Sons and Lovers
“Just a bit, like!”
He winked at the other men.
“Oh well,” said Paul, “I’ll be going!”
The mutual friend laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
“Nay,” he said, “you don’t get off as easy as that, my lad. We’ve got
to have a full account of this business.”
“Then get it from Dawes!” he said.
“You shouldn’t funk your own deeds, man,” remonstrated the friend.
Then Dawes made a remark which caused Paul to throw half a glass of
beer in his face.
“Oh, Mr. Morel!” cried the barmaid, and she rang the bell for the
“chucker-out”.
Dawes spat and rushed for the young man. At that minute a brawny fellow
with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his trousers tight over his
haunches intervened.
“Now, then!” he said, pushing his chest in front of Dawes.
“Come out!” cried Dawes.
Paul was leaning, white and quivering, against the brass rail of the
bar. He hated Dawes, wished something could exterminate him at that
minute; and at the same time, seeing the wet hair on the man’s
forehead, he thought he looked pathetic. He did not move.
“Come out, you—,” said Dawes.
“That’s enough, Dawes,” cried the barmaid.
“Come on,” said the “chucker-out”, with kindly insistence, “you’d
better be getting on.”
And, by making Dawes edge away from his own close proximity, he worked
him to the door.
“_That’s_ the little sod as started it!” cried Dawes, half-cowed,
pointing to Paul Morel.
“Why, what a story, Mr. Dawes!” said the barmaid. “You know it was you
all the time.”
Still the “chucker-out” kept thrusting his chest forward at him, still
he kept edging back, until he was in the doorway and on the steps
outside; then he turned round.
“All right,” he said, nodding straight at his rival.
Paul had a curious sensation of pity, almost of affection, mingled with
violent hate, for the man. The coloured door swung to; there was
silence in the bar.
“Serve him jolly well right!” said the barmaid.
“But it’s a nasty thing to get a glass of beer in your eyes,” said the
mutual friend.
“I tell you _I_ was glad he did,” said the barmaid. “Will you have
another, Mr. Morel?”
She held up Paul’s glass questioningly. He nodded.
“He’s a man as doesn’t care for anything, is Baxter Dawes,” said one.
“Pooh! is he?” said the barmaid. “He’s a loud-mouthed one, he is, and
they’re never much good. Give me a pleasant-spoken chap, if you want a
devil!”
“Well, Paul, my lad,” said the friend, “you’ll have to take care of
yourself now for a while.”
“You won’t have to give him a chance over you, that’s all,” said the
barmaid.
“Can you box?” asked a friend.
“Not a bit,” he answered, still very white.
“I might give you a turn or two,” said the friend.
“Thanks, I haven’t time.”
And presently he took his departure.
“Go along with him, Mr. Jenkinson,” whispered the barmaid, tipping Mr.
Jenkinson the wink.
The man nodded, took his hat, said: “Good-night all!” very heartily,
and followed Paul, calling:
“Half a minute, old man. You an’ me’s going the same road, I believe.”
“Mr. Morel doesn’t like it,” said the barmaid. “You’ll see, we shan’t
have him in much more. I’m sorry; he’s good company. And Baxter Dawes
wants locking up, that’s what he wants.”
Paul would have died rather than his mother should get to know of this
affair. He suffered tortures of humiliation and self-consciousness.
There was now a good deal of his life of which necessarily he could not
speak to his mother. He had a life apart from her—his sexual life. The
rest she still kept. But he felt he had to conceal something from her,
and it irked him. There was a certain silence between them, and he felt
he had, in that silence, to defend himself against her; he felt
condemned by her. Then sometimes he hated her, and pulled at her
bondage. His life wanted to free itself of her. It was like a circle
where life turned back on itself, and got no farther. She bore him,
loved him, kept him, and his love turned back into her, so that he
could not be free to go forward with his own life, really love another
woman. At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother’s influence.
He did not tell her things; there was a distance between them.
Clara was happy, almost sure of him. She felt she had at last got him
for herself; and then again came the uncertainty. He told her jestingly
of the affair with her husband. Her colour came up, her grey eyes
flashed.
“That’s him to a ‘T’,” she cried—“like a navvy! He’s not fit for mixing
with decent folk.”
“Yet you married him,” he said.
It made her furious that he reminded her.
“I did!” she cried. “But how was I to know?”
“I think he might have been rather nice,” he said.
“You think _I_ made him what he is!” she exclaimed.
“Oh no! he made himself. But there’s something about him—”
Clara looked at her lover closely. There was something in him she
hated, a sort of detached criticism of herself, a coldness which made
her woman’s soul harden against him.
“And what are you going to do?” she asked.
“How?”
“About Baxter.”
“There’s nothing to do, is there?” he replied.
“You can fight him if you have to, I suppose?” she said.
“No; I haven’t the least sense of the ‘fist’. It’s funny. With most men
there’s the instinct to clench the fist and hit. It’s not so with me. I
should want a knife or a pistol or something to fight with.”
“Then you’d better carry something,” she said.
“Nay,” he laughed; “I’m not daggeroso.”
“But he’ll do something to you. You don’t know him.”
“All right,” he said, “we’ll see.”
“And you’ll let him?”
“Perhaps, if I can’t help it.”
“And if he kills you?” she said.
“I should be sorry, for his sake and mine.”
Clara was silent for a moment.
“You _do_ make me angry!” she exclaimed.
“That’s nothing afresh,” he laughed.
“But why are you so silly? You don’t know him.”
“And don’t want.”
“Yes, but you’re not going to let a man do as he likes with you?”
“What must I do?” he replied, laughing.
“_I_ should carry a revolver,” she said. “I’m sure he’s dangerous.”
“I might blow my fingers off,” he said.
“No; but won’t you?” she pleaded.
“No.”
“Not anything?”
“No.”
“And you’ll leave him to—?”
“Yes.”
“You are a fool!”
“Fact!”
She set her teeth with anger.
“I could _shake_ you!” she cried, trembling with passion.
“Why?”
“Let a man like _him_ do as he likes with you.”
“You can go back to him if he triumphs,” he said.
“Do you want me to hate you?” she asked.
“Well, I only tell you,” he said.
“And _you_ say you _love_ me!” she exclaimed, low and indignant.
“Ought I to slay him to please you?” he said. “But if I did, see what a
hold he’d have over me.”
“Do you think I’m a fool!” she exclaimed.
“Not at all. But you don’t understand me, my dear.”
There was a pause between them.
“But you ought _not_ to expose yourself,” she pleaded.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“‘The man in righteousness arrayed,
The pure and blameless liver,
Needs not the keen Toledo blade,
Nor venom-freighted quiver,’”
he quoted.
She looked at him searchingly.
“I wish I could understand you,” she said.
“There’s simply nothing to understand,” he laughed.
She bowed her head, brooding.
He did not see Dawes for several days; then one morning as he ran
upstairs from the Spiral room he almost collided with the burly
metal-worker.
“What the—!” cried the smith.
“Sorry!” said Paul, and passed on.
“_Sorry!_” sneered Dawes.
Paul whistled lightly, “Put Me among the Girls”.
“I’ll stop your whistle, my jockey!” he said.
The other took no notice.
“You’re goin’ to answer for that job of the other night.”
Paul went to his desk in his corner, and turned over the leaves of the
ledger.
“Go and tell Fanny I want order 097, quick!” he said to his boy.
Dawes stood in the doorway, tall and threatening, looking at the top of
the young man’s head.
“Six and five’s eleven and seven’s one-and-six,” Paul added aloud.
“An’ you hear, do you!” said Dawes.
“_Five and ninepence!_” He wrote a figure. “What’s that?” he said.
“I’m going to show you what it is,” said the smith.
The other went on adding the figures aloud.
“Yer crawlin’ little—, yer daresn’t face me proper!”
Paul quickly snatched the heavy ruler. Dawes started. The young man
ruled some lines in his ledger. The elder man was infuriated.
“But wait till I light on you, no matter where it is, I’ll settle your
hash for a bit, yer little swine!”
“All right,” said Paul.
At that the smith started heavily from the doorway. Just then a whistle
piped shrilly. Paul went to the speaking-tube.
“Yes!” he said, and he listened. “Er—yes!” He listened, then he
laughed. “I’ll come down directly. I’ve got a visitor just now.”
Dawes knew from his tone that he had been speaking to Clara. He stepped
forward.
“Yer little devil!” he said. “I’ll visitor you, inside of two minutes!
Think I’m goin’ to have _you_ whipperty-snappin’ round?”
The other clerks in the warehouse looked up. Paul’s office-boy
appeared, holding some white article.
“Fanny says you could have had it last night if you’d let her know,” he
said.
“All right,” answered Paul, looking at the stocking. “Get it off.”
Dawes stood frustrated, helpless with rage. Morel turned round.
“Excuse me a minute,” he said to Dawes, and he would have run
downstairs.
“By God, I’ll stop your gallop!” shouted the smith, seizing him by the
arm. He turned quickly.
“Hey! Hey!” cried the office-boy, alarmed.
Thomas Jordan started out of his little glass office, and came running
down the room.
“What’s a-matter, what’s a-matter?” he said, in his old man’s sharp
voice.
“I’m just goin’ ter settle this little—, that’s all,” said Dawes
desperately.
“What do you mean?” snapped Thomas Jordan.
“What I say,” said Dawes, but he hung fire.
Morel was leaning against the counter, ashamed, half-grinning.
“What’s it all about?” snapped Thomas Jordan.
“Couldn’t say,” said Paul, shaking his head and shrugging his
shoulders.
“Couldn’t yer, couldn’t yer!” cried Dawes, thrusting forward his
handsome, furious face, and squaring his fist.
“Have you finished?” cried the old man, strutting. “Get off about your
business, and don’t come here tipsy in the morning.”
Dawes turned his big frame slowly upon him.
“Tipsy!” he said. “Who’s tipsy? I’m no more tipsy than _you_ are!”
“We’ve heard that song before,” snapped the old man. “Now you get off,
and don’t be long about it. Comin’ _here_ with your rowdying.”
The smith looked down contemptuously on his employer. His hands, large,
and grimy, and yet well shaped for his labour, worked restlessly. Paul
remembered they were the hands of Clara’s husband, and a flash of hate
went through him.
“Get out before you’re turned out!” snapped Thomas Jordan.
“Why, who’ll turn me out?” said Dawes, beginning to sneer.
Mr. Jordan started, marched up to the smith, waving him off, thrusting
his stout little figure at the man, saying:
“Get off my premises—get off!”
He seized and twitched Dawes’s arm.
“Come off!” said the smith, and with a jerk of the elbow he sent the
little manufacturer staggering backwards.
Before anyone could help him, Thomas Jordan had collided with the
flimsy spring-door. It had given way, and let him crash down the
half-dozen steps into Fanny’s room. There was a second of amazement;
then men and girls were running. Dawes stood a moment looking bitterly
on the scene, then he took his departure.
Thomas Jordan was shaken and bruised, not otherwise hurt. He was,
however, beside himself with rage. He dismissed Dawes from his
employment, and summoned him for assault.
At the trial Paul Morel had to give evidence. Asked how the trouble
began, he said: