Sons and Lovers
Clara came up.
“It’s a fine depth,” she said, “and so clear.”
“Yes,” said Miss Limb.
“Do you swim?” said Paul. “Miss Limb was just saying we could come when
we liked.”
“Of course there’s the farm-hands,” said Miss Limb.
They talked a few moments, then went on up the wild hill, leaving the
lonely, haggard-eyed woman on the bank.
The hillside was all ripe with sunshine. It was wild and tussocky,
given over to rabbits. The three walked in silence. Then:
“She makes me feel uncomfortable,” said Paul.
“You mean Miss Limb?” asked Miriam. “Yes.”
“What’s a matter with her? Is she going dotty with being too lonely?”
“Yes,” said Miriam. “It’s not the right sort of life for her. I think
it’s cruel to bury her there. _I_ really ought to go and see her more.
But—she upsets me.”
“She makes me feel sorry for her—yes, and she bothers me,” he said.
“I suppose,” blurted Clara suddenly, “she wants a man.”
The other two were silent for a few moments.
“But it’s the loneliness sends her cracked,” said Paul.
Clara did not answer, but strode on uphill. She was walking with her
hand hanging, her legs swinging as she kicked through the dead thistles
and the tussocky grass, her arms hanging loose. Rather than walking,
her handsome body seemed to be blundering up the hill. A hot wave went
over Paul. He was curious about her. Perhaps life had been cruel to
her. He forgot Miriam, who was walking beside him talking to him. She
glanced at him, finding he did not answer her. His eyes were fixed
ahead on Clara.
“Do you still think she is disagreeable?” she asked.
He did not notice that the question was sudden. It ran with his
thoughts.
“Something’s the matter with her,” he said.
“Yes,” answered Miriam.
They found at the top of the hill a hidden wild field, two sides of
which were backed by the wood, the other sides by high loose hedges of
hawthorn and elder bushes. Between these overgrown bushes were gaps
that the cattle might have walked through had there been any cattle
now. There the turf was smooth as velveteen, padded and holed by the
rabbits. The field itself was coarse, and crowded with tall, big
cowslips that had never been cut. Clusters of strong flowers rose
everywhere above the coarse tussocks of bent. It was like a roadstead
crowded with tan, fairy shipping.
“Ah!” cried Miriam, and she looked at Paul, her dark eyes dilating. He
smiled. Together they enjoyed the field of flowers. Clara, a little way
off, was looking at the cowslips disconsolately. Paul and Miriam stayed
close together, talking in subdued tones. He kneeled on one knee,
quickly gathering the best blossoms, moving from tuft to tuft
restlessly, talking softly all the time. Miriam plucked the flowers
lovingly, lingering over them. He always seemed to her too quick and
almost scientific. Yet his bunches had a natural beauty more than hers.
He loved them, but as if they were his and he had a right to them. She
had more reverence for them: they held something she had not.
The flowers were very fresh and sweet. He wanted to drink them. As he
gathered them, he ate the little yellow trumpets. Clara was still
wandering about disconsolately. Going towards her, he said:
“Why don’t you get some?”
“I don’t believe in it. They look better growing.”
“But you’d like some?”
“They want to be left.”
“I don’t believe they do.”
“I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me,” she said.
“That’s a stiff, artificial notion,” he said. “They don’t die any
quicker in water than on their roots. And besides, they _look_ nice in
a bowl—they look jolly. And you only call a thing a corpse because it
looks corpse-like.”
“Whether it is one or not?” she argued.
“It isn’t one to me. A dead flower isn’t a corpse of a flower.”
Clara now ignored him.
“And even so—what right have you to pull them?” she asked.
“Because I like them, and want them—and there’s plenty of them.”
“And that is sufficient?”
“Yes. Why not? I’m sure they’d smell nice in your room in Nottingham.”
“And I should have the pleasure of watching them die.”
“But then—it does not matter if they do die.”
Whereupon he left her, and went stooping over the clumps of tangled
flowers which thickly sprinkled the field like pale, luminous
foam-clots. Miriam had come close. Clara was kneeling, breathing some
scent from the cowslips.
“I think,” said Miriam, “if you treat them with reverence you don’t do
them any harm. It is the spirit you pluck them in that matters.”
“Yes,” he said. “But no, you get ’em because you want ’em, and that’s
all.” He held out his bunch.
Miriam was silent. He picked some more.
“Look at these!” he continued; “sturdy and lusty like little trees and
like boys with fat legs.”
Clara’s hat lay on the grass not far off. She was kneeling, bending
forward still to smell the flowers. Her neck gave him a sharp pang,
such a beautiful thing, yet not proud of itself just now. Her breasts
swung slightly in her blouse. The arching curve of her back was
beautiful and strong; she wore no stays. Suddenly, without knowing, he
was scattering a handful of cowslips over her hair and neck, saying:
“Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
If the Lord won’t have you the devil must.”
The chill flowers fell on her neck. She looked up at him, with almost
pitiful, scared grey eyes, wondering what he was doing. Flowers fell on
her face, and she shut her eyes.
Suddenly, standing there above her, he felt awkward.
“I thought you wanted a funeral,” he said, ill at ease.
Clara laughed strangely, and rose, picking the cowslips from her hair.
She took up her hat and pinned it on. One flower had remained tangled
in her hair. He saw, but would not tell her. He gathered up the flowers
he had sprinkled over her.
At the edge of the wood the bluebells had flowed over into the field
and stood there like flood-water. But they were fading now. Clara
strayed up to them. He wandered after her. The bluebells pleased him.
“Look how they’ve come out of the wood!” he said.
Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of gratitude.
“Yes,” she smiled.
His blood beat up.
“It makes me think of the wild men of the woods, how terrified they
would be when they got breast to breast with the open space.”
“Do you think they were?” she asked.
“I wonder which was more frightened among old tribes—those bursting out
of their darkness of woods upon all the space of light, or those from
the open tiptoeing into the forests.”
“I should think the second,” she answered.
“Yes, you _do_ feel like one of the open space sort, trying to force
yourself into the dark, don’t you?”
“How should I know?” she answered queerly.
The conversation ended there.
The evening was deepening over the earth. Already the valley was full
of shadow. One tiny square of light stood opposite at Crossleigh Bank
Farm. Brightness was swimming on the tops of the hills. Miriam came up
slowly, her face in her big, loose bunch of flowers, walking ankle-deep
through the scattered froth of the cowslips. Beyond her the trees were
coming into shape, all shadow.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
And the three turned away. They were all silent. Going down the path
they could see the light of home right across, and on the ridge of the
hill a thin dark outline with little lights, where the colliery village
touched the sky.
“It has been nice, hasn’t it?” he asked.
Miriam murmured assent. Clara was silent.
“Don’t you think so?” he persisted.
But she walked with her head up, and still did not answer. He could
tell by the way she moved, as if she didn’t care, that she suffered.
At this time Paul took his mother to Lincoln. She was bright and
enthusiastic as ever, but as he sat opposite her in the railway
carriage, she seemed to look frail. He had a momentary sensation as if
she were slipping away from him. Then he wanted to get hold of her, to
fasten her, almost to chain her. He felt he must keep hold of her with
his hand.
They drew near to the city. Both were at the window looking for the
cathedral.
“There she is, mother!” he cried.
They saw the great cathedral lying couchant above the plain.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “So she is!”
He looked at his mother. Her blue eyes were watching the cathedral
quietly. She seemed again to be beyond him. Something in the eternal
repose of the uplifted cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was
reflected in her, something of the fatality. What was, _was_. With all
his young will he could not alter it. He saw her face, the skin still
fresh and pink and downy, but crow’s-feet near her eyes, her eyelids
steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with disillusion; and
there was on her the same eternal look, as if she knew fate at last. He
beat against it with all the strength of his soul.
“Look, mother, how big she is above the town! Think, there are streets
and streets below her! She looks bigger than the city altogether.”
“So she does!” exclaimed his mother, breaking bright into life again.
But he had seen her sitting, looking steady out of the window at the
cathedral, her face and eyes fixed, reflecting the relentlessness of
life. And the crow’s-feet near her eyes, and her mouth shut so hard,
made him feel he would go mad.
They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant.
“Don’t imagine I like it,” she said, as she ate her cutlet. “I _don’t_
like it, I really don’t! Just _think_ of your money wasted!”
“You never mind my money,” he said. “You forget I’m a fellow taking his
girl for an outing.”
And he bought her some blue violets.
“Stop it at once, sir!” she commanded. “How can I do it?”
“You’ve got nothing to do. Stand still!”
And in the middle of High Street he stuck the flowers in her coat.
“An old thing like me!” she said, sniffing.
“You see,” he said, “I want people to think we’re awful swells. So look
ikey.”
“I’ll jowl your head,” she laughed.
“Strut!” he commanded. “Be a fantail pigeon.”
It took him an hour to get her through the street. She stood above
Glory Hole, she stood before Stone Bow, she stood everywhere, and
exclaimed.
A man came up, took off his hat, and bowed to her.
“Can I show you the town, madam?”
“No, thank you,” she answered. “I’ve got my son.”
Then Paul was cross with her for not answering with more dignity.
“You go away with you!” she exclaimed. “Ha! that’s the Jew’s House.
Now, do you remember that lecture, Paul—?”
But she could scarcely climb the cathedral hill. He did not notice.
Then suddenly he found her unable to speak. He took her into a little
public-house, where she rested.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “My heart is only a bit old; one must expect
it.”
He did not answer, but looked at her. Again his heart was crushed in a
hot grip. He wanted to cry, he wanted to smash things in fury.
They set off again, pace by pace, so slowly. And every step seemed like
a weight on his chest. He felt as if his heart would burst. At last
they came to the top. She stood enchanted, looking at the castle gate,
looking at the cathedral front. She had quite forgotten herself.
“Now _this_ is better than I thought it could be!” she cried.
But he hated it. Everywhere he followed her, brooding. They sat
together in the cathedral. They attended a little service in the choir.
She was timid.
“I suppose it is open to anybody?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he replied. “Do you think they’d have the damned cheek to send
us away.”
“Well, I’m sure,” she exclaimed, “they would if they heard your
language.”
Her face seemed to shine again with joy and peace during the service.
And all the time he was wanting to rage and smash things and cry.
Afterwards, when they were leaning over the wall, looking at the town
below, he blurted suddenly: