Sons and Lovers
flung down the brushes, and turned to talk to her.
Sometimes she praised his work; sometimes she was critical and cold.
“You are affected in that piece,” she would say; and, as there was an
element of truth in her condemnation, his blood boiled with anger.
Again: “What of this?” he would ask enthusiastically.
“H’m!” She made a small doubtful sound. “It doesn’t interest me much.”
“Because you don’t understand it,” he retorted.
“Then why ask me about it?”
“Because I thought you would understand.”
She would shrug her shoulders in scorn of his work. She maddened him.
He was furious. Then he abused her, and went into passionate exposition
of his stuff. This amused and stimulated her. But she never owned that
she had been wrong.
During the ten years that she had belonged to the women’s movement she
had acquired a fair amount of education, and, having had some of
Miriam’s passion to be instructed, had taught herself French, and could
read in that language with a struggle. She considered herself as a
woman apart, and particularly apart, from her class. The girls in the
Spiral department were all of good homes. It was a small, special
industry, and had a certain distinction. There was an air of refinement
in both rooms. But Clara was aloof also from her fellow-workers.
None of these things, however, did she reveal to Paul. She was not the
one to give herself away. There was a sense of mystery about her. She
was so reserved, he felt she had much to reserve. Her history was open
on the surface, but its inner meaning was hidden from everybody. It was
exciting. And then sometimes he caught her looking at him from under
her brows with an almost furtive, sullen scrutiny, which made him move
quickly. Often she met his eyes. But then her own were, as it were,
covered over, revealing nothing. She gave him a little, lenient smile.
She was to him extraordinarily provocative, because of the knowledge
she seemed to possess, and gathered fruit of experience he could not
attain.
One day he picked up a copy of _Lettres de mon Moulin_ from her
work-bench.
“You read French, do you?” he cried.
Clara glanced round negligently. She was making an elastic stocking of
heliotrope silk, turning the Spiral machine with slow, balanced
regularity, occasionally bending down to see her work or to adjust the
needles; then her magnificent neck, with its down and fine pencils of
hair, shone white against the lavender, lustrous silk. She turned a few
more rounds, and stopped.
“What did you say?” she asked, smiling sweetly.
Paul’s eyes glittered at her insolent indifference to him.
“I did not know you read French,” he said, very polite.
“Did you not?” she replied, with a faint, sarcastic smile.
“Rotten swank!” he said, but scarcely loud enough to be heard.
He shut his mouth angrily as he watched her. She seemed to scorn the
work she mechanically produced; yet the hose she made were as nearly
perfect as possible.
“You don’t like Spiral work,” he said.
“Oh, well, all work is work,” she answered, as if she knew all about
it.
He marvelled at her coldness. He had to do everything hotly. She must
be something special.
“What would you prefer to do?” he asked.
She laughed at him indulgently, as she said:
“There is so little likelihood of my ever being given a choice, that I
haven’t wasted time considering.”
“Pah!” he said, contemptuous on his side now. “You only say that
because you’re too proud to own up what you want and can’t get.”
“You know me very well,” she replied coldly.
“I know you think you’re terrific great shakes, and that you live under
the eternal insult of working in a factory.”
He was very angry and very rude. She merely turned away from him in
disdain. He walked whistling down the room, flirted and laughed with
Hilda.
Later on he said to himself:
“What was I so impudent to Clara for?” He was rather annoyed with
himself, at the same time glad. “Serve her right; she stinks with
silent pride,” he said to himself angrily.
In the afternoon he came down. There was a certain weight on his heart
which he wanted to remove. He thought to do it by offering her
chocolates.
“Have one?” he said. “I bought a handful to sweeten me up.”
To his great relief, she accepted. He sat on the work-bench beside her
machine, twisting a piece of silk round his finger. She loved him for
his quick, unexpected movements, like a young animal. His feet swung as
he pondered. The sweets lay strewn on the bench. She bent over her
machine, grinding rhythmically, then stooping to see the stocking that
hung beneath, pulled down by the weight. He watched the handsome
crouching of her back, and the apron-strings curling on the floor.
“There is always about you,” he said, “a sort of waiting. Whatever I
see you doing, you’re not really there: you are waiting—like Penelope
when she did her weaving.” He could not help a spurt of wickedness.
“I’ll call you Penelope,” he said.
“Would it make any difference?” she said, carefully removing one of her
needles.
“That doesn’t matter, so long as it pleases me. Here, I say, you seem
to forget I’m your boss. It just occurs to me.”
“And what does that mean?” she asked coolly.
“It means I’ve got a right to boss you.”
“Is there anything you want to complain about?”
“Oh, I say, you needn’t be nasty,” he said angrily.
“I don’t know what you want,” she said, continuing her task.
“I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully.”
“Call you ‘sir’, perhaps?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, call me ‘sir’. I should love it.”
“Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir.”
His mouth closed, and a frown came on his face. He jumped suddenly
down.
“You’re too blessed superior for anything,” he said.
And he went away to the other girls. He felt he was being angrier than
he had any need to be. In fact, he doubted slightly that he was showing
off. But if he were, then he would. Clara heard him laughing, in a way
she hated, with the girls down the next room.
When at evening he went through the department after the girls had
gone, he saw his chocolates lying untouched in front of Clara’s
machine. He left them. In the morning they were still there, and Clara
was at work. Later on Minnie, a little brunette they called Pussy,
called to him:
“Hey, haven’t you got a chocolate for anybody?”
“Sorry, Pussy,” he replied. “I meant to have offered them; then I went
and forgot ’em.”
“I think you did,” she answered.
“I’ll bring you some this afternoon. You don’t want them after they’ve
been lying about, do you?”
“Oh, I’m not particular,” smiled Pussy.
“Oh no,” he said. “They’ll be dusty.”
He went up to Clara’s bench.
“Sorry I left these things littering about,” he said.
She flushed scarlet. He gathered them together in his fist.
“They’ll be dirty now,” he said. “You should have taken them. I wonder
why you didn’t. I meant to have told you I wanted you to.”
He flung them out of the window into the yard below. He just glanced at
her. She winced from his eyes.
In the afternoon he brought another packet.
“Will you take some?” he said, offering them first to Clara. “These are
fresh.”
She accepted one, and put it on to the bench.
“Oh, take several—for luck,” he said.
She took a couple more, and put them on the bench also. Then she turned
in confusion to her work. He went on up the room.
“Here you are, Pussy,” he said. “Don’t be greedy!”
“Are they all for her?” cried the others, rushing up.
“Of course they’re not,” he said.
The girls clamoured round. Pussy drew back from her mates.
“Come out!” she cried. “I can have first pick, can’t I, Paul?”
“Be nice with ’em,” he said, and went away.
“You _are_ a dear,” the girls cried.
“Tenpence,” he answered.
He went past Clara without speaking. She felt the three chocolate
creams would burn her if she touched them. It needed all her courage to
slip them into the pocket of her apron.
The girls loved him and were afraid of him. He was so nice while he was
nice, but if he were offended, so distant, treating them as if they
scarcely existed, or not more than the bobbins of thread. And then, if
they were impudent, he said quietly: “Do you mind going on with your
work,” and stood and watched.
When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house was in trouble.
Arthur was just going to be married. His mother was not well. His
father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents, was given a
paltry, poor job. Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed
himself to her, yet could not give himself. The house, moreover, needed
his support. He was pulled in all directions. He was not glad it was
his birthday. It made him bitter.
He got to work at eight o’clock. Most of the clerks had not turned up.
The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was changing his coat, he heard
a voice behind him say:
“Paul, Paul, I want you.”
It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs, her
face radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment.
“I want you,” she said.
He stood, at a loss.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “Come before you begin on the letters.”
He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow, “finishing-off”
room. Fanny walked before him: her black bodice was short—the waist was
under her armpits—and her green-black cashmere skirt seemed very long,
as she strode with big strides before the young man, himself so
graceful. She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room, where the
window opened on to chimney-pots. Paul watched her thin hands and her
flat red wrists as she excitedly twitched her white apron, which was
spread on the bench in front of her. She hesitated.
“You didn’t think we’d forgot you?” she asked, reproachful.
“Why?” he asked. He had forgotten his birthday himself.
“‘Why,’ he says! ‘Why!’ Why, look here!” She pointed to the calendar,
and he saw, surrounding the big black number “21”, hundreds of little
crosses in black-lead.
“Oh, kisses for my birthday,” he laughed. “How did you know?”
“Yes, you want to know, don’t you?” Fanny mocked, hugely delighted.
“There’s one from everybody—except Lady Clara—and two from some. But I
shan’t tell you how many _I_ put.”
“Oh, I know, you’re spooney,” he said.
“There you _are_ mistaken!” she cried, indignant. “I could never be so
soft.” Her voice was strong and contralto.
“You always pretend to be such a hard-hearted hussy,” he laughed. “And
you know you’re as sentimental—”
“I’d rather be called sentimental than frozen meat,” Fanny blurted.
Paul knew she referred to Clara, and he smiled.
“Do you say such nasty things about me?” he laughed.
“No, my duck,” the hunchback woman answered, lavishly tender. She was
thirty-nine. “No, my duck, because you don’t think yourself a fine
figure in marble and us nothing but dirt. I’m as good as you, aren’t I,
Paul?” and the question delighted her.
“Why, we’re not better than one another, are we?” he replied.
“But I’m as good as you, aren’t I, Paul?” she persisted daringly.
“Of course you are. If it comes to goodness, you’re better.”
She was rather afraid of the situation. She might get hysterical.
“I thought I’d get here before the others—won’t they say I’m deep! Now
shut your eyes—” she said.
“And open your mouth, and see what God sends you,” he continued,
suiting action to words, and expecting a piece of chocolate. He heard
the rustle of the apron, and a faint clink of metal. “I’m going to
look,” he said.
He opened his eyes. Fanny, her long cheeks flushed, her blue eyes
shining, was gazing at him. There was a little bundle of paint-tubes on
the bench before him. He turned pale.
“No, Fanny,” he said quickly.
“From us all,” she answered hastily.
“No, but—”