“I can’t understand why it upsets you,” said Paul.
“No, perhaps you can’t. But I understand”; and she sat back in her chair, her chin in one hand, holding her elbow with the other, brimmed up with wrath and chagrin.
“And shall you go to Derby?” asked Paul.
“Yes.”
“It’s no good.”
“I’ll see for myself.”
“And why on earth don’t you let him stop. It’s just what he wants.”
“Of course,” cried the mother, “you know what he wants!”
She got ready and went by the first train to Derby, where she saw her son and the sergeant. It was, however, no good.
When Morel was having his dinner in the evening, she said suddenly :
“I’ve had to go to Derby to-day.”
The miner turned up his eyes, showing the whites in his black face.
“Has ter, lass. What took thee there?”
“That Arthur!”
“Oh―an’ what’s agate now?”
“He’s only enlisted.”
Morel put down his knife and leaned back in his chair.
“Nay,” he said, “that he niver ‘as!”
“And is going down to Aldershot to-morrow.”
“Well!” exclaimed the miner. “That’s a winder.” He considered it a moment, said “H’m!” and proceeded with his dinner. Suddenly his face contracted with wrath. “I hope he may never set foot i’ my house again,” he said.
“The idea!” cried Mrs. Morel. “Saying such a thing!”
“I do,” repeated Morel. “A fool as runs away for a soldier, let ‘im look after ’issen;dj I s’ll do no more for ’im.”
“A fat sight you have done as it is,” she said.
And Morel was almost ashamed to go to his public-house that evening.
“Well, did you go?” said Paul to his mother when he came home.
“I did.”
“And could you see him?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he say?”
“He blubbered when I came away.”
“H’m!”
“And so did I, so you needn’t ‘h’m’!”
Mrs. Morel fretted after her son. She knew he would not like the army. He did not. The discipline was intolerable to him.
“But the doctor,” she said with some pride to Paul, “said he was perfectly proportioned—almost exactly; all his measurements were correct. He is good-looking, you know.”
“He’s awfully nice-looking. But he doesn’t fetch the girls like William, does he?”
“No; it’s a different character. He’s a good deal like his father, irresponsible.”
To console his mother, Paul did not go much to Willey Farm at this time. And in the autumn exhibition of students’ work in the Castledk he had two studies, a landscape in water-colour and a still life in oil, both of which had first-prize awards. He was highly excited.
“What do you think I’ve got for my pictures, mother?” he asked, coming home one evening. She saw by his eyes he was glad. Her face flushed.
“Now, how should I know, my boy!”
“A first prize for those glass jars—”
“H’m!”
“And a first prize for that sketch up at Willey Farm.”
“Both first?”
“Yes.”
“H’m!”
There was a rosy, bright look about her, though she said nothing.
“It’s nice,” he said, “isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Why don’t you praise me up to the skies?”
She laughed.
“I should have the trouble of dragging you down again,” she said.
But she was full of joy, nevertheless. William had brought her his sporting trophies. She kept them still, and she did not forgive his death. Arthur was handsome—at least, a good specimen—and warm and generous, and probably would do well in the end. But Paul was going to distinguish himself. She had a great belief in him, the more because he was unaware of his own powers. There was so much to come out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled. Not for nothing had been her struggle.
Several times during the exhibition Mrs. Morel went to the Castle unknown to Paul. She wandered down the long room looking at the other exhibits. Yes, they were good. But they had not in them a certain something which she demanded for her satisfaction. Some made her jealous, they were so good. She looked at them a long time trying to find fault with them. Then suddenly she had a shock that made her heart beat. There hung Paul’s picture! She knew it as if it were printed on her heart.
“Name—Paul Morel—First Prize.”
It looked so strange, there in public, on the walls of the Castle gallery, where in her lifetime she had seen so many pictures. And she glanced round to see if anyone had noticed her again in front of the same sketch.
But she felt a proud woman. When she met well-dressed ladies going home to the Park, she thought to herself:
“Yes, you look very well—but I wonder if your son has two first prizes in the Castle.”
And she walked on, as proud a little woman as any in Nottingham. And Paul felt he had done something for her, if only a trifle. All his work was hers.
One day, as he was going up Castle Gate, he met Miriam. He had seen her on the Sunday, and had not expected to meet her in town. She was walking with a rather striking woman, blonde, with a sullen expression, and a defiant carriage. It was strange how Miriam, in her bowed, meditative bearing, looked dwarfed beside this woman with the handsome shoulders. Miriam watched Paul searchingly. His gaze was on the stranger, who ignored him. The girl saw his masculine spirit rear its head.
“Hello!” he said, “you didn’t tell me you were coming to town.”
“No,” replied Miriam, half apologetically. “I drove in to Cattle Market with father.”
He looked at her companion.
“I’ve told you about Mrs. Dawes,” said Miriam huskily; she was nervous. “Clara, do you know Paul?”
“I think I’ve seen him before,” replied Mrs. Dawes indifferently, as she shook hands with him. She had scornful grey eyes, a skin like white honey, and a full mouth, with a slightly lifted upper lip that did not know whether it was raised in scorn of all men or out of eagerness to be kissed, but which believed the former. She carried her head back, as if she had drawn away in contempt, perhaps from men also. She wore a large, dowdy hat of black beaver, and a sort of slightly affected simple dress that made her look rather sacklike. She was evidently poor, and had not much taste. Miriam usually looked nice.
“Where have you seen me?” Paul asked of the woman.
She looked at him as if she would not trouble to answer. Then:
“Walking with Louie Travers,” she said.
Louie was one of the “Spiral” girls.
“Why, do you know her?” he asked.
She did not answer. He turned to Miriam.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the Castle.”
“What train are you going home by?”
“I am driving with father. I wish you could come too. What time are you free?”
“You know not till eight to-night, damn it!”
And directly the two women moved on.
Paul remembered that Clara Dawes was the daughter of an old friend of Mrs. Leivers. Miriam had sought her out because she had once been Spiral overseer at Jordan‘s, and because her husband, Baxter Dawes, was smith for the factory, making the irons for cripple instruments, and so on. Through her Miriam felt she got into direct contact with Jordan’s, and could estimate better Paul’s position. But Mrs. Dawes was separated from her husband, and had taken up Women’s Rights.2 She was supposed to be clever. It interested Paul.
Baxter Dawes he knew and disliked. The smith was a man of thirty-one or thirty-two. He came occasionally through Paul’s corner—a big, well-set man, also striking to look at, and handsome.
There was a peculiar similarity between himself and his wife. He had the same white skin, with a clear, golden tinge. His hair was of soft brown, his moustache was golden. And he had a similar defiance in his bearing and manner. But then came the difference. His eyes, dark brown and quick-shifting, were dissolute. They protruded very slightly, and his eyelids hung over them in a way that was half hate. His mouth, too, was sensual. His whole manner was of cowed defiance, as if he were ready to knock anybody down who disapproved of him—perhaps because he really disapproved of himself.
From the first day he had hated Paul. Finding the lad’s impersonal, deliberate gaze of an artist on his face, he got into a fury.
“What are yer lookin’ at?” he sneered, bullying.
The boy glanced away. But the smith used to stand behind the counter and talk to Mr. Pappleworth. His speech was dirty, with a kind of rottenness. Again he found the youth with his cool, critical gaze fixed on his face. The smith started round as if he had been stung.
“What‘r yer lookin’ at, three hap’orth o’ pap?”dl he snarled.
The boy shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“Why yer——!” shouted Dawes.
“Leave him alone,” said Mr. Pappleworth, in that insinuating voice which means, “He’s only one of your good little sops who can’t help it.”
Since that time the boy used to look at the man every time he came through with the same curious criticism, glancing away before he met the smith’s eye. It made Dawes furious. They hated each other in silence.
Clara Dawes had no children. When she had left her husband the home had been broken up, and she had gone to live with her mother. Dawes lodged with his sister. In the same house was a sister-in-law, and somehow Paul knew that this girl, Louie Travers, was now Dawes’s woman. She was a handsome, insolent hussy, who mocked at the youth, and yet flushed if he walked along to the station with her as she went home.
The next time he went to see Miriam it was Saturday evening. She had a fire in the parlour, and was waiting for him. The others, except her father and mother and the young children, had gone out, so the two had the parlour together. It was a long, low, warm room. There were three of Paul’s small sketches on the wall, and his photo was on the mantelpiece. On the table and on the high old rosewood piano were bowls of coloured leaves. He sat in the arm-chair, she crouched on the hearthrug near his feet. The glow was warm on her handsome, pensive face as she kneeled there like a devotee.
“What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?” she asked quietly.
“She doesn’t look very amiable,” he replied.
“No, but don’t you think she’s a fine woman?” she said, in a deep tone.
“Yes—in stature. But without a grain of taste. I like her for some things. Is she disagreeable?”
“I don’t think so. I think she’s dissatisfied.”
“What with?”
“Well—how would you like to be tied for life to a man like that?”
“Why did she marry him, then, if she was to have revulsions so soon?”
“Ay, why did she!” repeated Miriam bitterly.
“And I should have thought she had enough fight in her to match him,” he said.
Miriam bowed her head.
“Ay?” she queried satirically. “What makes you think so?”
“Look at her mouth—made for passion—and the very setback of her throat———” He threw his head back in Clara’s defiant manner.
Miriam bowed a little lower.
“Yes,” she said.
There was a silence for some moments, while he thought of Clara.
“And what were the things you liked about her?” she asked.
“I don’t know—her skin and the texture of her—and her—I don’t know—there’s a sort of fierceness somewhere in her. I appreciate her as an artist, that’s all.”
“Yes.”
He wondered why Miriam crouched there brooding in that strange way. It irritated him.
“You don’t really like her, do you?” he asked the girl.
She looked at him with her great, dazzled dark eyes.
“I do,” she said.
“You don‘t—you can’t—not really.”
“Then what?” she asked slowly.
“Eh, I don’t know—perhaps you like her because she’s got a grudge against men.”
That was more probably one of his own reasons for liking Mrs. Dawes, but this did not occur to him. They were silent. There had come into his forehead a knitting of the brows which was becoming habitual with him, particularly when he was with Miriam. She longed to smooth it away, and she was afraid of it. It seemed the stamp of a man who was not her man in Paul Morel.
There were some crimson berries among the leaves in the bowl. He reached over and pulled out a bunch.
“If you put red berries in your hair,” he said, “why would you look like some witch or priestess, and never like a reveller?”
She laughed with a naked, painful sound.
“I don’t know,” she said.
His vigorous warm hands were playing excitedly with the berries.
“Why can’t you laugh?” he said. “You never laugh laughter. You only laugh when something is odd or incongruous, and then it almost seems to hurt you.”
She bowed her head as if he were scolding her.
“I wish you could laugh at me just for one minute—just for one minute. I feel as if it would set something free.”
“But”—and she looked up at him with eyes frightened and struggling—” I do laugh at you—I do.”
“Never! There’s always a kind of intensity. When you laugh I could always cry; it seems as if it shows up your suffering. Oh, you make me knit the brows of my very soul and cogitate.”
Slowly she shook her head despairingly.
“I’m sure I don’t want to,” she said.
“I’m so damned spiritual with you always!” he cried.
She remained silent, thinking, “Then why don’t you be otherwise.” But he saw her crouching, brooding figure, and it seemed to tear him in two.
“But, there, it’s autumn,” he said, “and everybody feels like a disembodied spirit then.”
There was still another silence. This peculiar sadness between them thrilled her soul. He seemed so beautiful with his eyes gone dark, and looking as if they were deep as the deepest well.
“You make me so spiritual!” he lamented. “And I don’t want to be spiritual.”
She took her finger from her mouth with a little pop, and looked up at him almost challenging. But still her soul was naked in her great dark eyes, and there was the same yearning appeal upon her. If he could have kissed her in abstract purity he would have done so. But he could not kiss her thus—and she seemed to leave no other way. And she yearned to him.
He gave a brief laugh.
“Well,” he said, “get that French and we’ll do some—some Verlaine.”3
“Yes,” she said in a deep tone, almost of resignation. And she rose and got the books. And her rather red, nervous hands looked so pitiful, he was mad to comfort her and kiss her. But then he dared not—or could not. There was something prevented him. His kisses were wrong for her. They continued the reading till ten o’clock, when they went into the kitchen, and Paul was natural and jolly again with the father and mother. His eyes were dark and shining; there was a kind of fascination about him.
When he went into the barn for his bicycle he found the front wheel punctured.
“Fetch me a drop of water in a bowl,” he said to her. “I shall be late, and then I s’ll catch it.”
He lighted the hurricane lamp, took off his coat, turned up the bicycle, and set speedily to work. Miriam came with the bowl of water and stood close to him, watching. She loved to see his hands doing things. He was slim and vigorous, with a kind of easiness even in his most hasty movements. And busy at his work he seemed to forget her. She loved him absorbedly. She wanted to run her hands down his sides. She always wanted to em
brace him, so long as he did not want her.
“There!” he said, rising suddenly. “Now, could you have done it quicker?”
“No!” she laughed.
He straightened himself. His back was towards her. She put her two hands on his sides, and ran them quickly down.
“You are so fine!” she said.
He laughed, hating her voice, but his blood roused to a wave of flame by her hands. She did not seem to realise him in all this. He might have been an object. She never realised the male he was.
He lighted his bicycle-lamp, bounced the machine on the barn floor to see that the tyres were sound, and buttoned his coat.
“That’s all right!” he said.
She was trying the brakes, that she knew were broken.
“Did you have them mended?” she asked.
“No!”
“But why didn’t you?”
“The back one goes on a bit.”
“But it’s not safe.”
“I can use my toe.”
“I wish you’d had them mended,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry—come to tea to-morrow, with Edgar.”
“Shall we?”
“Do—about four. I’ll come to meet you.”
“Very well.”
She was pleased. They went across the dark yard to the gate. Looking across, he saw through the uncurtained window of the kitchen the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Leivers in the warm glow. It looked very cosy. The road, with pine trees, was quite black in front.
“Till to-morrow,” he said, jumping on his bicycle.
“You’ll take care, won’t you?” she pleaded.
“Yes.”
His voice already came out of the darkness. She stood a moment watching the light from his lamp race into obscurity along the ground. She turned very slowly indoors. Orion was wheeling up over the wood, his dog twinkling after him, half smothered. For the rest the world was full of darkness, and silent, save for the breathing of cattle in their stalls. She prayed earnestly for his safety that night. When he left her, she often lay in anxiety, wondering if he had got home safely.
He dropped down the hills on his bicycle. The roads were greasy, so he had to let it go. He felt a pleasure as the machine plunged over the second, steeper drop in the hill. “Here goes!” he said. It was risky, because of the curve in the darkness at the bottom, and because of the brewers’ waggons with drunken waggoners asleep. His bicycle seemed to fall beneath him, and he loved it. Recklessness is almost a man’s revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.
Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 25