Sons and Lovers
still in resentment at his suddenly abandoning her. He looked for her.
She stood aloof. He caught her suddenly in his arms, held her strained
for a moment, kissed her. Then he let her go.
“Come along,” he said, penitent.
She followed him. He took her hand and kissed her finger-tips. They
went in silence. When they came to the light, he let go her hand.
Neither spoke till they reached the station. Then they looked each
other in the eyes.
“Good-night,” she said.
And he went for his train. His body acted mechanically. People talked
to him. He heard faint echoes answering them. He was in a delirium. He
felt that he would go mad if Monday did not come at once. On Monday he
would see her again. All himself was pitched there, ahead. Sunday
intervened. He could not bear it. He could not see her till Monday. And
Sunday intervened—hour after hour of tension. He wanted to beat his
head against the door of the carriage. But he sat still. He drank some
whisky on the way home, but it only made it worse. His mother must not
be upset, that was all. He dissembled, and got quickly to bed. There he
sat, dressed, with his chin on his knees, staring out of the window at
the far hill, with its few lights. He neither thought nor slept, but
sat perfectly still, staring. And when at last he was so cold that he
came to himself, he found his watch had stopped at half-past two. It
was after three o’clock. He was exhausted, but still there was the
torment of knowing it was only Sunday morning. He went to bed and
slept. Then he cycled all day long, till he was fagged out. And he
scarcely knew where he had been. But the day after was Monday. He slept
till four o’clock. Then he lay and thought. He was coming nearer to
himself—he could see himself, real, somewhere in front. She would go a
walk with him in the afternoon. Afternoon! It seemed years ahead.
Slowly the hours crawled. His father got up; he heard him pottering
about. Then the miner set off to the pit, his heavy boots scraping the
yard. Cocks were still crowing. A cart went down the road. His mother
got up. She knocked the fire. Presently she called him softly. He
answered as if he were asleep. This shell of himself did well.
He was walking to the station—another mile! The train was near
Nottingham. Would it stop before the tunnels? But it did not matter; it
would get there before dinner-time. He was at Jordan’s. She would come
in half an hour. At any rate, she would be near. He had done the
letters. She would be there. Perhaps she had not come. He ran
downstairs. Ah! he saw her through the glass door. Her shoulders
stooping a little to her work made him feel he could not go forward; he
could not stand. He went in. He was pale, nervous, awkward, and quite
cold. Would she misunderstand him? He could not write his real self
with this shell.
“And this afternoon,” he struggled to say. “You will come?”
“I think so,” she replied, murmuring.
He stood before her, unable to say a word. She hid her face from him.
Again came over him the feeling that he would lose consciousness. He
set his teeth and went upstairs. He had done everything correctly yet,
and he would do so. All the morning things seemed a long way off, as
they do to a man under chloroform. He himself seemed under a tight band
of constraint. Then there was his other self, in the distance, doing
things, entering stuff in a ledger, and he watched that far-off him
carefully to see he made no mistake.
But the ache and strain of it could not go on much longer. He worked
incessantly. Still it was only twelve o’clock. As if he had nailed his
clothing against the desk, he stood there and worked, forcing every
stroke out of himself. It was a quarter to one; he could clear away.
Then he ran downstairs.
“You will meet me at the Fountain at two o’clock,” he said.
“I can’t be there till half-past.”
“Yes!” he said.
She saw his dark, mad eyes.
“I will try at a quarter past.”
And he had to be content. He went and got some dinner. All the time he
was still under chloroform, and every minute was stretched out
indefinitely. He walked miles of streets. Then he thought he would be
late at the meeting-place. He was at the Fountain at five past two. The
torture of the next quarter of an hour was refined beyond expression.
It was the anguish of combining the living self with the shell. Then he
saw her. She came! And he was there.
“You are late,” he said.
“Only five minutes,” she answered.
“I’d never have done it to you,” he laughed.
She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her beautiful figure.
“You want some flowers,” he said, going to the nearest florist’s.
She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch of scarlet,
brick-red carnations. She put them in her coat, flushing.
“That’s a fine colour!” he said.
“I’d rather have had something softer,” she said.
He laughed.
“Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the street?” he
said.
She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He looked sideways at
her as they walked. There was a wonderful close down on her face near
the ear that he wanted to touch. And a certain heaviness, the heaviness
of a very full ear of corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there
was about her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning down the
street, everything going round.
As they sat in the tram-car, she leaned her heavy shoulder against him,
and he took her hand. He felt himself coming round from the anæsthetic,
beginning to breathe. Her ear, half-hidden among her blonde hair, was
near to him. The temptation to kiss it was almost too great. But there
were other people on top of the car. It still remained to him to kiss
it. After all, he was not himself, he was some attribute of hers, like
the sunshine that fell on her.
He looked quickly away. It had been raining. The big bluff of the
Castle rock was streaked with rain, as it reared above the flat of the
town. They crossed the wide, black space of the Midland Railway, and
passed the cattle enclosure that stood out white. Then they ran down
sordid Wilford Road.
She rocked slightly to the tram’s motion, and as she leaned against
him, rocked upon him. He was a vigorous, slender man, with exhaustless
energy. His face was rough, with rough-hewn features, like the common
people’s; but his eyes under the deep brows were so full of life that
they fascinated her. They seemed to dance, and yet they were still
trembling on the finest balance of laughter. His mouth the same was
just going to spring into a laugh of triumph, yet did not. There was a
sharp suspense about him. She bit her lip moodily. His hand was hard
clenched over hers.
They paid their two halfpennies at the turnstile and crossed the
bridge. The Trent was very full. It swept silent and insidious under
the bridge, travelling in a soft body. There had been a great deal of
rain. On the river levels were flat gleams of flood water. The sky was
grey, with glisten of silver here and there. In Wilford churchyard the
dahlias were sodden with rain—wet black-crimson balls. No one was on
the path that went along the green river meadow, along the elm-tree
colonnade.
There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water and the green
meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were spangled with gold. The river
slid by in a body, utterly silent and swift, intertwining among itself
like some subtle, complex creature. Clara walked moodily beside him.
“Why,” she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, “did you leave
Miriam?”
He frowned.
“Because I _wanted_ to leave her,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to go on with her. And I didn’t want to marry.”
She was silent for a moment. They picked their way down the muddy path.
Drops of water fell from the elm-trees.
“You didn’t want to marry Miriam, or you didn’t want to marry at all?”
she asked.
“Both,” he answered—“both!”
They had to manœuvre to get to the stile, because of the pools of
water.
“And what did she say?” Clara asked.
“Miriam? She said I was a baby of four, and that I always _had_ battled
her off.”
Clara pondered over this for a time.
“But you have really been going with her for some time?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And now you don’t want any more of her?”
“No. I know it’s no good.”
She pondered again.
“Don’t you think you’ve treated her rather badly?” she asked.
“Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back. But it would have been no
good going on. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“How old _are_ you?” Clara asked.
“Twenty-five.”
“And I am thirty,” she said.
“I know you are.”
“I shall be thirty-one—or _am_ I thirty-one?”
“I neither know nor care. What does it matter!”
They were at the entrance to the Grove. The wet, red track, already
sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep bank between the grass. On
either side stood the elm-trees like pillars along a great aisle,
arching over and making high up a roof from which the dead leaves fell.
All was empty and silent and wet. She stood on top of the stile, and he
held both her hands. Laughing, she looked down into his eyes. Then she
leaped. Her breast came against his; he held her, and covered her face
with kisses.
They went on up the slippery, steep red path. Presently she released
his hand and put it round her waist.
“You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly,” she said.
They walked along. His finger-tips felt the rocking of her breast. All
was silent and deserted. On the left the red wet plough-land showed
through the doorways between the elm-boles and their branches. On the
right, looking down, they could see the tree-tops of elms growing far
beneath them, hear occasionally the gurgle of the river. Sometimes
there below they caught glimpses of the full, soft-sliding Trent, and
of water-meadows dotted with small cattle.
“It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to come,” he
said.
But he was watching her throat below the ear, where the flush was
fusing into the honey-white, and her mouth that pouted disconsolate.
She stirred against him as she walked, and his body was like a taut
string.
Halfway up the big colonnade of elms, where the Grove rose highest
above the river, their forward movement faltered to an end. He led her
across to the grass, under the trees at the edge of the path. The cliff
of red earth sloped swiftly down, through trees and bushes, to the
river that glimmered and was dark between the foliage. The far-below
water-meadows were very green. He and she stood leaning against one
another, silent, afraid, their bodies touching all along. There came a
quick gurgle from the river below.
“Why,” he asked at length, “did you hate Baxter Dawes?”
She turned to him with a splendid movement. Her mouth was offered him,
and her throat; her eyes were half-shut; her breast was tilted as if it
asked for him. He flashed with a small laugh, shut his eyes, and met
her in a long, whole kiss. Her mouth fused with his; their bodies were
sealed and annealed. It was some minutes before they withdrew. They
were standing beside the public path.
“Will you go down to the river?” he asked.
She looked at him, leaving herself in his hands. He went over the brim
of the declivity and began to climb down.
“It is slippery,” he said.
“Never mind,” she replied.
The red clay went down almost sheer. He slid, went from one tuft of
grass to the next, hanging on to the bushes, making for a little
platform at the foot of a tree. There he waited for her, laughing with
excitement. Her shoes were clogged with red earth. It was hard for her.
He frowned. At last he caught her hand, and she stood beside him. The
cliff rose above them and fell away below. Her colour was up, her eyes
flashed. He looked at the big drop below them.