Sons and Lovers
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
Presently, Paul was bidden call upon Thomas Jordan, Manufacturer of
Surgical Appliances, at 21, Spaniel Row, Nottingham. Mrs. Morel was all
joy.
“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.”
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.
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.
She was quite excited, and quite gay. He suffered because she _would_
talk aloud in presence of the other travellers.
“Now look at that silly cow!” she said, “careering round as if it
thought it was a circus.”
“It’s most likely a bottfly,” he said very low.
“A what?” she asked brightly and unashamed.
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.
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.
“It’s just like Venice,” he said, seeing the sunshine on the water that
lay between high factory walls.
“Perhaps,” she answered, smiling.
They enjoyed the shops immensely.
“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?”
“And made of needlework as well,” he said.
“Yes.”
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.
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.
Suddenly they spied a big, dark archway, in which were names of various
firms, Thomas Jordan among them.
“Here it is!” said Mrs. Morel. “But now _where_ is it?”
They looked round. On one side was a queer, dark, cardboard factory, on
the other a Commercial Hotel.
“It’s up the entry,” said Paul.
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.
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.
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.
“Can I see Mr. Jordan?” she asked.
“I’ll fetch him,” answered the young man.
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.
“Good-morning!” he said, hesitating before Mrs. Morel, in doubt as to
whether she were a customer or not.
“Good-morning. I came with my son, Paul Morel. You asked him to call
this morning.”
“Come this way,” said Mr. Jordan, in a rather snappy little manner
intended to be businesslike.
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.
“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.
“Did you write this letter?” he snapped, thrusting what Paul recognised
as his own notepaper in front of him.
“Yes,” he answered.
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.
“Where did you learn to write?” said the old man crossly.
Paul merely looked at him shamedly, and did not answer.
“He _is_ 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.
“And you say you know French?” inquired the little man, still sharply.
“Yes,” said Paul.
“What school did you go to?”
“The Board-school.”
“And did you learn it there?”
“No—I—” The boy went crimson and got no farther.
“His godfather gave him lessons,” said Mrs. Morel, half pleading and
rather distant.
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.
“Read that,” he said.
It was a note in French, in thin, flimsy foreign handwriting that the
boy could not decipher. He stared blankly at the paper.
“‘Monsieur,’” he began; then he looked in great confusion at Mr.
Jordan. “It’s the—it’s the—”
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.
“‘Sir,—Please send me’—er—er—I can’t tell the—er—‘two pairs—_gris fil
bas_—grey thread stockings’—er—er—‘_sans_—without’—er—I can’t tell the
words—er—‘_doigts_—fingers’—er—I can’t tell the—”
He wanted to say “handwriting”, but the word still refused to come.
Seeing him stuck, Mr. Jordan snatched the paper from him.
“‘Please send by return two pairs grey thread stockings without
_toes_.’”
“Well,” flashed Paul, “‘_doigts_’ means ‘fingers’—as well—as a rule—”
The little man looked at him. He did not know whether “_doigts_” meant
“fingers”; he knew that for all _his_ purposes it meant “toes”.
“Fingers to stockings!” he snapped.
“Well, it _does_ mean fingers,” the boy persisted.
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.
“And when could he come?” he asked.
“Well,” said Mrs. Morel, “as soon as you wish. He has finished school
now.”
“He would live in Bestwood?”
“Yes; but he could be in—at the station—at quarter to eight.”
“H’m!”
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 “_doigts_” meant “fingers”. He followed his