Sons and Lovers
“Dawes took occasion to insult Mrs. Dawes and me because I accompanied
her to the theatre one evening; then I threw some beer at him, and he
wanted his revenge.”
“_Cherchez la femme!_” smiled the magistrate.
The case was dismissed after the magistrate had told Dawes he thought
him a skunk.
“You gave the case away,” snapped Mr. Jordan to Paul.
“I don’t think I did,” replied the latter. “Besides, you didn’t really
want a conviction, did you?”
“What do you think I took the case up for?”
“Well,” said Paul, “I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing.”
Clara was also very angry.
“Why need _my_ name have been dragged in?” she said.
“Better speak it openly than leave it to be whispered.”
“There was no need for anything at all,” she declared.
“We are none the poorer,” he said indifferently.
“_You_ may not be,” she said.
“And you?” he asked.
“I need never have been mentioned.”
“I’m sorry,” he said; but he did not sound sorry.
He told himself easily: “She will come round.” And she did.
He told his mother about the fall of Mr. Jordan and the trial of Dawes.
Mrs. Morel watched him closely.
“And what do you think of it all?” she asked him.
“I think he’s a fool,” he said.
But he was very uncomfortable, nevertheless.
“Have you ever considered where it will end?” his mother said.
“No,” he answered; “things work out of themselves.”
“They do, in a way one doesn’t like, as a rule,” said his mother.
“And then one has to put up with them,” he said.
“You’ll find you’re not as good at ‘putting up’ as you imagine,” she
said.
He went on working rapidly at his design.
“Do you ever ask _her_ opinion?” she said at length.
“What of?”
“Of you, and the whole thing.”
“I don’t care what her opinion of me is. She’s fearfully in love with
me, but it’s not very deep.”
“But quite as deep as your feeling for her.”
He looked up at his mother curiously.
“Yes,” he said. “You know, mother, I think there must be something the
matter with me, that I _can’t_ love. When she’s there, as a rule, I
_do_ love her. Sometimes, when I see her just as _the woman_, I love
her, mother; but then, when she talks and criticises, I often don’t
listen to her.”
“Yet she’s as much sense as Miriam.”
“Perhaps; and I love her better than Miriam. But _why_ don’t they hold
me?”
The last question was almost a lamentation. His mother turned away her
face, sat looking across the room, very quiet, grave, with something of
renunciation.
“But you wouldn’t want to marry Clara?” she said.
“No; at first perhaps I would. But why—why don’t I want to marry her or
anybody? I feel sometimes as if I wronged my women, mother.”
“How wronged them, my son?”
“I don’t know.”
He went on painting rather despairingly; he had touched the quick of
the trouble.
“And as for wanting to marry,” said his mother, “there’s plenty of time
yet.”
“But no, mother. I even love Clara, and I did Miriam; but to _give_
myself to them in marriage I couldn’t. I couldn’t belong to them. They
seem to want _me_, and I can’t ever give it them.”
“You haven’t met the right woman.”
“And I never shall meet the right woman while you live,” he said.
She was very quiet. Now she began to feel again tired, as if she were
done.
“We’ll see, my son,” she answered.
The feeling that things were going in a circle made him mad.
Clara was, indeed, passionately in love with him, and he with her, as
far as passion went. In the daytime he forgot her a good deal. She was
working in the same building, but he was not aware of it. He was busy,
and her existence was of no matter to him. But all the time she was in
her Spiral room she had a sense that he was upstairs, a physical sense
of his person in the same building. Every second she expected him to
come through the door, and when he came it was a shock to her. But he
was often short and offhand with her. He gave her his directions in an
official manner, keeping her at bay. With what wits she had left she
listened to him. She dared not misunderstand or fail to remember, but
it was a cruelty to her. She wanted to touch his chest. She knew
exactly how his breast was shapen under the waistcoat, and she wanted
to touch it. It maddened her to hear his mechanical voice giving orders
about the work. She wanted to break through the sham of it, smash the
trivial coating of business which covered him with hardness, get at the
man again; but she was afraid, and before she could feel one touch of
his warmth he was gone, and she ached again.
He knew that she was dreary every evening she did not see him, so he
gave her a good deal of his time. The days were often a misery to her,
but the evenings and the nights were usually a bliss to them both. Then
they were silent. For hours they sat together, or walked together in
the dark, and talked only a few, almost meaningless words. But he had
her hand in his, and her bosom left its warmth in his chest, making him
feel whole.
One evening they were walking down by the canal, and something was
troubling him. She knew she had not got him. All the time he whistled
softly and persistently to himself. She listened, feeling she could
learn more from his whistling than from his speech. It was a sad
dissatisfied tune—a tune that made her feel he would not stay with her.
She walked on in silence. When they came to the swing bridge he sat
down on the great pole, looking at the stars in the water. He was a
long way from her. She had been thinking.
“Will you always stay at Jordan’s?” she asked.
“No,” he answered without reflecting. “No; I s’ll leave Nottingham and
go abroad—soon.”
“Go abroad! What for?”
“I dunno! I feel restless.”
“But what shall you do?”
“I shall have to get some steady designing work, and some sort of sale
for my pictures first,” he said. “I am gradually making my way. I know
I am.”
“And when do you think you’ll go?”
“I don’t know. I shall hardly go for long, while there’s my mother.”
“You couldn’t leave her?”
“Not for long.”
She looked at the stars in the black water. They lay very white and
staring. It was an agony to know he would leave her, but it was almost
an agony to have him near her.
“And if you made a nice lot of money, what would you do?” she asked.
“Go somewhere in a pretty house near London with my mother.”
“I see.”
There was a long pause.
“I could still come and see you,” he said. “I don’t know. Don’t ask me
what I should do; I don’t know.”
There was a silence. The stars shuddered and broke upon the water.
There came a breath of wind. He went suddenly to her, and put his hand
on her shoulder.
“Don’t ask me anything about the future,” he said miserably. “I don’t
know anything. Be with me now, will you, no matter what it is?”
And she took him in her arms. After all, she was a married woman, and
she had no right even to what he gave her. He needed her badly. She had
him in her arms, and he was miserable. With her warmth she folded him
over, consoled him, loved him. She would let the moment stand for
itself.
After a moment he lifted his head as if he wanted to speak.
“Clara,” he said, struggling.
She caught him passionately to her, pressed his head down on her breast
with her hand. She could not bear the suffering in his voice. She was
afraid in her soul. He might have anything of her—anything; but she did
not want to _know_. She felt she could not bear it. She wanted him to
be soothed upon her—soothed. She stood clasping him and caressing him,
and he was something unknown to her—something almost uncanny. She
wanted to soothe him into forgetfulness.
And soon the struggle went down in his soul, and he forgot. But then
Clara was not there for him, only a woman, warm, something he loved and
almost worshipped, there in the dark. But it was not Clara, and she
submitted to him. The naked hunger and inevitability of his loving her,
something strong and blind and ruthless in its primitiveness, made the
hour almost terrible to her. She knew how stark and alone he was, and
she felt it was great that he came to her; and she took him simply
because his need was bigger either than her or him, and her soul was
still within her. She did this for him in his need, even if he left
her, for she loved him.
All the while the peewits were screaming in the field. When he came to,
he wondered what was near his eyes, curving and strong with life in the
dark, and what voice it was speaking. Then he realised it was the
grass, and the peewit was calling. The warmth was Clara’s breathing
heaving. He lifted his head, and looked into her eyes. They were dark
and shining and strange, life wild at the source staring into his life,
stranger to him, yet meeting him; and he put his face down on her
throat, afraid. What was she? A strong, strange, wild life, that
breathed with his in the darkness through this hour. It was all so much
bigger than themselves that he was hushed. They had met, and included
in their meeting the thrust of the manifold grass stems, the cry of the
peewit, the wheel of the stars.
When they stood up they saw other lovers stealing down the opposite
hedge. It seemed natural they were there; the night contained them.
And after such an evening they both were very still, having known the
immensity of passion. They felt small, half-afraid, childish and
wondering, like Adam and Eve when they lost their innocence and
realised the magnificence of the power which drove them out of Paradise
and across the great night and the great day of humanity. It was for
each of them an initiation and a satisfaction. To know their own
nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood which carried them
always, gave them rest within themselves. If so great a magnificent
power could overwhelm them, identify them altogether with itself, so
that they knew they were only grains in the tremendous heave that
lifted every grass blade its little height, and every tree, and living
thing, then why fret about themselves? They could let themselves be
carried by life, and they felt a sort of peace each in the other. There
was a verification which they had had together. Nothing could nullify
it, nothing could take it away; it was almost their belief in life.
But Clara was not satisfied. Something great was there, she knew;
something great enveloped her. But it did not keep her. In the morning
it was not the same. They had _known_, but she could not keep the
moment. She wanted it again; she wanted something permanent. She had
not realised fully. She thought it was he whom she wanted. He was not
safe to her. This that had been between them might never be again; he
might leave her. She had not got him; she was not satisfied. She had
been there, but she had not gripped the—the something—she knew not
what—which she was mad to have.
In the morning he had considerable peace, and was happy in himself. It
seemed almost as if he had known the baptism of fire in passion, and it
left him at rest. But it was not Clara. It was something that happened
because of her, but it was not her. They were scarcely any nearer each
other. It was as if they had been blind agents of a great force.
When she saw him that day at the factory her heart melted like a drop
of fire. It was his body, his brows. The drop of fire grew more intense
in her breast; she must hold him. But he, very quiet, very subdued this
morning, went on giving his instruction. She followed him into the
dark, ugly basement, and lifted her arms to him. He kissed her, and the
intensity of passion began to burn him again. Somebody was at the door.
He ran upstairs; she returned to her room, moving as if in a trance.
After that the fire slowly went down. He felt more and more that his
experience had been impersonal, and not Clara. He loved her. There was