Sons and Lovers
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.
“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.
But at the end of the riding was a fence to climb. Paul was over in a
second.
“Come,” he said, “let me help you.”
“No, go away. I will do it in my own way.”
He stood below with his hands up ready to help her. She climbed
cautiously.
“What a way to climb!” he exclaimed scornfully, when she was safely to
earth again.
“Hateful stiles!” she cried.
“Duffer of a little woman,” he replied, “who can’t get over ’em.”
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.
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.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, smiling with a little glow, “you’ve come, then. I
_am_ glad to see you.” Her voice was intimate and rather sad.
The two women shook hands.
“Now are you sure we’re not a bother to you?” said Mrs. Morel. “I know
what a farming life is.”
“Oh no! We’re only too thankful to see a new face, it’s so lost up
here.”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Morel.
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.
“I suppose these are cabbage-roses?” he said to her, pointing to the
bushes along the fence.
She looked at him with startled, big brown eyes.
“I suppose they are cabbage-roses when they come out?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she faltered. “They’re white with pink middles.”
“Then they’re maiden-blush.”
Miriam flushed. She had a beautiful warm colouring.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t have _much_ in your garden,” he said.
“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.
“And I suppose you have the fowls and calves and pigs to look after?”
said Mrs. Morel to Mrs. Leivers.
“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.”
“Well, I suppose it is,” said Mrs. Morel.
Presently the girl came out.
“Tea is ready, mother,” she said in a musical, quiet voice.
“Oh, thank you, Miriam, then we’ll come,” replied her mother, almost
ingratiatingly. “Would you _care_ to have tea now, Mrs. Morel?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Morel. “Whenever it’s ready.”
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.
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.
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.
“Durst you do it?” he asked of Paul.
“Let’s see,” said Paul.
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.
“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.”
“No,” she cried, shrinking back.
“Ha! baby. The mardy-kid!” said her brothers.
“It doesn’t hurt a bit,” said Paul. “It only just nips rather nicely.”
“No,” she still cried, shaking her black curls and shrinking.
“She dursn’t,” said Geoffrey. “She niver durst do anything except
recite poitry.”
“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.
Miriam was crimson with shame and misery.
“I dare do more than you,” she cried. “You’re never anything but
cowards and bullies.”
“Oh, cowards and bullies!” they repeated mincingly, mocking her speech.
“Not such a clown shall anger me,
A boor is answered silently”
he quoted against her, shouting with laughter.
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.
“I wouldn’t get the apple-blossom,” said Edgar, the eldest brother.
“There’ll be no apples next year.”
“I wasn’t going to get it,” replied Paul, going away.
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.
“It won’t hurt you,” said Paul.
She flushed crimson and started up.
“I only wanted to try,” she said in a low voice.
“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.
She put her hand forward and dragged it away, tried again, and started
back with a cry. He frowned.
“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.”
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.
“There, you see,” said the boy. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
She looked at him with dilated dark eyes.
“No,” she laughed, trembling.
Then she rose and went indoors. She seemed to be in some way resentful
of the boy.
“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”.
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.
“But it is a beautiful place,” said Mrs. Morel.
“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.”
He clapped his hands, and the field broke into motion near the woods,
brown rabbits hopping everywhere.
“Would you believe it!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel.
She and Paul went on alone together.
“Wasn’t it lovely, mother?” he said quietly.
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.
“Now _wouldn’t_ I help that man!” she said. “_Wouldn’t_ I see to the
fowls and the young stock! And _I’d_ learn to milk, and _I’d_ talk with
him, and _I’d_ 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’d_
had him, I shouldn’t have thought him a bad husband! Not that she does
either; and she’s very lovable.”
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.
“Now you look like a young witch-woman,” the boy said to her. “Doesn’t
she, William?”
Lily laughed. William opened his eyes and looked at her. In his gaze
was a certain baffled look of misery and fierce appreciation.
“Has he made a sight of me?” she asked, laughing down on her lover.
“That he has!” said William, smiling.
He looked at her. Her beauty seemed to hurt him. He glanced at her
flower-decked head and frowned.
“You look nice enough, if that’s what you want to know,” he said.
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.
heart
She watched his strong, nervous hand, with its glistening hairs and
freckles, as he carved, and she seemed fascinated by it.
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.
“Oh, would you mind,” she said to Annie, “washing me these two blouses,
and these things?”
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.