Mr. and Mrs. Belk were coming along High Row. She avoided them by turning
down the narrow passage into Mr. Horn's yard and the Back Lane. From the
Back Lane you could get up through the fields to the school-house lane
without seeing people.
She hated seeing them. They all thought the same thing: that you wanted
Maurice Jourdain and that you were unhappy because you hadn't got him.
They thought it was awful of you. Mamma thought it was awful, like--like
Aunt Charlotte wanting to marry the piano-tuner, or poor Jenny wanting to
marry Mr. Spall.
Maurice Jourdain knew better than that. He knew you didn't want to marry
him any more than he wanted to marry you. He nagged at you about your
hair, about philosophy--she could hear his voice nag-nagging now as she
went up the lane--he could nag worse than a woman, but he knew. _She_
knew. As far as she could see through the working of his dark mind, first
he had cared for her, cared violently. Then he had not cared.
That would be because he cared for some other woman. There were two
of them. The girl and the married woman. She felt no jealousy and no
interest in them beyond wondering which of them it would be and what
they would be like. There had been two Mary Oliviers; long-haired--
short-haired, and she had been jealous of the long-haired one. Jealous
of herself.
There had been two Maurice Jourdains, the one who said, "I'll understand.
I'll never lose my temper"; the one with the crystal mind, shining and
flashing, the mind like a big room filled from end to end with light. But
he had never existed.
Maurice Jourdain was only a name. A name for intellectual beauty. You
could love that. Love was "the cle-eansing _fi_-yer!" There was the love
of the body and the love of the soul. Perhaps she had loved Maurice
Jourdain with her soul and not with her body. No. She had _not_ loved him
with her soul, either. Body and soul; soul and body. Spinoza said they
were two aspects of the same thing. _What_ thing? Perhaps it was silly to
ask what thing; it would be just body _and_ soul. Somebody talked about a
soul dragging a corpse. Her body wasn't a corpse; it was strong and
active; it could play games and jump; it could pick Dan up and carry him
round the table; it could run a mile straight on end. It could excite
itself with its own activity and strength. It dragged a corpse-like soul,
dull and heavy; a soul that would never be excited again, never lift
itself up again in any ecstasy.
If only he had let her alone. If only she could go back to her real life.
But she couldn't. She couldn't feel any more her sudden, secret
happiness. Maurice Jourdain had driven it away. It had nothing to do with
Maurice Jourdain. He ought not to have been able to take it from you.
She might go up to Karva Hill to look for it; but it would not be there.
She couldn't even remember what it had been like.