Sons and Lovers

D >> David Herbert Lawrence >> Sons and Lovers


"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.

"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.