of the sea. Paul and Miriam walked in silence. Suddenly he started. The
whole of his blood seemed to burst into flame, and he could scarcely
breathe. An enormous orange moon was staring at them from the rim of
the sandhills. He stood still, looking at it.

“Ah!” cried Miriam, when she saw it.

He remained perfectly still, staring at the immense and ruddy moon, the
only thing in the far-reaching darkness of the level. His heart beat
heavily, the muscles of his arms contracted.

“What is it?” murmured Miriam, waiting for him.

He turned and looked at her. She stood beside him, for ever in shadow.
Her face, covered with the darkness of her hat, was watching him
unseen. But she was brooding. She was slightly afraid—deeply moved and
religious. That was her best state. He was impotent against it. His
blood was concentrated like a flame in his chest. But he could not get
across to her. There were flashes in his blood. But somehow she ignored
them. She was expecting some religious state in him. Still yearning,
she was half aware of his passion, and gazed at him, troubled.

“What is it?” she murmured again.

“It’s the moon,” he answered, frowning.

“Yes,” she assented. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She was curious about him.
The crisis was past.

He did not know himself what was the matter. He was naturally so young,
and their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he wanted to crush
her on to his breast to ease the ache there. He was afraid of her. The
fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in him been
suppressed into a shame. When she shrank in her convulsed, coiled
torture from the thought of such a thing, he had winced to the depths
of his soul. And now this “purity” prevented even their first
love-kiss. It was as if she could scarcely stand the shock of physical
love, even a passionate kiss, and then he was too shrinking and
sensitive to give it.

As they walked along the dark fen-meadow he watched the moon and did
not speak. She plodded beside him. He hated her, for she seemed in some
way to make him despise himself. Looking ahead—he saw the one light in
the darkness, the window of their lamp-lit cottage.

He loved to think of his mother, and the other jolly people.

“Well, everybody else has been in long ago!” said his mother as they
entered.

“What does that matter!” he cried irritably. “I can go a walk if I
like, can’t I?”

“And I should have thought you could get in to supper with the rest,”
said Mrs. Morel.

“I shall please myself,” he retorted. “It’s not _late_. I shall do as I
like.”

“Very well,” said his mother cuttingly, “then _do_ as you like.” And
she took no further notice of him that evening. Which he pretended
neither to notice nor to care about, but sat reading. Miriam read also,
obliterating herself. Mrs. Morel hated her for making her son like
this. She watched Paul growing irritable, priggish, and melancholic.
For this she put the blame on Miriam. Annie and all her friends joined
against the girl. Miriam had no friend of her own, only Paul. But she
did not suffer so much, because she despised the triviality of these
other people.

And Paul hated her because, somehow, she spoilt his ease and
naturalness. And he writhed himself with a feeling of humiliation.

CHAPTER VIII
STRIFE IN LOVE

Arthur finished his apprenticeship, and got a job on the electrical
plant at Minton Pit. He earned very little, but had a good chance of
getting on. But he was wild and restless. He did not drink nor gamble.
Yet he somehow contrived to get into endless scrapes, always through
some hot-headed thoughtlessness. Either he went rabbiting in the woods,
like a poacher, or he stayed in Nottingham all night instead of coming
home, or he miscalculated his dive into the canal at Bestwood, and
scored his chest into one mass of wounds on the raw stones and tins at
the bottom.

He had not been at his work many months when again he did not come home
one night.

“Do you know where Arthur is?” asked Paul at breakfast.

“I do not,” replied his mother.

“He is a fool,” said Paul. “And if he _did_ anything I shouldn’t mind.
But no, he simply can’t come away from a game of whist, or else he must
see a girl home from the skating-rink—quite proprietously—and so can’t
get home. He’s a fool.”

“I don’t know that it would make it any better if he did something to
make us all ashamed,” said Mrs. Morel.

“Well, _I_ should respect him more,” said Paul.

“I very much doubt it,” said his mother coldly.

They went on with breakfast.

“Are you fearfully fond of him?” Paul asked his mother.

“What do you ask that for?”

“Because they say a woman always like the youngest best.”

“She may do—but I don’t. No, he wearies me.”

“And you’d actually rather he was good?”

“I’d rather he showed some of a man’s common sense.”

Paul was raw and irritable. He also wearied his mother very often. She
saw the sunshine going out of him, and she resented it.

As they were finishing breakfast came the postman with a letter from
Derby. Mrs. Morel screwed up her eyes to look at the address.

“Give it here, blind eye!” exclaimed her son, snatching it away from
her.

She started, and almost boxed his ears.

“It’s from your son, Arthur,” he said.

“What now—!” cried Mrs. Morel.

“‘My dearest Mother,’” Paul read, “‘I don’t know what made me such a
fool. I want you to come and fetch me back from here. I came with Jack
Bredon yesterday, instead of going to work, and enlisted. He said he
was sick of wearing the seat of a stool out, and, like the idiot you
know I am, I came away with him.

“‘I have taken the King’s shilling, but perhaps if you came for me they
would let me go back with you. I was a fool when I did it. I don’t want
to be in the army. My dear mother, I am nothing but a trouble to you.
But if you get me out of this, I promise I will have more sense and
consideration. . . .’”

Mrs. Morel sat down in her rocking-chair.

“Well, _now_,” she cried, “let him stop!”

“Yes,” said Paul, “let him stop.”

There was silence. The mother sat with her hands folded in her apron,
her face set, thinking.

“If I’m not _sick!_” she cried suddenly. “Sick!”

“Now,” said Paul, beginning to frown, “you’re not going to worry your
soul out about this, do you hear.”

“I suppose I’m to take it as a blessing,” she flashed, turning on her
son.

“You’re not going to mount it up to a tragedy, so there,” he retorted.

“The _fool!_—the young fool!” she cried.

“He’ll look well in uniform,” said Paul irritatingly.

His mother turned on him like a fury.

“Oh, will he!” she cried. “Not in my eyes!”

“He should get in a cavalry regiment; he’ll have the time of his life,
and will look an awful swell.”

“Swell!—_swell!_—a mighty swell idea indeed!—a common soldier!”

“Well,” said Paul, “what am I but a common clerk?”

“A good deal, my boy!” cried his mother, stung.

“What?”

“At any rate, a _man_, and not a thing in a red coat.”

“I shouldn’t mind being in a red coat—or dark blue, that would suit me
better—if they didn’t boss me about too much.”

But his mother had ceased to listen.

“Just as he was getting on, or might have been getting on, at his job—a
young nuisance—here he goes and ruins himself for life. What good will
he be, do you think, after _this?_”

“It may lick him into shape beautifully,” said Paul.

“Lick him into shape!—lick what marrow there _was_ out of his bones. A
_soldier!_—a common _soldier!_—nothing but a body that makes movements
when it hears a shout! It’s a fine thing!”

“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; 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 Castle 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 sack-like. 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. 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?” 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 armchair, 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.”

“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 embrace 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.

The stars on the lake seemed to leap like grasshoppers, silver upon the
blackness, as he spun past. Then there was the long climb home.

“See, mother!” he said, as he threw her the berries and leaves on to
the table.

“H’m!” she said, glancing at them, then away again. She sat reading,
alone, as she always did.

“Aren’t they pretty?”

“Yes.”

He knew she was cross with him. After a few minutes he said:

“Edgar and Miriam are coming to tea to-morrow.”

She did not answer.

“You don’t mind?”

Still she did not answer.

“Do you?” he asked.

“You know whether I mind or not.”

“I don’t see why you should. I have plenty of meals there.”

“You do.”

“Then why do you begrudge them tea?”

“I begrudge whom tea?”

“What are you so horrid for?”

“Oh, say no more! You’ve asked her to tea, it’s quite sufficient.
She’ll come.”

He was very angry with his mother. He knew it was merely Miriam she
objected to. He flung off his boots and went to bed.

Paul went to meet his friends the next afternoon. He was glad to see
them coming. They arrived home at about four o’clock. Everywhere was
clean and still for Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Morel sat in her black dress
and black apron. She rose to meet the visitors. With Edgar she was
cordial, but with Miriam cold and rather grudging. Yet Paul thought the
girl looked so nice in her brown cashmere frock.

He helped his mother to get the tea ready. Miriam would have gladly
proffered, but was afraid. He was rather proud of his home. There was
about it now, he thought, a certain distinction. The chairs were only
wooden, and the sofa was old. But the hearthrug and cushions were cosy;
the pictures were prints in good taste; there was a simplicity in
everything, and plenty of books. He was never ashamed in the least of
his home, nor was Miriam of hers, because both were what they should
be, and warm. And then he was proud of the table; the china was pretty,
the cloth was fine. It did not matter that the spoons were not silver
nor the knives ivory-handled; everything looked nice. Mrs. Morel had
managed wonderfully while her children were growing up, so that nothing
was out of place.

Miriam talked books a little. That was her unfailing topic. But Mrs.
Morel was not cordial, and turned soon to Edgar.

At first Edgar and Miriam used to go into Mrs. Morel’s pew. Morel never
went to chapel, preferring the public-house. Mrs. Morel, like a little
champion, sat at the head of her pew, Paul at the other end; and at
first Miriam sat next to him. Then the chapel was like home. It was a
pretty place, with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars, and flowers.
And the same people had sat in the same places ever since he was a boy.
It was wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit there for an hour and a
half, next to Miriam, and near to his mother, uniting his two loves
under the spell of the place of worship. Then he felt warm and happy
and religious at once. And after chapel he walked home with Miriam,
whilst Mrs. Morel spent the rest of the evening with her old friend,
Mrs. Burns. He was keenly alive on his walks on Sunday nights with
Edgar and Miriam. He never went past the pits at night, by the lighted
lamp-house, the tall black headstocks and lines of trucks, past the
fans spinning slowly like shadows, without the feeling of Miriam
returning to him, keen and almost unbearable.

She did not very long occupy the Morels’ pew. Her father took one for
themselves once more. It was under the little gallery, opposite the
Morels’. When Paul and his mother came in the chapel the Leivers’s pew
was always empty. He was anxious for fear she would not come: it was so
far, and there were so many rainy Sundays. Then, often very late
indeed, she came in, with her long stride, her head bowed, her face
hidden under her hat of dark green velvet. Her face, as she sat
opposite, was always in shadow. But it gave him a very keen feeling, as
if all his soul stirred within him, to see her there. It was not the
same glow, happiness, and pride, that he felt in having his mother in
charge: something more wonderful, less human, and tinged to intensity
by a pain, as if there were something he could not get to.

At this time he was beginning to question the orthodox creed. He was
twenty-one, and she was twenty. She was beginning to dread the spring:
he became so wild, and hurt her so much. All the way he went cruelly
smashing her beliefs. Edgar enjoyed it. He was by nature critical and
rather dispassionate. But Miriam suffered exquisite pain, as, with an
intellect like a knife, the man she loved examined her religion in
which she lived and moved and had her being. But he did not spare her.
He was cruel. And when they went alone he was even more fierce, as if
he would kill her soul. He bled her beliefs till she almost lost
consciousness.

“She exults—she exults as she carries him off from me,” Mrs. Morel
cried in her heart when Paul had gone. “She’s not like an ordinary
woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him. She
wants to draw him out and absorb him till there is nothing left of him,
even for himself. He will never be a man on his own feet—she will suck
him up.” So the mother sat, and battled and brooded bitterly.

And he, coming home from his walks with Miriam, was wild with torture.
He walked biting his lips and with clenched fists, going at a great
rate. Then, brought up against a stile, he stood for some minutes, and
did not move. There was a great hollow of darkness fronting him, and on
the black upslopes patches of tiny lights, and in the lowest trough of
the night, a flare of the pit. It was all weird and dreadful. Why was
he torn so, almost bewildered, and unable to move? Why did his mother
sit at home and suffer? He knew she suffered badly. But why should she?
And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the
thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he
hated her—and he easily hated her. Why did she make him feel as if he
were uncertain of himself, insecure, an indefinite thing, as if he had
not sufficient sheathing to prevent the night and the space breaking
into him? How he hated her! And then, what a rush of tenderness and
humility!

Suddenly he plunged on again, running home. His mother saw on him the
marks of some agony, and she said nothing. But he had to make her talk
to him. Then she was angry with him for going so far with Miriam.

“Why don’t you like her, mother?” he cried in despair.

“I don’t know, my boy,” she replied piteously. “I’m sure I’ve tried to
like her. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t—I can’t!”

And he felt dreary and hopeless between the two.

Spring was the worst time. He was changeable, and intense and cruel. So
he decided to stay away from her. Then came the hours when he knew
Miriam was expecting him. His mother watched him growing restless. He
could not go on with his work. He could do nothing. It was as if
something were drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then he put on
his hat and went, saying nothing. And his mother knew he was gone. And
as soon as he was on the way he sighed with relief. And when he was
with her he was cruel again.

One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere, with Miriam sitting
beside him. It was a glistening, white-and-blue day. Big clouds, so
brilliant, went by overhead, while shadows stole along on the water.
The clear spaces in the sky were of clean, cold blue. Paul lay on his
back in the old grass, looking up. He could not bear to look at Miriam.
She seemed to want him, and he resisted. He resisted all the time. He
wanted now to give her passion and tenderness, and he could not. He
felt that she wanted the soul out of his body, and not him. All his
strength and energy she drew into herself through some channel which
united them. She did not want to meet him, so that there were two of
them, man and woman together. She wanted to draw all of him into her.
It urged him to an intensity like madness, which fascinated him, as
drug-taking might.

He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she were
fingering the very quivering tissue, the very protoplasm of life, as
she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it
frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search, and
his voice gradually filled her with fear, so level it was, almost
inhuman, as if in a trance.

“Don’t talk any more,” she pleaded softly, laying her hand on his
forehead.

He lay quite still, almost unable to move. His body was somewhere
discarded.

“Why not? Are you tired?”

“Yes, and it wears you out.”

He laughed shortly, realising.

“Yet you always make me like it,” he said.

“I don’t wish to,” she said, very low.

“Not when you’ve gone too far, and you feel you can’t bear it. But your
unconscious self always asks it of me. And I suppose I want it.”

He went on, in his dead fashion:

“If only you could want _me_, and not want what I can reel off for
you!”

“I!” she cried bitterly—“I! Why, when would you let me take you?”

“Then it’s my fault,” he said, and, gathering himself together, he got
up and began to talk trivialities. He felt insubstantial. In a vague
way he hated her for it. And he knew he was as much to blame himself.
This, however, did not prevent his hating her.

One evening about this time he had walked along the home road with her.
They stood by the pasture leading down to the wood, unable to part. As
the stars came out the clouds closed. They had glimpses of their own
constellation, Orion, towards the west. His jewels glimmered for a
moment, his dog ran low, struggling with difficulty through the spume
of cloud.

Orion was for them chief in significance among the constellations. They
had gazed at him in their strange, surcharged hours of feeling, until
they seemed themselves to live in every one of his stars. This evening
Paul had been moody and perverse. Orion had seemed just an ordinary
constellation to him. He had fought against his glamour and
fascination. Miriam was watching her lover’s mood carefully. But he
said nothing that gave him away, till the moment came to part, when he
stood frowning gloomily at the gathered clouds, behind which the great
constellation must be striding still.

There was to be a little party at his house the next day, at which she
was to attend.

“I shan’t come and meet you,” he said.

“Oh, very well; it’s not very nice out,” she replied slowly.

“It’s not that—only they don’t like me to. They say I care more for you
than for them. And you understand, don’t you? You know it’s only
friendship.”

Miriam was astonished and hurt for him. It had cost him an effort. She
left him, wanting to spare him any further humiliation. A fine rain
blew in her face as she walked along the road. She was hurt deep down;
and she despised him for being blown about by any wind of authority.
And in her heart of hearts, unconsciously, she felt that he was trying
to get away from her. This she would never have acknowledged. She
pitied him.

At this time Paul became an important factor in Jordan’s warehouse. Mr.
Pappleworth left to set up a business of his own, and Paul remained
with Mr. Jordan as Spiral overseer. His wages were to be raised to
thirty shillings at the year-end, if things went well.

Still on Friday night Miriam often came down for her French lesson.
Paul did not go so frequently to Willey Farm, and she grieved at the
thought of her education’s coming to end; moreover, they both loved to
be together, in spite of discords. So they read Balzac, and did
compositions, and felt highly cultured.

Friday night was reckoning night for the miners. Morel
“reckoned”—shared up the money of the stall—either in the New Inn at
Bretty or in his own house, according as his fellow-butties wished.
Barker had turned a non-drinker, so now the men reckoned at Morel’s
house.

Annie, who had been teaching away, was at home again. She was still a
tomboy; and she was engaged to be married. Paul was studying design.

Morel was always in good spirits on Friday evening, unless the week’s
earnings were small. He bustled immediately after his dinner, prepared
to get washed. It was decorum for the women to absent themselves while
the men reckoned. Women were not supposed to spy into such a masculine
privacy as the butties’ reckoning, nor were they to know the exact
amount of the week’s earnings. So, whilst her father was spluttering in
the scullery, Annie went out to spend an hour with a neighbour. Mrs.
Morel attended to her baking.

“Shut that doo-er!” bawled Morel furiously.

Annie banged it behind her, and was gone.

“If tha oppens it again while I’m weshin’ me, I’ll ma’e thy jaw
rattle,” he threatened from the midst of his soap-suds. Paul and the
mother frowned to hear him.

Presently he came running out of the scullery, with the soapy water
dripping from him, dithering with cold.

“Oh, my sirs!” he said. “Wheer’s my towel?”

It was hung on a chair to warm before the fire, otherwise he would have
bullied and blustered. He squatted on his heels before the hot
baking-fire to dry himself.

“F-ff-f!” he went, pretending to shudder with cold.

“Goodness, man, don’t be such a kid!” said Mrs. Morel. “It’s _not_
cold.”

“Thee strip thysen stark nak’d to wesh thy flesh i’ that scullery,”
said the miner, as he rubbed his hair; “nowt b’r a ice-’ouse!”

“And I shouldn’t make that fuss,” replied his wife.

“No, tha’d drop down stiff, as dead as a door-knob, wi’ thy nesh
sides.”

“Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?” asked Paul, curious.

“Eh, I dunno; that’s what they say,” replied his father. “But there’s
that much draught i’ yon scullery, as it blows through your ribs like
through a five-barred gate.”

“It would have some difficulty in blowing through yours,” said Mrs.
Morel.

Morel looked down ruefully at his sides.

“Me!” he exclaimed. “I’m nowt b’r a skinned rabbit. My bones fair juts
out on me.”

“I should like to know where,” retorted his wife.

“Iv’ry-wheer! I’m nobbut a sack o’ faggots.”

Mrs. Morel laughed. He had still a wonderfully young body, muscular,
without any fat. His skin was smooth and clear. It might have been the
body of a man of twenty-eight, except that there were, perhaps, too
many blue scars, like tattoo-marks, where the coal-dust remained under
the skin, and that his chest was too hairy. But he put his hand on his
side ruefully. It was his fixed belief that, because he did not get
fat, he was as thin as a starved rat. Paul looked at his father’s
thick, brownish hands all scarred, with broken nails, rubbing the fine
smoothness of his sides, and the incongruity struck him. It seemed
strange they were the same flesh.

“I suppose,” he said to his father, “you had a good figure once.”

“Eh!” exclaimed the miner, glancing round, startled and timid, like a
child.

“He had,” exclaimed Mrs. Morel, “if he didn’t hurtle himself up as if
he was trying to get in the smallest space he could.”

“Me!” exclaimed Morel—“me a good figure! I wor niver much more n’r a
skeleton.”

“Man!” cried his wife, “don’t be such a pulamiter!”

“‘Strewth!” he said. “Tha’s niver knowed me but what I looked as if I
wor goin’ off in a rapid decline.”

She sat and laughed.

“You’ve had a constitution like iron,” she said; “and never a man had a
better start, if it was body that counted. You should have seen him as
a young man,” she cried suddenly to Paul, drawing herself up to imitate
her husband’s once handsome bearing.

Morel watched her shyly. He saw again the passion she had had for him.
It blazed upon her for a moment. He was shy, rather scared, and humble.
Yet again he felt his old glow. And then immediately he felt the ruin
he had made during these years. He wanted to bustle about, to run away
from it.

“Gi’e my back a bit of a wesh,” he asked her.

His wife brought a well-soaped flannel and clapped it on his shoulders.
He gave a jump.

“Eh, tha mucky little ’ussy!” he cried. “Cowd as death!”

“You ought to have been a salamander,” she laughed, washing his back.
It was very rarely she would do anything so personal for him. The
children did those things.

“The next world won’t be half hot enough for you,” she added.

“No,” he said; “tha’lt see as it’s draughty for me.”

But she had finished. She wiped him in a desultory fashion, and went
upstairs, returning immediately with his shifting-trousers. When he was
dried he struggled into his shirt. Then, ruddy and shiny, with hair on
end, and his flannelette shirt hanging over his pit-trousers, he stood
warming the garments he was going to put on. He turned them, he pulled
them inside out, he scorched them.

“Goodness, man!” cried Mrs. Morel, “get dressed!”

“Should thee like to clap thysen into britches as cowd as a tub o’
water?” he said.

At last he took off his pit-trousers and donned decent black. He did
all this on the hearthrug, as he would have done if Annie and her
familiar friends had been present.

Mrs. Morel turned the bread in the oven. Then from the red earthenware
panchion of dough that stood in a corner she took another handful of
paste, worked it to the proper shape, and dropped it into a tin. As she
was doing so Barker knocked and entered. He was a quiet, compact little
man, who looked as if he would go through a stone wall. His black hair
was cropped short, his head was bony. Like most miners, he was pale,
but healthy and taut.

“Evenin’, missis,” he nodded to Mrs. Morel, and he seated himself with
a sigh.

“Good-evening,” she replied cordially.

“Tha’s made thy heels crack,” said Morel.

“I dunno as I have,” said Barker.

He sat, as the men always did in Morel’s kitchen, effacing himself
rather.

“How’s missis?” she asked of him.

He had told her some time back:

“We’re expectin’ us third just now, you see.”

“Well,” he answered, rubbing his head, “she keeps pretty middlin’, I
think.”

“Let’s see—when?” asked Mrs. Morel.

“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised any time now.”

“Ah! And she’s kept fairly?”

“Yes, tidy.”

“That’s a blessing, for she’s none too strong.”

“No. An’ I’ve done another silly trick.”

“What’s that?”

Mrs. Morel knew Barker wouldn’t do anything very silly.

“I’m come be-out th’ market-bag.”

“You can have mine.”

“Nay, you’ll be wantin’ that yourself.”

“I shan’t. I take a string bag always.”

She saw the determined little collier buying in the week’s groceries
and meat on the Friday nights, and she admired him. “Barker’s little,
but he’s ten times the man you are,” she said to her husband.

Just then Wesson entered. He was thin, rather frail-looking, with a
boyish ingenuousness and a slightly foolish smile, despite his seven
children. But his wife was a passionate woman.

“I see you’ve kested me,” he said, smiling rather vapidly.

“Yes,” replied Barker.

The newcomer took off his cap and his big woollen muffler. His nose was
pointed and red.

“I’m afraid you’re cold, Mr. Wesson,” said Mrs. Morel.

“It’s a bit nippy,” he replied.

“Then come to the fire.”

“Nay, I s’ll do where I am.”

Both colliers sat away back. They could not be induced to come on to
the hearth. The hearth is sacred to the family.

“Go thy ways i’ th’ armchair,” cried Morel cheerily.

“Nay, thank yer; I’m very nicely here.”

“Yes, come, of course,” insisted Mrs. Morel.

He rose and went awkwardly. He sat in Morel’s armchair awkwardly. It
was too great a familiarity. But the fire made him blissfully happy.

“And how’s that chest of yours?” demanded Mrs. Morel.

He smiled again, with his blue eyes rather sunny.

“Oh, it’s very middlin’,” he said.

“Wi’ a rattle in it like a kettle-drum,” said Barker shortly.

“T-t-t-t!” went Mrs. Morel rapidly with her tongue. “Did you have that
flannel singlet made?”

“Not yet,” he smiled.

“Then, why didn’t you?” she cried.

“It’ll come,” he smiled.

“Ah, an’ Doomsday!” exclaimed Barker.

Barker and Morel were both impatient of Wesson. But, then, they were
both as hard as nails, physically.

When Morel was nearly ready he pushed the bag of money to Paul.

“Count it, boy,” he asked humbly.

Paul impatiently turned from his books and pencil, tipped the bag
upside down on the table. There was a five-pound bag of silver,
sovereigns and loose money. He counted quickly, referred to the
checks—the written papers giving amount of coal—put the money in order.
Then Barker glanced at the checks.

Mrs. Morel went upstairs, and the three men came to table. Morel, as
master of the house, sat in his armchair, with his back to the hot
fire. The two butties had cooler seats. None of them counted the money.

“What did we say Simpson’s was?” asked Morel; and the butties cavilled
for a minute over the dayman’s earnings. Then the amount was put aside.

“An’ Bill Naylor’s?”

This money also was taken from the pack.

Then, because Wesson lived in one of the company’s houses, and his rent
had been deducted, Morel and Barker took four-and-six each. And because
Morel’s coals had come, and the leading was stopped, Barker and Wesson
took four shillings each. Then it was plain sailing. Morel gave each of
them a sovereign till there were no more sovereigns; each half a crown
till there were no more half-crowns; each a shilling till there were no
more shillings. If there was anything at the end that wouldn’t split,
Morel took it and stood drinks.

Then the three men rose and went. Morel scuttled out of the house
before his wife came down. She heard the door close, and descended. She
looked hastily at the bread in the oven. Then, glancing on the table,
she saw her money lying. Paul had been working all the time. But now he
felt his mother counting the week’s money, and her wrath rising,

“T-t-t-t-t!” went her tongue.

He frowned. He could not work when she was cross. She counted again.

“A measly twenty-five shillings!” she exclaimed. “How much was the
cheque?”

“Ten pounds eleven,” said Paul irritably. He dreaded what was coming.

“And he gives me a scrattlin’ twenty-five, an’ his club this week! But
I know him. He thinks because _you’re_ earning he needn’t keep the
house any longer. No, all he has to do with his money is to guttle it.
But I’ll show him!”

“Oh, mother, don’t!” cried Paul.

“Don’t what, I should like to know?” she exclaimed.

“Don’t carry on again. I can’t work.”

She went very quiet.

“Yes, it’s all very well,” she said; “but how do you think I’m going to
manage?”

“Well, it won’t make it any better to whittle about it.”

“I should like to know what you’d do if you had it to put up with.”

“It won’t be long. You can have my money. Let him go to hell.”

He went back to his work, and she tied her bonnet-strings grimly. When
she was fretted he could not bear it. But now he began to insist on her
recognising him.

“The two loaves at the top,” she said, “will be done in twenty minutes.
Don’t forget them.”

“All right,” he answered; and she went to market.

He remained alone working. But his usual intense concentration became
unsettled. He listened for the yard-gate. At a quarter-past seven came
a low knock, and Miriam entered.

“All alone?” she said.

“Yes.”

As if at home, she took off her tam-o’-shanter and her long coat,
hanging them up. It gave him a thrill. This might be their own house,
his and hers. Then she came back and peered over his work.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Still design, for decorating stuffs, and for embroidery.”

She bent short-sightedly over the drawings.

It irritated him that she peered so into everything that was his,
searching him out. He went into the parlour and returned with a bundle
of brownish linen. Carefully unfolding it, he spread it on the floor.
It proved to be a curtain or _portière_, beautifully stencilled with a
design on roses.

“Ah, how beautiful!” she cried.

The spread cloth, with its wonderful reddish roses and dark green
stems, all so simple, and somehow so wicked-looking, lay at her feet.
She went on her knees before it, her dark curls dropping. He saw her
crouched voluptuously before his work, and his heart beat quickly.
Suddenly she looked up at him.

“Why does it seem cruel?” she asked.

“What?”

“There seems a feeling of cruelty about it,” she said.

“It’s jolly good, whether or not,” he replied, folding up his work with
a lover’s hands.

She rose slowly, pondering.

“And what will you do with it?” she asked.

“Send it to Liberty’s. I did it for my mother, but I think she’d rather
have the money.”

“Yes,” said Miriam. He had spoken with a touch of bitterness, and
Miriam sympathised. Money would have been nothing to _her_.

He took the cloth back into the parlour. When he returned he threw to
Miriam a smaller piece. It was a cushion-cover with the same design.

“I did that for you,” he said.

She fingered the work with trembling hands, and did not speak. He
became embarrassed.

“By Jove, the bread!” he cried.

He took the top loaves out, tapped them vigorously. They were done. He
put them on the hearth to cool. Then he went to the scullery, wetted
his hands, scooped the last white dough out of the punchion, and
dropped it in a baking-tin. Miriam was still bent over her painted
cloth. He stood rubbing the bits of dough from his hands.

“You do like it?” he asked.

She looked up at him, with her dark eyes one flame of love. He laughed
uncomfortably. Then he began to talk about the design. There was for
him the most intense pleasure in talking about his work to Miriam. All
his passion, all his wild blood, went into this intercourse with her,
when he talked and conceived his work. She brought forth to him his
imaginations. She did not understand, any more than a woman understands
when she conceives a child in her womb. But this was life for her and
for him.

While they were talking, a young woman of about twenty-two, small and
pale, hollow-eyed, yet with a relentless look about her, entered the
room. She was a friend at the Morel’s.

“Take your things off,” said Paul.

“No, I’m not stopping.”

She sat down in the armchair opposite Paul and Miriam, who were on the
sofa. Miriam moved a little farther from him. The room was hot, with a
scent of new bread. Brown, crisp loaves stood on the hearth.

“I shouldn’t have expected to see you here to-night, Miriam Leivers,”
said Beatrice wickedly.

“Why not?” murmured Miriam huskily.

“Why, let’s look at your shoes.”

Miriam remained uncomfortably still.

“If tha doesna tha durs’na,” laughed Beatrice.

Miriam put her feet from under her dress. Her boots had that queer,
irresolute, rather pathetic look about them, which showed how
self-conscious and self-mistrustful she was. And they were covered with
mud.

“Glory! You’re a positive muck-heap,” exclaimed Beatrice. “Who cleans
your boots?”

“I clean them myself.”

“Then you wanted a job,” said Beatrice. “It would ha’ taken a lot of
men to ha’ brought me down here to-night. But love laughs at sludge,
doesn’t it, ’Postle my duck?”

“_Inter alia_,” he said.

“Oh, Lord! are you going to spout foreign languages? What does it mean,
Miriam?”

There was a fine sarcasm in the last question, but Miriam did not see
it.

“‘Among other things,’ I believe,” she said humbly.

Beatrice put her tongue between her teeth and laughed wickedly.

“‘Among other things,’ ’Postle?” she repeated. “Do you mean love laughs
at mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and brothers, and men friends,
and lady friends, and even at the b’loved himself?”

She affected a great innocence.

“In fact, it’s one big smile,” he replied.

“Up its sleeve, ’Postle Morel—you believe me,” she said; and she went
off into another burst of wicked, silent laughter.

Miriam sat silent, withdrawn into herself. Every one of Paul’s friends
delighted in taking sides against her, and he left her in the
lurch—seemed almost to have a sort of revenge upon her then.

“Are you still at school?” asked Miriam of Beatrice.

“Yes.”

“You’ve not had your notice, then?”

“I expect it at Easter.”

“Isn’t it an awful shame, to turn you off merely because you didn’t
pass the exam?”

“I don’t know,” said Beatrice coldly.

“Agatha says you’re as good as any teacher anywhere. It seems to me
ridiculous. I wonder why you didn’t pass.”

“Short of brains, eh, ’Postle?” said Beatrice briefly.

“Only brains to bite with,” replied Paul, laughing.

“Nuisance!” she cried; and, springing from her seat, she rushed and
boxed his ears. She had beautiful small hands. He held her wrists while
she wrestled with him. At last she broke free, and seized two handfuls
of his thick, dark brown hair, which she shook.

“Beat!” he said, as he pulled his hair straight with his fingers. “I
hate you!”

She laughed with glee.

“Mind!” she said. “I want to sit next to you.”

“I’d as lief be neighbours with a vixen,” he said, nevertheless making
place for her between him and Miriam.

“Did it ruffle his pretty hair, then!” she cried; and, with her
hair-comb, she combed him straight. “And his nice little moustache!”
she exclaimed. She tilted his head back and combed his young moustache.
“It’s a wicked moustache, ’Postle,” she said. “It’s a red for danger.
Have you got any of those cigarettes?”

He pulled his cigarette-case from his pocket. Beatrice looked inside
it.

“And fancy me having Connie’s last cig.,” said Beatrice, putting the
thing between her teeth. He held a lit match to her, and she puffed
daintily.

“Thanks so much, darling,” she said mockingly.

It gave her a wicked delight.

“Don’t you think he does it nicely, Miriam?” she asked.

“Oh, very!” said Miriam.

He took a cigarette for himself.

“Light, old boy?” said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at him.

He bent forward to her to light his cigarette at hers. She was winking
at him as he did so. Miriam saw his eyes trembling with mischief, and
his full, almost sensual, mouth quivering. He was not himself, and she
could not bear it. As he was now, she had no connection with him; she
might as well not have existed. She saw the cigarette dancing on his
full red lips. She hated his thick hair for being tumbled loose on his
forehead.

“Sweet boy!” said Beatrice, tipping up his chin and giving him a little
kiss on the cheek.

“I s’ll kiss thee back, Beat,” he said.

“Tha wunna!” she giggled, jumping up and going away. “Isn’t he
shameless, Miriam?”

“Quite,” said Miriam. “By the way, aren’t you forgetting the bread?”

“By Jove!” he cried, flinging open the oven door.

Out puffed the bluish smoke and a smell of burned bread.

“Oh, golly!” cried Beatrice, coming to his side. He crouched before the
oven, she peered over his shoulder. “This is what comes of the oblivion
of love, my boy.”

Paul was ruefully removing the loaves. One was burnt black on the hot
side; another was hard as a brick.

“Poor mater!” said Paul.

“You want to grate it,” said Beatrice. “Fetch me the nutmeg-grater.”

She arranged the bread in the oven. He brought the grater, and she
grated the bread on to a newspaper on the table. He set the doors open
to blow away the smell of burned bread. Beatrice grated away, puffing
her cigarette, knocking the charcoal off the poor loaf.

“My word, Miriam! you’re in for it this time,” said Beatrice.

“I!” exclaimed Miriam in amazement.

“You’d better be gone when his mother comes in. _I_ know why King
Alfred burned the cakes. Now I see it! ’Postle would fix up a tale
about his work making him forget, if he thought it would wash. If that
old woman had come in a bit sooner, she’d have boxed the brazen thing’s
ears who made the oblivion, instead of poor Alfred’s.”

She giggled as she scraped the loaf. Even Miriam laughed in spite of
herself. Paul mended the fire ruefully.

The garden gate was heard to bang.

“Quick!” cried Beatrice, giving Paul the scraped loaf. “Wrap it up in a
damp towel.”

Paul disappeared into the scullery. Beatrice hastily blew her scrapings
into the fire, and sat down innocently. Annie came bursting in. She was
an abrupt, quite smart young woman. She blinked in the strong light.

“Smell of burning!” she exclaimed.

“It’s the cigarettes,” replied Beatrice demurely.

“Where’s Paul?”

Leonard had followed Annie. He had a long comic face and blue eyes,
very sad.

“I suppose he’s left you to settle it between you,” he said. He nodded
sympathetically to Miriam, and became gently sarcastic to Beatrice.

“No,” said Beatrice, “he’s gone off with number nine.”

“I just met number five inquiring for him,” said Leonard.

“Yes—we’re going to share him up like Solomon’s baby,” said Beatrice.

Annie laughed.

“Oh, ay,” said Leonard. “And which bit should you have?”

“I don’t know,” said Beatrice. “I’ll let all the others pick first.”

“An’ you’d have the leavings, like?” said Leonard, twisting up a comic
face.

Annie was looking in the oven. Miriam sat ignored. Paul entered.

“This bread’s a fine sight, our Paul,” said Annie.

“Then you should stop an’ look after it,” said Paul.

“You mean _you_ should do what you’re reckoning to do,” replied Annie.

“He should, shouldn’t he!” cried Beatrice.

“I s’d think he’d got plenty on hand,” said Leonard.

“You had a nasty walk, didn’t you, Miriam?” said Annie.

“Yes—but I’d been in all week—”

“And you wanted a bit of a change, like,” insinuated Leonard kindly.

“Well, you can’t be stuck in the house for ever,” Annie agreed. She was
quite amiable. Beatrice pulled on her coat, and went out with Leonard
and Annie. She would meet her own boy.

“Don’t forget that bread, our Paul,” cried Annie. “Good-night, Miriam.
I don’t think it will rain.”

When they had all gone, Paul fetched the swathed loaf, unwrapped it,
and surveyed it sadly.

“It’s a mess!” he said.

“But,” answered Miriam impatiently, “what is it, after all—twopence,
ha’penny.”

“Yes, but—it’s the mater’s precious baking, and she’ll take it to
heart. However, it’s no good bothering.”

He took the loaf back into the scullery. There was a little distance
between him and Miriam. He stood balanced opposite her for some moments
considering, thinking of his behaviour with Beatrice. He felt guilty
inside himself, and yet glad. For some inscrutable reason it served
Miriam right. He was not going to repent. She wondered what he was
thinking of as he stood suspended. His thick hair was tumbled over his
forehead. Why might she not push it back for him, and remove the marks
of Beatrice’s comb? Why might she not press his body with her two
hands. It looked so firm, and every whit living. And he would let other
girls, why not her?

Suddenly he started into life. It made her quiver almost with terror as
he quickly pushed the hair off his forehead and came towards her.

“Half-past eight!” he said. “We’d better buck up. Where’s your French?”

Miriam shyly and rather bitterly produced her exercise-book. Every week
she wrote for him a sort of diary of her inner life, in her own French.
He had found this was the only way to get her to do compositions. And
her diary was mostly a love-letter. He would read it now; she felt as
if her soul’s history were going to be desecrated by him in his present
mood. He sat beside her. She watched his hand, firm and warm,
rigorously scoring her work. He was reading only the French, ignoring
her soul that was there. But gradually his hand forgot its work. He
read in silence, motionless. She quivered.

“‘_Ce matin les oiseaux m’ont éveillé_,’” he read. “‘_Il faisait encore
un crépuscule. Mais la petite fenêtre de ma chambre était blême, et
puis, jaûne, et tous les oiseaux du bois éclatèrent dans un chanson vif
et résonnant. Toute l’aûbe tressaillit. J’avais rêvé de vous. Est-ce
que vous voyez aussi l’aûbe? Les oiseaux m’éveillent presque tous les
matins, et toujours il y a quelque chose de terreur dans le cri des
grives. Il est si clair_—’”

Miriam sat tremulous, half ashamed. He remained quite still, trying to
understand. He only knew she loved him. He was afraid of her love for
him. It was too good for him, and he was inadequate. His own love was
at fault, not hers. Ashamed, he corrected her work, humbly writing
above her words.

“Look,” he said quietly, “the past participle conjugated with _avoir_
agrees with the direct object when it precedes.”

She bent forward, trying to see and to understand. Her free, fine curls
tickled his face. He started as if they had been red hot, shuddering.
He saw her peering forward at the page, her red lips parted piteously,
the black hair springing in fine strands across her tawny, ruddy cheek.
She was coloured like a pomegranate for richness. His breath came short
as he watched her. Suddenly she looked up at him. Her dark eyes were
naked with their love, afraid, and yearning. His eyes, too, were dark,
and they hurt her. They seemed to master her. She lost all her
self-control, was exposed in fear. And he knew, before he could kiss
her, he must drive something out of himself. And a touch of hate for
her crept back again into his heart. He returned to her exercise.

Suddenly he flung down the pencil, and was at the oven in a leap,
turning the bread. For Miriam he was too quick. She started violently,
and it hurt her with real pain. Even the way he crouched before the
oven hurt her. There seemed to be something cruel in it, something
cruel in the swift way he pitched the bread out of the tins, caught it
up again. If only he had been gentle in his movements she would have
felt so rich and warm. As it was, she was hurt.

He returned and finished the exercise.

“You’ve done well this week,” he said.

She saw he was flattered by her diary. It did not repay her entirely.

“You really do blossom out sometimes,” he said. “You ought to write
poetry.”

She lifted her head with joy, then she shook it mistrustfully.

“I don’t trust myself,” she said.

“You should try!”

Again she shook her head.

“Shall we read, or is it too late?” he asked.

“It is late—but we can read just a little,” she pleaded.

She was really getting now the food for her life during the next week.
He made her copy Baudelaire’s “Le Balcon”. Then he read it for her. His
voice was soft and caressing, but growing almost brutal. He had a way
of lifting his lips and showing his teeth, passionately and bitterly,
when he was much moved. This he did now. It made Miriam feel as if he
were trampling on her. She dared not look at him, but sat with her head
bowed. She could not understand why he got into such a tumult and fury.
It made her wretched. She did not like Baudelaire, on the whole—nor
Verlaine.

     “Behold her singing in the field
     Yon solitary highland lass.”

That nourished her heart. So did “Fair Ines”. And—

     “It was a beauteous evening, calm and pure,
     And breathing holy quiet like a nun.”

These were like herself. And there was he, saying in his throat
bitterly:

     “_Tu te rappelleras la beaûté des caresses_.”

The poem was finished; he took the bread out of the oven, arranging the
burnt loaves at the bottom of the panchion, the good ones at the top.
The desiccated loaf remained swathed up in the scullery.

“Mater needn’t know till morning,” he said. “It won’t upset her so much
then as at night.”

Miriam looked in the bookcase, saw what postcards and letters he had
received, saw what books were there. She took one that had interested
him. Then he turned down the gas and they set off. He did not trouble
to lock the door.

He was not home again until a quarter to eleven. His mother was seated
in the rocking-chair. Annie, with a rope of hair hanging down her back,
remained sitting on a low stool before the fire, her elbows on her
knees, gloomily. On the table stood the offending loaf unswathed. Paul
entered rather breathless. No one spoke. His mother was reading the
little local newspaper. He took off his coat, and went to sit down on
the sofa. His mother moved curtly aside to let him pass. No one spoke.
He was very uncomfortable. For some minutes he sat pretending to read a
piece of paper he found on the table. Then—

“I forgot that bread, mother,” he said.

There was no answer from either woman.

“Well,” he said, “it’s only twopence ha’penny. I can pay you for that.”

Being angry, he put three pennies on the table and slid them towards
his mother. She turned away her head. Her mouth was shut tightly.

“Yes,” said Annie, “you don’t know how badly my mother is!”

The girl sat staring glumly into the fire.

“Why is she badly?” asked Paul, in his overbearing way.

“Well!” said Annie. “She could scarcely get home.”

He looked closely at his mother. She looked ill.

“_Why_ could you scarcely get home?” he asked her, still sharply. She
would not answer.

“I found her as white as a sheet sitting here,” said Annie, with a
suggestion of tears in her voice.

“Well, _why?_” insisted Paul. His brows were knitting, his eyes
dilating passionately.

“It was enough to upset anybody,” said Mrs. Morel, “hugging those
parcels—meat, and green-groceries, and a pair of curtains—”

“Well, why _did_ you hug them; you needn’t have done.”

“Then who would?”

“Let Annie fetch the meat.”

“Yes, and I _would_ fetch the meat, but how was I to know. You were off
with Miriam, instead of being in when my mother came.”

“And what was the matter with you?” asked Paul of his mother.

“I suppose it’s my heart,” she replied. Certainly she looked bluish
round the mouth.

“And have you felt it before?”

“Yes—often enough.”

“Then why haven’t you told me?—and why haven’t you seen a doctor?”

Mrs. Morel shifted in her chair, angry with him for his hectoring.

“You’d never notice anything,” said Annie. “You’re too eager to be off
with Miriam.”

“Oh, am I—and any worse than you with Leonard?”

“_I_ was in at a quarter to ten.”

There was silence in the room for a time.

“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly, “that she wouldn’t
have occupied you so entirely as to burn a whole ovenful of bread.”

“Beatrice was here as well as she.”

“Very likely. But we know why the bread is spoilt.”

“Why?” he flashed.

“Because you were engrossed with Miriam,” replied Mrs. Morel hotly.

“Oh, very well—then it was _not!_” he replied angrily.

He was distressed and wretched. Seizing a paper, he began to read.
Annie, her blouse unfastened, her long ropes of hair twisted into a
plait, went up to bed, bidding him a very curt good-night.

Paul sat pretending to read. He knew his mother wanted to upbraid him.
He also wanted to know what had made her ill, for he was troubled. So,
instead of running away to bed, as he would have liked to do, he sat
and waited. There was a tense silence. The clock ticked loudly.

“You’d better go to bed before your father comes in,” said the mother
harshly. “And if you’re going to have anything to eat, you’d better get
it.”

“I don’t want anything.”

It was his mother’s custom to bring him some trifle for supper on
Friday night, the night of luxury for the colliers. He was too angry to
go and find it in the pantry this night. This insulted her.

“If I _wanted_ you to go to Selby on Friday night, I can imagine the
scene,” said Mrs. Morel. “But you’re never too tired to go if _she_
will come for you. Nay, you neither want to eat nor drink then.”

“I can’t let her go alone.”

“Can’t you? And why does she come?”

“Not because I ask her.”

“She doesn’t come without you want her—”

“Well, what if I _do_ want her—” he replied.

“Why, nothing, if it was sensible or reasonable. But to go trapseing up
there miles and miles in the mud, coming home at midnight, and got to
go to Nottingham in the morning—”

“If I hadn’t, you’d be just the same.”

“Yes, I should, because there’s no sense in it. Is she so fascinating
that you must follow her all that way?” Mrs. Morel was bitterly
sarcastic. She sat still, with averted face, stroking with a rhythmic,
jerked movement, the black sateen of her apron. It was a movement that
hurt Paul to see.

“I do like her,” he said, “but—”

“_Like_ her!” said Mrs. Morel, in the same biting tones. “It seems to
me you like nothing and nobody else. There’s neither Annie, nor me, nor
anyone now for you.”

“What nonsense, mother—you know I don’t love her—I—I tell you I _don’t_
love her—she doesn’t even walk with my arm, because I don’t want her
to.”

“Then why do you fly to her so often?”

“I _do_ like to talk to her—I never said I didn’t. But I _don’t_ love
her.”

“Is there nobody else to talk to?”

“Not about the things we talk of. There’s a lot of things that you’re
not interested in, that—”

“What things?”

Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant.

“Why—painting—and books. _You_ don’t care about Herbert Spencer.”

“No,” was the sad reply. “And _you_ won’t at my age.”

“Well, but I do now—and Miriam does—”

“And how do you know,” Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly, “that _I_
shouldn’t. Do you ever try me!”

“But you don’t, mother, you know you don’t care whether a picture’s
decorative or not; you don’t care what _manner_ it is in.”

“How do you know I don’t care? Do you ever try me? Do you ever talk to
me about these things, to try?”

“But it’s not that that matters to you, mother, you know it’s not.”

“What is it, then—what is it, then, that matters to me?” she flashed.
He knitted his brows with pain.

“You’re old, mother, and we’re young.”

He only meant that the interests of _her_ age were not the interests of
his. But he realised the moment he had spoken that he had said the
wrong thing.

“Yes, I know it well—I am old. And therefore I may stand aside; I have
nothing more to do with you. You only want me to wait on you—the rest
is for Miriam.”

He could not bear it. Instinctively he realised that he was life to
her. And, after all, she was the chief thing to him, the only supreme
thing.

“You know it isn’t, mother, you know it isn’t!”

She was moved to pity by his cry.

“It looks a great deal like it,” she said, half putting aside her
despair.

“No, mother—I really _don’t_ love her. I talk to her, but I want to
come home to you.”

He had taken off his collar and tie, and rose, bare-throated, to go to
bed. As he stooped to kiss his mother, she threw her arms round his
neck, hid her face on his shoulder, and cried, in a whimpering voice,
so unlike her own that he writhed in agony:

“I can’t bear it. I could let another woman—but not her. She’d leave me
no room, not a bit of room—”

And immediately he hated Miriam bitterly.

“And I’ve never—you know, Paul—I’ve never had a husband—not really—”

He stroked his mother’s hair, and his mouth was on her throat.

“And she exults so in taking you from me—she’s not like ordinary
girls.”

“Well, I don’t love her, mother,” he murmured, bowing his head and
hiding his eyes on her shoulder in misery. His mother kissed him a
long, fervent kiss.

“My boy!” she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love.

Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.

“There,” said his mother, “now go to bed. You’ll be so tired in the
morning.” As she was speaking she heard her husband coming. “There’s
your father—now go.” Suddenly she looked at him almost as if in fear.
“Perhaps I’m selfish. If you want her, take her, my boy.”

His mother looked so strange, Paul kissed her, trembling.

“Ha—mother!” he said softly.

Morel came in, walking unevenly. His hat was over one corner of his
eye. He balanced in the doorway.

“At your mischief again?” he said venomously.

Mrs. Morel’s emotion turned into sudden hate of the drunkard who had
come in thus upon her.

“At any rate, it is sober,” she said.

“H’m—h’m! h’m—h’m!” he sneered. He went into the passage, hung up his
hat and coat. Then they heard him go down three steps to the pantry. He
returned with a piece of pork-pie in his fist. It was what Mrs. Morel
had bought for her son.

“Nor was that bought for you. If you can give me no more than
twenty-five shillings, I’m sure I’m not going to buy you pork-pie to
stuff, after you’ve swilled a bellyful of beer.”

“Wha-at—wha-at!” snarled Morel, toppling in his balance. “Wha-at—not
for me?” He looked at the piece of meat and crust, and suddenly, in a
vicious spurt of temper, flung it into the fire.

Paul started to his feet.

“Waste your own stuff!” he cried.

“What—what!” suddenly shouted Morel, jumping up and clenching his fist.
“I’ll show yer, yer young jockey!”

“All right!” said Paul viciously, putting his head on one side. “Show
me!”

He would at that moment dearly have loved to have a smack at something.
Morel was half crouching, fists up, ready to spring. The young man
stood, smiling with his lips.

“Ussha!” hissed the father, swiping round with a great stroke just past
his son’s face. He dared not, even though so close, really touch the
young man, but swerved an inch away.

“Right!” said Paul, his eyes upon the side of his father’s mouth, where
in another instant his fist would have hit. He ached for that stroke.
But he heard a faint moan from behind. His mother was deadly pale and
dark at the mouth. Morel was dancing up to deliver another blow.

“Father!” said Paul, so that the word rang.

Morel started, and stood at attention.

“Mother!” moaned the boy. “Mother!”

She began to struggle with herself. Her open eyes watched him, although
she could not move. Gradually she was coming to herself. He laid her
down on the sofa, and ran upstairs for a little whisky, which at last
she could sip. The tears were hopping down his face. As he kneeled in
front of her he did not cry, but the tears ran down his face quickly.
Morel, on the opposite side of the room, sat with his elbows on his
knees glaring across.

“What’s a-matter with ’er?” he asked.

“Faint!” replied Paul.

“H’m!”

The elderly man began to unlace his boots. He stumbled off to bed. His
last fight was fought in that home.

Paul kneeled there, stroking his mother’s hand.

“Don’t be poorly, mother—don’t be poorly!” he said time after time.

“It’s nothing, my boy,” she murmured.

At last he rose, fetched in a large piece of coal, and raked the fire.
Then he cleared the room, put everything straight, laid the things for
breakfast, and brought his mother’s candle.

“Can you go to bed, mother?”

“Yes, I’ll come.”

“Sleep with Annie, mother, not with him.”

“No. I’ll sleep in my own bed.”

“Don’t sleep with him, mother.”

“I’ll sleep in my own bed.”

She rose, and he turned out the gas, then followed her closely
upstairs, carrying her candle. On the landing he kissed her close.

“Good-night, mother.”

“Good-night!” she said.

He pressed his face upon the pillow in a fury of misery. And yet,
somewhere in his soul, he was at peace because he still loved his
mother best. It was the bitter peace of resignation.

The efforts of his father to conciliate him next day were a great
humiliation to him.

Everybody tried to forget the scene.

CHAPTER IX
DEFEAT OF MIRIAM

Paul was dissatisfied with himself and with everything. The deepest of
his love belonged to his mother. When he felt he had hurt her, or
wounded his love for her, he could not bear it. Now it was spring, and
there was battle between him and Miriam. This year he had a good deal
against her. She was vaguely aware of it. The old feeling that she was
to be a sacrifice to this love, which she had had when she prayed, was
mingled in all her emotions. She did not at the bottom believe she ever
would have him. She did not believe in herself primarily: doubted
whether she could ever be what he would demand of her. Certainly she
never saw herself living happily through a lifetime with him. She saw
tragedy, sorrow, and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she was proud,
in renunciation she was strong, for she did not trust herself to
support everyday life. She was prepared for the big things and the deep
things, like tragedy. It was the sufficiency of the small day-life she
could not trust.

The Easter holidays began happily. Paul was his own frank self. Yet she
felt it would go wrong. On the Sunday afternoon she stood at her
bedroom window, looking across at the oak-trees of the wood, in whose
branches a twilight was tangled, below the bright sky of the afternoon.
Grey-green rosettes of honeysuckle leaves hung before the window, some
already, she fancied, showing bud. It was spring, which she loved and
dreaded.

Hearing the clack of the gate she stood in suspense. It was a bright
grey day. Paul came into the yard with his bicycle, which glittered as
he walked. Usually he rang his bell and laughed towards the house.
To-day he walked with shut lips and cold, cruel bearing, that had
something of a slouch and a sneer in it. She knew him well by now, and
could tell from that keen-looking, aloof young body of his what was
happening inside him. There was a cold correctness in the way he put
his bicycle in its place, that made her heart sink.

She came downstairs nervously. She was wearing a new net blouse that
she thought became her. It had a high collar with a tiny ruff,
reminding her of Mary, Queen of Scots, and making her, she thought,
look wonderfully a woman, and dignified. At twenty she was
full-breasted and luxuriously formed. Her face was still like a soft
rich mask, unchangeable. But her eyes, once lifted, were wonderful. She
was afraid of him. He would notice her new blouse.

He, being in a hard, ironical mood, was entertaining the family to a
description of a service given in the Primitive Methodist Chapel,
conducted by one of the well-known preachers of the sect. He sat at the
head of the table, his mobile face, with the eyes that could be so
beautiful, shining with tenderness or dancing with laughter, now taking
on one expression and then another, in imitation of various people he
was mocking. His mockery always hurt her; it was too near the reality.
He was too clever and cruel. She felt that when his eyes were like
this, hard with mocking hate, he would spare neither himself nor
anybody else. But Mrs. Leivers was wiping her eyes with laughter, and
Mr. Leivers, just awake from his Sunday nap, was rubbing his head in
amusement. The three brothers sat with ruffled, sleepy appearance in
their shirt-sleeves, giving a guffaw from time to time. The whole
family loved a “take-off” more than anything.

He took no notice of Miriam. Later, she saw him remark her new blouse,
saw that the artist approved, but it won from him not a spark of
warmth. She was nervous, could hardly reach the teacups from the
shelves.

When the men went out to milk, she ventured to address him personally.

“You were late,” she said.

“Was I?” he answered.

There was silence for a while.

“Was it rough riding?” she asked.

“I didn’t notice it.”

She continued quickly to lay the table. When she had finished—

“Tea won’t be for a few minutes. Will you come and look at the
daffodils?” she said.

He rose without answering. They went out into the back garden under the
budding damson-trees. The hills and the sky were clean and cold.
Everything looked washed, rather hard. Miriam glanced at Paul. He was
pale and impassive. It seemed cruel to her that his eyes and brows,
which she loved, could look so hurting.

“Has the wind made you tired?” she asked. She detected an underneath
feeling of weariness about him.

“No, I think not,” he answered.

“It must be rough on the road—the wood moans so.”

“You can see by the clouds it’s a south-west wind; that helps me here.”

“You see, I don’t cycle, so I don’t understand,” she murmured.

“Is there need to cycle to know that!” he said.

She thought his sarcasms were unnecessary. They went forward in
silence. Round the wild, tussocky lawn at the back of the house was a
thorn hedge, under which daffodils were craning forward from among
their sheaves of grey-green blades. The cheeks of the flowers were
greenish with cold. But still some had burst, and their gold ruffled
and glowed. Miriam went on her knees before one cluster, took a
wild-looking daffodil between her hands, turned up its face of gold to
her, and bowed down, caressing it with her mouth and cheeks and brow.
He stood aside, with his hands in his pockets, watching her. One after
another she turned up to him the faces of the yellow, bursten flowers
appealingly, fondling them lavishly all the while.

“Aren’t they magnificent?” she murmured.

“Magnificent! It’s a bit thick—they’re pretty!”

She bowed again to her flowers at his censure of her praise. He watched
her crouching, sipping the flowers with fervid kisses.

“Why must you always be fondling things?” he said irritably.

“But I love to touch them,” she replied, hurt.

“Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted to
pull the heart out of them? Why don’t you have a bit more restraint, or
reserve, or something?”

She looked up at him full of pain, then continued slowly to stroke her
lips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as she smelled it, was so
much kinder than he; it almost made her cry.

“You wheedle the soul out of things,” he said. “I would never
wheedle—at any rate, I’d go straight.”

He scarcely knew what he was saying. These things came from him
mechanically. She looked at him. His body seemed one weapon, firm and
hard against her.

“You’re always begging things to love you,” he said, “as if you were a
beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them—”

Rhythmically, Miriam was swaying and stroking the flower with her
mouth, inhaling the scent which ever after made her shudder as it came
to her nostrils.

“You don’t want to love—your eternal and abnormal craving is to be
loved. You aren’t positive, you’re negative. You absorb, absorb, as if
you must fill yourself up with love, because you’ve got a shortage
somewhere.”

She was stunned by his cruelty, and did not hear. He had not the
faintest notion of what he was saying. It was as if his fretted,
tortured soul, run hot by thwarted passion, jetted off these sayings
like sparks from electricity. She did not grasp anything he said. She
only sat crouched beneath his cruelty and his hatred of her. She never
realised in a flash. Over everything she brooded and brooded.

After tea he stayed with Edgar and the brothers, taking no notice of
Miriam. She, extremely unhappy on this looked-for holiday, waited for
him. And at last he yielded and came to her. She was determined to
track this mood of his to its origin. She counted it not much more than
a mood.

“Shall we go through the wood a little way?” she asked him, knowing he
never refused a direct request.

They went down to the warren. On the middle path they passed a trap, a
narrow horseshoe hedge of small fir-boughs, baited with the guts of a
rabbit. Paul glanced at it frowning. She caught his eye.

“Isn’t it dreadful?” she asked.

“I don’t know! Is it worse than a weasel with its teeth in a rabbit’s
throat? One weasel or many rabbits? One or the other must go!”

He was taking the bitterness of life badly. She was rather sorry for
him.

“We will go back to the house,” he said. “I don’t want to walk out.”

They went past the lilac-tree, whose bronze leaf-buds were coming
unfastened. Just a fragment remained of the haystack, a monument
squared and brown, like a pillar of stone. There was a little bed of
hay from the last cutting.

“Let us sit here a minute,” said Miriam.

He sat down against his will, resting his back against the hard wall of
hay. They faced the amphitheatre of round hills that glowed with
sunset, tiny white farms standing out, the meadows golden, the woods
dark and yet luminous, tree-tops folded over tree-tops, distinct in the
distance. The evening had cleared, and the east was tender with a
magenta flush under which the land lay still and rich.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she pleaded.

But he only scowled. He would rather have had it ugly just then.

At that moment a big bull-terrier came rushing up, open-mouthed,
pranced his two paws on the youth’s shoulders, licking his face. Paul
drew back, laughing. Bill was a great relief to him. He pushed the dog
aside, but it came leaping back.

“Get out,” said the lad, “or I’ll dot thee one.”

But the dog was not to be pushed away. So Paul had a little battle with
the creature, pitching poor Bill away from him, who, however, only
floundered tumultuously back again, wild with joy. The two fought
together, the man laughing grudgingly, the dog grinning all over.
Miriam watched them. There was something pathetic about the man. He
wanted so badly to love, to be tender. The rough way he bowled the dog
over was really loving. Bill got up, panting with happiness, his brown
eyes rolling in his white face, and lumbered back again. He adored
Paul. The lad frowned.

“Bill, I’ve had enough o’ thee,” he said.

But the dog only stood with two heavy paws, that quivered with love,
upon his thigh, and flickered a red tongue at him. He drew back.

“No,” he said—“no—I’ve had enough.”

And in a minute the dog trotted off happily, to vary the fun.

He remained staring miserably across at the hills, whose still beauty
he begrudged. He wanted to go and cycle with Edgar. Yet he had not the
courage to leave Miriam.

“Why are you sad?” she asked humbly.

“I’m not sad; why should I be,” he answered. “I’m only normal.”

She wondered why he always claimed to be normal when he was
disagreeable.

“But what is the matter?” she pleaded, coaxing him soothingly.

“Nothing!”

“Nay!” she murmured.

He picked up a stick and began to stab the earth with it.

“You’d far better not talk,” he said.

“But I wish to know—” she replied.

He laughed resentfully.

“You always do,” he said.

“It’s not fair to me,” she murmured.

He thrust, thrust, thrust at the ground with the pointed stick, digging
up little clods of earth as if he were in a fever of irritation. She
gently and firmly laid her band on his wrist.

“Don’t!” she said. “Put it away.”

He flung the stick into the currant-bushes, and leaned back. Now he was
bottled up.

“What is it?” she pleaded softly.

He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment.

“You know,” he said at length, rather wearily—“you know—we’d better
break off.”

It was what she dreaded. Swiftly everything seemed to darken before her
eyes.

“Why!” she murmured. “What has happened?”

“Nothing has happened. We only realise where we are. It’s no good—”

She waited in silence, sadly, patiently. It was no good being impatient
with him. At any rate, he would tell her now what ailed him.

“We agreed on friendship,” he went on in a dull, monotonous voice. “How
often _have_ we agreed for friendship! And yet—it neither stops there,
nor gets anywhere else.”

He was silent again. She brooded. What did he mean? He was so wearying.
There was something he would not yield. Yet she must be patient with
him.

“I can only give friendship—it’s all I’m capable of—it’s a flaw in my
make-up. The thing overbalances to one side—I hate a toppling balance.
Let us have done.”

There was warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him
more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in
herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul,
this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor
acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle
shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without
him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.

“But what has happened?” she said.

“Nothing—it’s all in myself—it only comes out just now. We’re always
like this towards Easter-time.”

He grovelled so helplessly, she pitied him. At least she never
floundered in such a pitiable way. After all, it was he who was chiefly
humiliated.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

“Why—I mustn’t come often—that’s all. Why should I monopolise you when
I’m not—You see, I’m deficient in something with regard to you—”

He was telling her he did not love her, and so ought to leave her a
chance with another man. How foolish and blind and shamefully clumsy he
was! What were other men to her! What were men to her at all! But he,
ah! she loved his soul. Was _he_ deficient in something? Perhaps he
was.

“But I don’t understand,” she said huskily. “Yesterday—”

The night was turning jangled and hateful to him as the twilight faded.
And she bowed under her suffering.

“I know,” he cried, “you never will! You’ll never believe that I
can’t—can’t physically, any more than I can fly up like a skylark—”

“What?” she murmured. Now she dreaded.

“Love you.”

He hated her bitterly at that moment because he made her suffer. Love
her! She knew he loved her. He really belonged to her. This about not
loving her, physically, bodily, was a mere perversity on his part,
because he knew she loved him. He was stupid like a child. He belonged
to her. His soul wanted her. She guessed somebody had been influencing
him. She felt upon him the hardness, the foreignness of another
influence.

“What have they been saying at home?” she asked.

“It’s not that,” he answered.

And then she knew it was. She despised them for their commonness, his
people. They did not know what things were really worth.

He and she talked very little more that night. After all he left her to
cycle with Edgar.

He had come back to his mother. Hers was the strongest tie in his life.
When he thought round, Miriam shrank away. There was a vague, unreal
feel about her. And nobody else mattered. There was one place in the
world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where
his mother was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent
to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole of his life,
from which he could not escape, was his mother.

And in the same way she waited for him. In him was established her life
now. After all, the life beyond offered very little to Mrs. Morel. She
saw that our chance for _doing_ is here, and doing counted with her.
Paul was going to prove that she had been right; he was going to make a
man whom nothing should shift off his feet; he was going to alter the
face of the earth in some way which mattered. Wherever he went she felt
her soul went with him. Whatever he did she felt her soul stood by him,
ready, as it were, to hand him his tools. She could not bear it when he
was with Miriam. William was dead. She would fight to keep Paul.

And he came back to her. And in his soul was a feeling of the
satisfaction of self-sacrifice because he was faithful to her. She
loved him first; he loved her first. And yet it was not enough. His new
young life, so strong and imperious, was urged towards something else.
It made him mad with restlessness. She saw this, and wished bitterly
that Miriam had been a woman who could take this new life of his, and
leave her the roots. He fought against his mother almost as he fought
against Miriam.

It was a week before he went again to Willey Farm. Miriam had suffered
a great deal, and was afraid to see him again. Was she now to endure
the ignominy of his abandoning her? That would only be superficial and
temporary. He would come back. She held the keys to his soul. But
meanwhile, how he would torture her with his battle against her. She
shrank from it.

However, the Sunday after Easter he came to tea. Mrs. Leivers was glad
to see him. She gathered something was fretting him, that he found
things hard. He seemed to drift to her for comfort. And she was good to
him. She did him that great kindness of treating him almost with
reverence.

He met her with the young children in the front garden.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” said the mother, looking at him with her great
appealing brown eyes. “It is such a sunny day. I was just going down
the fields for the first time this year.”

He felt she would like him to come. That soothed him. They went,
talking simply, he gentle and humble. He could have wept with gratitude
that she was deferential to him. He was feeling humiliated.

At the bottom of the Mow Close they found a thrush’s nest.

“Shall I show you the eggs?” he said.

“Do!” replied Mrs. Leivers. “They seem _such_ a sign of spring, and so
hopeful.”

He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding them in the
palm of his hand.

“They are quite hot—I think we frightened her off them,” he said.

“Ay, poor thing!” said Mrs. Leivers.

Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand which, it seemed
to her, cradled them so well.

“Isn’t it a strange warmth!” she murmured, to get near him.

“Blood heat,” he answered.

She watched him putting them back, his body pressed against the hedge,
his arm reaching slowly through the thorns, his hand folded carefully
over the eggs. He was concentrated on the act. Seeing him so, she loved
him; he seemed so simple and sufficient to himself. And she could not
get to him.

After tea she stood hesitating at the bookshelf. He took “Tartarin de
Tarascon”. Again they sat on the bank of hay at the foot of the stack.
He read a couple of pages, but without any heart for it. Again the dog
came racing up to repeat the fun of the other day. He shoved his muzzle
in the man’s chest. Paul fingered his ear for a moment. Then he pushed
him away.

“Go away, Bill,” he said. “I don’t want you.”

Bill slunk off, and Miriam wondered and dreaded what was coming. There
was a silence about the youth that made her still with apprehension. It
was not his furies, but his quiet resolutions that she feared.

Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could not see him,
he began, speaking slowly and painfully:

“Do you think—if I didn’t come up so much—you might get to like
somebody else—another man?”

So this was what he was still harping on.

“But I don’t know any other men. Why do you ask?” she replied, in a low
tone that should have been a reproach to him.

“Why,” he blurted, “because they say I’ve no right to come up like
this—without we mean to marry—”

Miriam was indignant at anybody’s forcing the issues between them. She
had been furious with her own father for suggesting to Paul,
laughingly, that he knew why he came so much.

“Who says?” she asked, wondering if her people had anything to do with
it. They had not.

“Mother—and the others. They say at this rate everybody will consider
me engaged, and I ought to consider myself so, because it’s not fair to
you. And I’ve tried to find out—and I don’t think I love you as a man
ought to love his wife. What do _you_ think about it?”

Miriam bowed her head moodily. She was angry at having this struggle.
People should leave him and her alone.

“I don’t know,” she murmured.

“Do you think we love each other enough to marry?” he asked definitely.
It made her tremble.

“No,” she answered truthfully. “I don’t think so—we’re too young.”

“I thought perhaps,” he went on miserably, “that you, with your
intensity in things, might have given me more—than I could ever make up
to you. And even now—if you think it better—we’ll be engaged.”

Now Miriam wanted to cry. And she was angry, too. He was always such a
child for people to do as they liked with.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said firmly.

He pondered a minute.

“You see,” he said, “with me—I don’t think one person would ever
monopolise me—be everything to me—I think never.”

This she did not consider.

“No,” she murmured. Then, after a pause, she looked at him, and her
dark eyes flashed.

“This is your mother,” she said. “I know she never liked me.”

“No, no, it isn’t,” he said hastily. “It was for your sake she spoke
this time. She only said, if I was going on, I ought to consider myself
engaged.” There was a silence. “And if I ask you to come down any time,
you won’t stop away, will you?”

She did not answer. By this time she was very angry.

“Well, what shall we do?” she said shortly. “I suppose I’d better drop
French. I was just beginning to get on with it. But I suppose I can go
on alone.”

“I don’t see that we need,” he said. “I can give you a French lesson,
surely.”

“Well—and there are Sunday nights. I shan’t stop coming to chapel,
because I enjoy it, and it’s all the social life I get. But you’ve no
need to come home with me. I can go alone.”

“All right,” he answered, rather taken aback. “But if I ask Edgar,
he’ll always come with us, and then they can say nothing.”

There was silence. After all, then, she would not lose much. For all
their talk down at his home there would not be much difference. She
wished they would mind their own business.

“And you won’t think about it, and let it trouble you, will you?” he
asked.

“Oh no,” replied Miriam, without looking at him.

He was silent. She thought him unstable. He had no fixity of purpose,
no anchor of righteousness that held him.

“Because,” he continued, “a man gets across his bicycle—and goes to
work—and does all sorts of things. But a woman broods.”

“No, I shan’t bother,” said Miriam. And she meant it.

It had gone rather chilly. They went indoors.

“How white Paul looks!” Mrs. Leivers exclaimed. “Miriam, you shouldn’t
have let him sit out of doors. Do you think you’ve taken cold, Paul?”

“Oh, no!” he laughed.

But he felt done up. It wore him out, the conflict in himself. Miriam
pitied him now. But quite early, before nine o’clock, he rose to go.

“You’re not going home, are you?” asked Mrs. Leivers anxiously.

“Yes,” he replied. “I said I’d be early.” He was very awkward.

“But this _is_ early,” said Mrs. Leivers.

Miriam sat in the rocking-chair, and did not speak. He hesitated,
expecting her to rise and go with him to the barn as usual for his
bicycle. She remained as she was. He was at a loss.

“Well—good-night, all!” he faltered.

She spoke her good-night along with all the others. But as he went past
the window he looked in. She saw him pale, his brows knit slightly in a
way that had become constant with him, his eyes dark with pain.

She rose and went to the doorway to wave good-bye to him as he passed
through the gate. He rode slowly under the pine-trees, feeling a cur
and a miserable wretch. His bicycle went tilting down the hills at
random. He thought it would be a relief to break one’s neck.

Two days later he sent her up a book and a little note, urging her to
read and be busy.

At this time he gave all his friendship to Edgar. He loved the family
so much, he loved the farm so much; it was the dearest place on earth
to him. His home was not so lovable. It was his mother. But then he
would have been just as happy with his mother anywhere. Whereas Willey
Farm he loved passionately. He loved the little pokey kitchen, where
men’s boots tramped, and the dog slept with one eye open for fear of
being trodden on; where the lamp hung over the table at night, and
everything was so silent. He loved Miriam’s long, low parlour, with its
atmosphere of romance, its flowers, its books, its high rosewood piano.
He loved the gardens and the buildings that stood with their scarlet
roofs on the naked edges of the fields, crept towards the wood as if
for cosiness, the wild country scooping down a valley and up the
uncultured hills of the other side. Only to be there was an
exhilaration and a joy to him. He loved Mrs. Leivers, with her
unworldliness and her quaint cynicism; he loved Mr. Leivers, so warm
and young and lovable; he loved Edgar, who lit up when he came, and the
boys and the children and Bill—even the sow Circe and the Indian
game-cock called Tippoo. All this besides Miriam. He could not give it
up.

So he went as often, but he was usually with Edgar. Only all the
family, including the father, joined in charades and games at evening.
And later, Miriam drew them together, and they read _Macbeth_ out of
penny books, taking parts. It was great excitement. Miriam was glad,
and Mrs. Leivers was glad, and Mr. Leivers enjoyed it. Then they all
learned songs together from tonic sol-fa, singing in a circle round the
fire. But now Paul was very rarely alone with Miriam. She waited. When
she and Edgar and he walked home together from chapel or from the
literary society in Bestwood, she knew his talk, so passionate and so
unorthodox nowadays, was for her. She did envy Edgar, however, his
cycling with Paul, his Friday nights, his days working in the fields.
For her Friday nights and her French lessons were gone. She was nearly
always alone, walking, pondering in the wood, reading, studying,
dreaming, waiting. And he wrote to her frequently.

One Sunday evening they attained to their old rare harmony. Edgar had
stayed to Communion—he wondered what it was like—with Mrs. Morel. So
Paul came on alone with Miriam to his home. He was more or less under
her spell again. As usual, they were discussing the sermon. He was
setting now full sail towards Agnosticism, but such a religious
Agnosticism that Miriam did not suffer so badly. They were at the Renan
_Vie de Jésus_ stage. Miriam was the threshing-floor on which he
threshed out all his beliefs. While he trampled his ideas upon her
soul, the truth came out for him. She alone was his threshing-floor.
She alone helped him towards realisation. Almost impassive, she
submitted to his argument and expounding. And somehow, because of her,
he gradually realised where he was wrong. And what he realised, she
realised. She felt he could not do without her.

They came to the silent house. He took the key out of the scullery
window, and they entered. All the time he went on with his discussion.
He lit the gas, mended the fire, and brought her some cakes from the
pantry. She sat on the sofa, quietly, with a plate on her knee. She
wore a large white hat with some pinkish flowers. It was a cheap hat,
but he liked it. Her face beneath was still and pensive, golden-brown
and ruddy. Always her ears were hid in her short curls. She watched
him.

She liked him on Sundays. Then he wore a dark suit that showed the
lithe movement of his body. There was a clean, clear-cut look about
him. He went on with his thinking to her. Suddenly he reached for a
Bible. Miriam liked the way he reached up—so sharp, straight to the
mark. He turned the pages quickly, and read her a chapter of St. John.
As he sat in the armchair reading, intent, his voice only thinking, she
felt as if he were using her unconsciously as a man uses his tools at
some work he is bent on. She loved it. And the wistfulness of his voice
was like a reaching to something, and it was as if she were what he
reached with. She sat back on the sofa away from him, and yet feeling
herself the very instrument his hand grasped. It gave her great
pleasure.

Then he began to falter and to get self-conscious. And when he came to
the verse, “A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow because her
hour is come”, he missed it out. Miriam had felt him growing
uncomfortable. She shrank when the well-known words did not follow. He
went on reading, but she did not hear. A grief and shame made her bend
her head. Six months ago he would have read it simply. Now there was a
scotch in his running with her. Now she felt there was really something
hostile between them, something of which they were ashamed.

She ate her cake mechanically. He tried to go on with his argument, but
could not get back the right note. Soon Edgar came in. Mrs. Morel had
gone to her friends’. The three set off to Willey Farm.

Miriam brooded over his split with her. There was something else he
wanted. He could not be satisfied; he could give her no peace. There
was between them now always a ground for strife. She wanted to prove
him. She believed that his chief need in life was herself. If she could
prove it, both to herself and to him, the rest might go; she could
simply trust to the future.

So in May she asked him to come to Willey Farm and meet Mrs. Dawes.
There was something he hankered after. She saw him, whenever they spoke
of Clara Dawes, rouse and get slightly angry. He said he did not like
her. Yet he was keen to know about her. Well, he should put himself to
the test. She believed that there were in him desires for higher
things, and desires for lower, and that the desire for the higher would
conquer. At any rate, he should try. She forgot that her “higher” and
“lower” were arbitrary.

He was rather excited at the idea of meeting Clara at Willey Farm. Mrs.
Dawes came for the day. Her heavy, dun-coloured hair was coiled on top
of her head. She wore a white blouse and navy skirt, and somehow,
wherever she was, seemed to make things look paltry and insignificant.
When she was in the room, the kitchen seemed too small and mean
altogether. Miriam’s beautiful twilighty parlour looked stiff and
stupid. All the Leivers were eclipsed like candles. They found her
rather hard to put up with. Yet she was perfectly amiable, but
indifferent, and rather hard.

Paul did not come till afternoon. He was early. As he swung off his
bicycle, Miriam saw him look round at the house eagerly. He would be
disappointed if the visitor had not come. Miriam went out to meet him,
bowing her head because of the sunshine. Nasturtiums were coming out
crimson under the cool green shadow of their leaves. The girl stood,
dark-haired, glad to see him.

“Hasn’t Clara come?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Miriam in her musical tone. “She’s reading.”

He wheeled his bicycle into the barn. He had put on a handsome tie, of
which he was rather proud, and socks to match.

“She came this morning?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Miriam, as she walked at his side. “You said you’d bring
me that letter from the man at Liberty’s. Have you remembered?”

“Oh, dash, no!” he said. “But nag at me till you get it.”

“I don’t like to nag at you.”

“Do it whether or not. And is she any more agreeable?” he continued.

“You know I always think she is quite agreeable.”

He was silent. Evidently his eagerness to be early to-day had been the
newcomer. Miriam already began to suffer. They went together towards
the house. He took the clips off his trousers, but was too lazy to
brush the dust from his shoes, in spite of the socks and tie.

Clara sat in the cool parlour reading. He saw the nape of her white
neck, and the fine hair lifted from it. She rose, looking at him
indifferently. To shake hands she lifted her arm straight, in a manner
that seemed at once to keep him at a distance, and yet to fling
something to him. He noticed how her breasts swelled inside her blouse,
and how her shoulder curved handsomely under the thin muslin at the top
of her arm.

“You have chosen a fine day,” he said.

“It happens so,” she said.

“Yes,” he said; “I am glad.”

She sat down, not thanking him for his politeness.

“What have you been doing all morning?” asked Paul of Miriam.

“Well, you see,” said Miriam, coughing huskily, “Clara only came with
father—and so—she’s not been here very long.”

Clara sat leaning on the table, holding aloof. He noticed her hands
were large, but well kept. And the skin on them seemed almost coarse,
opaque, and white, with fine golden hairs. She did not mind if he
observed her hands. She intended to scorn him. Her heavy arm lay
negligently on the table. Her mouth was closed as if she were offended,
and she kept her face slightly averted.

“You were at Margaret Bonford’s meeting the other evening,” he said to
her.

Miriam did not know this courteous Paul. Clara glanced at him.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why,” asked Miriam, “how do you know?”

“I went in for a few minutes before the train came,” he answered.

Clara turned away again rather disdainfully.

“I think she’s a lovable little woman,” said Paul.

“Margaret Bonford!” exclaimed Clara. “She’s a great deal cleverer than
most men.”

“Well, I didn’t say she wasn’t,” he said, deprecating. “She’s lovable
for all that.”

“And, of course, that is all that matters,” said Clara witheringly.

He rubbed his head, rather perplexed, rather annoyed.

“I suppose it matters more than her cleverness,” he said; “which, after
all, would never get her to heaven.”

“It’s not heaven she wants to get—it’s her fair share on earth,”
retorted Clara. She spoke as if he were responsible for some
deprivation which Miss Bonford suffered.

“Well,” he said, “I thought she was warm, and awfully nice—only too
frail. I wished she was sitting comfortably in peace—”

“‘Darning her husband’s stockings,’” said Clara scathingly.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind darning even my stockings,” he said. “And
I’m sure she’d do them well. Just as I wouldn’t mind blacking her boots
if she wanted me to.”

But Clara refused to answer this sally of his. He talked to Miriam for
a little while. The other woman held aloof.

“Well,” he said, “I think I’ll go and see Edgar. Is he on the land?”

“I believe,” said Miriam, “he’s gone for a load of coal. He should be
back directly.”

“Then,” he said, “I’ll go and meet him.”

Miriam dared not propose anything for the three of them. He rose and
left them.

On the top road, where the gorse was out, he saw Edgar walking lazily
beside the mare, who nodded her white-starred forehead as she dragged
the clanking load of coal. The young farmer’s face lighted up as he saw
his friend. Edgar was good-looking, with dark, warm eyes. His clothes
were old and rather disreputable, and he walked with considerable
pride.

“Hello!” he said, seeing Paul bareheaded. “Where are you going?”

“Came to meet you. Can’t stand ‘Nevermore.’”

Edgar’s teeth flashed in a laugh of amusement.

“Who is ‘Nevermore’?” he asked.

“The lady—Mrs. Dawes—it ought to be Mrs. The Raven that quothed
‘Nevermore.’”

Edgar laughed with glee.

“Don’t you like her?” he asked.

“Not a fat lot,” said Paul. “Why, do you?”

“No!” The answer came with a deep ring of conviction. “No!” Edgar
pursed up his lips. “I can’t say she’s much in my line.” He mused a
little. Then: “But why do you call her ‘Nevermore’?” he asked.

“Well,” said Paul, “if she looks at a man she says haughtily
‘Nevermore,’ and if she looks at herself in the looking-glass she says
disdainfully ‘Nevermore,’ and if she thinks back she says it in
disgust, and if she looks forward she says it cynically.”

Edgar considered this speech, failed to make much out of it, and said,
laughing:

“You think she’s a man-hater?”

“_She_ thinks she is,” replied Paul.

“But you don’t think so?”

“No,” replied Paul.

“Wasn’t she nice with you, then?”

“Could you imagine her _nice_ with anybody?” asked the young man.

Edgar laughed. Together they unloaded the coal in the yard. Paul was
rather self-conscious, because he knew Clara could see if she looked
out of the window. She didn’t look.

On Saturday afternoons the horses were brushed down and groomed. Paul
and Edgar worked together, sneezing with the dust that came from the
pelts of Jimmy and Flower.

“Do you know a new song to teach me?” said Edgar.

He continued to work all the time. The back of his neck was sun-red
when he bent down, and his fingers that held the brush were thick. Paul
watched him sometimes.

“‘Mary Morrison’?” suggested the younger.

Edgar agreed. He had a good tenor voice, and he loved to learn all the
songs his friend could teach him, so that he could sing whilst he was
carting. Paul had a very indifferent baritone voice, but a good ear.
However, he sang softly, for fear of Clara. Edgar repeated the line in
a clear tenor. At times they both broke off to sneeze, and first one,
then the other, abused his horse.

Miriam was impatient of men. It took so little to amuse them—even Paul.
She thought it anomalous in him that he could be so thoroughly absorbed
in a triviality.

It was tea-time when they had finished.

“What song was that?” asked Miriam.

Edgar told her. The conversation turned to singing.

“We have such jolly times,” Miriam said to Clara.

Mrs. Dawes ate her meal in a slow, dignified way. Whenever the men were
present she grew distant.

“Do you like singing?” Miriam asked her.

“If it is good,” she said.

Paul, of course, coloured.

“You mean if it is high-class and trained?” he said.

“I think a voice needs training before the singing is anything,” she
said.

“You might as well insist on having people’s voices trained before you
allowed them to talk,” he replied. “Really, people sing for their own
pleasure, as a rule.”

“And it may be for other people’s discomfort.”

“Then the other people should have flaps to their ears,” he replied.

The boys laughed. There was a silence. He flushed deeply, and ate in
silence.

After tea, when all the men had gone but Paul, Mrs. Leivers said to
Clara:

“And you find life happier now?”

“Infinitely.”

“And you are satisfied?”

“So long as I can be free and independent.”

“And you don’t _miss_ anything in your life?” asked Mrs. Leivers
gently.

“I’ve put all that behind me.”

Paul had been feeling uncomfortable during this discourse. He got up.

“You’ll find you’re always tumbling over the things you’ve put behind
you,” he said. Then he took his departure to the cowsheds. He felt he
had been witty, and his manly pride was high. He whistled as he went
down the brick track.

Miriam came for him a little later to know if he would go with Clara
and her for a walk. They set off down to Strelley Mill Farm. As they
were going beside the brook, on the Willey Water side, looking through
the brake at the edge of the wood, where pink campions glowed under a
few sunbeams, they saw, beyond the tree-trunks and the thin hazel
bushes, a man leading a great bay horse through the gullies. The big
red beast seemed to dance romantically through that dimness of green
hazel drift, away there where the air was shadowy, as if it were in the
past, among the fading bluebells that might have bloomed for Deidre or
Iseult.

The three stood charmed.

“What a treat to be a knight,” he said, “and to have a pavilion here.”

“And to have us shut up safely?” replied Clara.

“Yes,” he answered, “singing with your maids at your broidery. I would
carry your banner of white and green and heliotrope. I would have
‘W.S.P.U.’ emblazoned on my shield, beneath a woman rampant.”

“I have no doubt,” said Clara, “that you would much rather fight for a
woman than let her fight for herself.”

“I would. When she fights for herself she seems like a dog before a
looking-glass, gone into a mad fury with its own shadow.”

“And _you_ are the looking-glass?” she asked, with a curl of the lip.

“Or the shadow,” he replied.

“I am afraid,” she said, “that you are too clever.”

“Well, I leave it to you to be _good_,” he retorted, laughing. “Be
good, sweet maid, and just let _me_ be clever.”

But Clara wearied of his flippancy. Suddenly, looking at her, he saw
that the upward lifting of her face was misery and not scorn. His heart
grew tender for everybody. He turned and was gentle with Miriam, whom
he had neglected till then.

At the wood’s edge they met Limb, a thin, swarthy man of forty, tenant
of Strelley Mill, which he ran as a cattle-raising farm. He held the
halter of the powerful stallion indifferently, as if he were tired. The
three stood to let him pass over the stepping-stones of the first
brook. Paul admired that so large an animal should walk on such springy
toes, with an endless excess of vigour. Limb pulled up before them.

“Tell your father, Miss Leivers,” he said, in a peculiar piping voice,
“that his young beas’es ’as broke that bottom fence three days an’
runnin’.”

“Which?” asked Miriam, tremulous.

The great horse breathed heavily, shifting round its red flanks, and
looking suspiciously with its wonderful big eyes upwards from under its
lowered head and falling mane.

“Come along a bit,” replied Limb, “an’ I’ll show you.”

The man and the stallion went forward. It danced sideways, shaking its
white fetlocks and looking frightened, as it felt itself in the brook.

“No hanky-pankyin’,” said the man affectionately to the beast.

It went up the bank in little leaps, then splashed finely through the
second brook. Clara, walking with a kind of sulky abandon, watched it
half-fascinated, half-contemptuous. Limb stopped and pointed to the
fence under some willows.

“There, you see where they got through,” he said. “My man’s druv ’em
back three times.”

“Yes,” answered Miriam, colouring as if she were at fault.

“Are you comin’ in?” asked the man.

“No, thanks; but we should like to go by the pond.”

“Well, just as you’ve a mind,” he said.

The horse gave little whinneys of pleasure at being so near home.

“He is glad to be back,” said Clara, who was interested in the
creature.

“Yes—’e’s been a tidy step to-day.”

They went through the gate, and saw approaching them from the big
farmhouse a smallish, dark, excitable-looking woman of about
thirty-five. Her hair was touched with grey, her dark eyes looked wild.
She walked with her hands behind her back. Her brother went forward. As
it saw her, the big bay stallion whinneyed again. She came up
excitedly.

“Are you home again, my boy!” she said tenderly to the horse, not to
the man. The great beast shifted round to her, ducking his head. She
smuggled into his mouth the wrinkled yellow apple she had been hiding
behind her back, then she kissed him near the eyes. He gave a big sigh
of pleasure. She held his head in her arms against her breast.

“Isn’t he splendid!” said Miriam to her.

Miss Limb looked up. Her dark eyes glanced straight at Paul.

“Oh, good-evening, Miss Leivers,” she said. “It’s ages since you’ve
been down.”

Miriam introduced her friends.

“Your horse _is_ a fine fellow!” said Clara.

“Isn’t he!” Again she kissed him. “As loving as any man!”

“More loving than most men, I should think,” replied Clara.

“He’s a nice boy!” cried the woman, again embracing the horse.

Clara, fascinated by the big beast, went up to stroke his neck.

“He’s quite gentle,” said Miss Limb. “Don’t you think big fellows are?”

“He’s a beauty!” replied Clara.

She wanted to look in his eyes. She wanted him to look at her.

“It’s a pity he can’t talk,” she said.

“Oh, but he can—all but,” replied the other woman.

Then her brother moved on with the horse.

“Are you coming in? _Do_ come in, Mr.—I didn’t catch it.”

“Morel,” said Miriam. “No, we won’t come in, but we should like to go
by the mill-pond.”

“Yes—yes, do. Do you fish, Mr. Morel?”

“No,” said Paul.

“Because if you do you might come and fish any time,” said Miss Limb.
“We scarcely see a soul from week’s end to week’s end. I should be
thankful.”

“What fish are there in the pond?” he asked.

They went through the front garden, over the sluice, and up the steep
bank to the pond, which lay in shadow, with its two wooded islets. Paul
walked with Miss Limb.

“I shouldn’t mind swimming here,” he said.

“Do,” she replied. “Come when you like. My brother will be awfully
pleased to talk with you. He is so quiet, because there is no one to
talk to. Do come and swim.”

Clara came up.

“It’s a fine depth,” she said, “and so clear.”

“Yes,” said Miss Limb.

“Do you swim?” said Paul. “Miss Limb was just saying we could come when
we liked.”

“Of course there’s the farm-hands,” said Miss Limb.

They talked a few moments, then went on up the wild hill, leaving the
lonely, haggard-eyed woman on the bank.

The hillside was all ripe with sunshine. It was wild and tussocky,
given over to rabbits. The three walked in silence. Then:

“She makes me feel uncomfortable,” said Paul.

“You mean Miss Limb?” asked Miriam. “Yes.”

“What’s a matter with her? Is she going dotty with being too lonely?”

“Yes,” said Miriam. “It’s not the right sort of life for her. I think
it’s cruel to bury her there. _I_ really ought to go and see her more.
But—she upsets me.”

“She makes me feel sorry for her—yes, and she bothers me,” he said.

“I suppose,” blurted Clara suddenly, “she wants a man.”

The other two were silent for a few moments.

“But it’s the loneliness sends her cracked,” said Paul.

Clara did not answer, but strode on uphill. She was walking with her
hand hanging, her legs swinging as she kicked through the dead thistles
and the tussocky grass, her arms hanging loose. Rather than walking,
her handsome body seemed to be blundering up the hill. A hot wave went
over Paul. He was curious about her. Perhaps life had been cruel to
her. He forgot Miriam, who was walking beside him talking to him. She
glanced at him, finding he did not answer her. His eyes were fixed
ahead on Clara.

“Do you still think she is disagreeable?” she asked.

He did not notice that the question was sudden. It ran with his
thoughts.

“Something’s the matter with her,” he said.

“Yes,” answered Miriam.

They found at the top of the hill a hidden wild field, two sides of
which were backed by the wood, the other sides by high loose hedges of
hawthorn and elder bushes. Between these overgrown bushes were gaps
that the cattle might have walked through had there been any cattle
now. There the turf was smooth as velveteen, padded and holed by the
rabbits. The field itself was coarse, and crowded with tall, big
cowslips that had never been cut. Clusters of strong flowers rose
everywhere above the coarse tussocks of bent. It was like a roadstead
crowded with tan, fairy shipping.

“Ah!” cried Miriam, and she looked at Paul, her dark eyes dilating. He
smiled. Together they enjoyed the field of flowers. Clara, a little way
off, was looking at the cowslips disconsolately. Paul and Miriam stayed
close together, talking in subdued tones. He kneeled on one knee,
quickly gathering the best blossoms, moving from tuft to tuft
restlessly, talking softly all the time. Miriam plucked the flowers
lovingly, lingering over them. He always seemed to her too quick and
almost scientific. Yet his bunches had a natural beauty more than hers.
He loved them, but as if they were his and he had a right to them. She
had more reverence for them: they held something she had not.

The flowers were very fresh and sweet. He wanted to drink them. As he
gathered them, he ate the little yellow trumpets. Clara was still
wandering about disconsolately. Going towards her, he said:

“Why don’t you get some?”

“I don’t believe in it. They look better growing.”

“But you’d like some?”

“They want to be left.”

“I don’t believe they do.”

“I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me,” she said.

“That’s a stiff, artificial notion,” he said. “They don’t die any
quicker in water than on their roots. And besides, they _look_ nice in
a bowl—they look jolly. And you only call a thing a corpse because it
looks corpse-like.”

“Whether it is one or not?” she argued.

“It isn’t one to me. A dead flower isn’t a corpse of a flower.”

Clara now ignored him.

“And even so—what right have you to pull them?” she asked.

“Because I like them, and want them—and there’s plenty of them.”

“And that is sufficient?”

“Yes. Why not? I’m sure they’d smell nice in your room in Nottingham.”

“And I should have the pleasure of watching them die.”

“But then—it does not matter if they do die.”

Whereupon he left her, and went stooping over the clumps of tangled
flowers which thickly sprinkled the field like pale, luminous
foam-clots. Miriam had come close. Clara was kneeling, breathing some
scent from the cowslips.

“I think,” said Miriam, “if you treat them with reverence you don’t do
them any harm. It is the spirit you pluck them in that matters.”

“Yes,” he said. “But no, you get ’em because you want ’em, and that’s
all.” He held out his bunch.

Miriam was silent. He picked some more.

“Look at these!” he continued; “sturdy and lusty like little trees and
like boys with fat legs.”

Clara’s hat lay on the grass not far off. She was kneeling, bending
forward still to smell the flowers. Her neck gave him a sharp pang,
such a beautiful thing, yet not proud of itself just now. Her breasts
swung slightly in her blouse. The arching curve of her back was
beautiful and strong; she wore no stays. Suddenly, without knowing, he
was scattering a handful of cowslips over her hair and neck, saying:

     “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
     If the Lord won’t have you the devil must.”

The chill flowers fell on her neck. She looked up at him, with almost
pitiful, scared grey eyes, wondering what he was doing. Flowers fell on
her face, and she shut her eyes.

Suddenly, standing there above her, he felt awkward.

“I thought you wanted a funeral,” he said, ill at ease.

Clara laughed strangely, and rose, picking the cowslips from her hair.
She took up her hat and pinned it on. One flower had remained tangled
in her hair. He saw, but would not tell her. He gathered up the flowers
he had sprinkled over her.

At the edge of the wood the bluebells had flowed over into the field
and stood there like flood-water. But they were fading now. Clara
strayed up to them. He wandered after her. The bluebells pleased him.

“Look how they’ve come out of the wood!” he said.

Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of gratitude.

“Yes,” she smiled.

His blood beat up.

“It makes me think of the wild men of the woods, how terrified they
would be when they got breast to breast with the open space.”

“Do you think they were?” she asked.

“I wonder which was more frightened among old tribes—those bursting out
of their darkness of woods upon all the space of light, or those from
the open tiptoeing into the forests.”

“I should think the second,” she answered.

“Yes, you _do_ feel like one of the open space sort, trying to force
yourself into the dark, don’t you?”

“How should I know?” she answered queerly.

The conversation ended there.

The evening was deepening over the earth. Already the valley was full
of shadow. One tiny square of light stood opposite at Crossleigh Bank
Farm. Brightness was swimming on the tops of the hills. Miriam came up
slowly, her face in her big, loose bunch of flowers, walking ankle-deep
through the scattered froth of the cowslips. Beyond her the trees were
coming into shape, all shadow.

“Shall we go?” she asked.

And the three turned away. They were all silent. Going down the path
they could see the light of home right across, and on the ridge of the
hill a thin dark outline with little lights, where the colliery village
touched the sky.

“It has been nice, hasn’t it?” he asked.

Miriam murmured assent. Clara was silent.

“Don’t you think so?” he persisted.

But she walked with her head up, and still did not answer. He could
tell by the way she moved, as if she didn’t care, that she suffered.

At this time Paul took his mother to Lincoln. She was bright and
enthusiastic as ever, but as he sat opposite her in the railway
carriage, she seemed to look frail. He had a momentary sensation as if
she were slipping away from him. Then he wanted to get hold of her, to
fasten her, almost to chain her. He felt he must keep hold of her with
his hand.

They drew near to the city. Both were at the window looking for the
cathedral.

“There she is, mother!” he cried.

They saw the great cathedral lying couchant above the plain.

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “So she is!”

He looked at his mother. Her blue eyes were watching the cathedral
quietly. She seemed again to be beyond him. Something in the eternal
repose of the uplifted cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was
reflected in her, something of the fatality. What was, _was_. With all
his young will he could not alter it. He saw her face, the skin still
fresh and pink and downy, but crow’s-feet near her eyes, her eyelids
steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with disillusion; and
there was on her the same eternal look, as if she knew fate at last. He
beat against it with all the strength of his soul.

“Look, mother, how big she is above the town! Think, there are streets
and streets below her! She looks bigger than the city altogether.”

“So she does!” exclaimed his mother, breaking bright into life again.
But he had seen her sitting, looking steady out of the window at the
cathedral, her face and eyes fixed, reflecting the relentlessness of
life. And the crow’s-feet near her eyes, and her mouth shut so hard,
made him feel he would go mad.

They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant.

“Don’t imagine I like it,” she said, as she ate her cutlet. “I _don’t_
like it, I really don’t! Just _think_ of your money wasted!”