Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (36 page)

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. “Goodnight, 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 eveille,’ ”he read. “‘Il faisait encore un crepuscule. Mais la petite fenetre de ma chambre etait bleme, et puis, jaûne, et tous les oiseaux du bois eclaterent dans un chanson vif et résonnant. Toute l’aûbe tressaillit. J‘avais reve 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
—’”
¹⁰

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.”
¹¹
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.

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

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

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.”
¹⁴

“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 t’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.