Sons and Lovers
She looked at him as if she would not trouble to answer. Then:
“Walking with Louie Travers,” she said.
Louie was one of the “Spiral” girls.
“Why, do you know her?” he asked.
She did not answer. He turned to Miriam.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the Castle.”
“What train are you going home by?”
“I am driving with father. I wish you could come too. What time are you
free?”
“You know not till eight to-night, damn it!”
And directly the two women moved on.
Paul remembered that Clara Dawes was the daughter of an old friend of
Mrs. Leivers. Miriam had sought her out because she had once been
Spiral overseer at Jordan’s, and because her husband, Baxter Dawes, was
smith for the factory, making the irons for cripple instruments, and so
on. Through her Miriam felt she got into direct contact with Jordan’s,
and could estimate better Paul’s position. But Mrs. Dawes was separated
from her husband, and had taken up Women’s Rights. She was supposed to
be clever. It interested Paul.
Baxter Dawes he knew and disliked. The smith was a man of thirty-one or
thirty-two. He came occasionally through Paul’s corner—a big, well-set
man, also striking to look at, and handsome. There was a peculiar
similarity between himself and his wife. He had the same white skin,
with a clear, golden tinge. His hair was of soft brown, his moustache
was golden. And he had a similar defiance in his bearing and manner.
But then came the difference. His eyes, dark brown and quick-shifting,
were dissolute. They protruded very slightly, and his eyelids hung over
them in a way that was half hate. His mouth, too, was sensual. His
whole manner was of cowed defiance, as if he were ready to knock
anybody down who disapproved of him—perhaps because he really
disapproved of himself.
From the first day he had hated Paul. Finding the lad’s impersonal,
deliberate gaze of an artist on his face, he got into a fury.
“What are yer lookin’ at?” he sneered, bullying.
The boy glanced away. But the smith used to stand behind the counter
and talk to Mr. Pappleworth. His speech was dirty, with a kind of
rottenness. Again he found the youth with his cool, critical gaze fixed
on his face. The smith started round as if he had been stung.
“What’r yer lookin’ at, three hap’orth o’ pap?” he snarled.
The boy shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“Why yer—!” shouted Dawes.
“Leave him alone,” said Mr. Pappleworth, in that insinuating voice
which means, “He’s only one of your good little sops who can’t help
it.”
Since that time the boy used to look at the man every time he came
through with the same curious criticism, glancing away before he met
the smith’s eye. It made Dawes furious. They hated each other in
silence.
Clara Dawes had no children. When she had left her husband the home had
been broken up, and she had gone to live with her mother. Dawes lodged
with his sister. In the same house was a sister-in-law, and somehow
Paul knew that this girl, Louie Travers, was now Dawes’s woman. She was
a handsome, insolent hussy, who mocked at the youth, and yet flushed if
he walked along to the station with her as she went home.
The next time he went to see Miriam it was Saturday evening. She had a
fire in the parlour, and was waiting for him. The others, except her
father and mother and the young children, had gone out, so the two had
the parlour together. It was a long, low, warm room. There were three
of Paul’s small sketches on the wall, and his photo was on the
mantelpiece. On the table and on the high old rosewood piano were bowls
of coloured leaves. He sat in the armchair, she crouched on the
hearthrug near his feet. The glow was warm on her handsome, pensive
face as she kneeled there like a devotee.
“What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?” she asked quietly.
“She doesn’t look very amiable,” he replied.
“No, but don’t you think she’s a fine woman?” she said, in a deep tone,
“Yes—in stature. But without a grain of taste. I like her for some
things. _Is_ she disagreeable?”
“I don’t think so. I think she’s dissatisfied.”
“What with?”
“Well—how would _you_ like to be tied for life to a man like that?”
“Why did she marry him, then, if she was to have revulsions so soon?”
“Ay, why did she!” repeated Miriam bitterly.
“And I should have thought she had enough fight in her to match him,”
he said.
Miriam bowed her head.
“Ay?” she queried satirically. “What makes you think so?”
“Look at her mouth—made for passion—and the very setback of her
throat—” He threw his head back in Clara’s defiant manner.
Miriam bowed a little lower.
“Yes,” she said.
There was a silence for some moments, while he thought of Clara.
“And what were the things you liked about her?” she asked.
“I don’t know—her skin and the texture of her—and her—I don’t
know—there’s a sort of fierceness somewhere in her. I appreciate her as
an artist, that’s all.”
“Yes.”
He wondered why Miriam crouched there brooding in that strange way. It
irritated him.
“You don’t really like her, do you?” he asked the girl.
She looked at him with her great, dazzled dark eyes.
“I do,” she said.
“You don’t—you can’t—not really.”
“Then what?” she asked slowly.
“Eh, I don’t know—perhaps you like her because she’s got a grudge
against men.”
That was more probably one of his own reasons for liking Mrs. Dawes,
but this did not occur to him. They were silent. There had come into
his forehead a knitting of the brows which was becoming habitual with
him, particularly when he was with Miriam. She longed to smooth it
away, and she was afraid of it. It seemed the stamp of a man who was
not her man in Paul Morel.
There were some crimson berries among the leaves in the bowl. He
reached over and pulled out a bunch.
“If you put red berries in your hair,” he said, “why would you look
like some witch or priestess, and never like a reveller?”
She laughed with a naked, painful sound.
“I don’t know,” she said.
His vigorous warm hands were playing excitedly with the berries.
“Why can’t you laugh?” he said. “You never laugh laughter. You only
laugh when something is odd or incongruous, and then it almost seems to
hurt you.”
She bowed her head as if he were scolding her.
“I wish you could laugh at me just for one minute—just for one minute.
I feel as if it would set something free.”
“But”—and she looked up at him with eyes frightened and struggling—“I
do laugh at you—I _do_.”
“Never! There’s always a kind of intensity. When you laugh I could
always cry; it seems as if it shows up your suffering. Oh, you make me
knit the brows of my very soul and cogitate.”
Slowly she shook her head despairingly.
“I’m sure I don’t want to,” she said.
“I’m so damned spiritual with _you_ always!” he cried.
She remained silent, thinking, “Then why don’t you be otherwise.” But
he saw her crouching, brooding figure, and it seemed to tear him in
two.
“But, there, it’s autumn,” he said, “and everybody feels like a
disembodied spirit then.”
There was still another silence. This peculiar sadness between them
thrilled her soul. He seemed so beautiful with his eyes gone dark, and
looking as if they were deep as the deepest well.
“You make me so spiritual!” he lamented. “And I don’t want to be
spiritual.”
She took her finger from her mouth with a little pop, and looked up at
him almost challenging. But still her soul was naked in her great dark
eyes, and there was the same yearning appeal upon her. If he could have
kissed her in abstract purity he would have done so. But he could not
kiss her thus—and she seemed to leave no other way. And she yearned to
him.
He gave a brief laugh.
“Well,” he said, “get that French and we’ll do some—some Verlaine.”
“Yes,” she said in a deep tone, almost of resignation. And she rose and
got the books. And her rather red, nervous hands looked so pitiful, he
was mad to comfort her and kiss her. But then he dared not—or could
not. There was something prevented him. His kisses were wrong for her.
They continued the reading till ten o’clock, when they went into the
kitchen, and Paul was natural and jolly again with the father and
mother. His eyes were dark and shining; there was a kind of fascination
about him.
When he went into the barn for his bicycle he found the front wheel
punctured.
“Fetch me a drop of water in a bowl,” he said to her. “I shall be late,
and then I s’ll catch it.”
He lighted the hurricane lamp, took off his coat, turned up the
bicycle, and set speedily to work. Miriam came with the bowl of water
and stood close to him, watching. She loved to see his hands doing
things. He was slim and vigorous, with a kind of easiness even in his
most hasty movements. And busy at his work he seemed to forget her. She
loved him absorbedly. She wanted to run her hands down his sides. She
always wanted to embrace him, so long as he did not want her.
“There!” he said, rising suddenly. “Now, could you have done it
quicker?”
“No!” she laughed.
He straightened himself. His back was towards her. She put her two
hands on his sides, and ran them quickly down.
“You are so _fine!_” she said.
He laughed, hating her voice, but his blood roused to a wave of flame
by her hands. She did not seem to realise _him_ in all this. He might
have been an object. She never realised the male he was.
He lighted his bicycle-lamp, bounced the machine on the barn floor to
see that the tyres were sound, and buttoned his coat.
“That’s all right!” he said.
She was trying the brakes, that she knew were broken.
“Did you have them mended?” she asked.
“No!”
“But why didn’t you?”
“The back one goes on a bit.”
“But it’s not safe.”
“I can use my toe.”
“I wish you’d had them mended,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry—come to tea to-morrow, with Edgar.”
“Shall we?”
“Do—about four. I’ll come to meet you.”
“Very well.”
She was pleased. They went across the dark yard to the gate. Looking
across, he saw through the uncurtained window of the kitchen the heads
of Mr. and Mrs. Leivers in the warm glow. It looked very cosy. The
road, with pine trees, was quite black in front.
“Till to-morrow,” he said, jumping on his bicycle.
“You’ll take care, won’t you?” she pleaded.
“Yes.”
His voice already came out of the darkness. She stood a moment watching
the light from his lamp race into obscurity along the ground. She
turned very slowly indoors. Orion was wheeling up over the wood, his
dog twinkling after him, half smothered. For the rest the world was
full of darkness, and silent, save for the breathing of cattle in their
stalls. She prayed earnestly for his safety that night. When he left
her, she often lay in anxiety, wondering if he had got home safely.
He dropped down the hills on his bicycle. The roads were greasy, so he
had to let it go. He felt a pleasure as the machine plunged over the
second, steeper drop in the hill. “Here goes!” he said. It was risky,
because of the curve in the darkness at the bottom, and because of the
brewers’ waggons with drunken waggoners asleep. His bicycle seemed to
fall beneath him, and he loved it. Recklessness is almost a man’s
revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he will risk
destroying himself to deprive her altogether.
The stars on the lake seemed to leap like grasshoppers, silver upon the
blackness, as he spun past. Then there was the long climb home.
“See, mother!” he said, as he threw her the berries and leaves on to
the table.
“H’m!” she said, glancing at them, then away again. She sat reading,
alone, as she always did.
“Aren’t they pretty?”
“Yes.”
He knew she was cross with him. After a few minutes he said:
“Edgar and Miriam are coming to tea to-morrow.”
She did not answer.
“You don’t mind?”