Sons and Lovers

  “Twenty-four and twenty-three—”

  “Not yet,” she pleaded, as she rocked herself in distress.

  “When you will,” he said.

  She bowed her head gravely. The tone of hopelessness in which he said these things grieved her deeply. It had always been a failure between them. Tacitly, she acquiesced in what he felt.

  And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly one Sunday night, just as they were going to bed:

  “I shan’t go so much to Miriam’s, mother.”

  She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything.

  “You please yourself,” she said.

  So he went to bed. But there was a new quietness about him which she had wondered at. She almost guessed. She would leave him alone, however. Precipitation might spoil things. She watched him in his loneliness, wondering where he would end. He was sick, and much too quiet for him. There was a perpetual little knitting of his brows, such as she had seen when he was a small baby, and which had been gone for many years. Now it was the same again. And she could do nothing for him. He had to go on alone, make his own way.

  He continued faithful to Miriam. For one day he had loved her utterly. But it never came again. The sense of failure grew stronger. At first it was only a sadness. Then he began to feel he could not go on. He wanted to run, to go abroad, anything. Gradually he ceased to ask her to have him. Instead of drawing them together, it put them apart. And then he realised, consciously, that it was no good. It was useless trying: it would never be a success between them.

  For some months he had seen very little of Clara. They had occasionally walked out for half an hour at dinner-time. But he always reserved himself for Miriam. With Clara, however, his brow cleared, and he was gay again. She treated him indulgently, as if he were a child. He thought he did not mind. But deep below the surface it piqued him.

  Sometimes Miriam said:

  “What about Clara? I hear nothing of her lately.”

  “I walked with her about twenty minutes yesterday,” he replied.

  “And what did she talk about?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I did all the jawing—I usually do. I think I was telling her about the strike, and how the women took it.”

  “Yes.”

  So he gave the account of himself.

  But insidiously, without his knowing it, the warmth he felt for Clara drew him away from Miriam, for whom he felt responsible, and to whom he felt he belonged. He thought he was being quite faithful to her. It was not easy to estimate exactly the strength and warmth of one’s feelings for a woman till they have run away with one.

  He began to give more time to his men friends. There was Jessop, at the art school; Swain, who was chemistry demonstrator at the university; Newton, who was a teacher; besides Edgar and Miriam’s younger brothers. Pleading work, he sketched and studied with Jessop. He called in the University for Swain, and the two went “down town” together. Having come home in the train with Newton, he called and had a game of billiards with him in the Moon and Stars. If he gave to Miriam the excuse of his men friends, he felt quite justified. His mother began to be relieved. He always told her where he had been.

  During the summer Clara wore sometimes a dress of soft cotton stuff with loose sleeves. When she lifted her hands, her sleeves fell back, and her beautiful strong arms shone out.

  “Half a minute,” he cried. “Hold your arm still.”

  He made sketches of her hand and arm, and the drawings contained some of the fascination the real thing had for him. Miriam, who always went scrupulously through his books and papers, saw the drawings.

  “I think Clara has such beautiful arms,” he said.

  “Yes! When did you draw them?”

  “On Tuesday, in the work-room. You know, I’ve got a corner where I can work. Often I can do every single thing they need in the department, before dinner. Then I work for myself in the afternoon, and just see to things at night.”

  “Yes,” she said, turning the leaves of his sketch-book.

  Frequently he hated Miriam. He hated her as she bent forward and pored over his things. He hated her way of patiently casting him up, as if he were an endless psychological account. When he was with her, he hated her for having got him, and yet not got him, and he tortured her. She took all and gave nothing, he said. At least, she gave no living warmth. She was never alive, and giving off life. Looking for her was like looking for something which did not exist. She was only his conscience, not his mate. He hated her violently, and was more cruel to her. They dragged on till the next summer. He saw more and more of Clara.

  At last he spoke. He had been sitting working at home one evening. There was between him and his mother a peculiar condition of people frankly finding fault with each other. Mrs. Morel was strong on her feet again. He was not going to stick to Miriam. Very well; then she would stand aloof till he said something. It had been coming a long time, this bursting of the storm in him, when he would come back to her. This evening there was between them a peculiar condition of suspense. He worked feverishly and mechanically so that he could escape from himself. It grew late. Through the open door, stealthily, came the scent of madonna lilies, almost as if it were prowling abroad. Suddenly he got up and went out of doors.

  The beauty of the night made him want to shout. A half-moon, dusky gold, was sinking behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden, making the sky dull purple with its glow. Nearer, a dim white fence of lilies went across the garden, and the air all round seemed to stir with scent, as if it were alive. He went across the bed of pinks, whose keen perfume came sharply across the rocking, heavy scent of the lilies, and stood alongside the white barrier of flowers. They flagged all loose, as if they were panting. The scent made him drunk. He went down to the field to watch the moon sink under.

  A corncrake in the hay-close called insistently. The moon slid quite quickly downwards, growing more flushed. Behind him the great flowers leaned as if they were calling. And then, like a shock, he caught another perfume, something raw and coarse. Hunting round, he found the purple iris, touched their fleshy throats and their dark, grasping hands. At any rate, he had found something. They stood stiff in the darkness. Their scent was brutal. The moon was melting down upon the crest of the hill. It was gone; all was dark. The corncrake called still.

  Breaking off a pink, he suddenly went indoors.

  “Come, my boy,” said his mother. “I’m sure it’s time you went to bed.”

  He stood with the pink against his lips.

  “I shall break off with Miriam, mother,” he answered calmly.

  She looked up at him over her spectacles. He was staring back at her, unswerving. She met his eyes for a moment, then took off her glasses. He was white. The male was up in him, dominant. She did not want to see him too clearly.

  “But I thought—” she began.

  “Well,” he answered, “I don’t love her. I don’t want to marry her—so I shall have done.”

  “But,” exclaimed his mother, amazed, “I thought lately you had made up your mind to have her, and so I said nothing.”

  “I had—I wanted to—but now I don’t want. It’s no good. I shall break off on Sunday. I ought to, oughtn’t I?”

  “You know best. You know I said so long ago.”

  “I can’t help that now. I shall break off on Sunday.”

  “Well,” said his mother, “I think it will be best. But lately I decided you had made up your mind to have her, so I said nothing, and should have said nothing. But I say as I have always said, I don’t think she is suited to you.”

  “On Sunday I break off,” he said, smelling the pink. He put the flower in his mouth. Unthinking, he bared his teeth, closed them on the blossom slowly, and had a mouthful of petals. These he spat into the fire, kissed his mother, and went to bed.

  On Sunday he went up to the farm in the early afternoon. He had written Miriam that they would walk over the fields to Hucknall. His mother was very tende
r with him. He said nothing. But she saw the effort it was costing. The peculiar set look on his face stilled her.

  “Never mind, my son,” she said. “You will be so much better when it is all over.”

  Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and resentment. He did not want sympathy.

  Miriam met him at the lane-end. She was wearing a new dress of figured muslin that had short sleeves. Those short sleeves, and Miriam’s brown-skinned arms beneath them—such pitiful, resigned arms—gave him so much pain that they helped to make him cruel. She had made herself look so beautiful and fresh for him. She seemed to blossom for him alone. Every time he looked at her—a mature young woman now, and beautiful in her new dress—it hurt so much that his heart seemed almost to be bursting with the restraint he put on it. But he had decided, and it was irrevocable.

  On the hills they sat down, and he lay with his head in her lap, whilst she fingered his hair. She knew that “he was not there,” as she put it. Often, when she had him with her, she looked for him, and could not find him. But this afternoon she was not prepared.

  It was nearly five o’clock when he told her. They were sitting on the bank of a stream, where the lip of turf hung over a hollow bank of yellow earth, and he was hacking away with a stick, as he did when he was perturbed and cruel.

  “I have been thinking,” he said, “we ought to break off.”

  “Why?” she cried in surprise.

  “Because it’s no good going on.”

  “Why is it no good?”

  “It isn’t. I don’t want to marry, I don’t want ever to marry. And if we’re not going to marry, it’s no good going on.”

  “But why do you say this now?”

  “Because I’ve made up my mind.”

  “And what about these last months, and the things you told me then?”

  “I can’t help it! I don’t want to go on.”

  “You don’t want any more of me?”

  “I want us to break off—you be free of me, I free of you.”

  “And what about these last months?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve not told you anything but what I thought was true.”

  “Then why are you different now?”

  “I’m not—I’m the same—only I know it’s no good going on.”

  “You haven’t told me why it’s no good.”

  “Because I don’t want to go on—and I don’t want to marry.”

  “How many times have you offered to marry me, and I wouldn’t?”

  “I know; but I want us to break off.”

  There was silence for a moment or two, while he dug viciously at the earth. She bent her head, pondering. He was an unreasonable child. He was like an infant which, when it has drunk its fill, throws away and smashes the cup. She looked at him, feeling she could get hold of him and wring some consistency out of him. But she was helpless. Then she cried:

  “I have said you were only fourteen—you are only four!”

  He still dug at the earth viciously. He heard.

  “You are a child of four,” she repeated in her anger.

  He did not answer, but said in his heart: “All right; if I’m a child of four, what do you want me for? I don’t want another mother.” But he said nothing to her, and there was silence.

  “And have you told your people?” she asked.

  “I have told my mother.”

  There was another long interval of silence.

  “Then what do you want?” she asked.

  “Why, I want us to separate. We have lived on each other all these years; now let us stop. I will go my own way without you, and you will go your way without me. You will have an independent life of your own then.”

  There was in it some truth that, in spite of her bitterness, she could not help registering. She knew she felt in a sort of bondage to him, which she hated because she could not control it. She hated her love for him from the moment it grew too strong for her. And, deep down, she had hated him because she loved him and he dominated her. She had resisted his domination. She had fought to keep herself free of him in the last issue. And she was free of him, even more than he of her.

  “And,” he continued, “we shall always be more or less each other’s work. You have done a lot for me, I for you. Now let us start and live by ourselves.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Nothing—only to be free,” he answered.

  She, however, knew in her heart that Clara’s influence was over him to liberate him. But she said nothing.

  “And what have I to tell my mother?” she asked.

  “I told my mother,” he answered, “that I was breaking off—clean and altogether.”

  “I shall not tell them at home,” she said.

  Frowning, “You please yourself,” he said.

  He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was leaving her in the lurch. It angered him.

  “Tell them you wouldn’t and won’t marry me, and have broken off,” he said. “It’s true enough.”

  She bit her finger moodily. She thought over their whole affair. She had known it would come to this; she had seen it all along. It chimed with her bitter expectation.

  “Always—it has always been so!” she cried. “It has been one long battle between us—you fighting away from me.”

  It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. The man’s heart stood still. Was this how she saw it?

  “But we’ve had some perfect hours, some perfect times, when we were together!” he pleaded.

  “Never!” she cried; “never! It has always been you fighting me off.”

  “Not always—not at first!” he pleaded.

  “Always, from the very beginning—always the same!”

  She had finished, but she had done enough. He sat aghast. He had wanted to say: “It has been good, but it is at an end.” And she—she whose love he had believed in when he had despised himself—denied that their love had ever been love. “He had always fought away from her?” Then it had been monstrous. There had never been anything really between them; all the time he had been imagining something where there was nothing. And she had known. She had known so much, and had told him so little. She had known all the time. All the time this was at the bottom of her!

  He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair appeared in a cynical aspect to him. She had really played with him, not he with her. She had hidden all her condemnation from him, had flattered him, and despised him. She despised him now. He grew intellectual and cruel.

  “You ought to marry a man who worships you,” he said; “then you could do as you liked with him. Plenty of men will worship you, if you get on the private side of their natures. You ought to marry one such. They would never fight you off.”

  “Thank you!” she said. “But don’t advise me to marry someone else any more. You’ve done it before.”

  “Very well,” he said; “I will say no more.”

  He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of giving one. Their eight years of friendship and love, the eight years of his life, were nullified.

  “When did you think of this?” she asked.

  “I thought definitely on Thursday night.”

  “I knew it was coming,” she said.

  That pleased him bitterly. “Oh, very well! If she knew then it doesn’t come as a surprise to her,” he thought.

  “And have you said anything to Clara?” she asked.

  “No; but I shall tell her now.”

  There was a silence.

  “Do you remember the things you said this time last year, in my grandmother’s house—nay last month even?”

  “Yes,” he said; “I do! And I meant them! I can’t help that it’s failed.”

  “It has failed because you want something else.”

  “It would have failed whether or not. You never believed in me.”

  She laughed strangely.

  He sat in silence. He was full of a feeling
that she had deceived him. She had despised him when he thought she worshipped him. She had let him say wrong things, and had not contradicted him. She had let him fight alone. But it stuck in his throat that she had despised him whilst he thought she worshipped him. She should have told him when she found fault with him. She had not played fair. He hated her. All these years she had treated him as if he were a hero, and thought of him secretly as an infant, a foolish child. Then why had she left the foolish child to his folly? His heart was hard against her.

  She sat full of bitterness. She had known—oh, well she had known! All the time he was away from her she had summed him up, seen his littleness, his meanness, and his folly. Even she had guarded her soul against him. She was not overthrown, not prostrated, not even much hurt. She had known. Only why, as he sat there, had he still this strange dominance over her? His very movements fascinated her as if she were hypnotised by him. Yet he was despicable, false, inconsistent, and mean. Why this bondage for her? Why was it the movement of his arm stirred her as nothing else in the world could? Why was she fastened to him? Why, even now, if he looked at her and commanded her, would she have to obey? She would obey him in his trifling commands. But once he was obeyed, then she had him in her power, she knew, to lead him where she would. She was sure of herself. Only, this new influence! Ah, he was not a man! He was a baby that cries for the newest toy. And all the attachment of his soul would not keep him. Very well, he would have to go. But he would come back when he had tired of his new sensation.

  He hacked at the earth till she was fretted to death. She rose. He sat flinging lumps of earth in the stream.

  “We will go and have tea here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  They chattered over irrelevant subjects during tea. He held forth on the love of ornament—the cottage parlour moved him thereto—and its connection with aesthetics. She was cold and quiet. As they walked home, she asked:

  “And we shall not see each other?”

  “No—or rarely,” he answered.

  “Nor write?” she asked, almost sarcastically.

  “As you will,” he answered. “We’re not strangers—never should be, whatever happened. I will write to you now and again. You please yourself.”