Sons and Lovers
felt he belonged. He thought he was being quite faithful to her. It was
not easy to estimate exactly the strength and warmth of one’s feelings
for a woman till they have run away with one.
He began to give more time to his men friends. There was Jessop, at the
Art School; Swain, who was chemistry demonstrator at the university;
Newton, who was a teacher; besides Edgar and Miriam’s younger brothers.
Pleading work, he sketched and studied with Jessop. He called in the
university for Swain, and the two went “down town” together. Having
come home in the train with Newton, he called and had a game of
billiards with him in the Moon and Stars. If he gave to Miriam the
excuse of his men friends, he felt quite justified. His mother began to
be relieved. He always told her where he had been.
During the summer Clara wore sometimes a dress of soft cotton stuff
with loose sleeves. When she lifted her hands, her sleeves fell back,
and her beautiful strong arms shone out.
“Half a minute,” he cried. “Hold your arm still.”
He made sketches of her hand and arm, and the drawings contained some
of the fascination the real thing had for him. Miriam, who always went
scrupulously through his books and papers, saw the drawings.
“I think Clara has such beautiful arms,” he said.
“Yes! When did you draw them?”
“On Tuesday, in the work-room. You know, I’ve got a corner where I can
work. Often I can do every single thing they need in the department,
before dinner. Then I work for myself in the afternoon, and just see to
things at night.”
“Yes,” she said, turning the leaves of his sketch-book.
Frequently he hated Miriam. He hated her as she bent forward and pored
over his things. He hated her way of patiently casting him up, as if he
were an endless psychological account. When he was with her, he hated
her for having got him, and yet not got him, and he tortured her. She
took all and gave nothing, he said. At least, she gave no living
warmth. She was never alive, and giving off life. Looking for her was
like looking for something which did not exist. She was only his
conscience, not his mate. He hated her violently, and was more cruel to
her. They dragged on till the next summer. He saw more and more of
Clara.
At last he spoke. He had been sitting working at home one evening.
There was between him and his mother a peculiar condition of people
frankly finding fault with each other. Mrs. Morel was strong on her
feet again. He was not going to stick to Miriam. Very well; then she
would stand aloof till he said something. It had been coming a long
time, this bursting of the storm in him, when he would come back to
her. This evening there was between them a peculiar condition of
suspense. He worked feverishly and mechanically, so that he could
escape from himself. It grew late. Through the open door, stealthily,
came the scent of madonna lilies, almost as if it were prowling abroad.
Suddenly he got up and went out of doors.
The beauty of the night made him want to shout. A half-moon, dusky
gold, was sinking behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden,
making the sky dull purple with its glow. Nearer, a dim white fence of
lilies went across the garden, and the air all round seemed to stir
with scent, as if it were alive. He went across the bed of pinks, whose
keen perfume came sharply across the rocking, heavy scent of the
lilies, and stood alongside the white barrier of flowers. They flagged
all loose, as if they were panting. The scent made him drunk. He went
down to the field to watch the moon sink under.
A corncrake in the hay-close called insistently. The moon slid quite
quickly downwards, growing more flushed. Behind him the great flowers
leaned as if they were calling. And then, like a shock, he caught
another perfume, something raw and coarse. Hunting round, he found the
purple iris, touched their fleshy throats and their dark, grasping
hands. At any rate, he had found something. They stood stiff in the
darkness. Their scent was brutal. The moon was melting down upon the
crest of the hill. It was gone; all was dark. The corncrake called
still.
Breaking off a pink, he suddenly went indoors.
“Come, my boy,” said his mother. “I’m sure it’s time you went to bed.”
He stood with the pink against his lips.
“I shall break off with Miriam, mother,” he answered calmly.
She looked up at him over her spectacles. He was staring back at her,
unswerving. She met his eyes for a moment, then took off her glasses.
He was white. The male was up in him, dominant. She did not want to see
him too clearly.
“But I thought—” she began.
“Well,” he answered, “I don’t love her. I don’t want to marry her—so I
shall have done.”
“But,” exclaimed his mother, amazed, “I thought lately you had made up
your mind to have her, and so I said nothing.”
“I had—I wanted to—but now I don’t want. It’s no good. I shall break
off on Sunday. I ought to, oughtn’t I?”
“You know best. You know I said so long ago.”
“I can’t help that now. I shall break off on Sunday.”
“Well,” said his mother, “I think it will be best. But lately I decided
you had made up your mind to have her, so I said nothing, and should
have said nothing. But I say as I have always said, I _don’t_ think she
is suited to you.”
“On Sunday I break off,” he said, smelling the pink. He put the flower
in his mouth. Unthinking, he bared his teeth, closed them on the
blossom slowly, and had a mouthful of petals. These he spat into the
fire, kissed his mother, and went to bed.
On Sunday he went up to the farm in the early afternoon. He had written
Miriam that they would walk over the fields to Hucknall. His mother was
very tender with him. He said nothing. But she saw the effort it was
costing. The peculiar set look on his face stilled her.
“Never mind, my son,” she said. “You will be so much better when it is
all over.”
Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and resentment. He did
not want sympathy.
Miriam met him at the lane-end. She was wearing a new dress of figured
muslin that had short sleeves. Those short sleeves, and Miriam’s
brown-skinned arms beneath them—such pitiful, resigned arms—gave him so
much pain that they helped to make him cruel. She had made herself look
so beautiful and fresh for him. She seemed to blossom for him alone.
Every time he looked at her—a mature young woman now, and beautiful in
her new dress—it hurt so much that his heart seemed almost to be
bursting with the restraint he put on it. But he had decided, and it
was irrevocable.
On the hills they sat down, and he lay with his head in her lap, whilst
she fingered his hair. She knew that “he was not there,” as she put it.
Often, when she had him with her, she looked for him, and could not
find him. But this afternoon she was not prepared.
It was nearly five o’clock when he told her. They were sitting on the
bank of a stream, where the lip of turf hung over a hollow bank of
yellow earth, and he was hacking away with a stick, as he did when he
was perturbed and cruel.
“I have been thinking,” he said, “we ought to break off.”
“Why?” she cried in surprise.
“Because it’s no good going on.”
“Why is it no good?”
“It isn’t. I don’t want to marry. I don’t want ever to marry. And if
we’re not going to marry, it’s no good going on.”
“But why do you say this now?”
“Because I’ve made up my mind.”
“And what about these last months, and the things you told me then?”
“I can’t help it! I don’t want to go on.”
“You don’t want any more of me?”
“I want us to break off—you be free of me, I free of you.”
“And what about these last months?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not told you anything but what I thought was true.”
“Then why are you different now?”
“I’m not—I’m the same—only I know it’s no good going on.”
“You haven’t told me why it’s no good.”
“Because I don’t want to go on—and I don’t want to marry.”
“How many times have you offered to marry me, and I wouldn’t?”
“I know; but I want us to break off.”
There was silence for a moment or two, while he dug viciously at the
earth. She bent her head, pondering. He was an unreasonable child. He
was like an infant which, when it has drunk its fill, throws away and
smashes the cup. She looked at him, feeling she could get hold of him
and _wring_ some consistency out of him. But she was helpless. Then she
cried:
“I have said you were only fourteen—you are only _four!_”
He still dug at the earth viciously. He heard.
“You are a child of four,” she repeated in her anger.
He did not answer, but said in his heart: “All right; if I’m a child of
four, what do you want me for? _I_ don’t want another mother.” But he
said nothing to her, and there was silence.
“And have you told your people?” she asked.
“I have told my mother.”
There was another long interval of silence.
“Then what do you _want?_” she asked.
“Why, I want us to separate. We have lived on each other all these
years; now let us stop. I will go my own way without you, and you will
go your way without me. You will have an independent life of your own
then.”
There was in it some truth that, in spite of her bitterness, she could
not help registering. She knew she felt in a sort of bondage to him,
which she hated because she could not control it. She hated her love
for him from the moment it grew too strong for her. And, deep down, she
had hated him because she loved him and he dominated her. She had
resisted his domination. She had fought to keep herself free of him in
the last issue. And she _was_ free of him, even more than he of her.
“And,” he continued, “we shall always be more or less each other’s
work. You have done a lot for me, I for you. Now let us start and live
by ourselves.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“Nothing—only to be free,” he answered.
She, however, knew in her heart that Clara’s influence was over him to
liberate him. But she said nothing.
“And what have I to tell my mother?” she asked.
“I told my mother,” he answered, “that I was breaking off—clean and
altogether.”
“I shall not tell them at home,” she said.
Frowning, “You please yourself,” he said.
He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was leaving her in the
lurch. It angered him.
“Tell them you wouldn’t and won’t marry me, and have broken off,” he
said. “It’s true enough.”
She bit her finger moodily. She thought over their whole affair. She
had known it would come to this; she had seen it all along. It chimed
with her bitter expectation.
“Always—it has always been so!” she cried. “It has been one long battle
between us—you fighting away from me.”
It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. The man’s heart
stood still. Was this how she saw it?
“But we’ve had _some_ perfect hours, _some_ perfect times, when we were
together!” he pleaded.
“Never!” she cried; “never! It has always been you fighting me off.”
“Not always—not at first!” he pleaded.
“Always, from the very beginning—always the same!”
She had finished, but she had done enough. He sat aghast. He had wanted
to say: “It has been good, but it is at an end.” And she—she whose love
he had believed in when he had despised himself—denied that their love
had ever been love. “He had always fought away from her?” Then it had
been monstrous. There had never been anything really between them; all
the time he had been imagining something where there was nothing. And
she had known. She had known so much, and had told him so little. She
had known all the time. All the time this was at the bottom of her!
He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair appeared in a
cynical aspect to him. She had really played with him, not he with her.
She had hidden all her condemnation from him, had flattered him, and