Sons and Lovers
And she, with her little finger in her mouth, would ponder these
sayings. They gave her a feeling of life again, and vivified things
which had meant nothing to her. She managed to find some meaning in his
struggling, abstract speeches. And they were the medium through which
she came distinctly at her beloved objects.
Another day she sat at sunset whilst he was painting some pine-trees
which caught the red glare from the west. He had been quiet.
“There you are!” he said suddenly. “I wanted that. Now, look at them
and tell me, are they pine trunks or are they red coals, standing-up
pieces of fire in that darkness? There’s God’s burning bush for you,
that burned not away.”
Miriam looked, and was frightened. But the pine trunks were wonderful
to her, and distinct. He packed his box and rose. Suddenly he looked at
her.
“Why are you always sad?” he asked her.
“Sad!” she exclaimed, looking up at him with startled, wonderful brown
eyes.
“Yes,” he replied. “You are always sad.”
“I am not—oh, not a bit!” she cried.
“But even your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness,” he
persisted. “You’re never jolly, or even just all right.”
“No,” she pondered. “I wonder—why?”
“Because you’re not; because you’re different inside, like a pine-tree,
and then you flare up; but you’re not just like an ordinary tree, with
fidgety leaves and jolly—”
He got tangled up in his own speech; but she brooded on it, and he had
a strange, roused sensation, as if his feelings were new. She got so
near him. It was a strange stimulant.
Then sometimes he hated her. Her youngest brother was only five. He was
a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragile face—one of
Reynolds’s “Choir of Angels”, with a touch of elf. Often Miriam kneeled
to the child and drew him to her.
“Eh, my Hubert!” she sang, in a voice heavy and surcharged with love.
“Eh, my Hubert!”
And, folding him in her arms, she swayed slightly from side to side
with love, her face half lifted, her eyes half closed, her voice
drenched with love.
“Don’t!” said the child, uneasy—“don’t, Miriam!”
“Yes; you love me, don’t you?” she murmured deep in her throat, almost
as if she were in a trance, and swaying also as if she were swooned in
an ecstasy of love.
“Don’t!” repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow.
“You love me, don’t you?” she murmured.
“What do you make such a _fuss_ for?” cried Paul, all in suffering
because of her extreme emotion. “Why can’t you be ordinary with him?”
She let the child go, and rose, and said nothing. Her intensity, which
would leave no emotion on a normal plane, irritated the youth into a
frenzy. And this fearful, naked contact of her on small occasions
shocked him. He was used to his mother’s reserve. And on such occasions
he was thankful in his heart and soul that he had his mother, so sane
and wholesome.
All the life of Miriam’s body was in her eyes, which were usually dark
as a dark church, but could flame with light like a conflagration. Her
face scarcely ever altered from its look of brooding. She might have
been one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body
was not flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather heavily,
her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not clumsy, and yet none of
her movements seemed quite _the_ movement. Often, when wiping the
dishes, she would stand in bewilderment and chagrin because she had
pulled in two halves a cup or a tumbler. It was as if, in her fear and
self-mistrust, she put too much strength into the effort. There was no
looseness or abandon about her. Everything was gripped stiff with
intensity, and her effort, overcharged, closed in on itself.
She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense walk.
Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields. Then her eyes blazed
naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened him. But she was physically
afraid. If she were getting over a stile, she gripped his hands in a
little hard anguish, and began to lose her presence of mind. And he
could not persuade her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes
dilated, became exposed and palpitating.
“No!” she cried, half laughing in terror—“no!”
“You shall!” he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he brought her
falling from the fence. But her wild “Ah!” of pain, as if she were
losing consciousness, cut him. She landed on her feet safely, and
afterwards had courage in this respect.
She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.
“Don’t you like being at home?” Paul asked her, surprised.
“Who would?” she answered, low and intense. “What is it? I’m all day
cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five minutes. I don’t _want_
to be at home.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody else. Why should
I, because I’m a girl, be kept at home and not allowed to be anything?
What chance _have_ I?”
“Chance of what?”
“Of knowing anything—of learning, of doing anything. It’s not fair,
because I’m a woman.”
She seemed very bitter. Paul wondered. In his own home Annie was almost
glad to be a girl. She had not so much responsibility; things were
lighter for her. She never wanted to be other than a girl. But Miriam
almost fiercely wished she were a man. And yet she hated men at the
same time.
“But it’s as well to be a woman as a man,” he said, frowning.
“Ha! Is it? Men have everything.”
“I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as men are to be
men,” he answered.
“No!”—she shook her head—“no! Everything the men have.”
“But what do you want?” he asked.
“I want to learn. Why _should_ it be that I know nothing?”
“What! such as mathematics and French?”
“Why _shouldn’t_ I know mathematics? Yes!” she cried, her eye expanding
in a kind of defiance.
“Well, you can learn as much as I know,” he said. “I’ll teach you, if
you like.”
Her eyes dilated. She mistrusted him as teacher.
“Would you?” he asked.
Her head had dropped, and she was sucking her finger broodingly.
“Yes,” she said hesitatingly.
He used to tell his mother all these things.
“I’m going to teach Miriam algebra,” he said.
“Well,” replied Mrs. Morel, “I hope she’ll get fat on it.”
When he went up to the farm on the Monday evening, it was drawing
twilight. Miriam was just sweeping up the kitchen, and was kneeling at
the hearth when he entered. Everyone was out but her. She looked round
at him, flushed, her dark eyes shining, her fine hair falling about her
face.
“Hello!” she said, soft and musical. “I knew it was you.”
“How?”
“I knew your step. Nobody treads so quick and firm.”
He sat down, sighing.
“Ready to do some algebra?” he asked, drawing a little book from his
pocket.
“But—”
He could feel her backing away.
“You said you wanted,” he insisted.
“To-night, though?” she faltered.
“But I came on purpose. And if you want to learn it, you must begin.”
She took up her ashes in the dustpan and looked at him, half
tremulously, laughing.
“Yes, but to-night! You see, I haven’t thought of it.”
“Well, my goodness! Take the ashes and come.”
He went and sat on the stone bench in the back-yard, where the big
milk-cans were standing, tipped up, to air. The men were in the
cowsheds. He could hear the little sing-song of the milk spurting into
the pails. Presently she came, bringing some big greenish apples.
“You know you like them,” she said.
He took a bite.
“Sit down,” he said, with his mouth full.
She was short-sighted, and peered over his shoulder. It irritated him.
He gave her the book quickly.
“Here,” he said. “It’s only letters for figures. You put down ‘_a_’
instead of ‘2’ or ‘6’.”
They worked, he talking, she with her head down on the book. He was
quick and hasty. She never answered. Occasionally, when he demanded of
her, “Do you see?” she looked up at him, her eyes wide with the
half-laugh that comes of fear. “Don’t you?” he cried.
He had been too fast. But she said nothing. He questioned her more,
then got hot. It made his blood rouse to see her there, as it were, at
his mercy, her mouth open, her eyes dilated with laughter that was
afraid, apologetic, ashamed. Then Edgar came along with two buckets of
milk.
“Hello!” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Algebra,” replied Paul.
“Algebra!” repeated Edgar curiously. Then he passed on with a laugh.
Paul took a bite at his forgotten apple, looked at the miserable
cabbages in the garden, pecked into lace by the fowls, and he wanted to
pull them up. Then he glanced at Miriam. She was poring over the book,
seemed absorbed in it, yet trembling lest she could not get at it. It
made him cross. She was ruddy and beautiful. Yet her soul seemed to be
intensely supplicating. The algebra-book she closed, shrinking, knowing
he was angered; and at the same instant he grew gentle, seeing her hurt
because she did not understand.
But things came slowly to her. And when she held herself in a grip,
seemed so utterly humble before the lesson, it made his blood rouse. He
stormed at her, got ashamed, continued the lesson, and grew furious
again, abusing her. She listened in silence. Occasionally, very rarely,
she defended herself. Her liquid dark eyes blazed at him.
“You don’t give me time to learn it,” she said.
“All right,” he answered, throwing the book on the table and lighting a
cigarette. Then, after a while, he went back to her repentant. So the
lessons went. He was always either in a rage or very gentle.
“What do you tremble your _soul_ before it for?” he cried. “You don’t
learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can’t you look at it with your
clear simple wits?”
Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would look at
him reproachfully, saying:
“Paul, don’t be so hard on Miriam. She may not be quick, but I’m sure
she tries.”
“I can’t help it,” he said rather pitiably. “I go off like it.”
“You don’t mind me, Miriam, do you?” he asked of the girl later.
“No,” she reassured him in her beautiful deep tones—“no, I don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind me; it’s my fault.”
But, in spite of himself, his blood began to boil with her. It was
strange that no one else made him in such fury. He flared against her.
Once he threw the pencil in her face. There was a silence. She turned
her face slightly aside.
“I didn’t—” he began, but got no farther, feeling weak in all his
bones. She never reproached him or was angry with him. He was often
cruelly ashamed. But still again his anger burst like a bubble
surcharged; and still, when he saw her eager, silent, as it were, blind
face, he felt he wanted to throw the pencil in it; and still, when he
saw her hand trembling and her mouth parted with suffering, his heart
was scalded with pain for her. And because of the intensity to which
she roused him, he sought her.
Then he often avoided her and went with Edgar. Miriam and her brother
were naturally antagonistic. Edgar was a rationalist, who was curious,
and had a sort of scientific interest in life. It was a great
bitterness to Miriam to see herself deserted by Paul for Edgar, who
seemed so much lower. But the youth was very happy with her elder
brother. The two men spent afternoons together on the land or in the
loft doing carpentry, when it rained. And they talked together, or Paul
taught Edgar the songs he himself had learned from Annie at the piano.
And often all the men, Mr. Leivers as well, had bitter debates on the
nationalizing of the land and similar problems. Paul had already heard
his mother’s views, and as these were as yet his own, he argued for
her. Miriam attended and took part, but was all the time waiting until
it should be over and a personal communication might begin.
“After all,” she said within herself, “if the land were nationalised,