Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (24 page)

“Now
wouldn’t
I help that man!” she said.
“Wouldn’t
I see to the fowls and the young stock! And
I’d
learn to milk, and
I’d
talk with him, and
I’d
plan with him. My word, if I were his wife, the farm would be run, I know! But there, she hasn’t the strength—she simply hasn’t the strength. She ought never to have been burdened like it, you know. I’m sorry for her, and I’m sorry for him too. My word, if
I’d
had him, I shouldn’t have thought him a bad husband! Not that she does either; and she’s very lovable.”

William came home again with his sweetheart at the Whitsuntide.
²
He had one week of his holidays then. It was beautiful weather. As a rule, William and Lily and Paul went out in the morning together for a walk. William did not talk to his beloved much, except to tell her things from his boyhood. Paul talked endlessly to both of them. They lay down, all three, in a meadow by Minton Church. On one side, by the Castle Farm, was a beautiful quivering screen of poplars. Hawthorn was dropping from the hedges; penny daisies and ragged robin were in the field, like laughter. William, a big fellow of twenty-three, thinner now and even a bit gaunt, lay back in the sunshine and dreamed, while she fingered with his hair. Paul went gathering the big daisies. She had taken off her hat; her hair was black as a horse’s mane. Paul came back and threaded daisies in her jet-black hair—big spangles of white and yellow, and just a pink touch of ragged robin.

“Now you look like a young witch-woman,” the boy said to her. “Doesn’t she, William?”

Lily laughed. William opened his eyes and looked at her. In his gaze was a certain baffled look of misery and fierce appreciation.

“Has he made a sight of me?” she asked, laughing down on her lover.

“That he has!” said William, smiling.

He looked at her. Her beauty seemed to hurt him. He glanced at her flower-decked head and frowned.

“You look nice enough, if that’s what you want to know,” he said.

And she walked without her hat. In a little while William recovered, and was rather tender to her. Coming to a bridge, he carved her initials and his in a heart.

L. L. W.
W.M.

She watched his strong, nervous hand, with its glistening hairs and freckles, as he carved, and she seemed fascinated by it.

All the time there was a feeling of sadness and warmth, and a certain tenderness in the house, whilst William and Lily were at home. But often he got irritable. She had brought, for an eight-days’ stay, five dresses and six blouses.

“Oh, would you mind,” she said to Annie, “washing me these two blouses, and these things?”

And Annie stood washing when William and Lily went out the next morning. Mrs. Morel was furious. And sometimes the young man, catching a glimpse of his sweetheart’s attitude towards his sister, hated her.

On Sunday morning she looked very beautiful in a dress of foulard,
^cv
silky and sweeping, and blue as a jaybird’s feather, and in a large cream hat covered with many roses, mostly crimson. Nobody could admire her enough. But in the evening, when she was going out, she asked again:

“Chubby, have you got my gloves?”

“Which?” asked William.

“My new black
suede
.”

“No.”

There was a hunt. She had lost them.

“Look here, mother,” said William, “that’s the fourth pair she’s lost since Christmas—at five shillings a pair!”

“You only gave me
two
of them,” she remonstrated.

And in the evening, after supper, he stood on the hearth-rug whilst she sat on the sofa, and he seemed to hate her. In the afternoon he had left her whilst he went to see some old friend. She had sat looking at a book. After supper William wanted to write a letter.

“Here is your book, Lily,” said Mrs. Morel. “Would you care to go on with it for a few minutes?”

“No, thank you,” said the girl. “I will sit still.”

“But it is so dull.”

William scribbled irritably at a great rate. As he sealed the envelope he said:

“Read a book! Why, she’s never read a book in her life.”

“Oh, go along!” said Mrs. Morel, cross with the exaggeration.

“It’s true, mother—she hasn’t,” he cried, jumping up and taking his old position on the hearth-rug. “She’s never read a book in her life.”

“‘Er’s like me,” chimed in Morel. “’Er canna see what there is i’ books, ter sit borin’ your nose in ’em for, nor more can I.”

“But you shouldn’t say these things,” said Mrs. Morel to her son.

“But it’s true, mother—she
can’t
read. What did you give her?”

“Well, I gave her a little thing of Annie Swan’s.
³
Nobody wants to read dry stuff on Sunday afternoon.”

“Well, I’ll bet she didn’t read ten lines of it.”

“You are mistaken,” said his mother.

All the time Lily sat miserably on the sofa. He turned to her swiftly.

“Did you read any?” he asked.

“Yes, I did,” she replied.

“How much?”

“I don’t know how many pages.”

“Tell me
one thing
you read.”

She could not.

She never got beyond the second page. He read a great deal, and had a quick, active intelligence. She could understand nothing but love-making and chatter. He was accustomed to having all his thoughts sifted through his mother’s mind; so, when he wanted companionship, and was asked in reply to be the billing and twittering lover, he hated his betrothed.

“You know, mother,” he said, when he was alone with her at night, “she’s no idea of money, she’s so wessel-brained. When she’s paid, she’ll suddenly buy such rot as
marrons glacés
,
^cw
and then
I
have to buy her her season ticket, and her extras, even her underclothing. And she wants to get married, and I think myself we might as well get married next year. But at this rate—”

“A fine mess of a marriage it would be,” replied his mother. “I should consider it again, my boy.”

“Oh, well, I’ve gone too far to break off now,” he said, “and so I shall get married as soon as I can.”

“Very well, my boy. If you will, you will, and there’s no stopping you; but I tell you,
I
can’t sleep when I think about it.”

“Oh, she’ll be all right, mother. We shall manage.”

“And she lets you buy her underclothing?” asked the mother.

“Well,” he began apologetically, “she didn’t ask me; but one morning—and it
was
cold—I found her on the station shivering, not able to keep still; so I asked her if she was well wrapped up. She said: ‘I think so.’ So I said: ‘Have you got warm underthings on?’ And she said: ‘No, they were cotton.’ I asked her why on earth she hadn’t got something thicker on in weather like that, and she said because she
had
nothing. And there she is—a bronchial subject! I
had
to take her and get some warm things. Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind the money if we had any. And, you know, she
ought
to keep enough to pay for her season-ticket; but no, she comes to me about that, and I have to find the money.”

“It’s a poor lookout,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly.

He was pale, and his rugged face, that used to be so perfectly careless and laughing, was stamped with conflict and despair.

“But I can’t give her up now; it’s gone too far,” he said. “And besides, for
some
things I couldn’t do without her.”

“My boy, remember you’re taking your life in your hands,” said Mrs. Morel. “
Nothing
is as bad as a marriage that’s a hopeless failure. Mine was bad enough, God knows, and ought to teach you something ; but it might have been worse by a long chalk.”

He leaned with his back against the side of the chimney-piece, his hands in his pockets. He was a big, raw-boned man, who looked as if he would go to the world’s end if he wanted to. But she saw the despair on his face.

“I couldn’t give her up
now,”
he said.

“Well,” she said, “remember there are worse things than breaking off an engagement.”

“I can’t give her up
now
,” he said.

The clock ticked on; mother and son remained in silence, a conflict between them; but he would say no more. At last she said:

“Well, go to bed, my son. You’ll feel better in the morning, and perhaps you’ll know better.”

He kissed her, and went. She raked the fire. Her heart was heavy now as it had never been. Before, with her husband, things had seemed to be breaking down in her, but they did not destroy her power to live. Now her soul felt lamed in itself. It was her hope that was struck.

And so often William manifested the same hatred towards his betrothed. On the last evening at home he was railing against her.

“Well,” he said, “if you don’t believe me, what she’s like, would you believe she has been confirmed three times?”

“Nonsense!” laughed Mrs. Morel.

“Nonsense or not, she
has
! That’s what confirmation means for her—a bit of a theatrical show where she can cut a figure.”

“I haven‘t, Mrs. Morel!” cried the girl—“I haven’t! it is not true!”

“What!” he cried, flashing round on her. “Once in Bromley, once in Beckenham, and once somewhere else.”

“Nowhere else!” she said, in tears—“nowhere else!”

“It
was
! And if it wasn’t why were you confirmed
twice
?”

“Once I was only fourteen, Mrs. Morel,” she pleaded, tears in her eyes.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel; “I can quite understand it, child. Take no notice of him. You ought to be ashamed, William, saying such things.”

“But it’s true. She’s religious—she had blue velvet Prayer-Books—and she’s not as much religion, or anything else, in her than that table-leg. Gets confirmed three times for show, to show herself off, and that’s how she is in
everything
—
everything
!”

The girl sat on the sofa, crying. She was not strong.

“As for
love
!” he cried, “you might as well ask a fly to love you! It’ll love settling on you—”

“Now, say no more,” commanded Mrs. Morel. “If you want to say these things, you must find another place than this. I am ashamed of you, William! Why don’t you be more manly. To do nothing but find fault with a girl, and then pretend you’re engaged to her!”

Mrs. Morel subsided in wrath and indignation.

William was silent, and later he repented, kissed and comforted the girl. Yet it was true, what he had said. He hated her.

When they were going away, Mrs. Morel accompanied them as far as Nottingham. It was a long way to Keston station.

“You know, mother,” he said to her, “Gyp’s shallow. Nothing goes deep with her.”

“William, I
wish
you wouldn’t say these things,” said Mrs. Morel, very uncomfortable for the girl who walked beside her.

“But it doesn’t, mother. She’s very much in love with me now, but if I died she’d have forgotten me in three months.”

Mrs. Morel was afraid. Her heart beat furiously, hearing the quiet bitterness of her son’s last speech.

“How do you know?” she replied. “You
don’t
know, and therefore you’ve no right to say such a thing.”

“He’s always saying these things!” cried the girl.

“In three months after I was buried you’d have somebody else, and I should be forgotten,” he said. “And that’s your love!”

Mrs. Morel saw them into the train in Nottingham, then she returned home.

“There’s one comfort,” she said to Paul—“he’ll never have any money to marry on, that I
am
sure of. And so she’ll save him that way.

So she took cheer. Matters were not yet very desperate. She firmly believed William would never marry his Gipsy. She waited, and she kept Paul near to her.

All summer long William’s letters had a feverish tone; he seemed unnatural and intense. Sometimes he was exaggeratedly jolly, usually he was flat and bitter in his letter.

“Ah,” his mother said, “I’m afraid he’s ruining himself against that creature, who isn’t worthy of his love—no, no more than a rag doll.”

He wanted to come home. The midsummer holiday was gone; it was a long while to Christmas. He wrote in wild excitement, saying he could come for Saturday and Sunday at Goose Fair, the first week in October.
⁴

“You are not well, my boy,” said his mother, when she saw him.

She was almost in tears at having him to herself again.

“No, I’ve not been well,” he said. “I’ve seemed to have a dragging cold all the last month, but it’s going, I think.”

It was sunny October weather. He seemed wild with joy, like a schoolboy escaped; then again he was silent and reserved. He was more gaunt than ever, and there was a haggard look in his eyes.

“You are doing too much,” said his mother to him.

He was doing extra work, trying to make some money to marry on, he said. He only talked to his mother once on the Saturday night; then he was sad and tender about his beloved.

“And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she’d be broken-hearted for two months, and then she’d start to forget me. You’d see, she’d never come home here to look at my grave, not even once.”

“Why, William,” said his mother, “you’re not going to die, so why talk about it?”

“But whether or not—” he replied.

“And she can’t help it. She is like that, and if you choose her—well, you can’t grumble,” said his mother.

On the Sunday morning, as he was putting his collar on:

“Look,” he said to his mother, holding up his chin, “what a rash my collar’s made under my chin!”

Just at the junction of chin and throat was a big red inflammation.

“It ought not to do that,” said his mother. “Here, put a bit of this soothing ointment on. You should wear different collars.”