Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (52 page)

She toiled to his side. Arriving there, she looked at him heavily, dumbly, and laid her head on his shoulder. He held her fast as he looked round. They were safe enough from all but the small, lonely cows over the river. He sunk his mouth on her throat, where he felt her heavy pulse beat under his lips. Everything was perfectly still. There was nothing in the afternoon but themselves.

When she arose, he, looking on the ground all the time, saw suddenly sprinkled on the black wet beech-roots many scarlet carnation petals, like splashed drops of blood; and red, small splashes fell from her bosom, streaming down her dress to her feet.

“Your flowers are smashed,” he said.

She looked at him heavily as she put back her hair. Suddenly he put his finger-tips on her cheek.

“Why dost look so heavy?” he reproached her.

She smiled sadly, as if she felt alone in herself. He caressed her cheek with his fingers, and kissed her.

“Nay!” he said. “Never thee bother!”

She gripped his fingers tight, and laughed shakily. Then she dropped her hand. He put the hair back from her brows, stroking her temples, kissing them lightly.

“But tha shouldna worrit!” he said softly, pleading.

“No, I don’t worry!” she laughed tenderly and resigned.

“Yea, tha does! Dunna thee worrit,” he implored, caressing.

“No!” she consoled him, kissing him.

They had a stiff climb to get to the top again. It took them a quarter of an hour. When he got on to the level grass, he threw off his cap, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and sighed.

“Now we’re back at the ordinary level,” he said.

She sat down, panting, on the tussocky grass. Her cheeks were flushed pink. He kissed her, and she gave way to joy.

“And now I’ll clean thy boots and make thee fit for respectable folk,” he said.

He kneeled at her feet, worked away with a stick and tufts of grass. She put her fingers in his hair, drew his head to her, and kissed it.

“What am I supposed to be doing,” he said, looking at her laughing ; “cleaning shoes or dibbling with love? Answer me that!”

“Just whichever I please,” she replied.

“I’m your boot-boy for the time being, and nothing else!” But they remained looking into each other’s eyes and laughing. Then they kissed with little nibbling kisses.

“T-t-t-t!” he went with his tongue, like his mother. “I tell you, nothing gets done when there’s a woman about.”

And he returned to his boot-cleaning, singing softly. She touched his thick hair, and he kissed her fingers. He worked away at her shoes. At last they were quite presentable.

“There you are, you see!” he said. “Aren’t I a great hand at restoring you to respectability? Stand up! There, you look as irreproachable as Britannia
^fi
herself!”

He cleaned his own boots a little, washed his hands in a puddle, and sang. They went on into Clifton village. He was madly in love with her; every movement she made, every crease in her garments, sent a hot flash through him and seemed adorable.

The old lady at whose house they had tea was roused into gaiety by them.

“I could wish you’d had something of a better day,” she said, hovering round.

“Nay!” he laughed. “We’ve been saying how nice it is.”

The old lady looked at him curiously. There was a peculiar glow and charm about him. His eyes were dark and laughing. He rubbed his moustache with a glad movement.

“Have you been saying
so
!” she exclaimed, a light rousing in her old eyes.

“Truly!” he laughed.

“Then I’m sure the day’s good enough,” said the old lady.

She fussed about, and did not want to leave them.

“I don’t know whether you’d like some radishes as well,” she said to Clara; “but I’ve got some in the garden—
and
a cucumber.”

Clara flushed. She looked very handsome.

“I should like some radishes,” she answered.

And the old lady pottered off gleefully.

“If she knew!” said Clara quietly to him.

“Well, she doesn’t know; and it shows we’re nice in ourselves, at any rate. You look quite enough to satisfy an archangel, and I’m sure I feel harmless—so—if it makes you look nice, and makes folk happy when they have us, and makes us happy—why, we’re not cheating them out of much!”

They went on with the meal. When they were going away, the old lady came timidly with three tiny dahlias in full blow, neat as bees, and speckled scarlet and white. She stood before Clara, pleased with herself, saying:

“I don’t know whether—” and holding the flowers forward in her old hand.

“Oh, how pretty!” cried Clara, accepting the flowers.

“Shall she have them all?” asked Paul reproachfully of the old woman.

“Yes, she shall have them all,” she replied, beaming with joy. “You have got enough for your share.”

“Ah, but I shall ask her to give me one!” he teased.

“Then she does as she pleases,” said the old lady, smiling. And she bobbed a little curtsey of delight.

Clara was rather quiet and uncomfortable. As they walked along, he said:

“You don’t feel criminal, do you?”

She looked at him with startled grey eyes.

“Criminal!” she said. “No.”

“But you seem to feel you have done a wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I only think ‘If they knew!’ ”

“If they knew, they’d cease to understand. As it is, they do understand, and they like it. What do they matter? Here, with only the trees and me, you don’t feel not the least bit wrong, do you?”

He took her by the arm, held her facing him, holding her eyes with his. Something fretted him.

“Not sinners, are we?” he said, with an uneasy little frown.

“No,” she replied.

He kissed her, laughing.

“You like your little bit of guiltiness, I believe,” he said. “I believe Eve enjoyed it, when she went cowering out of Paradise.”
²

But there was a certain glow and quietness about her that made him glad. When he was alone in the railway-carriage, he found himself tumultuously happy, and the people exceedingly nice, and the night lovely, and everything good.

Mrs. Morel was sitting reading when he got home. Her health was not good now, and there had come that ivory pallor into her face which he never noticed, and which afterwards he never forgot. She did not mention her own ill-health to him. After all, she thought, it was not much.

“You are late!” she said, looking at him.

His eyes were shining; his face seemed to glow. He smiled to her.

“Yes; I’ve been down Clifton Grove with Clara.”

His mother looked at him again.

“But won’t people talk?” she said.

“Why? They know she’s a suffragette, and so on. And what if they do talk!”

“Of course, there may be nothing wrong in it,” said his mother.

“But you know what folks are, and if once she gets talked about—”

“Well, I can’t help it. Their jaw isn’t so almighty important, after all.”

“I think you ought to consider
her
.”

“So I
do
! What can people say?—that we take a walk together. I believe you’re jealous.”

“You know I should be glad if she weren’t a married woman.”

“Well, my dear, she lives separate from her husband, and talks on platforms; so she’s already singled out from the sheep, and, as far as I can see, hasn’t much to lose. No; her life’s nothing to her, so what’s the worth of nothing? She goes with me—it becomes something. Then she must pay—we both must pay! Folk are so frightened of paying; they’d rather starve and die.”

“Very well, my son. We’ll see how it will end.”

“Very well, my mother. I’ll abide by the end.”

“We’ll see!”

“And she’s—she’s
awfully
nice mother; she is really! You don’t know!”

“That’s not the same as marrying her.”

“It’s perhaps better.”

There was silence for a while. He wanted to ask his mother something, but was afraid.

“Should you like to know her?” he hesitated.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel coolly. “I should like to know what she’s like.”

“But she’s nice, mother, she is! And not a bit common!”

“I never suggested she was.”

“But you seem to think she’s—not as good as—She’s better than ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She’s
better
, she is! She’s fair, she’s honest, she’s straight! There isn’t anything underhand or superior about her. Don’t be mean about her!”

Mrs. Morel flushed.

“I am sure I am not mean about her. She may be quite as you say, but—”

“You don’t approve,” he finished.

“And do you expect me to?” she answered coldly.

“Yes!—yes!—if you’d anything about you, you’d be glad! Do you
want
to see her?”

“I said I did.”

“Then I’ll bring her—shall I bring her here?”

“You please yourself.”

“Then I
will
bring her here—one Sunday—to tea. If you think a horrid thing about her, I shan’t forgive you.”

His mother laughed.

“As if it would make any difference!” she said. He knew he had won.

“Oh, but it feels so fine, when she’s there! She’s such a queen in her way.”

Occasionally he still walked a little way from chapel with Miriam and Edgar. He did not go up to the farm. She, however, was very much the same with him, and he did not feel embarrassed in her presence. One evening she was alone when he accompanied her. They began by talking books: it was their unfailing topic. Mrs. Morel had said that his and Miriam’s affair was like a fire fed on books—if there were no more volumes it would die out. Miriam, for her part, boasted that she could read him like a book, could place her finger any minute on the chapter and the line. He, easily taken in, believed that Miriam knew more about him than anyone else. So it pleased him to talk to her about himself, like the simplest egoist. Very soon the conversation drifted to his own doings. It flattered him immensely that he was of such supreme interest.

“And what have you been doing lately?”

“I—oh, not much! I made a sketch of Bestwood from the garden, that is nearly right at last. It’s the hundredth try.”

So they went on. Then she said:

“You’ve not been out, then, lately?”

“Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with Clara.”

“It was not very nice weather,” said Miriam, “was it?”

“But I wanted to go out, and it was all right. The Trent is full.”

“And did you go to Barton?” she asked.

“No; we had tea in Clifton.”

“
Did
you! That would be nice.”

“It was! The jolliest old woman! She gave us several pompom dahlias, as pretty as you like.”

Miriam bowed her head and brooded. He was quite unconscious of concealing anything from her.

“What made her give them you?” she asked.

He laughed.

“Because she liked us—because we were jolly, I should think.”

Miriam put her finger in her mouth.

“Were you late home?” she asked.

At last he resented her tone.

“I caught the seven-thirty.”

“Ha!”

They walked on in silence, and he was angry.

“And how
is
Clara?” asked Miriam.

“Quite all right, I think.”

“That’s good!” she said, with a tinge of irony. “By the way, what of her husband? One never hears anything of him.”

“He’s got some other woman, and is also quite all right,” he replied. “At least, so I think.”

“I see—you don’t know for certain. Don’t you think a position like that is hard on a woman?”

“Rottenly hard!”

“It’s so unjust!” said Miriam. “The man does as he likes—”

“Then let the woman also,” he said.

“How can she? And if she does, look at her position!”

“What of it?”

“Why, it’s impossible! You don’t understand what a woman forfeits—”

“No, I don’t. But if a woman’s got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it’s thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!”

So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she knew he would act accordingly.

She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know enough.

Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned to marriage, then to Clara’s marriage with Dawes.

“You see,” he said, “she never knew the fearful importance of marriage. She thought it was all in the day’s march—it would have to come—and Dawes—well, a good many women would have given their souls to get him; so why not him? Then she developed into the
femme incomprise
,
^fj
and treated him badly, I’ll bet my boots.”

“And she left him because he didn’t understand her?”

“I suppose so. I suppose she had to. It isn’t altogether a question of understanding; it’s a question of living. With him, she was only half-alive; the rest was dormant, deadened. And the dormant woman was the
femme
incomprise, and she
had
to be awakened.”

“And what about him.”

“I don’t know. I rather think he loves her as much as he can, but he’s a fool.”

“It was something like your mother and father,” said Miriam.

“Yes; but my mother, I believe, got real joy and satisfaction out of my father at first. I believe she had a passion for him; that’s why she stayed with him. After all, they were bound to each other.”

“Yes,” said Miriam.

“That’s what one
must have
, I think,” he continued—“the real, real flame of feeling through another person—once, only once, if it only lasts three months. See, my mother looks as if she’d
had
everything that was necessary for her living and developing. There’s not a tiny bit of feeling of sterility about her.”