Sons and Lovers
dark and yet luminous, tree-tops folded over tree-tops, distinct in the
distance. The evening had cleared, and the east was tender with a
magenta flush under which the land lay still and rich.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she pleaded.
But he only scowled. He would rather have had it ugly just then.
At that moment a big bull-terrier came rushing up, open-mouthed,
pranced his two paws on the youth’s shoulders, licking his face. Paul
drew back, laughing. Bill was a great relief to him. He pushed the dog
aside, but it came leaping back.
“Get out,” said the lad, “or I’ll dot thee one.”
But the dog was not to be pushed away. So Paul had a little battle with
the creature, pitching poor Bill away from him, who, however, only
floundered tumultuously back again, wild with joy. The two fought
together, the man laughing grudgingly, the dog grinning all over.
Miriam watched them. There was something pathetic about the man. He
wanted so badly to love, to be tender. The rough way he bowled the dog
over was really loving. Bill got up, panting with happiness, his brown
eyes rolling in his white face, and lumbered back again. He adored
Paul. The lad frowned.
“Bill, I’ve had enough o’ thee,” he said.
But the dog only stood with two heavy paws, that quivered with love,
upon his thigh, and flickered a red tongue at him. He drew back.
“No,” he said—“no—I’ve had enough.”
And in a minute the dog trotted off happily, to vary the fun.
He remained staring miserably across at the hills, whose still beauty
he begrudged. He wanted to go and cycle with Edgar. Yet he had not the
courage to leave Miriam.
“Why are you sad?” she asked humbly.
“I’m not sad; why should I be,” he answered. “I’m only normal.”
She wondered why he always claimed to be normal when he was
disagreeable.
“But what is the matter?” she pleaded, coaxing him soothingly.
“Nothing!”
“Nay!” she murmured.
He picked up a stick and began to stab the earth with it.
“You’d far better not talk,” he said.
“But I wish to know—” she replied.
He laughed resentfully.
“You always do,” he said.
“It’s not fair to me,” she murmured.
He thrust, thrust, thrust at the ground with the pointed stick, digging
up little clods of earth as if he were in a fever of irritation. She
gently and firmly laid her band on his wrist.
“Don’t!” she said. “Put it away.”
He flung the stick into the currant-bushes, and leaned back. Now he was
bottled up.
“What is it?” she pleaded softly.
He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment.
“You know,” he said at length, rather wearily—“you know—we’d better
break off.”
It was what she dreaded. Swiftly everything seemed to darken before her
eyes.
“Why!” she murmured. “What has happened?”
“Nothing has happened. We only realise where we are. It’s no good—”
She waited in silence, sadly, patiently. It was no good being impatient
with him. At any rate, he would tell her now what ailed him.
“We agreed on friendship,” he went on in a dull, monotonous voice. “How
often _have_ we agreed for friendship! And yet—it neither stops there,
nor gets anywhere else.”
He was silent again. She brooded. What did he mean? He was so wearying.
There was something he would not yield. Yet she must be patient with
him.
“I can only give friendship—it’s all I’m capable of—it’s a flaw in my
make-up. The thing overbalances to one side—I hate a toppling balance.
Let us have done.”
There was warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him
more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in
herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul,
this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor
acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle
shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without
him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.
“But what has happened?” she said.
“Nothing—it’s all in myself—it only comes out just now. We’re always
like this towards Easter-time.”
He grovelled so helplessly, she pitied him. At least she never
floundered in such a pitiable way. After all, it was he who was chiefly
humiliated.
“What do you want?” she asked him.
“Why—I mustn’t come often—that’s all. Why should I monopolise you when
I’m not—You see, I’m deficient in something with regard to you—”
He was telling her he did not love her, and so ought to leave her a
chance with another man. How foolish and blind and shamefully clumsy he
was! What were other men to her! What were men to her at all! But he,
ah! she loved his soul. Was _he_ deficient in something? Perhaps he
was.
“But I don’t understand,” she said huskily. “Yesterday—”
The night was turning jangled and hateful to him as the twilight faded.
And she bowed under her suffering.
“I know,” he cried, “you never will! You’ll never believe that I
can’t—can’t physically, any more than I can fly up like a skylark—”
“What?” she murmured. Now she dreaded.
“Love you.”
He hated her bitterly at that moment because he made her suffer. Love
her! She knew he loved her. He really belonged to her. This about not
loving her, physically, bodily, was a mere perversity on his part,
because he knew she loved him. He was stupid like a child. He belonged
to her. His soul wanted her. She guessed somebody had been influencing
him. She felt upon him the hardness, the foreignness of another
influence.
“What have they been saying at home?” she asked.
“It’s not that,” he answered.
And then she knew it was. She despised them for their commonness, his
people. They did not know what things were really worth.
He and she talked very little more that night. After all he left her to
cycle with Edgar.
He had come back to his mother. Hers was the strongest tie in his life.
When he thought round, Miriam shrank away. There was a vague, unreal
feel about her. And nobody else mattered. There was one place in the
world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where
his mother was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent
to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole of his life,
from which he could not escape, was his mother.
And in the same way she waited for him. In him was established her life
now. After all, the life beyond offered very little to Mrs. Morel. She
saw that our chance for _doing_ is here, and doing counted with her.
Paul was going to prove that she had been right; he was going to make a
man whom nothing should shift off his feet; he was going to alter the
face of the earth in some way which mattered. Wherever he went she felt
her soul went with him. Whatever he did she felt her soul stood by him,
ready, as it were, to hand him his tools. She could not bear it when he
was with Miriam. William was dead. She would fight to keep Paul.
And he came back to her. And in his soul was a feeling of the
satisfaction of self-sacrifice because he was faithful to her. She
loved him first; he loved her first. And yet it was not enough. His new
young life, so strong and imperious, was urged towards something else.
It made him mad with restlessness. She saw this, and wished bitterly
that Miriam had been a woman who could take this new life of his, and
leave her the roots. He fought against his mother almost as he fought
against Miriam.
It was a week before he went again to Willey Farm. Miriam had suffered
a great deal, and was afraid to see him again. Was she now to endure
the ignominy of his abandoning her? That would only be superficial and
temporary. He would come back. She held the keys to his soul. But
meanwhile, how he would torture her with his battle against her. She
shrank from it.
However, the Sunday after Easter he came to tea. Mrs. Leivers was glad
to see him. She gathered something was fretting him, that he found
things hard. He seemed to drift to her for comfort. And she was good to
him. She did him that great kindness of treating him almost with
reverence.
He met her with the young children in the front garden.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” said the mother, looking at him with her great
appealing brown eyes. “It is such a sunny day. I was just going down
the fields for the first time this year.”
He felt she would like him to come. That soothed him. They went,
talking simply, he gentle and humble. He could have wept with gratitude
that she was deferential to him. He was feeling humiliated.
At the bottom of the Mow Close they found a thrush’s nest.
“Shall I show you the eggs?” he said.
“Do!” replied Mrs. Leivers. “They seem _such_ a sign of spring, and so
hopeful.”
He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding them in the
palm of his hand.
“They are quite hot—I think we frightened her off them,” he said.
“Ay, poor thing!” said Mrs. Leivers.
Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand which, it seemed
to her, cradled them so well.
“Isn’t it a strange warmth!” she murmured, to get near him.
“Blood heat,” he answered.
She watched him putting them back, his body pressed against the hedge,
his arm reaching slowly through the thorns, his hand folded carefully
over the eggs. He was concentrated on the act. Seeing him so, she loved
him; he seemed so simple and sufficient to himself. And she could not
get to him.
After tea she stood hesitating at the bookshelf. He took “Tartarin de
Tarascon”. Again they sat on the bank of hay at the foot of the stack.
He read a couple of pages, but without any heart for it. Again the dog
came racing up to repeat the fun of the other day. He shoved his muzzle
in the man’s chest. Paul fingered his ear for a moment. Then he pushed
him away.
“Go away, Bill,” he said. “I don’t want you.”
Bill slunk off, and Miriam wondered and dreaded what was coming. There
was a silence about the youth that made her still with apprehension. It
was not his furies, but his quiet resolutions that she feared.
Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could not see him,
he began, speaking slowly and painfully:
“Do you think—if I didn’t come up so much—you might get to like
somebody else—another man?”
So this was what he was still harping on.
“But I don’t know any other men. Why do you ask?” she replied, in a low
tone that should have been a reproach to him.
“Why,” he blurted, “because they say I’ve no right to come up like
this—without we mean to marry—”
Miriam was indignant at anybody’s forcing the issues between them. She
had been furious with her own father for suggesting to Paul,
laughingly, that he knew why he came so much.
“Who says?” she asked, wondering if her people had anything to do with
it. They had not.
“Mother—and the others. They say at this rate everybody will consider
me engaged, and I ought to consider myself so, because it’s not fair to
you. And I’ve tried to find out—and I don’t think I love you as a man
ought to love his wife. What do _you_ think about it?”
Miriam bowed her head moodily. She was angry at having this struggle.
People should leave him and her alone.
“I don’t know,” she murmured.
“Do you think we love each other enough to marry?” he asked definitely.
It made her tremble.
“No,” she answered truthfully. “I don’t think so—we’re too young.”
“I thought perhaps,” he went on miserably, “that you, with your
intensity in things, might have given me more—than I could ever make up
to you. And even now—if you think it better—we’ll be engaged.”
Now Miriam wanted to cry. And she was angry, too. He was always such a
child for people to do as they liked with.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said firmly.
He pondered a minute.
“You see,” he said, “with me—I don’t think one person would ever
monopolise me—be everything to me—I think never.”