +night?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked at him; their eyes met. Then he knew Dawes had seen him coming out +of the theatre with Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what about th’ theatre?” asked one of Paul’s +associates, glad to get a dig at the young fellow, and sniffing something +tasty. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, him in a bob-tailed evening suit, on the lardy-da!” sneered +Dawes, jerking his head contemptuously at Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s comin’ it strong,” said the mutual friend. +“Tart an’ all?” +</p> + +<p> +“Tart, begod!” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Go on; let’s have it!” cried the mutual friend. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got it,” said Dawes, “an’ I reckon +Morelly had it an’ all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” said the mutual friend. +“An’ was it a proper tart?” +</p> + +<p> +“Tart, God blimey—yes!” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Dawes, “I reckon he spent th’ +night—” +</p> + +<p> +There was a good deal of laughter at Paul’s expense. +</p> + +<p> +“But who <i>was</i> she? D’you know her?” asked the mutual +friend. +</p> + +<p> +“I should <i>shay sho</i>,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +This brought another burst of laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“Then spit it out,” said the mutual friend. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes shook his head, and took a gulp of beer. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a wonder he hasn’t let on himself,” he said. +“He’ll be braggin’ of it in a bit.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come on, Paul,” said the friend; “it’s no good. You +might just as well own up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Own up what? That I happened to take a friend to the theatre?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well, if it was all right, tell us who she was, lad,” said the +friend. +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>was</i> all right,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +Paul was furious. Dawes wiped his golden moustache with his fingers, sneering. +</p> + +<p> +“Strike me—! One o’ that sort?” said the mutual friend. +“Paul, boy, I’m surprised at you. And do you know her, +Baxter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just a bit, like!” +</p> + +<p> +He winked at the other men. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well,” said Paul, “I’ll be going!” +</p> + +<p> +The mutual friend laid a detaining hand on his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then get it from Dawes!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You shouldn’t funk your own deeds, man,” remonstrated the +friend. +</p> + +<p> +Then Dawes made a remark which caused Paul to throw half a glass of beer in his +face. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Mr. Morel!” cried the barmaid, and she rang the bell for the +“chucker-out”. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, then!” he said, pushing his chest in front of Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Come out!” cried Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Come out, you—,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s enough, Dawes,” cried the barmaid. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on,” said the “chucker-out”, with kindly +insistence, “you’d better be getting on.” +</p> + +<p> +And, by making Dawes edge away from his own close proximity, he worked him to +the door. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>That’s</i> the little sod as started it!” cried Dawes, +half-cowed, pointing to Paul Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what a story, Mr. Dawes!” said the barmaid. “You know +it was you all the time.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, nodding straight at his rival. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Serve him jolly well right!” said the barmaid. +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s a nasty thing to get a glass of beer in your eyes,” +said the mutual friend. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you <i>I</i> was glad he did,” said the barmaid. +“Will you have another, Mr. Morel?” +</p> + +<p> +She held up Paul’s glass questioningly. He nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a man as doesn’t care for anything, is Baxter +Dawes,” said one. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Paul, my lad,” said the friend, “you’ll have to +take care of yourself now for a while.” +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t have to give him a chance over you, that’s +all,” said the barmaid. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you box?” asked a friend. +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit,” he answered, still very white. +</p> + +<p> +“I might give you a turn or two,” said the friend. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks, I haven’t time.” +</p> + +<p> +And presently he took his departure. +</p> + +<p> +“Go along with him, Mr. Jenkinson,” whispered the barmaid, tipping +Mr. Jenkinson the wink. +</p> + +<p> +The man nodded, took his hat, said: “Good-night all!” very +heartily, and followed Paul, calling: +</p> + +<p> +“Half a minute, old man. You an’ me’s going the same road, I +believe.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s him to a ‘T’,” she +cried—“like a navvy! He’s not fit for mixing with decent +folk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you married him,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +It made her furious that he reminded her. +</p> + +<p> +“I did!” she cried. “But how was I to know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he might have been rather nice,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You think <i>I</i> made him what he is!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no! he made himself. But there’s something about +him—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And what are you going to do?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“How?” +</p> + +<p> +“About Baxter.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing to do, is there?” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“You can fight him if you have to, I suppose?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you’d better carry something,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” he laughed; “I’m not daggeroso.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he’ll do something to you. You don’t know him.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” he said, “we’ll see.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’ll let him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps, if I can’t help it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if he kills you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I should be sorry, for his sake and mine.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara was silent for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>do</i> make me angry!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s nothing afresh,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“But why are you so silly? You don’t know him.” +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t want.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but you’re not going to let a man do as he likes with +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“What must I do?” he replied, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> should carry a revolver,” she said. “I’m sure +he’s dangerous.” +</p> + +<p> +“I might blow my fingers off,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No; but won’t you?” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’ll leave him to—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are a fool!” +</p> + +<p> +“Fact!” +</p> + +<p> +She set her teeth with anger. +</p> + +<p> +“I could <i>shake</i> you!” she cried, trembling with passion. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let a man like <i>him</i> do as he likes with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can go back to him if he triumphs,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want me to hate you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I only tell you,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>you</i> say you <i>love</i> me!” she exclaimed, low and +indignant. +</p> + +<p> +“Ought I to slay him to please you?” he said. “But if I did, +see what a hold he’d have over me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think I’m a fool!” she exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all. But you don’t understand me, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause between them. +</p> + +<p> +“But you ought <i>not</i> to expose yourself,” she pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +He shrugged his shoulders. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘The man in righteousness arrayed,<br /> + The pure and blameless liver,<br /> +Needs not the keen Toledo blade,<br /> + Nor venom-freighted quiver,’” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +he quoted. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him searchingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I could understand you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s simply nothing to understand,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +She bowed her head, brooding. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What the—!” cried the smith. +</p> + +<p> +“Sorry!” said Paul, and passed on. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Sorry!</i>” sneered Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +Paul whistled lightly, “Put Me among the Girls”. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll stop your whistle, my jockey!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The other took no notice. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re goin’ to answer for that job of the other +night.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul went to his desk in his corner, and turned over the leaves of the ledger. +</p> + +<p> +“Go and tell Fanny I want order 097, quick!” he said to his boy. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes stood in the doorway, tall and threatening, looking at the top of the +young man’s head. +</p> + +<p> +“Six and five’s eleven and seven’s one-and-six,” Paul +added aloud. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ you hear, do you!” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Five and ninepence!</i>” He wrote a figure. “What’s +that?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to show you what it is,” said the smith. +</p> + +<p> +The other went on adding the figures aloud. +</p> + +<p> +“Yer crawlin’ little—, yer daresn’t face me +proper!” +</p> + +<p> +Paul quickly snatched the heavy ruler. Dawes started. The young man ruled some +lines in his ledger. The elder man was infuriated. +</p> + +<p> +“But wait till I light on you, no matter where it is, I’ll settle +your hash for a bit, yer little swine!” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +At that the smith started heavily from the doorway. Just then a whistle piped +shrilly. Paul went to the speaking-tube. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes knew from his tone that he had been speaking to Clara. He stepped +forward. +</p> + +<p> +“Yer little devil!” he said. “I’ll visitor you, inside +of two minutes! Think I’m goin’ to have <i>you</i> +whipperty-snappin’ round?” +</p> + +<p> +The other clerks in the warehouse looked up. Paul’s office-boy appeared, +holding some white article. +</p> + +<p> +“Fanny says you could have had it last night if you’d let her +know,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” answered Paul, looking at the stocking. “Get it +off.” Dawes stood frustrated, helpless with rage. Morel turned round. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me a minute,” he said to Dawes, and he would have run +downstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“By God, I’ll stop your gallop!” shouted the smith, seizing +him by the arm. He turned quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Hey! Hey!” cried the office-boy, alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Jordan started out of his little glass office, and came running down the +room. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a-matter, what’s a-matter?” he said, in his old +man’s sharp voice. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m just goin’ ter settle this little—, that’s +all,” said Dawes desperately. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” snapped Thomas Jordan. +</p> + +<p> +“What I say,” said Dawes, but he hung fire. +</p> + +<p> +Morel was leaning against the counter, ashamed, half-grinning. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s it all about?” snapped Thomas Jordan. +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t say,” said Paul, shaking his head and shrugging his +shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t yer, couldn’t yer!” cried Dawes, thrusting +forward his handsome, furious face, and squaring his fist. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you finished?” cried the old man, strutting. “Get off +about your business, and don’t come here tipsy in the morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes turned his big frame slowly upon him. +</p> + +<p> +“Tipsy!” he said. “Who’s tipsy? I’m no more tipsy +than <i>you</i> are!” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve heard that song before,” snapped the old man. +“Now you get off, and don’t be long about it. Comin’ +<i>here</i> with your rowdying.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Get out before you’re turned out!” snapped Thomas Jordan. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, who’ll turn me out?” said Dawes, beginning to sneer. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Jordan started, marched up to the smith, waving him off, thrusting his +stout little figure at the man, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Get off my premises—get off!” +</p> + +<p> +He seized and twitched Dawes’s arm. +</p> + +<p> +“Come off!” said the smith, and with a jerk of the elbow he sent +the little manufacturer staggering backwards. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Jordan was shaken and bruised, not otherwise hurt. He was, however, +beside himself with rage. He dismissed Dawes from his employment, and summoned +him for assault. +</p> + +<p> +At the trial Paul Morel had to give evidence. Asked how the trouble began, he +said: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Cherchez la femme!</i>” smiled the magistrate. +</p> + +<p> +The case was dismissed after the magistrate had told Dawes he thought him a +skunk. +</p> + +<p> +“You gave the case away,” snapped Mr. Jordan to Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think I did,” replied the latter. “Besides, +you didn’t really want a conviction, did you?” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think I took the case up for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Paul, “I’m sorry if I said the wrong +thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara was also very angry. +</p> + +<p> +“Why need <i>my</i> name have been dragged in?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Better speak it openly than leave it to be whispered.” +</p> + +<p> +“There was no need for anything at all,” she declared. +</p> + +<p> +“We are none the poorer,” he said indifferently. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> may not be,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I need never have been mentioned.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry,” he said; but he did not sound sorry. +</p> + +<p> +He told himself easily: “She will come round.” And she did. +</p> + +<p> +He told his mother about the fall of Mr. Jordan and the trial of Dawes. Mrs. +Morel watched him closely. +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you think of it all?” she asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“I think he’s a fool,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +But he was very uncomfortable, nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you ever considered where it will end?” his mother said. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he answered; “things work out of themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“They do, in a way one doesn’t like, as a rule,” said his +mother. +</p> + +<p> +“And then one has to put up with them,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll find you’re not as good at ‘putting up’ +as you imagine,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He went on working rapidly at his design. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you ever ask <i>her</i> opinion?” she said at length. +</p> + +<p> +“What of?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of you, and the whole thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care what her opinion of me is. She’s fearfully in +love with me, but it’s not very deep.” +</p> + +<p> +“But quite as deep as your feeling for her.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at his mother curiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “You know, mother, I think there must be +something the matter with me, that I <i>can’t</i> love. When she’s +there, as a rule, I <i>do</i> love her. Sometimes, when I see her just as +<i>the woman</i>, I love her, mother; but then, when she talks and criticises, +I often don’t listen to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet she’s as much sense as Miriam.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps; and I love her better than Miriam. But <i>why</i> don’t +they hold me?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you wouldn’t want to marry Clara?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How wronged them, my son?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +He went on painting rather despairingly; he had touched the quick of the +trouble. +</p> + +<p> +“And as for wanting to marry,” said his mother, +“there’s plenty of time yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“But no, mother. I even love Clara, and I did Miriam; but to <i>give</i> +myself to them in marriage I couldn’t. I couldn’t belong to them. +They seem to want <i>me</i>, and I can’t ever give it them.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t met the right woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I never shall meet the right woman while you live,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She was very quiet. Now she began to feel again tired, as if she were done. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll see, my son,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +The feeling that things were going in a circle made him mad. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you always stay at Jordan’s?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he answered without reflecting. “No; I s’ll leave +Nottingham and go abroad—soon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go abroad! What for?” +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno! I feel restless.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what shall you do?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And when do you think you’ll go?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. I shall hardly go for long, while there’s my +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“You couldn’t leave her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for long.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And if you made a nice lot of money, what would you do?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Go somewhere in a pretty house near London with my mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long pause. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +After a moment he lifted his head as if he wanted to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Clara,” he said, struggling. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>know</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When they stood up they saw other lovers stealing down the opposite hedge. It +seemed natural they were there; the night contained them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>known</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But what do you always want to be kissing and embracing for?” he +said. “Surely there’s a time for everything.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at him, and the hate came into her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Do</i> I always want to be kissing you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is love?” she asked. “Has it to have special +hours?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; out of work hours.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’ll regulate it according to Mr. Jordan’s closing +time?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and according to the freedom from business of any sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is only to exist in spare time?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all, and not always then—not the kissing sort of +love.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that’s all you think of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s quite enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad you think so.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They had a warm hollow in the sandhills where the wind did not come. He stood +looking out to sea. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s very fine,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Now don’t get sentimental,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +It irritated her to see him standing gazing at the sea, like a solitary and +poetic person. He laughed. She quickly undressed. +</p> + +<p> +“There are some fine waves this morning,” she said triumphantly. +</p> + +<p> +She was a better swimmer than he; he stood idly watching her. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you coming?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“In a minute,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +She was white and velvet skinned, with heavy shoulders. A little wind, coming +from the sea, blew across her body and ruffled her hair. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Oo, it will be so cold!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Go, then!” he said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +She flung her arms round his neck, drew him against her, kissed him +passionately, and went, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ll come in?” +</p> + +<p> +“In a minute.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>she?</i> It’s not her I care for.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“But she is magnificent, and even bigger than the morning and the sea. Is +she—? Is she—?” +</p> + +<p> +She, seeing his dark eyes fixed on her, broke off from her drying with a laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you looking at?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“You,” he answered, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes met his, and in a moment he was kissing her white +“goose-fleshed” shoulder, and thinking: +</p> + +<p> +“What is she? What is she?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Later in the day he went out sketching. +</p> + +<p> +“You,” he said to her, “go with your mother to Sutton. I am +so dull.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He ran the cold sand through his fingers, feeling guilty under the accusation. +</p> + +<p> +“The night is free to you,” he replied. “In the daytime I +want to be by myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” she said. “Why, even now, when we are on this +short holiday?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. Love-making stifles me in the daytime.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it needn’t be always love-making,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“It always is,” he answered, “when you and I are +together.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat feeling very bitter. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you ever want to marry me?” he asked curiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you me?” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes; I should like us to have children,” he answered slowly. +</p> + +<p> +She sat with her head bent, fingering the sand. +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t really want a divorce from Baxter, do you?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +It was some minutes before she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, very deliberately; “I don’t think I +do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you feel as if you belonged to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I don’t think so.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he belongs to me,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +He was silent for some minutes, listening to the wind blowing over the hoarse, +dark sea. +</p> + +<p> +“And you never really intended to belong to <i>me?</i>” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do belong to you,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said; “because you don’t want to be +divorced.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I consider you treated Baxter rottenly,” he said another time. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I certainly never imagined him a lily of the valley.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what are you doing?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m thinking what tune I shall whistle,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +And instead of boxing his ears, she considered him in earnest. +</p> + +<p> +“You think I want to give you what’s good for you?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“And would <i>you</i> let a <i>woman</i> do as she likes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I’ll see that she <i>likes</i> to love me. If she +doesn’t—well, I don’t hold her.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you were as wonderful as you say—,” replied Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“I should be the marvel I am,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence in which they hated each other, though they laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Love’s a dog in a manger,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And which of us is the dog?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well, you, of course.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>herself</i>, 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 +<i>knew</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“But we walk side by side, and yet I’m in London arguing with an +imaginary Orpen; and where are you?” +</p> + +<p> +At that instant Dawes passed, almost touching Morel. The young man glanced, saw +the dark brown eyes burning, full of hate and yet tired. +</p> + +<p> +“Who was that?” he asked of Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“It was Baxter,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He looks shady,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +But the note of pity in his voice reproached her, and made her feel hard. +</p> + +<p> +“His true commonness comes out,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you hate him?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t <i>I?</i>” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t I know you exist?” +</p> + +<p> +“About <i>me</i> you know nothing,” she said +bitterly—“about <i>me!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“No more than Baxter knew?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps not as much.” +</p> + +<p> +He felt puzzled, and helpless, and angry. There she walked unknown to him, +though they had been through such experience together. +</p> + +<p> +“But you know <i>me</i> pretty well,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know Baxter as well as you know me?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He wouldn’t let me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And I have let you know me?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s what men <i>won’t</i> let you do. They won’t let +you get really near to them,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And haven’t I let you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He walked on pondering. He was angry with her for preferring Baxter to him. +</p> + +<p> +“You begin to value Baxter now you’ve not got him,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I can only see where he was different from you.” +</p> + +<p> +But he felt she had a grudge against him. +</p> + +<p> +One evening, as they were coming home over the fields, she startled him by +asking: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think it’s worth it—the—the sex part?” +</p> + +<p> +“The act of loving, itself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; is it worth anything to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“But how can you separate it?” he said. “It’s the +culmination of everything. All our intimacy culminates then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>me</i> +you were taking—” +</p> + +<p> +“Who, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Something just for yourself. It has been fine, so that I daren’t +think of it. But is it <i>me</i> you want, or is it <i>It?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He again felt guilty. Did he leave Clara out of count, and take simply women? +But he thought that was splitting a hair. +</p> + +<p> +“When I had Baxter, actually had him, then I <i>did</i> feel as if I had +all of him,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And it was better?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes; it was more whole. I don’t say you haven’t given +me more than he ever gave me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Or could give you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, perhaps; but you’ve never given me yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +He knitted his brows angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“If I start to make love to you,” he said, “I just go like a +leaf down the wind.” +</p> + +<p> +“And leave me out of count,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And then is it nothing to you?” he asked, almost rigid with +chagrin. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s something; and sometimes you have carried me away—right +away—I know—and—I reverence you for +it—but—” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t ‘but’ me,” he said, kissing her quickly, +as a fire ran through him. +</p> + +<p> +She submitted, and was silent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>that</i> 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 passers-by 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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was close up to the next stile before he saw a dark shape leaning against +it. The man moved aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evening!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evening!” Morel answered, not noticing. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul Morel?” said the man. +</p> + +<p> +Then he knew it was Dawes. The man stopped his way. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got yer, have I?” he said awkwardly. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall miss my train,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +He could see nothing of Dawes’s face. The man’s teeth seemed to +chatter as he talked. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re going to get it from me now,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +Morel attempted to move forward; the other man stepped in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Are yer goin’ to take that top-coat off,” he said, “or +are you goin’ to lie down to it?” +</p> + +<p> +Paul was afraid the man was mad. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” he said, “I don’t know how to fight.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right, then,” answered Dawes, and before the younger man knew +where he was, he was staggering backwards from a blow across the face. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I mustn’t lie here,” he said; “it’s +silly.” +</p> + +<p> +But still he did not move. +</p> + +<p> +“I said I was going to get up,” he repeated. “Why don’t +I?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not much, mother,” he said. “It was Baxter +Dawes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me where it hurts you,” she said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—my shoulder. Say it was a bicycle accident, +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +He could not move his arm. Presently Minnie, the little servant, came upstairs +with some tea. +</p> + +<p> +“Your mother’s nearly frightened me out of my wits—fainted +away,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He felt he could not bear it. His mother nursed him; he told her about it. +</p> + +<p> +“And now I should have done with them all,” she said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“I will, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +She covered him up. +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t think about it,” she said—“only try to +go to sleep. The doctor won’t be here till eleven.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“She makes me tired, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I wish she wouldn’t come,” Mrs. Morel replied. +</p> + +<p> +Another day Miriam came, but she seemed almost like a stranger to him. +</p> + +<p> +“You know, I don’t care about them, mother,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you don’t, my son,” she replied sadly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is my mother ill?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; she’s not very well. Don’t upset her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is she in bed?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you were never coming,” she answered gaily. +</p> + +<p> +But he only fell on his knees at the bedside, and buried his face in the +bedclothes, crying in agony, and saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Mother—mother—mother!” +</p> + +<p> +She stroked his hair slowly with her thin hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t cry,” she said. “Don’t +cry—it’s nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +But he felt as if his blood was melting into tears, and he cried in terror and +pain. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t—don’t cry,” his mother faltered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>are</i> late. Where have you been?” his mother asked. +</p> + +<p> +“The train was late,” he replied, muffled in the sheet. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; that miserable Central! Is Newton come?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure you must be hungry, and they’ve kept dinner +waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +With a wrench he looked up at her. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, mother?” he asked brutally. +</p> + +<p> +She averted her eyes as she answered: +</p> + +<p> +“Only a bit of a tumour, my boy. You needn’t trouble. It’s +been there—the lump has—a long time.” +</p> + +<p> +Up came the tears again. His mind was clear and hard, but his body was crying. +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She put her hand on her side. +</p> + +<p> +“Here. But you know they can sweal a tumour away.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“When were you poorly?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It was yesterday it began,” she answered submissively. +</p> + +<p> +“Pains?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but not more than I’ve often had at home. I believe Dr. +Ansell is an alarmist.” +</p> + +<p> +“You ought not to have travelled alone,” he said, to himself more +than to her. +</p> + +<p> +“As if that had anything to do with it!” she answered quickly. +</p> + +<p> +They were silent for a while. +</p> + +<p> +“Now go and have your dinner,” she said. “You <i>must</i> be +hungry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you had yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; a beautiful sole I had. Annie <i>is</i> good to me.” +</p> + +<p> +They talked a little while, then he went downstairs. He was very white and +strained. Newton sat in miserable sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner he went into the scullery to help Annie to wash up. The little +maid had gone on an errand. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it really a tumour?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Annie began to cry again. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The tears came to his eyes, then dried suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“But she’s been attending the doctor in Nottingham—and she +never told me,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“If I’d have been at home,” said Annie, “I should have +seen for myself.” +</p> + +<p> +He felt like a man walking in unrealities. In the afternoon he went to see the +doctor. The latter was a shrewd, lovable man. +</p> + +<p> +“But what is it?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor looked at the young man, then knitted his fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“It may be a large tumour which has formed in the membrane,” he +said slowly, “and which we <i>may</i> be able to make go away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you operate?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Not there,” replied the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Quite!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Paul meditated a while. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Morel never told Dr. Jameson about the lump,” said the +doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“And do you <i>know</i> it’s a tumour?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I am not sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“What else <i>might</i> it be? You asked my sister if there was cancer in +the family. Might it be cancer?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what shall you do?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like an examination, with Dr. Jameson.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then have one.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must arrange about that. His fee wouldn’t be less than ten +guineas to come here from Nottingham.” +</p> + +<p> +“When would you like him to come?” +</p> + +<p> +“I will call in this evening, and we will talk it over.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul went away, biting his lip. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you look quite pretty in that,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; they make me so fine, I hardly know myself,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” she panted, “it’ll go off. Don’t +cry!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not doing,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +After a while she was better again. He was kneeling beside the couch. They +looked into each other’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want you to make a trouble of it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, mother. You’ll have to be quite still, and then you’ll +get better soon.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you all right?” she murmured timidly to her mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +Paul sat down and told her about Blackpool. She was curious. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Number forty-six M.,” said the nurse; and the doctor looked up the +case in his book. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a big lump that may be a tumour,” said Paul. “But +Dr. Ansell was going to write you a letter.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is your father?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He is a coal-miner,” replied Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Not very well off, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“This—I see after this,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“And you?” smiled the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a clerk in Jordan’s Appliance Factory.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor smiled at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Er—to go to Sheffield!” he said, putting the tips of his +fingers together, and smiling with his eyes. “Eight guineas?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” said Paul, flushing and rising. “And +you’ll come to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow—Sunday? Yes! Can you tell me about what time there is a +train in the afternoon?” +</p> + +<p> +“There is a Central gets in at four-fifteen.” +</p> + +<p> +“And will there be any way of getting up to the house? Shall I have to +walk?” The doctor smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“There is the tram,” said Paul; “the Western Park +tram.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor made a note of it. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” he said, and shook hands. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, son! Tha has landed, then?” said the father. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied the son. “But I’m going back +to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are ter, beguy!” exclaimed the collier. “An’ has ter +eaten owt?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s just like thee,” said Morel. “Come thy ways +in.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, an’ how is she?” asked the miner at length, in a +little voice. +</p> + +<p> +“She can sit up; she can be carried down for tea,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a blessin’!” exclaimed Morel. “I hope we +s’ll soon be havin’ her whoam, then. An’ what’s that +Nottingham doctor say?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s going to-morrow to have an examination of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he beguy! That’s a tidy penny, I’m thinkin’!” +</p> + +<p> +“Eight guineas.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eight guineas!” the miner spoke breathlessly. “Well, we mun +find it from somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can pay that,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence between them for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“She says she hopes you’re getting on all right with Minnie,” +Paul said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll have to be going at half-past three,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a trapse for thee, lad! Eight guineas! An’ when dost +think she’ll be able to get as far as this?” +</p> + +<p> +“We must see what the doctors say to-morrow,” Paul said. +</p> + +<p> +Morel sighed deeply. The house seemed strangely empty, and Paul thought his +father looked lost, forlorn, and old. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll have to go and see her next week, father,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope she’ll be a-whoam by that time,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“If she’s not,” said Paul, “then you must come.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno wheer I s’ll find th’ money,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’ll write to you what the doctor says,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“But tha writes i’ such a fashion, I canna ma’e it +out,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll write plain.” +</p> + +<p> +It was no good asking Morel to answer, for he could scarcely do more than write +his own name. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>may</i> be a tumour; we must wait and see,” said Dr. +Jameson. +</p> + +<p> +“And if it is,” said Annie, “can you sweal it away?” +</p> + +<p> +“Probably,” said the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” he said. “I’m sorry Mrs. Morel is so ill. +But we must see what we can do.” +</p> + +<p> +“There can’t be an operation?” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said; “and even if there could, her heart +wouldn’t stand it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is her heart risky?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; you must be careful with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very risky?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—er—no, no! Just take care.” +</p> + +<p> +And the doctor was gone. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so frightened of these beastly stairs,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +And he was frightened, too. He would let Leonard do it another time. He felt he +could not carry her. +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks it’s only a tumour!” cried Annie to her mother. +“And he can sweal it away.” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>knew</i> he could,” protested Mrs. Morel scornfully. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The next day he kissed her before going back to work. It was very early in the +morning, and they were alone. +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t fret, my boy!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; it would be silly. And take care of yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered. Then, after a while: “And I shall come +next Saturday, and shall I bring my father?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose he wants to come,” she replied. “At any rate, if +he does you’ll have to let him.” +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her again, and stroked the hair from her temples, gently, tenderly, +as if she were a lover. +</p> + +<p> +“Shan’t you be late?” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going,” he said, very low. +</p> + +<p> +Still he sat a few minutes, stroking the brown and grey hair from her temples. +</p> + +<p> +“And you won’t be any worse, mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, my son.” +</p> + +<p> +“You promise me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I won’t be any worse.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon he went a walk with Clara. They sat in the little wood where +bluebells were standing. He took her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll see,” he said to Clara, “she’ll never be +better.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you don’t know!” replied the other. +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She caught him impulsively to her breast. +</p> + +<p> +“Try and forget it, dear,” she said; “try and forget +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t think of it, Paul! Don’t think of it, my +darling!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +On the Saturday Walter Morel went to Sheffield. He was a forlorn figure, +looking rather as if nobody owned him. Paul ran upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“My father’s come,” he said, kissing his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he?” she answered wearily. +</p> + +<p> +The old collier came rather frightened into the bedroom. +</p> + +<p> +“How dun I find thee, lass?” he said, going forward and kissing her +in a hasty, timid fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m middlin’,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you gone on all right?” asked the wife, rather wearily, as if +it were an effort to talk to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yis,” he answered. “’Er’s a bit behint-hand now +and again, as yer might expect.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does she have your dinner ready?” asked Mrs. Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ve ’ad to shout at ’er once or twice,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And you <i>must</i> shout at her if she’s not ready. She +<i>will</i> leave things to the last minute.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Annie,” she exclaimed, “I saw a lizard dart on that +rock!” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes were so quick; she was still so full of life. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t think I don’t like your house, Annie,” she said; +“but it’s nice to be in my own home again.” +</p> + +<p> +And Morel answered huskily: +</p> + +<p> +“It is, lass, it is.” +</p> + +<p> +And Minnie, the little quaint maid, said: +</p> + +<p> +“An’ we glad t’ ’ave yer.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a lovely yellow ravel of sunflowers in the garden. She looked out of +the window. +</p> + +<p> +“There are my sunflowers!” she said. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br/> +THE RELEASE</h2> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Baxter Dawes!” Paul exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the man—has been a fine fellow, physically, I should +think. Been in a bit of a mess lately. You know him?” +</p> + +<p> +“He used to work at the place where I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he? Do you know anything about him? He’s just sulking, or +he’d be a lot better than he is by now.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The next time Morel saw the doctor he said: +</p> + +<p> +“And what about Dawes?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did he say he would see me?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“He wouldn’t say anything—good, bad or indifferent,” +replied the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think I might go?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You might.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He went down to the isolation hospital, with Dr. Ansell’s card. This +sister, a healthy young Irishwoman, led him down the ward. +</p> + +<p> +“A visitor to see you, Jim Crow,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes turned over suddenly with a startled grunt. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Ansell told me you were here,” said Morel, holding out his +hand. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes mechanically shook hands. +</p> + +<p> +“So I thought I’d come in,” continued Paul. +</p> + +<p> +There was no answer. Dawes lay staring at the opposite wall. +</p> + +<p> +“Say ‘Caw!’” mocked the nurse. “Say +‘Caw!’ Jim Crow.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is getting on all right?” said Paul to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes! He lies and imagines he’s going to die,” said the +nurse, “and it frightens every word out of his mouth.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you <i>must</i> have somebody to talk to,” laughed Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it!” laughed the nurse. “Only two old men and a +boy who always cries. It <i>is</i> hard lines! Here am I dying to hear Jim +Crow’s voice, and nothing but an odd ‘Caw!’ will he +give!” +</p> + +<p> +“So rough on you!” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it?” said the nurse. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I am a godsend,” he laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dropped straight from heaven!” laughed the nurse. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you had a bad time?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly again Dawes looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing in Sheffield?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“My mother was taken ill at my sister’s in Thurston Street. What +are you doing here?” +</p> + +<p> +There was no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“How long have you been in?” Morel asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t say for sure,” Dawes answered grudgingly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Ansell told me you were here,” he said coldly. +</p> + +<p> +The other man did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Typhoid’s pretty bad, I know,” Morel persisted. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Dawes said: +</p> + +<p> +“What did you come for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because Dr. Ansell said you didn’t know anybody here. Do +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know nobody nowhere,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Paul, “it’s because you don’t choose +to, then.” +</p> + +<p> +There was another silence. +</p> + +<p> +“We s’ll be taking my mother home as soon as we can,” said +Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s a-matter with her?” asked Dawes, with a sick +man’s interest in illness. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s got a cancer.” +</p> + +<p> +There was another silence. +</p> + +<p> +“But we want to get her home,” said Paul. “We s’ll have +to get a motor-car.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes lay thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you ask Thomas Jordan to lend you his?” said +Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not big enough,” Morel answered. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes blinked his dark eyes as he lay thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“Then ask Jack Pilkington; he’d lend it you. You know him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I s’ll hire one,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a fool if you do,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +The sick man was gaunt and handsome again. Paul was sorry for him because his +eyes looked so tired. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you get a job here?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I was only here a day or two before I was taken bad,” Dawes +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“You want to get in a convalescent home,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +The other’s face clouded again. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m goin’ in no convalescent home,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“My father’s been in the one at Seathorpe, an’ he liked it. +Dr. Ansell would get you a recommend.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes lay thinking. It was evident he dared not face the world again. +</p> + +<p> +“The seaside would be all right just now,” Morel said. “Sun +on those sandhills, and the waves not far out.” +</p> + +<p> +The other did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“By Gad!” Paul concluded, too miserable to bother much; +“it’s all right when you know you’re going to walk again, and +swim!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is she far gone?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s going like wax,” Paul answered; “but +cheerful—lively!” +</p> + +<p> +He bit his lip. After a minute he rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll be going,” he said. “I’ll leave you +this half-crown.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want it,” Dawes muttered. +</p> + +<p> +Morel did not answer, but left the coin on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know him,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s all right. Should I tell him to come? He might bring you some +papers to look at.” +</p> + +<p> +The other man did not answer. Paul went. The strong emotion that Dawes aroused +in him, repressed, made him shiver. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know Baxter was in Sheffield Hospital with typhoid?” he +asked. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him with startled grey eyes, and her face went pale. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s getting better. I went to see him yesterday—the doctor +told me.” +</p> + +<p> +Clara seemed stricken by the news. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he very bad?” she asked guiltily. +</p> + +<p> +“He has been. He’s mending now.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did he say to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nothing! He seems to be sulking.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a distance between the two of them. He gave her more information. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t you be nice with me?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” he said, putting his arm across her +shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t!” she said, disengaging herself. +</p> + +<p> +He left her alone, and returned to his own brooding. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it Baxter that upsets you?” he asked at length. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>have</i> been <i>vile</i> to him!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve said many a time you haven’t treated him well,” +he replied. +</p> + +<p> +And there was a hostility between them. Each pursued his own train of thought. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve treated him—no, I’ve treated him badly,” +she said. “And now you treat <i>me</i> badly. It serves me right.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do I treat you badly?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It serves me right,” she repeated. “I never considered him +worth having, and now you don’t consider <i>me</i>. But it serves me +right. He loved me a thousand times better than you ever did.” +</p> + +<p> +“He didn’t!” protested Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“He did! At any rate, he did respect me, and that’s what you +don’t do.” +</p> + +<p> +“It looked as if he respected you!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“He did! And I <i>made</i> him horrid—I know I did! You’ve +taught me that. And he loved me a thousand times better than ever you +do.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you sleep, my dear?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Not very well?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he knew she had lain awake. He saw her hand under the bedclothes, pressing +the place on her side where the pain was. +</p> + +<p> +“Has it been bad?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No. It hurt a bit, but nothing to mention.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a sunny day,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a beautiful day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think you’ll be carried down?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall see.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He ran straight upstairs and kissed her. He was almost afraid to ask: +</p> + +<p> +“Didn’t you get up, pigeon?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “it was that morphia; it made me +tired.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he gives you too much,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I think he does,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t it tickle you?” he said, gently putting it back. +</p> + +<p> +“It does,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You want your hair doing in a plait,” he said. “Lie +still.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes, in the sunny afternoons, she seemed almost happy. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Take me!” he said simply. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In the beginning of November Clara reminded Paul that it was her birthday. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d nearly forgotten,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d thought quite,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“No. Shall we go to the seaside for the week-end?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it dear?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing!” he said. “Don’t those windmill sails look +monotonous?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking at the black, heavy +sea. +</p> + +<p> +“She will never give in,” he said quietly. +</p> + +<p> +Clara’s heart sank. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>can</i> do without them now. It is the living I want, not the dead.’ +She wants to live even now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, how horrible!” said Clara, too frightened to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t think of it!” cried Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>will</i> +to die.’ And she said to me, sharp: ‘Do you think I haven’t? +Do you think you can die when you like?’” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Come!” said Clara roughly. “I’m going.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You shouldn’t get up,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes sat down heavily, eyeing Morel with a sort of suspicion. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you waste your time on me,” he said, “if +you’ve owt better to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to come,” said Paul. “Here! I brought you some +sweets.” +</p> + +<p> +The invalid put them aside. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not been much of a week-end,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“How’s your mother?” asked the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Hardly any different.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn’t come on +Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was at Skegness,” said Paul. “I wanted a change.” +</p> + +<p> +The other looked at him with dark eyes. He seemed to be waiting, not quite +daring to ask, trusting to be told. +</p> + +<p> +“I went with Clara,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew as much,” said Dawes quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“It was an old promise,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You have it your own way,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +This was the first time Clara had been definitely mentioned between them. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” said Morel slowly; “she’s tired of me.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Dawes looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Since August she’s been getting tired of me,” Morel +repeated. +</p> + +<p> +The two men were very quiet together. Paul suggested a game of draughts. They +played in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll go abroad when my mother’s dead,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Abroad!” repeated Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I don’t care what I do.” +</p> + +<p> +They continued the game. Dawes was winning. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll have to begin a new start of some sort,” said Paul; +“and you as well, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +He took one of Dawes’s pieces. +</p> + +<p> +“I dunno where,” said the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Things have to happen,” Morel said. “It’s no good +doing anything—at least—no, I don’t know. Give me some +toffee.” +</p> + +<p> +The two men ate sweets, and began another game of draughts. +</p> + +<p> +“What made that scar on your mouth?” asked Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over the garden. +</p> + +<p> +“I had a bicycle accident,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes’s hand trembled as he moved the piece. +</p> + +<p> +“You shouldn’t ha’ laughed at me,” he said, very low. +</p> + +<p> +“When?” +</p> + +<p> +“That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed me—you +with your hand on her shoulder.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never laughed at you,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece. +</p> + +<p> +“I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed,” +said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“It was that as did me,” Dawes said, very low. +</p> + +<p> +Paul took another sweet. +</p> + +<p> +“I never laughed,” he said, “except as I’m always +laughing.” +</p> + +<p> +They finished the game. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“When she’s dead,” he said to himself, “that fire will +go out.” +</p> + +<p> +He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. His mother’s 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Paul!” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +His heart seemed to break again. He went in and sat by the bed. +</p> + +<p> +“How late you are!” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Not very,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what time is it?” The murmur came plaintive and helpless. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s only just gone eleven.” +</p> + +<p> +That was not true; it was nearly one o’clock. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she said; “I thought it was later.” +</p> + +<p> +And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that would not go. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you sleep, my pigeon?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I can’t,” she wailed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now go to bed,” she murmured, lying quite still under his fingers +and his love. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you sleep?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think so.” +</p> + +<p> +“You feel better, my Little, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How is she?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“The same—the same!” he said. “The doctor says she +can’t last, but I know she will. She’ll be here at +Christmas.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then Paul would go upstairs gingerly, guiltily, to see if she had heard. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I give you some milk?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“A little,” she replied plaintively. +</p> + +<p> +And he would put some water with it, so that it should not nourish her. Yet he +loved her more than his own life. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You slept a bit later this morning, little one,” he would say to +her. +</p> + +<p> +“Did I?” she answered, with fretful weariness. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; it’s nearly eight o’clock.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you give her something to put an end to it?” he asked +the doctor at last. +</p> + +<p> +But the doctor shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“She can’t last many days now, Mr. Morel,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul went indoors. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t bear it much longer; we shall all go mad,” said +Annie. +</p> + +<p> +The two sat down to breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +“Go and sit with her while we have breakfast, Minnie,” said Annie. +But the girl was frightened. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His mother, silent, was still alive, with her hard mouth gripped grimly, her +eyes of dark torture only living. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Not as I know of, Mrs. Morel,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Not a thing did she let slip. +</p> + +<p> +“Your father’s pit things will want well airing, Annie,” she +said, when the men were going back to work. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you bother about that, my dear,” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +One night Annie and Paul were alone. Nurse was upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which?” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“All that came from Sheffield,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay—do!” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t walk about, Paul.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked round. Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face, were looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +“No, my dear,” he said gently. Another fibre seemed to snap in his +heart. +</p> + +<p> +That evening he got all the morphia pills there were, and took them downstairs. +Carefully he crushed them to powder. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing?” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll put ’em in her night milk.” +</p> + +<p> +Then they both laughed together like two conspiring children. On top of all +their horror flicked this little sanity. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it <i>is</i> bitter, Paul!” she said, making a little grimace. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I hope it won’t,” she said, like a child. +</p> + +<p> +She drank some more of the milk. +</p> + +<p> +“But it <i>is</i> horrid!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making a little move. +</p> + +<p> +“I know—I tasted it,” he said. “But I’ll give you +some clean milk afterwards.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Has she had it?” whispered Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and she said it was bitter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her teeth. +</p> + +<p> +“And I told her it was a new draught. Where’s that milk?” +</p> + +<p> +They both went upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder why nurse didn’t come to settle me down?” +complained the mother, like a child, wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“She said she was going to a concert, my love,” replied Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Did she?” +</p> + +<p> +They were silent a minute. Mrs. Morel gulped the little clean milk. +</p> + +<p> +“Annie, that draught <i>was</i> horrid!” she said plaintively. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it, my love? Well, never mind.” +</p> + +<p> +The mother sighed again with weariness. Her pulse was very irregular. +</p> + +<p> +“Let <i>us</i> settle you down,” said Annie. “Perhaps nurse +will be so late.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” said the mother—“try.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“There,” said Paul, stroking her softly. “There!—now +you’ll sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll sleep, my love,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered trustfully. “Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +They put out the light, and it was still. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we sit up?” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’ll lie with her as I always do,” said Annie. “She +might wake up.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right. And call me if you see any difference.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” he whispered, sitting up. +</p> + +<p> +“Come and look at her.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s going!” he whispered. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“How long has she been like it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I only just woke up.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it awful!” whispered Annie. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She may last like this,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +They were both silent. He looked out of the window, and could faintly discern +the snow on the garden. +</p> + +<p> +“You go to my bed,” he said to Annie. “I’ll sit +up.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, “I’ll stop with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His father got up. Paul heard the miner drawing his stockings on, yawning. Then +Morel, in shirt and stockings, entered. +</p> + +<p> +“Hush!” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Morel stood watching. Then he looked at his son, helplessly, and in horror. +</p> + +<p> +“Had I better stop a-whoam?” he whispered. +</p> + +<p> +“No. Go to work. She’ll last through to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Go to work.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +After another half-hour Paul went downstairs and drank a cup of tea, then +returned. Morel, dressed for the pit, came upstairs again. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I to go?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>was</i> 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— +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the door opened, and Annie entered. She looked at him questioningly. +</p> + +<p> +“Just the same,” he said calmly. +</p> + +<p> +They whispered together a minute, then he went downstairs to get breakfast. It +was twenty to eight. Soon Annie came down. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it awful! Doesn’t she look awful!” she +whispered, dazed with horror. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“If she looks like that!” said Annie. +</p> + +<p> +“Drink some tea,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +They went upstairs again. Soon the neighbours came with their frightened +question: +</p> + +<p> +“How is she?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At ten o’clock nurse came. She looked strange and woebegone. +</p> + +<p> +“Nurse,” cried Paul, “she’ll last like this for +days?” +</p> + +<p> +“She can’t, Mr. Morel,” said nurse. “She +can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t it dreadful!” wailed the nurse. “Who would have +thought she could stand it? Go down now, Mr. Morel, go down.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Paul—Paul—she’s gone!” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“My love—my love—oh, my love!” he whispered again and +again. “My love—oh, my love!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he heard the nurse behind him, crying, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“She’s better, Mr. Morel, she’s better.” +</p> + +<p> +When he took his face up from his warm, dead mother he went straight downstairs +and began blacking his boots. +</p> + +<p> +There was a good deal to do, letters to write, and so on. The doctor came and +glanced at her, and sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay—poor thing!” he said, then turned away. “Well, call +at the surgery about six for the certificate.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“You noticed the blinds were down?” +</p> + +<p> +Morel looked up. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “Why—has she gone?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“When wor that?” +</p> + +<p> +“About twelve this morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you seen her?” Annie asked of him when he came down. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Mother, mother!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“I thought tha wor niver comin’, lad.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t think you’d sit up,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I forgot you’d be alone, father,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Dost want owt to eat?” asked Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sithee—I made thee a drop o’ hot milk. Get it down thee; +it’s cold enough for owt.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul drank it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear!” he whispered. “My dear!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you seen her?” Annie asked of him sharply after breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t you think she looks nice?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +He went out of the house soon after. And all the time he seemed to be creeping +aside to avoid it. +</p> + +<p> +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 café, when they were quite +jolly again. She was infinitely relieved to find he did not take it tragically. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>have</i> been dreaming of thy mother,” he said in a small +voice. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +But Morel crouched in front of the fire in terror. +</p> + +<p> +The weeks passed half-real, not much pain, not much of anything, perhaps a +little relief, mostly a <i>nuit blanche</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Two days after Christmas Paul was to go back to Nottingham. The evening before +he sat with Dawes smoking before the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“You know Clara’s coming down for the day to-morrow?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +The other man glanced at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you told me,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +Paul drank the remainder of his glass of whisky. +</p> + +<p> +“I told the landlady your wife was coming,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me fill you up,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Paul jumped up. +</p> + +<p> +“You sit still,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +But Dawes, with rather shaky hand, continued to mix the drink. +</p> + +<p> +“Say when,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks!” replied the other. “But you’ve no business to +get up.” +</p> + +<p> +“It does me good, lad,” replied Dawes. “I begin to think +I’m right again, then.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are about right, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am, certainly I am,” said Dawes, nodding to him. +</p> + +<p> +“And Len says he can get you on in Sheffield.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes glanced at him again, with dark eyes that agreed with everything the +other would say, perhaps a trifle dominated by him. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s funny,” said Paul, “starting again. I feel in a +lot bigger mess than you.” +</p> + +<p> +“In what way, lad?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know—I understand it,” Dawes said, nodding. “But +you’ll find it’ll come all right.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke caressingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose so,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes knocked his pipe in a hopeless fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve not done for yourself like I have,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How old are you?” Paul asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Thirty-nine,” replied Dawes, glancing at him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll just be in your prime,” said Morel. “You +don’t look as if much life had gone out of you.” +</p> + +<p> +The brown eyes of the other flashed suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“It hasn’t,” he said. “The go is there.” +</p> + +<p> +Paul looked up and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve both got plenty of life in us yet to make things fly,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, begod!” said Dawes, breathless. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“And I don’t see,” said Paul, “why you shouldn’t +go on where you left off.” +</p> + +<p> +“What—” said Dawes, suggestively. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—fit your old home together again.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes hid his face and shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t be done,” he said, and looked up with an ironic +smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Because you don’t want?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps.” +</p> + +<p> +They smoked in silence. Dawes showed his teeth as he bit his pipe stem. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you don’t want her?” asked Paul. +</p> + +<p> +Dawes stared up at the picture with a caustic expression on his face. +</p> + +<p> +“I hardly know,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The smoke floated softly up. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe she wants you,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” replied the other, soft, satirical, abstract. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. She never really hitched on to me—you were always there in +the background. That’s why she wouldn’t get a divorce.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes continued to stare in a satirical fashion at the picture over the +mantelpiece. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>belonged</i> +to you all the time. I knew.” +</p> + +<p> +The triumphant male came up in Dawes. He showed his teeth more distinctly. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I was a fool,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You were a big fool,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“But perhaps even <i>then</i> you were a bigger fool,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +There was a touch of triumph and malice in it. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think so?” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +They were silent for some time. +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, I’m clearing out to-morrow,” said Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” answered Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +Then they did not talk any more. The instinct to murder each other had +returned. They almost avoided each other. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t you getting cold?” asked Morel. +</p> + +<p> +“I was lookin’ at these legs,” replied the other. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s up with ’em? They look all right,” replied +Paul, from his bed. +</p> + +<p> +“They look all right. But there’s some water in ’em +yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what about it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Come and look.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look here,” said Dawes, pointing to his shin. “Look at the +water under here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where?” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +The man pressed in his finger-tips. They left little dents that filled up +slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nothing,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“You feel,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +Paul tried with his fingers. It made little dents. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Rotten, isn’t it?” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? It’s nothing much.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not much of a man with water in your legs.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t see as it makes any difference,” said Morel. +“I’ve got a weak chest.” +</p> + +<p> +He returned to his own bed. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose the rest of me’s all right,” said Dawes, and he +put out the light. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You ought to look better than this,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m all right now.” +</p> + +<p> +The three stood at a loss. She kept the two men hesitating near her. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go to the lodging straight off,” said Paul, “or +somewhere else?” +</p> + +<p> +“We may as well go home,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Morel swung up the big arm-chair. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down, Jack,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want that chair,” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down!” Morel repeated. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I should think you’re cold,” said Dawes to his wife. +“Come nearer to the fire.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, I’m quite warm,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +She looked out of the window at the rain and at the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“When are you going back?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, the rooms are taken until to-morrow, so he wants me to stop. +He’s going back to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then you’re thinking of going to Sheffield?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you fit to start work?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m going to start.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve really got a place?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—begin on Monday.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t look fit.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked again out of the window instead of answering. +</p> + +<p> +“And have you got lodgings in Sheffield?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +Again she looked away out of the window. The panes were blurred with streaming +rain. +</p> + +<p> +“And can you manage all right?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I s’d think so. I s’ll have to!” +</p> + +<p> +They were silent when Morel returned. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall go by the four-twenty,” he said as he entered. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody answered. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you’d take your boots off,” he said to Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a pair of slippers of mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” she said. “They aren’t wet.” +</p> + +<p> +He put the slippers near her feet. She left them there. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>he</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am going by the four-twenty,” said Paul again to Clara. +“Are you coming then or later?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m meeting my father in Nottingham at seven-fifteen,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” she answered, “I’ll come later.” +</p> + +<p> +Dawes jerked suddenly, as if he had been held on a strain. He looked out over +the sea, but he saw nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“There are one or two books in the corner,” said Morel. +“I’ve done with ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +At about four o’clock he went. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall see you both later,” he said, as he shook hands. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose so,” said Dawes. “An’ perhaps—one +day—I s’ll be able to pay you back the money as—” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall come for it, you’ll see,” laughed Paul. “I +s’ll be on the rocks before I’m very much older.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay—well—” said Dawes. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye,” he said to Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye,” she said, giving him her hand. Then she glanced at him +for the last time, dumb and humble. +</p> + +<p> +He was gone. Dawes and his wife sat down again. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a nasty day for travelling,” said the man. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +After tea, as it drew near to six o’clock, he went to the window. All was +dark outside. The sea was roaring. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s raining yet,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it?” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t go to-night, shall you?” he said, hesitating. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer. He waited. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t go in this rain,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you <i>want</i> me to stay?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +His hand as he held the dark curtain trembled. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want me, Baxter?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +His voice was hoarse as he answered: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want to come back to me?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want me again?” he murmured, broken. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV<br/> +DERELICT</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>not</i> be as be. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What am I doing?” +</p> + +<p> +And out of the semi-intoxicated trance came the answer: +</p> + +<p> +“Destroying myself.” +</p> + +<p> +Then a dull, live feeling, gone in an instant, told him that it was wrong. +After a while, suddenly came the question: +</p> + +<p> +“Why wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +Again there was no answer, but a stroke of hot stubbornness inside his chest +resisted his own annihilation. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then, quite mechanically and more distinctly, the conversation began again +inside him. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s dead. What was it all for—her struggle?” +</p> + +<p> +That was his despair wanting to go after her. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re alive.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s not.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is—in you.” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he felt tired with the burden of it. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to keep alive for her sake,” said his will in +him. +</p> + +<p> +Something felt sulky, as if it would not rouse. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to carry forward her living, and what she had done, go +on with it.” +</p> + +<p> +But he did not want to. He wanted to give up. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Painting is not living.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then live.” +</p> + +<p> +“Marry whom?” came the sulky question. +</p> + +<p> +“As best you can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Miriam?” +</p> + +<p> +But he did not trust that. +</p> + +<p> +He rose suddenly, went straight to bed. When he got inside his bedroom and +closed the door, he stood with clenched fist. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Going straight to bed, he slept at once, abandoning himself to the sleep. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>was</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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—? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know—” she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor I,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +He looked away. His sudden, flaring hope sank again. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing in town?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m staying at Cousin Anne’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! For long?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; only till to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Must you go straight home?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, then hid her face under her hat-brim. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said—“no; it’s not necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You will just have supper with me,” he said: “then +I’ll bring you back.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” she replied, low and husky. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Aren’t they beautiful?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said. “What will you drink—coffee?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like it,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then excuse me a moment.” +</p> + +<p> +He went out to the kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She was curiously examining a sketch-book when he returned with the coffee. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing new in it,” he said, “and nothing very +interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +He put down the tray, and went to look over her shoulder. She turned the pages +slowly, intent on examining everything. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m!” he said, as she paused at a sketch. “I’d +forgotten that. It’s not bad, is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said. “I don’t quite understand it.” +</p> + +<p> +He took the book from her and went through it. Again he made a curious sound of +surprise and pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s some not bad stuff in there,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all bad,” she answered gravely. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +They sat down to supper. +</p> + +<p> +“By the way,” he said, “didn’t I hear something about +your earning your own living?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she replied, bowing her dark head over her cup. “And +what of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m merely going to the farming college at Broughton for three +months, and I shall probably be kept on as a teacher there.” +</p> + +<p> +“I say—that sounds all right for you! You always wanted to be +independent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. +</p> + +<p> +“Why didn’t you tell me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I only knew last week.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I heard a month ago,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but nothing was settled then.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should have thought,” he said, “you’d have told me +you were trying.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you’re glad,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Very glad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—it will be something.” +</p> + +<p> +He was rather disappointed. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it will be a great deal,” she said, almost haughtily, +resentfully. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed shortly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you think it won’t?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t think it won’t be a great deal. Only +you’ll find earning your own living isn’t everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, swallowing with difficulty; “I don’t +suppose it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose work <i>can</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But a man can give <i>all</i> himself to work?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, practically.” +</p> + +<p> +“And a woman only the unimportant part of herself?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked up at him, and her eyes dilated with anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” she said, “if it’s true, it’s a great +shame.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is. But I don’t know everything,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And how are things with you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“About all right,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him, waiting. +</p> + +<p> +“Nay,” she said, very low. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And you have broken off with Clara?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +His body lay like an abandoned thing, strewn in the chair. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” she said, “I think we ought to be married.” +</p> + +<p> +He opened his eyes for the first time since many months, and attended to her +with respect. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if we married?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and being a prey to +other women—like—like Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +“A prey?” he repeated, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +She bowed her head in silence. He lay feeling his despair come up again. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sure,” he said slowly, “that marriage would be +much good.” +</p> + +<p> +“I only think of you,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +“I know you do. But—you love me so much, you want to put me in your +pocket. And I should die there smothered.” +</p> + +<p> +She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips, while the bitterness +surged up in her heart. +</p> + +<p> +“And what will you do otherwise?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—go on, I suppose. Perhaps I shall soon go +abroad.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you have me, to marry me?” he said very low. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>her</i> choice. She could not cope with it, with +him, she knew not with what. But it strained her till she felt she would break. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want it?” she asked, very gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“Not much,” he replied, with pain. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And without marriage we can do nothing?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +His mouth was lifted from his teeth with pain. She put her little finger +between her lips. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, low and like the toll of a bell. “No, I think +not.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“I think I must go,” she said softly. +</p> + +<p> +By her tone he knew she was despising him. He rose quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll come along with you,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” he whimpered—“mother!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</p> + +<h5> THE END </h5> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS AND LOVERS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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