Sons and Lovers
Still she did not answer.
“Do you?” he asked.
“You know whether I mind or not.”
“I don’t see why you should. I have plenty of meals there.”
“You do.”
“Then why do you begrudge them tea?”
“I begrudge whom tea?”
“What are you so horrid for?”
“Oh, say no more! You’ve asked her to tea, it’s quite sufficient.
She’ll come.”
He was very angry with his mother. He knew it was merely Miriam she
objected to. He flung off his boots and went to bed.
Paul went to meet his friends the next afternoon. He was glad to see
them coming. They arrived home at about four o’clock. Everywhere was
clean and still for Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Morel sat in her black dress
and black apron. She rose to meet the visitors. With Edgar she was
cordial, but with Miriam cold and rather grudging. Yet Paul thought the
girl looked so nice in her brown cashmere frock.
He helped his mother to get the tea ready. Miriam would have gladly
proffered, but was afraid. He was rather proud of his home. There was
about it now, he thought, a certain distinction. The chairs were only
wooden, and the sofa was old. But the hearthrug and cushions were cosy;
the pictures were prints in good taste; there was a simplicity in
everything, and plenty of books. He was never ashamed in the least of
his home, nor was Miriam of hers, because both were what they should
be, and warm. And then he was proud of the table; the china was pretty,
the cloth was fine. It did not matter that the spoons were not silver
nor the knives ivory-handled; everything looked nice. Mrs. Morel had
managed wonderfully while her children were growing up, so that nothing
was out of place.
Miriam talked books a little. That was her unfailing topic. But Mrs.
Morel was not cordial, and turned soon to Edgar.
At first Edgar and Miriam used to go into Mrs. Morel’s pew. Morel never
went to chapel, preferring the public-house. Mrs. Morel, like a little
champion, sat at the head of her pew, Paul at the other end; and at
first Miriam sat next to him. Then the chapel was like home. It was a
pretty place, with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars, and flowers.
And the same people had sat in the same places ever since he was a boy.
It was wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit there for an hour and a
half, next to Miriam, and near to his mother, uniting his two loves
under the spell of the place of worship. Then he felt warm and happy
and religious at once. And after chapel he walked home with Miriam,
whilst Mrs. Morel spent the rest of the evening with her old friend,
Mrs. Burns. He was keenly alive on his walks on Sunday nights with
Edgar and Miriam. He never went past the pits at night, by the lighted
lamp-house, the tall black headstocks and lines of trucks, past the
fans spinning slowly like shadows, without the feeling of Miriam
returning to him, keen and almost unbearable.
She did not very long occupy the Morels’ pew. Her father took one for
themselves once more. It was under the little gallery, opposite the
Morels’. When Paul and his mother came in the chapel the Leivers’s pew
was always empty. He was anxious for fear she would not come: it was so
far, and there were so many rainy Sundays. Then, often very late
indeed, she came in, with her long stride, her head bowed, her face
hidden under her hat of dark green velvet. Her face, as she sat
opposite, was always in shadow. But it gave him a very keen feeling, as
if all his soul stirred within him, to see her there. It was not the
same glow, happiness, and pride, that he felt in having his mother in
charge: something more wonderful, less human, and tinged to intensity
by a pain, as if there were something he could not get to.
At this time he was beginning to question the orthodox creed. He was
twenty-one, and she was twenty. She was beginning to dread the spring:
he became so wild, and hurt her so much. All the way he went cruelly
smashing her beliefs. Edgar enjoyed it. He was by nature critical and
rather dispassionate. But Miriam suffered exquisite pain, as, with an
intellect like a knife, the man she loved examined her religion in
which she lived and moved and had her being. But he did not spare her.
He was cruel. And when they went alone he was even more fierce, as if
he would kill her soul. He bled her beliefs till she almost lost
consciousness.
“She exults—she exults as she carries him off from me,” Mrs. Morel
cried in her heart when Paul had gone. “She’s not like an ordinary
woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him. She
wants to draw him out and absorb him till there is nothing left of him,
even for himself. He will never be a man on his own feet—she will suck
him up.” So the mother sat, and battled and brooded bitterly.
And he, coming home from his walks with Miriam, was wild with torture.
He walked biting his lips and with clenched fists, going at a great
rate. Then, brought up against a stile, he stood for some minutes, and
did not move. There was a great hollow of darkness fronting him, and on
the black upslopes patches of tiny lights, and in the lowest trough of
the night, a flare of the pit. It was all weird and dreadful. Why was
he torn so, almost bewildered, and unable to move? Why did his mother
sit at home and suffer? He knew she suffered badly. But why should she?
And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the
thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he
hated her—and he easily hated her. Why did she make him feel as if he
were uncertain of himself, insecure, an indefinite thing, as if he had
not sufficient sheathing to prevent the night and the space breaking
into him? How he hated her! And then, what a rush of tenderness and
humility!
Suddenly he plunged on again, running home. His mother saw on him the
marks of some agony, and she said nothing. But he had to make her talk
to him. Then she was angry with him for going so far with Miriam.
“Why don’t you like her, mother?” he cried in despair.
“I don’t know, my boy,” she replied piteously. “I’m sure I’ve tried to
like her. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t—I can’t!”
And he felt dreary and hopeless between the two.
Spring was the worst time. He was changeable, and intense and cruel. So
he decided to stay away from her. Then came the hours when he knew
Miriam was expecting him. His mother watched him growing restless. He
could not go on with his work. He could do nothing. It was as if
something were drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then he put on
his hat and went, saying nothing. And his mother knew he was gone. And
as soon as he was on the way he sighed with relief. And when he was
with her he was cruel again.
One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere, with Miriam sitting
beside him. It was a glistening, white-and-blue day. Big clouds, so
brilliant, went by overhead, while shadows stole along on the water.
The clear spaces in the sky were of clean, cold blue. Paul lay on his
back in the old grass, looking up. He could not bear to look at Miriam.
She seemed to want him, and he resisted. He resisted all the time. He
wanted now to give her passion and tenderness, and he could not. He
felt that she wanted the soul out of his body, and not him. All his
strength and energy she drew into herself through some channel which
united them. She did not want to meet him, so that there were two of
them, man and woman together. She wanted to draw all of him into her.
It urged him to an intensity like madness, which fascinated him, as
drug-taking might.
He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she were
fingering the very quivering tissue, the very protoplasm of life, as
she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it
frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search, and
his voice gradually filled her with fear, so level it was, almost
inhuman, as if in a trance.
“Don’t talk any more,” she pleaded softly, laying her hand on his
forehead.
He lay quite still, almost unable to move. His body was somewhere
discarded.
“Why not? Are you tired?”
“Yes, and it wears you out.”
He laughed shortly, realising.
“Yet you always make me like it,” he said.
“I don’t wish to,” she said, very low.
“Not when you’ve gone too far, and you feel you can’t bear it. But your
unconscious self always asks it of me. And I suppose I want it.”
He went on, in his dead fashion:
“If only you could want _me_, and not want what I can reel off for
you!”
“I!” she cried bitterly—“I! Why, when would you let me take you?”
“Then it’s my fault,” he said, and, gathering himself together, he got
up and began to talk trivialities. He felt insubstantial. In a vague
way he hated her for it. And he knew he was as much to blame himself.
This, however, did not prevent his hating her.
One evening about this time he had walked along the home road with her.
They stood by the pasture leading down to the wood, unable to part. As
the stars came out the clouds closed. They had glimpses of their own
constellation, Orion, towards the west. His jewels glimmered for a
moment, his dog ran low, struggling with difficulty through the spume
of cloud.
Orion was for them chief in significance among the constellations. They
had gazed at him in their strange, surcharged hours of feeling, until
they seemed themselves to live in every one of his stars. This evening
Paul had been moody and perverse. Orion had seemed just an ordinary
constellation to him. He had fought against his glamour and
fascination. Miriam was watching her lover’s mood carefully. But he
said nothing that gave him away, till the moment came to part, when he
stood frowning gloomily at the gathered clouds, behind which the great
constellation must be striding still.
There was to be a little party at his house the next day, at which she
was to attend.
“I shan’t come and meet you,” he said.
“Oh, very well; it’s not very nice out,” she replied slowly.
“It’s not that—only they don’t like me to. They say I care more for you
than for them. And you understand, don’t you? You know it’s only
friendship.”
Miriam was astonished and hurt for him. It had cost him an effort. She
left him, wanting to spare him any further humiliation. A fine rain
blew in her face as she walked along the road. She was hurt deep down;
and she despised him for being blown about by any wind of authority.
And in her heart of hearts, unconsciously, she felt that he was trying
to get away from her. This she would never have acknowledged. She
pitied him.
At this time Paul became an important factor in Jordan’s warehouse. Mr.
Pappleworth left to set up a business of his own, and Paul remained
with Mr. Jordan as Spiral overseer. His wages were to be raised to
thirty shillings at the year-end, if things went well.
Still on Friday night Miriam often came down for her French lesson.
Paul did not go so frequently to Willey Farm, and she grieved at the
thought of her education’s coming to end; moreover, they both loved to
be together, in spite of discords. So they read Balzac, and did
compositions, and felt highly cultured.
Friday night was reckoning night for the miners. Morel
“reckoned”—shared up the money of the stall—either in the New Inn at
Bretty or in his own house, according as his fellow-butties wished.
Barker had turned a non-drinker, so now the men reckoned at Morel’s
house.
Annie, who had been teaching away, was at home again. She was still a
tomboy; and she was engaged to be married. Paul was studying design.
Morel was always in good spirits on Friday evening, unless the week’s
earnings were small. He bustled immediately after his dinner, prepared
to get washed. It was decorum for the women to absent themselves while
the men reckoned. Women were not supposed to spy into such a masculine