Sons and Lovers
Edgar and Paul and I would be just the same.” So she waited for the
youth to come back to her.
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.
“I can do my best things when you sit there in your rocking-chair,
mother,” he said.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He looked at his watch.
“Nine o’clock!” he said.
The pair stood, loth to part, hugging their books.
“The wood is so lovely now,” she said. “I wanted you to see it.”
He followed her slowly across the road to the white gate.
“They grumble so if I’m late,” he said.
“But you’re not doing anything wrong,” she answered impatiently.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Where?” he asked.
“Down the middle path,” she murmured, quivering.
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.
“Ah!” she cried, hastening forward.
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.
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.
“They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves,” he
said.
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.
“Let us go,” he said.
There was a cool scent of ivory roses—a white, virgin scent. Something
made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The two walked in silence.
“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.
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.
She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather tired:
“You have been far enough to-night.”
His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl, shrank.
“You must have been right home with her,” his mother continued.
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.
“She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can’t get away from her,
but must go trailing eight miles at this time of night.”
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.
“I _do_ like to talk to her,” he answered irritably.
“Is there nobody else to talk to?”
“You wouldn’t say anything if I went with Edgar.”
“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.”
“It is _not_ courting,” he cried.
“I don’t know what else you call it.”
“It’s not! Do you think we _spoon_ and do? We only talk.”
“Till goodness knows what time and distance,” was the sarcastic
rejoinder.
Paul snapped at the laces of his boots angrily.
“What are you so mad about?” he asked. “Because you don’t like her.”
“I don’t say I don’t like her. But I don’t hold with children keeping
company, and never did.”
“But you don’t mind our Annie going out with Jim Inger.”
“They’ve more sense than you two.”
“Why?”
“Our Annie’s not one of the deep sort.”
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.
“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?”
“I ought to have been in bed a long time ago,” she replied.
“Why, mother, you know you wouldn’t have gone before quarter-past ten.”
“Oh, yes, I should!”
“Oh, little woman, you’d say anything now you’re disagreeable with me,
wouldn’t you?”
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.
Then the next time he saw Miriam he said to her:
“Don’t let me be late to-night—not later than ten o’clock. My mother
gets so upset.”
Miriam dropped her bead, brooding.
“Why does she get upset?” she asked.
“Because she says I oughtn’t to be out late when I have to get up
early.”
“Very well!” said Miriam, rather quietly, with just a touch of a sneer.
He resented that. And he was usually late again.
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.
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