Sons and Lovers
understand. He only knew she loved him. He was afraid of her love for
him. It was too good for him, and he was inadequate. His own love was
at fault, not hers. Ashamed, he corrected her work, humbly writing
above her words.
“Look,” he said quietly, “the past participle conjugated with _avoir_
agrees with the direct object when it precedes.”
She bent forward, trying to see and to understand. Her free, fine curls
tickled his face. He started as if they had been red hot, shuddering.
He saw her peering forward at the page, her red lips parted piteously,
the black hair springing in fine strands across her tawny, ruddy cheek.
She was coloured like a pomegranate for richness. His breath came short
as he watched her. Suddenly she looked up at him. Her dark eyes were
naked with their love, afraid, and yearning. His eyes, too, were dark,
and they hurt her. They seemed to master her. She lost all her
self-control, was exposed in fear. And he knew, before he could kiss
her, he must drive something out of himself. And a touch of hate for
her crept back again into his heart. He returned to her exercise.
Suddenly he flung down the pencil, and was at the oven in a leap,
turning the bread. For Miriam he was too quick. She started violently,
and it hurt her with real pain. Even the way he crouched before the
oven hurt her. There seemed to be something cruel in it, something
cruel in the swift way he pitched the bread out of the tins, caught it
up again. If only he had been gentle in his movements she would have
felt so rich and warm. As it was, she was hurt.
He returned and finished the exercise.
“You’ve done well this week,” he said.
She saw he was flattered by her diary. It did not repay her entirely.
“You really do blossom out sometimes,” he said. “You ought to write
poetry.”
She lifted her head with joy, then she shook it mistrustfully.
“I don’t trust myself,” she said.
“You should try!”
Again she shook her head.
“Shall we read, or is it too late?” he asked.
“It is late—but we can read just a little,” she pleaded.
She was really getting now the food for her life during the next week.
He made her copy Baudelaire’s “Le Balcon”. Then he read it for her. His
voice was soft and caressing, but growing almost brutal. He had a way
of lifting his lips and showing his teeth, passionately and bitterly,
when he was much moved. This he did now. It made Miriam feel as if he
were trampling on her. She dared not look at him, but sat with her head
bowed. She could not understand why he got into such a tumult and fury.
It made her wretched. She did not like Baudelaire, on the whole—nor
Verlaine.
“Behold her singing in the field
Yon solitary highland lass.”
That nourished her heart. So did “Fair Ines”. And—
“It was a beauteous evening, calm and pure,
And breathing holy quiet like a nun.”
These were like herself. And there was he, saying in his throat
bitterly:
“_Tu te rappelleras la beaûté des caresses_.”
The poem was finished; he took the bread out of the oven, arranging the
burnt loaves at the bottom of the panchion, the good ones at the top.
The desiccated loaf remained swathed up in the scullery.
“Mater needn’t know till morning,” he said. “It won’t upset her so much
then as at night.”
Miriam looked in the bookcase, saw what postcards and letters he had
received, saw what books were there. She took one that had interested
him. Then he turned down the gas and they set off. He did not trouble
to lock the door.
He was not home again until a quarter to eleven. His mother was seated
in the rocking-chair. Annie, with a rope of hair hanging down her back,
remained sitting on a low stool before the fire, her elbows on her
knees, gloomily. On the table stood the offending loaf unswathed. Paul
entered rather breathless. No one spoke. His mother was reading the
little local newspaper. He took off his coat, and went to sit down on
the sofa. His mother moved curtly aside to let him pass. No one spoke.
He was very uncomfortable. For some minutes he sat pretending to read a
piece of paper he found on the table. Then—
“I forgot that bread, mother,” he said.
There was no answer from either woman.
“Well,” he said, “it’s only twopence ha’penny. I can pay you for that.”
Being angry, he put three pennies on the table and slid them towards
his mother. She turned away her head. Her mouth was shut tightly.
“Yes,” said Annie, “you don’t know how badly my mother is!”
The girl sat staring glumly into the fire.
“Why is she badly?” asked Paul, in his overbearing way.
“Well!” said Annie. “She could scarcely get home.”
He looked closely at his mother. She looked ill.
“_Why_ could you scarcely get home?” he asked her, still sharply. She
would not answer.
“I found her as white as a sheet sitting here,” said Annie, with a
suggestion of tears in her voice.
“Well, _why?_” insisted Paul. His brows were knitting, his eyes
dilating passionately.
“It was enough to upset anybody,” said Mrs. Morel, “hugging those
parcels—meat, and green-groceries, and a pair of curtains—”
“Well, why _did_ you hug them; you needn’t have done.”
“Then who would?”
“Let Annie fetch the meat.”
“Yes, and I _would_ fetch the meat, but how was I to know. You were off
with Miriam, instead of being in when my mother came.”
“And what was the matter with you?” asked Paul of his mother.
“I suppose it’s my heart,” she replied. Certainly she looked bluish
round the mouth.
“And have you felt it before?”
“Yes—often enough.”
“Then why haven’t you told me?—and why haven’t you seen a doctor?”
Mrs. Morel shifted in her chair, angry with him for his hectoring.
“You’d never notice anything,” said Annie. “You’re too eager to be off
with Miriam.”
“Oh, am I—and any worse than you with Leonard?”
“_I_ was in at a quarter to ten.”
There was silence in the room for a time.
“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly, “that she wouldn’t
have occupied you so entirely as to burn a whole ovenful of bread.”
“Beatrice was here as well as she.”
“Very likely. But we know why the bread is spoilt.”
“Why?” he flashed.
“Because you were engrossed with Miriam,” replied Mrs. Morel hotly.
“Oh, very well—then it was _not!_” he replied angrily.
He was distressed and wretched. Seizing a paper, he began to read.
Annie, her blouse unfastened, her long ropes of hair twisted into a
plait, went up to bed, bidding him a very curt good-night.
Paul sat pretending to read. He knew his mother wanted to upbraid him.
He also wanted to know what had made her ill, for he was troubled. So,
instead of running away to bed, as he would have liked to do, he sat
and waited. There was a tense silence. The clock ticked loudly.
“You’d better go to bed before your father comes in,” said the mother
harshly. “And if you’re going to have anything to eat, you’d better get
it.”
“I don’t want anything.”
It was his mother’s custom to bring him some trifle for supper on
Friday night, the night of luxury for the colliers. He was too angry to
go and find it in the pantry this night. This insulted her.
“If I _wanted_ you to go to Selby on Friday night, I can imagine the
scene,” said Mrs. Morel. “But you’re never too tired to go if _she_
will come for you. Nay, you neither want to eat nor drink then.”
“I can’t let her go alone.”
“Can’t you? And why does she come?”
“Not because I ask her.”
“She doesn’t come without you want her—”
“Well, what if I _do_ want her—” he replied.
“Why, nothing, if it was sensible or reasonable. But to go trapseing up
there miles and miles in the mud, coming home at midnight, and got to
go to Nottingham in the morning—”
“If I hadn’t, you’d be just the same.”
“Yes, I should, because there’s no sense in it. Is she so fascinating
that you must follow her all that way?” Mrs. Morel was bitterly
sarcastic. She sat still, with averted face, stroking with a rhythmic,
jerked movement, the black sateen of her apron. It was a movement that
hurt Paul to see.
“I do like her,” he said, “but—”
“_Like_ her!” said Mrs. Morel, in the same biting tones. “It seems to
me you like nothing and nobody else. There’s neither Annie, nor me, nor
anyone now for you.”
“What nonsense, mother—you know I don’t love her—I—I tell you I _don’t_
love her—she doesn’t even walk with my arm, because I don’t want her
to.”
“Then why do you fly to her so often?”
“I _do_ like to talk to her—I never said I didn’t. But I _don’t_ love
her.”
“Is there nobody else to talk to?”
“Not about the things we talk of. There’s a lot of things that you’re
not interested in, that—”
“What things?”
Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant.
“Why—painting—and books. _You_ don’t care about Herbert Spencer.”
“No,” was the sad reply. “And _you_ won’t at my age.”
“Well, but I do now—and Miriam does—”
“And how do you know,” Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly, “that _I_
shouldn’t. Do you ever try me!”
“But you don’t, mother, you know you don’t care whether a picture’s
decorative or not; you don’t care what _manner_ it is in.”
“How do you know I don’t care? Do you ever try me? Do you ever talk to
me about these things, to try?”
“But it’s not that that matters to you, mother, you know it’s not.”
“What is it, then—what is it, then, that matters to me?” she flashed.
He knitted his brows with pain.
“You’re old, mother, and we’re young.”
He only meant that the interests of _her_ age were not the interests of
his. But he realised the moment he had spoken that he had said the
wrong thing.
“Yes, I know it well—I am old. And therefore I may stand aside; I have
nothing more to do with you. You only want me to wait on you—the rest
is for Miriam.”
He could not bear it. Instinctively he realised that he was life to
her. And, after all, she was the chief thing to him, the only supreme
thing.
“You know it isn’t, mother, you know it isn’t!”
She was moved to pity by his cry.
“It looks a great deal like it,” she said, half putting aside her
despair.
“No, mother—I really _don’t_ love her. I talk to her, but I want to
come home to you.”
He had taken off his collar and tie, and rose, bare-throated, to go to
bed. As he stooped to kiss his mother, she threw her arms round his
neck, hid her face on his shoulder, and cried, in a whimpering voice,
so unlike her own that he writhed in agony:
“I can’t bear it. I could let another woman—but not her. She’d leave me
no room, not a bit of room—”
And immediately he hated Miriam bitterly.
“And I’ve never—you know, Paul—I’ve never had a husband—not really—”
He stroked his mother’s hair, and his mouth was on her throat.
“And she exults so in taking you from me—she’s not like ordinary
girls.”
“Well, I don’t love her, mother,” he murmured, bowing his head and
hiding his eyes on her shoulder in misery. His mother kissed him a
long, fervent kiss.
“My boy!” she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love.
Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.
“There,” said his mother, “now go to bed. You’ll be so tired in the
morning.” As she was speaking she heard her husband coming. “There’s
your father—now go.” Suddenly she looked at him almost as if in fear.
“Perhaps I’m selfish. If you want her, take her, my boy.”
His mother looked so strange, Paul kissed her, trembling.
“Ha—mother!” he said softly.
Morel came in, walking unevenly. His hat was over one corner of his
eye. He balanced in the doorway.
“At your mischief again?” he said venomously.
Mrs. Morel’s emotion turned into sudden hate of the drunkard who had
come in thus upon her.
“At any rate, it is sober,” she said.
“H’m—h’m! h’m—h’m!” he sneered. He went into the passage, hung up his
hat and coat. Then they heard him go down three steps to the pantry. He