Sons and Lovers
“But you seem to think she’s—not as good as—She’s better than
ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She’s _better_, she is!
She’s fair, she’s honest, she’s straight! There isn’t anything
underhand or superior about her. Don’t be mean about her!”
Mrs. Morel flushed.
“I am sure I am not mean about her. She may be quite as you say, but—”
“You don’t approve,” he finished.
“And do you expect me to?” she answered coldly.
“Yes!—yes!—if you’d anything about you, you’d be glad! Do you _want_ to
see her?”
“I said I did.”
“Then I’ll bring her—shall I bring her here?”
“You please yourself.”
“Then I _will_ bring her here—one Sunday—to tea. If you think a horrid
thing about her, I shan’t forgive you.”
His mother laughed.
“As if it would make any difference!” she said. He knew he had won.
“Oh, but it feels so fine, when she’s there! She’s such a queen in her
way.”
Occasionally he still walked a little way from chapel with Miriam and
Edgar. He did not go up to the farm. She, however, was very much the
same with him, and he did not feel embarrassed in her presence. One
evening she was alone when he accompanied her. They began by talking
books: it was their unfailing topic. Mrs. Morel had said that his and
Miriam’s affair was like a fire fed on books—if there were no more
volumes it would die out. Miriam, for her part, boasted that she could
read him like a book, could place her finger any minute on the chapter
and the line. He, easily taken in, believed that Miriam knew more about
him than anyone else. So it pleased him to talk to her about himself,
like the simplest egoist. Very soon the conversation drifted to his own
doings. It flattered him immensely that he was of such supreme
interest.
“And what have you been doing lately?”
“I—oh, not much! I made a sketch of Bestwood from the garden, that is
nearly right at last. It’s the hundredth try.”
So they went on. Then she said:
“You’ve not been out, then, lately?”
“Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with Clara.”
“It was not very nice weather,” said Miriam, “was it?”
“But I wanted to go out, and it was all right. The Trent _is_ full.”
“And did you go to Barton?” she asked.
“No; we had tea in Clifton.”
“_Did_ you! That would be nice.”
“It was! The jolliest old woman! She gave us several pom-pom dahlias,
as pretty as you like.”
Miriam bowed her head and brooded. He was quite unconscious of
concealing anything from her.
“What made her give them you?” she asked.
He laughed.
“Because she liked us—because we were jolly, I should think.”
Miriam put her finger in her mouth.
“Were you late home?” she asked.
At last he resented her tone.
“I caught the seven-thirty.”
“Ha!”
They walked on in silence, and he was angry.
“And how _is_ Clara?” asked Miriam.
“Quite all right, I think.”
“That’s good!” she said, with a tinge of irony. “By the way, what of
her husband? One never hears anything of him.”
“He’s got some other woman, and is also quite all right,” he replied.
“At least, so I think.”
“I see—you don’t know for certain. Don’t you think a position like that
is hard on a woman?”
“Rottenly hard!”
“It’s so unjust!” said Miriam. “The man does as he likes—”
“Then let the woman also,” he said.
“How can she? And if she does, look at her position!”
“What of it?”
“Why, it’s impossible! You don’t understand what a woman forfeits—”
“No, I don’t. But if a woman’s got nothing but her fair fame to feed
on, why, it’s thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!”
So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she knew he would
act accordingly.
She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know enough.
Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned to marriage,
then to Clara’s marriage with Dawes.
“You see,” he said, “she never knew the fearful importance of marriage.
She thought it was all in the day’s march—it would have to come—and
Dawes—well, a good many women would have given their souls to get him;
so why not him? Then she developed into the _femme incomprise_, and
treated him badly, I’ll bet my boots.”
“And she left him because he didn’t understand her?”
“I suppose so. I suppose she had to. It isn’t altogether a question of
understanding; it’s a question of living. With him, she was only
half-alive; the rest was dormant, deadened. And the dormant woman was
the _femme incomprise_, and she _had_ to be awakened.”
“And what about him.”
“I don’t know. I rather think he loves her as much as he can, but he’s
a fool.”
“It was something like your mother and father,” said Miriam.
“Yes; but my mother, I believe, got _real_ joy and satisfaction out of
my father at first. I believe she had a passion for him; that’s why she
stayed with him. After all, they were bound to each other.”
“Yes,” said Miriam.
“That’s what one _must have_, I think,” he continued—“the real, real
flame of feeling through another person—once, only once, if it only
lasts three months. See, my mother looks as if she’d _had_ everything
that was necessary for her living and developing. There’s not a tiny
bit of feeling of sterility about her.”
“No,” said Miriam.
“And with my father, at first, I’m sure she had the real thing. She
knows; she has been there. You can feel it about her, and about him,
and about hundreds of people you meet every day; and, once it has
happened to you, you can go on with anything and ripen.”
“What happened, exactly?” asked Miriam.
“It’s so hard to say, but the something big and intense that changes
you when you really come together with somebody else. It almost seems
to fertilise your soul and make it that you can go on and mature.”
“And you think your mother had it with your father?”
“Yes; and at the bottom she feels grateful to him for giving it her,
even now, though they are miles apart.”
“And you think Clara never had it?”
“I’m sure.”
Miriam pondered this. She saw what he was seeking—a sort of baptism of
fire in passion, it seemed to her. She realised that he would never be
satisfied till he had it. Perhaps it was essential to him, as to some
men, to sow wild oats; and afterwards, when he was satisfied, he would
not rage with restlessness any more, but could settle down and give her
his life into her hands. Well, then, if he must go, let him go and have
his fill—something big and intense, he called it. At any rate, when he
had got it, he would not want it—that he said himself; he would want
the other thing that she could give him. He would want to be owned, so
that he could work. It seemed to her a bitter thing that he must go,
but she could let him go into an inn for a glass of whisky, so she
could let him go to Clara, so long as it was something that would
satisfy a need in him, and leave him free for herself to possess.
“Have you told your mother about Clara?” she asked.
She knew this would be a test of the seriousness of his feeling for the
other woman: she knew he was going to Clara for something vital, not as
a man goes for pleasure to a prostitute, if he told his mother.
“Yes,” he said, “and she is coming to tea on Sunday.”
“To your house?”
“Yes; I want mater to see her.”
“Ah!”
There was a silence. Things had gone quicker than she thought. She felt
a sudden bitterness that he could leave her so soon and so entirely.
And was Clara to be accepted by his people, who had been so hostile to
herself?
“I may call in as I go to chapel,” she said. “It is a long time since I
saw Clara.”
“Very well,” he said, astonished, and unconsciously angry.
On the Sunday afternoon he went to Keston to meet Clara at the station.
As he stood on the platform he was trying to examine in himself if he
had a premonition.
“Do I _feel_ as if she’d come?” he said to himself, and he tried to
find out. His heart felt queer and contracted. That seemed like
foreboding. Then he _had_ a foreboding she would not come! Then she
would not come, and instead of taking her over the fields home, as he
had imagined, he would have to go alone. The train was late; the
afternoon would be wasted, and the evening. He hated her for not
coming. Why had she promised, then, if she could not keep her promise?
Perhaps she had missed her train—he himself was always missing
trains—but that was no reason why she should miss this particular one.
He was angry with her; he was furious.
Suddenly he saw the train crawling, sneaking round the corner. Here,
then, was the train, but of course she had not come. The green engine
hissed along the platform, the row of brown carriages drew up, several
doors opened. No; she had not come! No! Yes; ah, there she was! She had
a big black hat on! He was at her side in a moment.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.
She was laughing rather breathlessly as she put out her hand to him;
their eyes met. He took her quickly along the platform, talking at a
great rate to hide his feeling. She looked beautiful. In her hat were
large silk roses, coloured like tarnished gold. Her costume of dark
cloth fitted so beautifully over her breast and shoulders. His pride
went up as he walked with her. He felt the station people, who knew
him, eyed her with awe and admiration.
“I was sure you weren’t coming,” he laughed shakily.
She laughed in answer, almost with a little cry.
“And I wondered, when I was in the train, what_ever_ I should do if you
weren’t there!” she said.
He caught her hand impulsively, and they went along the narrow
twitchel. They took the road into Nuttall and over the Reckoning House
Farm. It was a blue, mild day. Everywhere the brown leaves lay
scattered; many scarlet hips stood upon the hedge beside the wood. He
gathered a few for her to wear.
“Though, really,” he said, as he fitted them into the breast of her
coat, “you ought to object to my getting them, because of the birds.
But they don’t care much for rose-hips in this part, where they can get
plenty of stuff. You often find the berries going rotten in the
springtime.”
So he chattered, scarcely aware of what he said, only knowing he was
putting berries in the bosom of her coat, while she stood patiently for
him. And she watched his quick hands, so full of life, and it seemed to
her she had never _seen_ anything before. Till now, everything had been
indistinct.
They came near to the colliery. It stood quite still and black among
the corn-fields, its immense heap of slag seen rising almost from the
oats.
“What a pity there is a coal-pit here where it is so pretty!” said
Clara.
“Do you think so?” he answered. “You see, I am so used to it I should
miss it. No; and I like the pits here and there. I like the rows of
trucks, and the headstocks, and the steam in the daytime, and the
lights at night. When I was a boy, I always thought a pillar of cloud
by day and a pillar of fire by night was a pit, with its steam, and its
lights, and the burning bank,—and I thought the Lord was always at the
pit-top.”
As they drew near home she walked in silence, and seemed to hang back.
He pressed her fingers in his own. She flushed, but gave no response.
“Don’t you want to come home?” he asked.
“Yes, I want to come,” she replied.
It did not occur to him that her position in his home would be rather a
peculiar and difficult one. To him it seemed just as if one of his men
friends were going to be introduced to his mother, only nicer.
The Morels lived in a house in an ugly street that ran down a steep
hill. The street itself was hideous. The house was rather superior to
most. It was old, grimy, with a big bay window, and it was
semi-detached; but it looked gloomy. Then Paul opened the door to the
garden, and all was different. The sunny afternoon was there, like