Sons and Lovers
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.
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.
“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.”
Mrs. Morel never heard any more of her.
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.
PART TWO
CHAPTER VII
LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE
Paul had been many times up to Willey Farm during the autumn. He was
friends with the two youngest boys. Edgar, the eldest, would not
condescend at first. And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was
afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was
romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved
by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was
something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own
imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless,
looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak
French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to
Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl,
unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof.
Her great companion was her mother. They were both brown-eyed, and
inclined to be mystical, such women as treasure religion inside them,
breathe it in their nostrils, and see the whole of life in a mist
thereof. So to Miriam, Christ and God made one great figure, which she
loved tremblingly and passionately when a tremendous sunset burned out
the western sky, and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian de Bois
Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings, rustled the sunny leaves in
the morning, or sat in her bedroom aloft, alone, when it snowed. That
was life to her. For the rest, she drudged in the house, which work she
would not have minded had not her clean red floor been mucked up
immediately by the trampling farm-boots of her brothers. She madly
wanted her little brother of four to let her swathe him and stifle him
in her love; she went to church reverently, with bowed head, and
quivered in anguish from the vulgarity of the other choir-girls and
from the common-sounding voice of the curate; she fought with her
brothers, whom she considered brutal louts; and she held not her father
in too high esteem because he did not carry any mystical ideals
cherished in his heart, but only wanted to have as easy a time as he
could, and his meals when he was ready for them.
She hated her position as swine-girl. She wanted to be considered. She
wanted to learn, thinking that if she could read, as Paul said he could
read, “Colomba”, or the “Voyage autour de ma Chambre”, the world would
have a different face for her and a deepened respect. She could not be
princess by wealth or standing. So she was mad to have learning whereon
to pride herself. For she was different from other folk, and must not
be scooped up among the common fry. Learning was the only distinction
to which she thought to aspire.
Her beauty—that of a shy, wild, quiveringly sensitive thing—seemed
nothing to her. Even her soul, so strong for rhapsody, was not enough.
She must have something to reinforce her pride, because she felt
different from other people. Paul she eyed rather wistfully. On the
whole, she scorned the male sex. But here was a new specimen, quick,
light, graceful, who could be gentle and who could be sad, and who was
clever, and who knew a lot, and who had a death in the family. The
boy’s poor morsel of learning exalted him almost sky-high in her
esteem. Yet she tried hard to scorn him, because he would not see in
her the princess but only the swine-girl. And he scarcely observed her.
Then he was so ill, and she felt he would be weak. Then she would be
stronger than he. Then she could love him. If she could be mistress of
him in his weakness, take care of him, if he could depend on her, if
she could, as it were, have him in her arms, how she would love him!
As soon as the skies brightened and plum-blossom was out, Paul drove
off in the milkman’s heavy float up to Willey Farm. Mr. Leivers shouted
in a kindly fashion at the boy, then clicked to the horse as they
climbed the hill slowly, in the freshness of the morning. White clouds
went on their way, crowding to the back of the hills that were rousing
in the springtime. The water of Nethermere lay below, very blue against
the seared meadows and the thorn-trees.
It was four and a half miles’ drive. Tiny buds on the hedges, vivid as
copper-green, were opening into rosettes; and thrushes called, and
blackbirds shrieked and scolded. It was a new, glamorous world.
Miriam, peeping through the kitchen window, saw the horse walk through
the big white gate into the farmyard that was backed by the oak-wood,
still bare. Then a youth in a heavy overcoat climbed down. He put up
his hands for the whip and the rug that the good-looking, ruddy farmer
handed down to him.
Miriam appeared in the doorway. She was nearly sixteen, very beautiful,
with her warm colouring, her gravity, her eyes dilating suddenly like
an ecstasy.
“I say,” said Paul, turning shyly aside, “your daffodils are nearly
out. Isn’t it early? But don’t they look cold?”
“Cold!” said Miriam, in her musical, caressing voice.
“The green on their buds—” and he faltered into silence timidly.
“Let me take the rug,” said Miriam over-gently.
“I can carry it,” he answered, rather injured. But he yielded it to
her.
Then Mrs. Leivers appeared.
“I’m sure you’re tired and cold,” she said. “Let me take your coat. It
_is_ heavy. You mustn’t walk far in it.”
She helped him off with his coat. He was quite unused to such
attention. She was almost smothered under its weight.
“Why, mother,” laughed the farmer as he passed through the kitchen,
swinging the great milk-churns, “you’ve got almost more than you can
manage there.”
She beat up the sofa cushions for the youth.
The kitchen was very small and irregular. The farm had been originally
a labourer’s cottage. And the furniture was old and battered. But Paul
loved it—loved the sack-bag that formed the hearthrug, and the funny
little corner under the stairs, and the small window deep in the
corner, through which, bending a little, he could see the plum trees in
the back garden and the lovely round hills beyond.
“Won’t you lie down?” said Mrs. Leivers.
“Oh no; I’m not tired,” he said. “Isn’t it lovely coming out, don’t you
think? I saw a sloe-bush in blossom and a lot of celandines. I’m glad
it’s sunny.”
“Can I give you anything to eat or to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“How’s your mother?”
“I think she’s tired now. I think she’s had too much to do. Perhaps in
a little while she’ll go to Skegness with me. Then she’ll be able to
rest. I s’ll be glad if she can.”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Leivers. “It’s a wonder she isn’t ill herself.”
Miriam was moving about preparing dinner. Paul watched everything that
happened. His face was pale and thin, but his eyes were quick and
bright with life as ever. He watched the strange, almost rhapsodic way
in which the girl moved about, carrying a great stew-jar to the oven,
or looking in the saucepan. The atmosphere was different from that of
his own home, where everything seemed so ordinary. When Mr. Leivers
called loudly outside to the horse, that was reaching over to feed on
the rose-bushes in the garden, the girl started, looked round with dark
eyes, as if something had come breaking in on her world. There was a
sense of silence inside the house and out. Miriam seemed as in some
dreamy tale, a maiden in bondage, her spirit dreaming in a land far
away and magical. And her discoloured, old blue frock and her broken
boots seemed only like the romantic rags of King Cophetua’s
beggar-maid.
She suddenly became aware of his keen blue eyes upon her, taking her
all in. Instantly her broken boots and her frayed old frock hurt her.
She resented his seeing everything. Even he knew that her stocking was
not pulled up. She went into the scullery, blushing deeply. And
afterwards her hands trembled slightly at her work. She nearly dropped
all she handled. When her inside dream was shaken, her body quivered
with trepidation. She resented that he saw so much.
Mrs. Leivers sat for some time talking to the boy, although she was
needed at her work. She was too polite to leave him. Presently she
excused herself and rose. After a while she looked into the tin
saucepan.
“Oh _dear_, Miriam,” she cried, “these potatoes have boiled dry!”
Miriam started as if she had been stung.
“_Have_ they, mother?” she cried.
“I shouldn’t care, Miriam,” said the mother, “if I hadn’t trusted them
to you.” She peered into the pan.
The girl stiffened as if from a blow. Her dark eyes dilated; she
remained standing in the same spot.
“Well,” she answered, gripped tight in self-conscious shame, “I’m sure
I looked at them five minutes since.”
“Yes,” said the mother, “I know it’s easily done.”
“They’re not much burned,” said Paul. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Mrs. Leivers looked at the youth with her brown, hurt eyes.
“It wouldn’t matter but for the boys,” she said to him. “Only Miriam
knows what a trouble they make if the potatoes are ‘caught’.”
“Then,” thought Paul to himself, “you shouldn’t let them make a
trouble.”
After a while Edgar came in. He wore leggings, and his boots were
covered with earth. He was rather small, rather formal, for a farmer.
He glanced at Paul, nodded to him distantly, and said:
“Dinner ready?”
“Nearly, Edgar,” replied the mother apologetically.
“I’m ready for mine,” said the young man, taking up the newspaper and
reading. Presently the rest of the family trooped in. Dinner was
served. The meal went rather brutally. The over-gentleness and
apologetic tone of the mother brought out all the brutality of manners
in the sons. Edgar tasted the potatoes, moved his mouth quickly like a
rabbit, looked indignantly at his mother, and said:
“These potatoes are burnt, mother.”
“Yes, Edgar. I forgot them for a minute. Perhaps you’ll have bread if
you can’t eat them.”
Edgar looked in anger across at Miriam.
“What was Miriam doing that she couldn’t attend to them?” he said.
Miriam looked up. Her mouth opened, her dark eyes blazed and winced,
but she said nothing. She swallowed her anger and her shame, bowing her
dark head.
“I’m sure she was trying hard,” said the mother.
“She hasn’t got sense even to boil the potatoes,” said Edgar. “What is
she kept at home for?”
“On’y for eating everything that’s left in th’ pantry,” said Maurice.
“They don’t forget that potato-pie against our Miriam,” laughed the
father.
She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence, suffering, like
some saint out of place at the brutal board.
It puzzled Paul. He wondered vaguely why all this intense feeling went
running because of a few burnt potatoes. The mother exalted
everything—even a bit of housework—to the plane of a religious trust.
The sons resented this; they felt themselves cut away underneath, and