CHAPTER VII

LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE

Paul had been many times up to Willey Farm during the autumn. He was

friends with the two youngest boys. Edgar, the eldest, would not

condescend at first. And Miriam also refused to be approached. She

was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl

was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being

loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself

was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl, in her own

imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless,

looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and

speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to

Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl,

unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof.

Her great companion was her mother. They were both brown-eyed, and

inclined to be mystical, such women as treasure religion inside them,

breathe it in their nostrils, and see the whole of life in a mist

thereof. So to Miriam, Christ and God made one great figure, which she

loved tremblingly and passionately when a tremendous sunset burned out

the western sky, and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian de Bois

Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings, rustled the sunny leaves in

the morning, or sat in her bedroom aloft, alone, when it snowed. That

was life to her. For the rest, she drudged in the house, which work

she would not have minded had not her clean red floor been mucked up

immediately by the trampling farm-boots of her brothers. She madly

wanted her little brother of four to let her swathe him and stifle

him in her love; she went to church reverently, with bowed head, and

quivered in anguish from the vulgarity of the other choir-girls and

from the common-sounding voice of the curate; she fought with her

brothers, whom she considered brutal louts; and she held not her

father in too high esteem because he did not carry any mystical ideals

cherished in his heart, but only wanted to have as easy a time as he

could, and his meals when he was ready for them.

She hated her position as swine-girl. She wanted to be considered. She

wanted to learn, thinking that if she could read, as Paul said he could

read, _Colomba_, or the _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, the world would

have a different face for her and a deepened respect. She could not be

princess by wealth or standing. So she was mad to have learning whereon

to pride herself. For she was different from other folk, and must not

be scooped up among the common fry. Learning was the only distinction

to which she thought to aspire.

Her beauty--that of a shy, wild, quiveringly sensitive thing--seemed

nothing to her. Even her soul, so strong for rhapsody, was not enough.

She must have something to reinforce her pride, because she felt

different from other people. Paul she eyed rather wistfully. On the

whole, she scorned the male sex. But here was a new specimen, quick,

light, graceful, who could be gentle and who could be sad, and who

was clever, and who knew a lot, and who had a death in the family.

The boy's poor morsel of learning exalted him almost sky-high in her

esteem. Yet she tried hard to scorn him, because he would not see in

her the princess but only the swine-girl. And he scarcely observed her.

Then he was so ill, and she felt he would be weak. Then she would be

stronger than he. Then she could love him. If she could be mistress of

him in his weakness, take care of him, if he could depend on her, if

she could, as it were, have him in her arms, how she would love him!

As soon as the skies brightened and plum-blossom was out, Paul drove

off in the milkman's heavy float up to Willey Farm. Mr. Leivers shouted

in a kindly fashion at the boy, then clicked to the horse as they

climbed the hill slowly, in the freshness of the morning. White clouds

went on their way, crowding to the back of the hills that were rousing

in the springtime. The water of Nethermere lay below, very blue against

the seared meadows and the thorn-trees.

It was four and a half miles' drive. Tiny buds on the hedges, vivid

as copper-green, were opening into rosettes; and thrushes called, and

blackbirds shrieked and scolded. It was a new, glamorous world.

Miriam, peeping through the kitchen window, saw the horse walk through

the big white gate into the farmyard that was backed by the oak-wood,

still bare. Then a youth in a heavy overcoat climbed down. He put up

his hands for the whip and the rug that the good-looking, ruddy farmer

handed down to him.

Miriam appeared in the doorway. She was nearly sixteen, very beautiful,

with her warm colouring, her gravity, her eyes dilating suddenly like

an ecstasy.

"I say," said Paul, turning shyly aside, "your daffodils are nearly

out. Isn't it early? But don't they look cold?"

"Cold!" said Miriam, in her musical, caressing voice.

"The green on their buds--" and he faltered into silence timidly.

"Let me take the rug," said Miriam over-gently.

"I can carry it," he answered, rather injured. But he yielded it to her.

Then Mrs. Leivers appeared.

"I'm sure you're tired and cold," she said. "Let me take your coat. It

is heavy. You mustn't walk far in it."

She helped him off with his coat. He was quite unused to such

attention. She was almost smothered under its weight.

"Why, mother," laughed the farmer as he passed through the kitchen,

swinging the great milk-churns, "you've got almost more than you can

manage there."

She beat up the sofa cushions for the youth.

The kitchen was very small and irregular. The farm had been originally

a labourer's cottage. And the furniture was old and battered. But

Paul loved it--loved the sack-bag that formed the hearthrug, and the

funny little corner under the stairs, and the small window deep in the

corner, through which, bending a little, he could see the plum-trees in

the back-garden and the lovely round hills beyond.

"Won't you lie down?" said Mrs. Leivers.

"Oh no; I'm not tired," he said. "Isn't it lovely coming out, don't you

think? I saw a sloe bush in blossom and a lot of celandines. I'm glad

it's sunny."

"Can I give you anything to eat or to drink?"

"No, thank you."

"How's your mother?"

"I think she's tired now. I think she's had too much to do. Perhaps in

a little while she'll go to Skegness with me. Then she'll be able to

rest. I s'll be glad if she can."

"Yes," replied Mrs. Leivers. "It's a wonder she isn't ill herself."

Miriam was moving about preparing dinner. Paul watched everything that

happened. His face was pale and thin, but his eyes were quick and

bright with life as ever. He watched the strange, almost rhapsodic way

in which the girl moved about, carrying a great stew-jar to the oven,

or looking in the saucepan. The atmosphere was different from that of

his own home, where everything seemed so ordinary. When Mr. Leivers

called loudly outside to the horse, that was reaching over to feed on

the rose-bushes in the garden, the girl started, looked round with dark

eyes, as if something had come breaking in on her world. There was a

sense of silence inside the house and out. Miriam seemed as in some

dreamy tale, a maiden in bondage, her spirit dreaming in a land far

away and magical. And her discoloured, old blue frock and her broken

boots seemed only like the romantic rags of King Cophetua's beggar-maid.

She suddenly became aware of his keen blue eyes upon her, taking her

all in. Instantly her broken boots and her frayed old frock hurt her.

She resented his seeing everything. Even he knew that her stocking

was not pulled up. She went into the scullery, blushing deeply. And

afterwards her hands trembled slightly at her work. She nearly dropped

all she handled. When her inside dream was shaken, her body quivered

with trepidation. She resented that he saw so much.

Mrs. Leivers sat for some time talking to the boy, although she was

needed at her work. She was too polite to leave him. Presently she

excused herself and rose. After a while she looked into the tin

saucepan.

"Oh _dear_, Miriam," she cried, "these potatoes have boiled dry!"

Miriam started as if she had been stung.

"_Have_ they, mother?" she cried.

"I shouldn't care, Miriam," said the mother, "if I hadn't trusted them

to you." She peered into the pan.

The girl stiffened as if from a blow. Her dark eyes dilated; she

remained standing in the same spot.

"Well," she answered, gripped tight in self-conscious shame, "I'm sure

I looked at them five minutes since."

"Yes," said the mother, "I know it's easily done."

"They're not much burned," said Paul. "It doesn't matter, does it?"

Mrs. Leivers looked at the youth with her brown, hurt eyes.

"It wouldn't matter but for the boys," she said to him. "Only Miriam

knows what a trouble they make if the potatoes are 'caught.'"

"Then," thought Paul to himself, "you shouldn't let them make a

trouble."

After a while Edgar came in. He wore leggings, and his boots were

covered with earth. He was rather small, rather formal, for a farmer.

He glanced at Paul, nodded to him distantly, and said:

"Dinner ready?"

"Nearly, Edgar," replied the mother apologetically.

"I'm ready for mine," said the young man, taking up the newspaper

and reading. Presently the rest of the family trooped in. Dinner

was served. The meal went rather brutally. The over-gentleness and

apologetic tone of the mother brought out all the brutality of manners

in the sons. Edgar tasted the potatoes, moved his mouth quickly like a

rabbit, looked indignantly at his mother, and said:

"These potatoes are burnt, mother."

"Yes, Edgar. I forgot them for a minute. Perhaps you'll have bread if

you can't eat them."

Edgar looked in anger across at Miriam.

"What was Miriam doing that she couldn't attend to them?" he said.

Miriam looked up. Her mouth opened, her dark eyes blazed and winced,

but she said nothing. She swallowed her anger and her shame, bowing her

dark head.

"I'm sure she was trying hard," said the mother.

"She hasn't got sense even to boil the potatoes," said Edgar. "What is

she kept at home for?"

"On'y for eating everything that's left in th' pantry," said Maurice.

"They don't forget that potato-pie against our Miriam," laughed the

father.

She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence, suffering, like

some saint out of place at the brutal board.

It puzzled Paul. He wondered vaguely why all this intense feeling

went running because of a few burnt potatoes. The mother exalted

everything--even a bit of housework--to the plane of a religious trust.

The sons resented this; they felt themselves cut away underneath, and

they answered with brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness.

Paul was just opening out from childhood into manhood. This atmosphere,

where everything took a religious value, came with a subtle fascination

to him. There was something in the air. His own mother was logical.

Here there was something different, something he loved, something that

at times he hated.

Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely. Later in the afternoon,

when they had gone away again, her mother said:

"You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam."

The girl dropped her head.

"They are such _brutes_!" she suddenly cried, looking up with flashing

eyes.

"But hadn't you promised not to answer them?" said the mother. "And I

believed in you. I _can't_ stand it when you wrangle."

"But they're so hateful!" cried Miriam, "and--and _low_."

"Yes, dear. But how often have I asked you not to answer Edgar back?

Can't you let him say what he likes?"

"But why should he say what he likes?"

"Aren't you strong enough to bear it, Miriam, if even for my sake? Are

you so weak that you must wrangle with them?"

Mrs. Leivers stuck unflinchingly to this doctrine of "the other

cheek." She could not instil it at all into the boys. With the girls

she succeeded better, and Miriam was the child of her heart. The boys

loathed the other cheek when it was presented to them. Miriam was often

sufficiently lofty to turn it. Then they spat on her and hated her. But

she walked in her proud humility, living within herself.

There was always this feeling of jangle and discord in the Leivers

family. Although the boys resented so bitterly this eternal appeal to

their deeper feelings of resignation and proud humility, yet it had

its effect on them. They could not establish between themselves and an

outsider just the ordinary human feeling and unexaggerated friendship;

they were always restless for the something deeper. Ordinary folk

seemed shallow to them, trivial and inconsiderable. And so they were

unaccustomed, painfully uncouth in the simplest social intercourse,

suffering, and yet insolent in their superiority. Then beneath was the

yearning for the soul-intimacy to which they could not attain because

they were too dumb, and every approach to close connexion was blocked

by their clumsy contempt of other people. They wanted genuine intimacy,

but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they

scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which

forms common human intercourse.

Paul fell under Mrs. Leivers' spell. Everything had a religious and

intensified meaning when he was with her. His soul, hurt, highly

developed, sought her as if for nourishment. Together they seemed to

sift the vital fact from an experience.

Miriam was her mother's daughter. In the sunshine of the afternoon

mother and daughter went down the fields with him. They looked for

nests. There was a jenny wren's in the hedge by the orchard.

"I _do_ want you to see this," said Mrs. Leivers.

He crouched down and carefully put his finger through the thorns into

the round door of the nest.

"It's almost as if you were feeling inside the live body of the bird,"

he said, "it's so warm. They say a bird makes its nest round like a cup

with pressing its breast on it. Then how did it make the ceiling round,

I wonder?"

The nest seemed to start into life for the two women. After that,

Miriam came to see it every day. It seemed so close to her. Again,

going down the hedgeside with the girl, he noticed the celandines,

scalloped splashes of gold, on the side of the ditch.

"I like them," he said, "when their petals go flat back with the

sunshine. They seem to be pressing themselves at the sun."

And then the celandines ever after drew her with a little spell.

Anthropomorphic as she was, she stimulated him into appreciating things

thus, and then they lived for her. She seemed to need things kindling

in her imagination or in her soul before she felt she had them. And she

was cut off from ordinary life by her religious intensity which made

the world for her either a nunnery garden or a paradise, where sin and

knowledge were not, or else an ugly, cruel thing.

So it was in this atmosphere of subtle intimacy, this meeting in their

common feeling for something in nature, that their love started.

Personally, he was a long time before he realized her. For ten months

he had to stay at home after his illness. For a while he went to

Skegness with his mother, and was perfectly happy. But even from the

seaside he wrote long letters to Mrs. Leivers about the shore and the

sea. And he brought back his beloved sketches of the flat Lincoln

coast, anxious for them to see. Almost they would interest the Leivers

more than they interested his mother. It was not his art Mrs. Morel

cared about; it was himself and his achievement. But Mrs. Leivers and

her children were almost his disciples. They kindled him and made

him glow to his work, whereas his mother's influence was to make him

quietly determined, patient, dogged, unwearied.

He soon was friends with the boys, whose rudeness was only superficial.

They had all, when they could trust themselves, a strange gentleness

and lovableness.

"Will you come with me on to the fallow?" asked Edgar, rather

hesitatingly.

Paul went joyfully, and spent the afternoon helping to hoe or to single

turnips with his friend. He used to lie with the three brothers in the

hay piled up in the barn, and tell them about Nottingham and about

Jordan's. In return, they taught him to milk, and let him do little

jobs--chopping hay or pulping turnips--just as much as he liked.

At midsummer he worked all through hay-harvest with them, and then

he loved them. The family was so cut off from the world, actually.

They seemed, somehow, like "les derniers fils d'une race épuisée."

Though the lads were strong and healthy, yet they had all that

over-sensitiveness and hanging-back which made them so lonely, yet also

such close, delicate friends once their intimacy was won. Paul loved

them dearly, and they him.

Miriam came later. But he had come into her life before she made any

mark on his. One dull afternoon, when the men were on the land and the

rest at school, only Miriam and her mother at home, the girl said to

him, after having hesitated for some time:

"Have you seen the swing?"

"No," he answered. "Where?"

"In the cowshed," she replied.

She always hesitated to offer or to show him anything. Men have such

different standards of worth from women, and her dear things--the

valuable things to her--her brothers had so often mocked or flouted.

"Come on, then," he replied, jumping up.

There were two cowsheds, one on either side of the barn. In the lower,

darker shed there was standing for four cows. Hens flew scolding over

the manger-wall as the youth and girl went forward for the great thick

rope which hung from the beam in the darkness overhead, and was pushed

back over a peg in the wall.

"It's something like a rope!" he exclaimed appreciatively; and he sat

down on it, anxious to try it. Then immediately he rose.

"Come on, then, and have first go," he said to the girl.

"See," she answered, going into the barn, "we put some bags on the

seat"; and she made the swing comfortable for him. That gave her

pleasure. He held the rope.

"Come on, then," he said to her.

"No, I won't go first," she answered.

She stood aside in her still, aloof fashion.

"Why?"

"You go," she pleaded.

Almost for the first time in her life she had the pleasure of giving up

to a man, of spoiling him. Paul looked at her.

"All right," he said, sitting down. "Mind out!"

He set off with a spring, and in a moment was flying through the

air, almost out of the door of the shed, the upper half of which was

open, showing outside the drizzling rain, the filthy yard, the cattle

standing disconsolate against the black cart-shed, and at the back of

all the grey-green wall of the wood. She stood below in her crimson

tam-o'-shanter and watched. He looked down at her, and she saw his

blue eyes sparkling.

"It's a treat of a swing," he said.

"Yes."

He was swinging through the air, every bit of him swinging, like a bird

that swoops for joy of movement. And he looked down at her. Her crimson

cap hung over her dark curls, her beautiful warm face, so still in a

kind of brooding, was lifted towards him. It was dark and rather cold

in the shed. Suddenly a swallow came down from the high roof and darted

out of the door.

"I didn't know a bird was watching," he called.

He swung negligently. She could feel him falling and lifting through

the air, as if he were lying on some force.

"Now I'll die," he said, in a detached, dreamy voice, as though he were

the dying motion of the swing. She watched him, fascinated. Suddenly he

put on the brake and jumped out.

"I've had a long turn," he said. "But it's a treat of a swing--it's a

real treat of a swing!"

Miriam was amused that he took a swing so seriously and felt so warmly

over it.

"No; you go on," she said.

"Why, don't you want one?" he asked, astonished.

"Well, not much. I'll have just a little."

She sat down, whilst he kept the bags in place for her.

"It's so ripping!" he said, setting her in motion. "Keep your heels up,

or they'll bang the manger-wall."

She felt the accuracy with which he caught her, exactly at the right

moment, and the exactly proportionate strength of his thrust, and she

was afraid. Down to her bowels went the hot wave of fear. She was in

his hands. Again, firm and inevitable came the thrust at the right

moment. She gripped the rope, almost swooning.

"Ha!" she laughed in fear. "No higher!"

"But you're not a _bit_ high," he remonstrated.

"But no higher."

He heard the fear in her voice, and desisted. Her heart melted in hot

pain when the moment came for him to thrust her forward again. But he

left her alone. She began to breathe.

"Won't you really go any farther?" he asked. "Should I keep you there?"

"No; let me go by myself," she answered.

He moved aside and watched her.

"Why, you're scarcely moving," he said.

She laughed slightly with shame, and in a moment got down.

"They say if you can swing you won't be sea-sick," he said, as he

mounted again. "I don't believe I should ever be sea-sick."

Away he went. There was something fascinating to her in him. For the

moment he was nothing but a piece of swinging stuff; not a particle of

him that did not swing. She could never lose herself so, nor could her

brothers. It roused a warmth in her. It were almost as if he were a

flame that had lit a warmth in her whilst he swung in the middle air.

And gradually the intimacy with the family concentrated for Paul on

three persons--the mother, Edgar, and Miriam. To the mother he went

for that sympathy and that appeal which seemed to draw him out. Edgar

was his very close friend. And to Miriam he more or less condescended,

because she seemed so humble.

But the girl gradually sought him out. If he brought up his

sketch-book, it was she who pondered longest over the last picture.

Then she would look up at him. Suddenly, her dark eyes alight like

water that shakes with a stream of gold in the dark, she would ask:

"Why do I like this so?"

Always something in his breast shrank from these close, intimate,

dazzled looks of hers.

"Why _do_ you?" he asked.

"I don't know. It seems so true."

"It's because--it's because there is scarcely any shadow in it; it's

more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering protoplasm in the

leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. That seems

dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a

dead crust. The shimmer is inside really."

And she, with her little finger in her mouth, would ponder these

sayings. They gave her a feeling of life again, and vivified things

which had meant nothing to her. She managed to find some meaning in his

struggling, abstract speeches. And they were the medium through which

she came distinctly at her beloved objects.

Another day she sat at sunset whilst he was painting some pine-trees

which caught the red glare from the west. He had been quiet.

"There you are!" he said suddenly. "I wanted that. Now, look at them

and tell me, are they pine-trunks or are they red coals, standing-up

pieces of fire in that darkness? There's God's burning bush for you,

that burned not away."

Miriam looked, and was frightened. But the pine-trunks were wonderful

to her, and distinct. He packed his box and rose. Suddenly he looked at

her.

"Why are you always sad?" he asked her.

"Sad!" she exclaimed, looking up at him with startled, wonderful brown

eyes.

"Yes," he replied. "You are always, always sad."

"I am not--oh, not a bit!" she cried.

"But even your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness," he

persisted. "You're never jolly or even just all right."

"No," she pondered. "I wonder--why."

"Because you're not; because you're different inside, like a pine-tree,

and then you flare up; but you're not just like an ordinary tree, with

fidgety leaves and jolly----"

He got tangled up in his own speech; but she brooded on it, and he had

a strange, roused sensation, as if his feelings were new. She got so

near him. It was a strange stimulant.

Then sometimes he hated her. Her youngest brother was only five. He was

a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint, fragile face--one

of Reynold's "Choir of Angels," with a touch of elf. Often Miriam

kneeled to the child and drew him to her.

"Eh, my Hubert!" she sang, in a voice heavy and surcharged with love.

"Eh, my Hubert!"

And, folding him in her arms, she swayed slightly from side to side

with love, her face half lifted, her eyes half closed, her voice

drenched with love.

"Don't!" said the child, uneasy--"don't, Miriam!"

"Yes; you love me, don't you?" she murmured deep in her throat, almost

as if she were in a trance, and swaying also as if she were swooned in

an ecstasy of love.

"Don't!" repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow.

"You love me, don't you?" she murmured.

"What do you make such a _fuss_ for?" cried Paul, all in suffering

because of her extreme emotion. "Why can't you be ordinary with him?"

She let the child go, and rose, and said nothing. Her intensity, which

would leave no emotion on a normal plane, irritated the youth into

a frenzy. And this tearful, naked contact of her on small occasions

shocked him. He was used to his mother's reserve. And on such occasions

he was thankful in his heart and soul that he had his mother, so sane

and wholesome.

All the life of Miriam's body was in her eyes, which were usually dark

as a dark church, but could flame with light like a conflagration. Her

face scarcely ever altered from its look of brooding. She might have

been one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body

was not flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather heavily,

her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not clumsy, and yet none

of her movements seemed quite _the_ movement. Often, when wiping the

dishes, she would stand in bewilderment and chagrin because she had

pulled in two halves a cup or a tumbler. It was as if, in her fear and

self-mistrust, she put too much strength into the effort. There was

no looseness or abandon about her. Everything was gripped stiff with

intensity, and her effort, overcharged, closed in on itself.

She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense walk.

Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields. Then her eyes blazed

naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened him. But she was physically

afraid. If she were getting over a stile, she gripped his hands in

a little hard anguish, and began to lose her presence of mind. And

he could not persuade her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes

dilated, became exposed and palpitating.

"No!" she cried, half laughing in terror--"no!"

"You shall!" he cried, once, and, jerking her forward, he brought her

falling from the fence. But her wild "Ah!" of pain, as if she were

losing consciousness, cut him. She landed on her feet safely, and

afterwards had courage in this respect.

She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.

"Don't you like being at home?" Paul asked her, surprised.

"Who would?" she answered, low and intense. "What is it? I'm all day

cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five minutes. I don't _want_

to be at home."

"What do you want, then?"

"I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody else. Why should

I, because I'm a girl, be kept at home and not allowed to be anything?

What chance _have_ I?"

"Chance of what?"

"Of knowing anything--of learning, of doing anything. It's not fair,

because I'm a woman."

She seemed very bitter. Paul wondered. In his own home Annie was almost

glad to be a girl. She had not so much responsibility; things were

lighter for her. She never wanted to be other than a girl. But Miriam

almost fiercely wished she were a man. And yet she hated men at the

same time.

"But it's as well to be a woman as a man," he said, frowning.

"Ha! Is it? Men have everything."

"I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as men are to be

men," he answered.

"No!" she shook her head--"no! Everything the men have."

"But what do you want?" he asked.

"I want to learn. Why _should_ it be that I know nothing?"

"What! such as mathematics and French?"

"Why _shouldn't_ I know mathematics? Yes!" she cried, her eye expanding

in a kind of defiance.

"Well, you can learn as much as I know," he said. "I'll teach you, if

you like."

Her eyes dilated. She mistrusted him as teacher.

"Would you?" he asked.

Her head had dropped, and she was sucking her finger broodingly.

"Yes," she said hesitatingly.

He used to tell his mother all these things.

"I'm going to teach Miriam algebra," he said.

"Well," replied Mrs. Morel, "I hope she'll get fat on it."

When he went up to the farm on the Monday evening, it was drawing

twilight. Miriam was just sweeping up the kitchen, and was kneeling at

the hearth when he entered. Everyone was out but her. She looked round

at him, flushed, her dark eyes shining, her fine hair falling about her

face.

"Hello!" she said, soft and musical. "I knew it was you."

"How?"

"I knew your step. Nobody treads so quick and firm."

He sat down, sighing.

"Ready to do some algebra?" he asked, drawing a little book from his

pocket.

"But----"

He could feel her backing away.

"You said you wanted," he insisted.

"Tonight, though?" she faltered.

"But I came on purpose. And if you want to learn it, you must begin."

She took up her ashes in the dustpan and looked at him, half

tremulously, laughing.

"Yes, but tonight! You see, I haven't thought of it."

"Well, my goodness! Take the ashes and come."

He went and sat on the stone bench in the back-yard, where the big

milk-cans were standing, tipped up, to air. The men were in the

cowsheds. He could hear the little sing-song of the milk spurting into

the pails. Presently she came, bringing some big greenish apples.

"You know you like them," she said.

He took a bite.

"Sit down," he said, with his mouth full.

She was short-sighted, and peered over his shoulder. It irritated him.

He gave her the book quickly.

"Here," he said. "It's only letters for figures. You put down '_a_'

instead of '2' or '6.'"

They worked, he talking, she with her head down on the book. He was

quick and hasty. She never answered. Occasionally, when he demanded

of her, "Do you see?" she looked up at him, her eyes wide with the

half-laugh that comes of fear. "Don't you?" he cried.

He had been too fast. But she said nothing. He questioned her more,

then got hot. It made his blood rouse to see her there, as it were,

at his mercy, her mouth open, her eyes dilated with laughter that was

afraid, apologetic, ashamed. Then Edgar came along with two buckets of

milk.

"Hello!" he said. "What are you doing?"

"Algebra," replied Paul.

"Algebra!" repeated Edgar curiously. Then he passed on with a laugh.

Paul took a bite at his forgotten apple, looked at the miserable

cabbages in the garden, pecked into lace by the fowls, and he wanted to

pull them up. Then he glanced at Miriam. She was poring over the book,

seemed absorbed in it, yet trembling lest she could not get at it. It

made him cross. She was ruddy and beautiful. Yet her soul seemed to be

intensely supplicating. The algebra-book she closed, shrinking, knowing

he was angered; and at the same instant he grew gentle, seeing her hurt

because she did not understand.

But things came slowly to her. And when she held herself in a grip,

seemed so utterly humble before the lesson, it made his blood rouse.

He stormed at her, got ashamed, continued the lesson, and grew furious

again, abusing her. She listened in silence. Occasionally, very

rarely, she defended herself. Her liquid dark eyes blazed at him.

"You don't give me time to learn it," she said.

"All right," he answered, throwing the book on the table and lighting

a cigarette. Then, after awhile, he went back to her repentant. So the

lessons went. He was always either in a rage or very gentle.

"What do you tremble your _soul_ before it for?" he cried. "You don't

learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can't you look at it with your

clear simple wits?"

Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would look at

him reproachfully, saying:

"Paul, don't be so hard on Miriam. She may not be quick, but I'm sure

she tries."

"I can't help it," he said rather pitiably. "I go off like it."

"You don't mind me, Miriam, do you?" he asked of the girl later.

"No," she reassured him in her beautiful deep tones--"no, I don't mind."

"Don't mind me; it's my fault."

But, in spite of himself, his blood began to boil with her. It was

strange that no one else made him in such fury. He flared against her.

Once he threw the pencil in her face. There was a silence. She turned

her face slightly aside.

"I didn't--" he began, but got no farther, feeling weak in all his

bones. She never reproached him or was angry with him. He was often

cruelly ashamed. But still again his anger burst like a bubble

surcharged; and still, when he saw her eager, silent, as it were, blind

face, he felt he wanted to throw the pencil in it; and still, when he

saw her hand trembling and her mouth parted with suffering, his heart

was scalded with pain for her. And because of the intensity to which

she roused him, he sought her.

Then he often avoided her and went with Edgar. Miriam and her brother

were naturally antagonistic. Edgar was a rationalist, who was curious,

and had a sort of scientific interest in life. It was a great

bitterness to Miriam to see herself deserted by Paul for Edgar, who

seemed so much lower. But the youth was very happy with her elder

brother. The two men spent afternoons together on the land or in the

loft doing carpentry, when it rained. And they talked together, or Paul

taught Edgar the songs he himself had learned from Annie at the piano.

And often all the men, Mr. Leivers as well, had bitter debates on the

nationalizing of the land and similar problems. Paul had already heard

his mother's views, and as these were as yet his own, he argued for

her. Miriam attended and took part, but was all the time waiting until

it should be over and a personal communication might begin.

"After all," she said within herself, "if the land were nationalized,

Edgar and Paul and I would be just the same." So she waited for the

youth to come back to her.

He was studying for his painting. He loved to sit at home, alone with

his mother, at night, working and working. She sewed or read. Then,

looking up from his task, he would rest his eyes for a moment on her

face, that was bright with living warmth, and he returned gladly to his

work.

"I can do my best things when you sit there in your rocking-chair,

mother," he said.

"I'm sure!" she exclaimed, sniffing with mock scepticism. But she felt

it was so, and her heart quivered with brightness. For many hours she

sat still, slightly conscious of him labouring away, whilst she worked

or read her book. And he, with all his soul's intensity directing his

pencil, could feel her warmth inside him like strength. They were both

very happy so, and both unconscious of it. These times, that meant so

much, and which were real living, they almost ignored.

He was conscious only when stimulated. A sketch finished, he always

wanted to take it to Miriam. Then he was stimulated into knowledge

of the work he had produced unconsciously. In contact with Miriam he

gained insight; his vision went deeper. From his mother he drew the

life-warmth, the strength to produce; Miriam urged this warmth into

intensity like a white light.

When he returned to the factory the conditions of work were better.

He had Wednesday afternoon off to go to the Art School--Miss Jordan's

provision--returning in the evening. Then the factory closed at six

instead of at eight on Thursday and Friday evenings.

One evening in the summer Miriam and he went over the fields by Herod's

Farm on their way from the library home. So it was only three miles to

Willey Farm. There was a yellow glow over the mowing-grass, and the

sorrel-heads burned crimson. Gradually, as they walked along the high

land, the gold in the west sank down to red, the red to crimson, and

then the chill blue crept up against the glow.

They came out upon the high road to Alfreton, which ran white between

the darkening fields. There Paul hesitated. It was two miles home for

him, one mile forward for Miriam. They both looked up the road that ran

in shadow right under the glow of the north-west sky. On the crest of

the hill, Selby, with its stark houses and the up-pricked headstocks of

the pit, stood in black silhouette small against the sky.

He looked at his watch.

"Nine o'clock!" he said.

The pair stood, loath to part, hugging their books.

"The wood is so lovely now," she said. "I wanted you to see it."

He followed her slowly across the road to the white gate.

"They grumble so if I'm late," he said.

"But you're not doing anything wrong," she answered impatiently.

He followed her across the nibbled pasture in the dusk. There was

a coolness in the wood, a scent of leaves, of honeysuckle, and a

twilight. The two walked in silence. Night came wonderfully there,

among the throng of dark tree-trunks. He looked round, expectant.

She wanted to show him a certain wild-rose bush she had discovered. She

knew it was wonderful. And yet, till he had seen it, she felt it had

not come into her soul. Only he could make it her own, immortal. She

was dissatisfied.

Dew was already on the paths. In the old oak-wood a mist was rising,

and he hesitated, wondering whether one whiteness were a strand of fog

or only campion-flowers pallid in a cloud.

By the time they came to the pine-trees Miriam was getting very eager

and very tense. Her bush might be gone. She might not be able to find

it; and she wanted it so much. Almost passionately she wanted to be

with him when he stood before the flowers. They were going to have a

communion together--something that thrilled her, something holy. He was

walking beside her in silence. They were very near to each other. She

trembled, and he listened, vaguely anxious.

Coming to the edge of the wood, they saw the sky in front, like

mother-of-pearl, and the earth growing dark. Somewhere on the outermost

branches of the pine-wood the honeysuckle was streaming scent.

"Where?" he asked.

"Down the middle path," she murmured, quivering.

When they turned the corner of the path she stood still. In the wide

walk between the pines, gazing rather frightened, she could distinguish

nothing for some moments; the greying light robbed things of their

colour. Then she saw her bush.

"Ah!" she cried, hastening forward.

It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its

briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick,

right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great

spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars

the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul

and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point

the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in

their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out

the roses.

Paul looked into Miriam's eyes. She was pale and expectant with

wonder, her lips were parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him. His

look seemed to travel down into her. Her soul quivered. It was the

communion she wanted. He turned aside, as if pained. He turned to the

bush.

"They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves," he

said.

She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy,

others expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She

lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and

touched them in worship.

"Let us go," he said.

There was a cool scent of ivory roses--a white, virgin scent. Something

made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The two walked in silence.

"Till Sunday," he said quietly, and left her; and she walked home

slowly, feeling her soul satisfied with the holiness of the night. He

stumbled down the path. And as soon as he was out of the wood, in the

free open meadow, where he could breathe, he started to run as fast as

he could. It was like a delicious delirium in his veins.

Always when he went with Miriam, and it grew rather late, he knew his

mother was fretting and getting angry about him--why, he could not

understand. As he went into the house, flinging down his cap, his

mother looked up at the clock. She had been sitting thinking, because

a chill to her eyes prevented her reading. She could feel Paul being

drawn away by this girl. And she did not care for Miriam. "She is one

of those who will want to suck a man's soul out till he has none of his

own left," she said to herself; "and he is just such a gaby as to let

himself be absorbed. She will never let him become a man; she never

will." So, while he was away with Miriam, Mrs. Morel grew more and more

worked up.

She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather tired:

"You have been far enough tonight."

His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl, shrank.

"You must have been right home with her," his mother continued.

He would not answer. Mrs. Morel, looking at him quickly, saw his hair

was damp on his forehead with haste, saw him frowning in his heavy

fashion, resentfully.

"She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can't get away from her,

but must go trailing eight miles at this time of night."

He was hurt between the past glamour with Miriam and the knowledge that

his mother fretted. He had meant not to say anything, to refuse to

answer. But he could not harden his heart to ignore his mother.

"I _do_ like to talk to her," he answered irritably.

"Is there nobody else to talk to?"

"You wouldn't say anything if I went with Edgar."

"You know I should. You know, whoever you went with, I should say it

was too far for you to go trailing, late at night, when you've been

to Nottingham. Besides"--her voice suddenly flashed into anger and

contempt--"it is disgusting--bits of lads and girls courting."

"It is _not_ courting," he cried.

"I don't know what else you call it."

"It's not! Do you think we _spoon_ and do? We only talk."

"Till goodness knows what time and distance," was the sarcastic

rejoinder.

Paul snapped at the laces of his boots angrily.

"What are you so mad about?" he asked. "Because you don't like her?"

"I don't say I don't like her. But I don't hold with children keeping

company, and never did."

"But you don't mind our Annie going out with Jim Inger."

"They've more sense than you two."

"Why?"

"Our Annie's not one of the deep sort."

He failed to see the meaning of this remark. But his mother looked

tired. She was never so strong after William's death: and her eyes hurt

her.

"Well," he said, "it's so pretty in the country. Mr. Sleath asked about

you. He said he'd missed you. Are you a bit better?"

"I ought to have been in bed a long time ago," she replied.

"Why, mother, you know you wouldn't have gone before quarter-past ten."

"Oh yes, I should!"

"Oh, little woman, you'd say anything now you're disagreeable with me,

wouldn't you?"

He kissed her forehead that he knew so well: the deep marks between the

brows, the rising of the fine hair, greying now, and the proud setting

of the temples. His hand lingered on her shoulder after his kiss. Then

he went slowly to bed. He had forgotten Miriam; he only saw how his

mother's hair was lifted back from her warm, broad brow. And somehow,

she was hurt.

Then the next time he saw Miriam he said to her:

"Don't let me be late tonight--not later than ten o'clock. My mother

gets so upset."

Miriam dropped her head, brooding.

"Why does she get upset?" she asked.

"Because she says I oughtn't to be out late when I have to get up

early."

"Very well!" said Miriam, rather quietly, with just a touch of a sneer.

He resented that. And he was usually late again.

That there was any love growing between him and Miriam neither of

them would have acknowledged. He thought he was too sane for such

sentimentality, and she thought herself too lofty. They both were late

in coming to maturity, and psychical ripeness was much behind even the

physical. Miriam was exceedingly sensitive, as her mother had always

been. The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish. Her

brothers were brutal, but never coarse in speech. The men did all

the discussing of farm matters outside. But, perhaps because of the

continual business of birth and of begetting which goes on upon every

farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood

was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such

intercourse. Paul took his pitch from her, and their intimacy went on

in an utterly blanched and chaste fashion. It could never be mentioned

that the mare was in foal.

When he was nineteen, he was earning only twenty shillings a week, but

he was happy. His painting went well, and life went well enough. On

the Good Friday he organized a walk to the Hemlock Stone. There were

three lads of his own age, then Annie and Arthur, Miriam and Geoffrey.

Arthur, apprenticed as an electrician in Nottingham, was home for the

holiday. Morel, as usual, was up early, whistling and sawing in the

yard. At seven o'clock the family heard him buy threepennyworth of

hot-cross buns; he talked with gusto to the little girl who brought

them, calling her "my darling." He turned away several boys who came

with more buns, telling them they had been "kested" by a little lass.

Then Mrs. Morel got up, and the family straggled down. It was an

immense luxury to everybody, this lying in bed just beyond the ordinary

time on a weekday. And Paul and Arthur read before breakfast, and had

the meal unwashed, sitting in their shirt-sleeves. This was another

holiday luxury. The room was warm. Everything felt free of care and

anxiety. There was a sense of plenty in the house.

While the boys were reading, Mrs. Morel went into the garden. They were

now in another house, an old one, near the Scargill Street home, which

had been left soon after William had died. Directly came an excited cry

from the garden:

"Paul, Paul! come and look!"

It was his mother's voice. He threw down his book and went out. There

was a long garden that ran to a field. It was a grey, cold day, with a

sharp wind blowing out of Derbyshire. Two fields away Bestwood began,

with a jumble of roofs and red house-ends, out of which rose the church

tower and the spire of the Congregational chapel. And beyond went woods

and hills, right away to the pale grey heights of the Pennine Chain.

Paul looked down the garden for his mother. Her head appeared among the

young currant-bushes.

"Come here!" she cried.

"What for?" he answered.

"Come and see."

She had been looking at the buds on the currant-trees. Paul went up.

"To think," she said, "that here I might never have seen them!"

Her son went to her side. Under the fence, in a little bed, was a ravel

of poor grassy leaves, such as come from very immature bulbs, and three

scyllas in bloom. Mrs. Morel pointed to the deep blue flowers.

"Now, just see those!" she exclaimed. "I was looking at the

currant-bushes, when, thinks I to myself, 'There's something very blue;

is it a bit of sugar-bag?' and there, behold you! Sugar-bag! Three

glories of the snow, and _such_ beauties! But where on earth did they

come from?"

"I don't know," said Paul.

"Well, that's a marvel, now! I _thought_ I knew every weed and

blade in this garden. But _haven't_ they done well? You see, that

gooseberry-bush just shelters them. Not nipped, not touched!"

He crouched down and turned up the bells of the little blue flowers.

"They're a glorious colour!" he said.

"Aren't they!" she cried. "I guess they come from Switzerland, where

they say they have such lovely things. Fancy them against the snow! But

where have they come from? They can't have _blown_ here, can they?"

Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash of bulbs to

mature.

"And you never told me," she said.

"No; I thought I'd leave it till they might flower."

"And now, you see! I might have missed them. And I've never had a glory

of the snow in my garden in my life."

She was full of excitement and elation. The garden was an endless joy

to her. Paul was thankful for her sake at last to be in a house with a

long garden that went down to a field. Every morning after breakfast

she went out and was happy pottering about in it. And it was true, she

knew every weed and blade.

Everybody turned up for the walk. Food was packed, and they set off,

a merry, delighted party. They hung over the wall of the mill-race,

dropped paper in the water on one side the tunnel and watched it shoot

out on the other. They stood on the footbridge over Boathouse Station

and looked at the metals gleaming coldly.

"You should see the Flying Scotchman come through at half-past six!"

said Leonard, whose father was a signal-man. "Lad, but she doesn't half

buzz!" and the little party looked up the lines one way, to London,

and the other way, to Scotland, and they felt the touch of these two

magical places.

In Ilkeston the colliers were waiting in gangs for the public-houses

to open. It was a town of idleness and lounging. At Stanton Gate the

iron foundry blazed. Over everything there were great discussions. At

Trowell they crossed again from Derbyshire into Nottinghamshire. They

came to the Hemlock at dinner-time. Its field was crowded with folk

from Nottingham and Ilkeston.

They had expected a venerable and dignified monument. They found a

little, gnarled, twisted stump of rock, something like a decayed

mushroom, standing out pathetically on the side of a field. Leonard and

Dick immediately proceeded to carve their initials, "L. W." and "R.

P.," in the old red sandstone; but Paul desisted, because he had read

in the newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who could

find no other road to immortality. Then all the lads climbed to the top

of the rock to look round.

Everywhere in the field below, factory girls and lads were eating

lunch or sporting about. Beyond was the garden of an old manor. It had

yew-hedges and thick clumps and borders of yellow crocuses round the

lawn.

"See," said Paul to Miriam, "what a quiet garden!"

She saw the dark yews and the golden crocuses, then she looked at him

gratefully. He had not seemed to belong to her among all these others;

he was different then--not her Paul, who understood the slightest

quiver of her innermost soul, but something else, speaking another

language than hers. How it hurt her, and deadened her very perceptions.

Only when he came right back to her, leaving his other, his lesser

self, as she thought, would she feel alive again. And now he asked her

to look at this garden, wanting the contact with her again. Impatient

of the set in the field, she turned to the quiet lawn, surrounded by

sheaves of shut-up crocuses. A feeling of stillness, almost of ecstasy,

came over her. It felt almost as if she were alone with him in this

garden.

Then he left her again and joined the others. Soon they started home.

Miriam loitered behind, alone. She did not fit in with the others;

she could very rarely get into human relations with anyone: so her

friend, her companion, her lover, was Nature. She saw the sun declining

wanly. In the dusky, cold hedgerows were some red leaves. She lingered

to gather them, tenderly, passionately. The love in her finger-tips

caressed the leaves; the passion in her heart came to a glow upon the

leaves.

Suddenly she realized she was alone in a strange road, and she hurried

forward. Turning a corner in the lane, she came upon Paul, who stood

bent over something, his mind fixed on it, working away steadily,

patiently, a little hopelessly. She hesitated in her approach, to watch.

He remained concentrated in the middle of the road. Beyond, one rift

of rich gold in that colourless grey evening seemed to make him stand

out in dark relief. She saw him, slender and firm, as if the setting

sun had given him to her. A deep pain took hold of her, and she knew

she must love him. And she had discovered him, discovered in him a

rare potentiality, discovered his loneliness. Quivering as at some

"annunciation," she went slowly forward.

At last he looked up.

"Why," he exclaimed gratefully, "have you waited for me!"

She saw a deep shadow in his eyes.

"What was it?" she asked.

"The spring broken here"; and he showed her where his umbrella was

injured.

Instantly, with some shame, she knew he had not done the damage

himself, but that Geoffrey was responsible.

"It is only an old umbrella, isn't it?" she asked.

She wondered why he, who did not usually trouble over trifles, made

such a mountain of this molehill.

"But it was William's, an' my mother can't help but know," he said

quietly, still patiently working at the umbrella.

The words went through Miriam like a blade. This, then, was the

confirmation of her vision of him! She looked at him. But there was

about him a certain reserve, and she dared not comfort him, not even

speak softly to him.

"Come on," he said. "I can't do it"; and they went in silence along the

road.

That same evening they were walking along under the trees by Nether

Green. He was talking to her fretfully, seemed to be struggling to

convince himself.

"You know," he said, with an effort, "if one person loves, the other

does."

"Ah!" she answered. "Like mother said to me when I was little, 'Love

begets love.'"

"Yes, something like that, I think it _must_ be."

"I hope so, because, if it were not, love might be a very terrible

thing," she said.

"Yes, but it _is_--at least with most people," he answered.

And Miriam, thinking he had assured himself, felt strong in herself.

She always regarded that sudden coming upon him in the lane as a

revelation. And this conversation remained graven in her mind as one of

the letters of the law.

Now she stood with him and for him. When, about this time, he outraged

the family feeling at Willey Farm by some overbearing insult, she

stuck to him, and believed he was right. And at this time she dreamed

dreams of him, vivid, unforgettable. These dreams came again later on,

developed to a more subtle psychological stage.

On the Easter Monday the same party took an excursion to Wingfield

Manor. It was great excitement to Miriam to catch a train at Sethley

Bridge, amid all the bustle of the Bank Holiday crowd. They left

the train at Alfreton. Paul was interested in the street and in the

colliers with their dogs. Here was a new race of miners. Miriam did

not live till they came to the church. They were all rather timid

of entering, with their bags of food, for fear of being turned out.

Leonard, a comic, thin fellow, went first; Paul, who would have died

rather than be sent back, went last. The place was decorated for

Easter. In the font hundreds of white narcissi seemed to be growing.

The air was dim and coloured from the windows, and thrilled with a

subtle scent of lilies and narcissi. In that atmosphere Miriam's

soul came into a glow. Paul was afraid of the things he mustn't do;

and he was sensitive to the feel of the place. Miriam turned to

him. He answered. They were together. He would not go beyond the

Communion-rail. She loved him for that. Her soul expanded into prayer

beside him. He felt the strange fascination of shadowy religious

places. All his latent mysticism quivered into life. She was drawn to

him. He was a prayer along with her.

Miriam very rarely talked to the other lads. They at once became

awkward in conversation with her. So usually she was silent.

It was past midday when they climbed the steep path to the manor.

All things shone softly in the sun, which was wonderfully warm and

enlivening. Celandines and violets were out. Everybody was tip-top full

with happiness. The glitter of the ivy, the soft, atmospheric grey

of the Castle walls, the gentleness of everything near the ruin, was

perfect.

The manor is of hard, pale grey stone, and the outer walls are blank

and calm. The young folk were in raptures. They went in trepidation,

almost afraid that the delight of exploring this ruin might be denied

them. In the first courtyard, within the high broken walls, were

farm-carts, with their shafts lying idle on the ground, the tires of

the wheels brilliant with gold-red rust. It was very still.

All eagerly paid their sixpences, and went timidly through the fine

clean arch of the inner courtyard. They were shy. Here on the pavement,

where the hall had been, an old thorn-tree was budding. All kinds of

strange openings and broken rooms were in the shadow around them.

After lunch they set off once more to explore the ruin. This time the

girls went with the boys, who could act as guides and expositors. There

was one tall tower in a corner, rather tottering, where they say Mary

Queen of Scots was imprisoned.

"Think of the Queen going up here!" said Miriam in a low voice, as she

climbed the hollow stairs.

"If she could get up," said Paul, "for she had rheumatism like

anything. I reckon they treated her rottenly."

"You don't think she deserved it?" asked Miriam.

"No, I don't. She was only lively."

They continued to mount the winding staircase. A high wind, blowing

through the loopholes, went rushing up the shaft, and filled the girl's

skirts like a balloon, so that she was ashamed, until he took the hem

of her dress and held it down for her. He did it perfectly simply, as

he would have picked up her glove. She remembered this always.

Round the broken top of the tower the ivy bushed out, old and handsome.

Also, there were a few chill gillivers, in pale cold bud. Miriam wanted

to lean over for some ivy, but he would not let her. Instead, she had

to wait behind him, and take from him each spray as he gathered it and

held it to her, each one separately, in the purest manner of chivalry.

The tower seemed to rock in the wind. They looked over miles and miles

of wooded country, and country with gleams of pasture.

The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful, and in perfect

preservation. Paul made a drawing: Miriam stayed with him. She was

thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking with her strained, hopeless

eyes, that could not understand misery, over the hills whence no help

came, or sitting in this crypt, being told of a God as cold as the

place she sat in.

They set off again gaily, looking round on their beloved manor that

stood so clean and big on its hill.

"Supposing you could have _that_ farm," said Paul to Miriam.

"Yes!"

"Wouldn't it be lovely to come and see you!"

They were now in the bare country of stone walls, which he loved, and

which, though only ten miles from home, seemed so foreign to Miriam.

The party was straggling. As they were crossing a large meadow that

sloped away from the sun, along a path embedded with innumerable tiny

glittering points, Paul, walking alongside, laced his fingers in the

strings of the bag Miriam was carrying, and instantly she felt Annie

behind, watchful and jealous. But the meadow was bathed in a glory of

sunshine, and the path was jewelled, and it was seldom that he gave her

any sign. She held her fingers very still among the strings of the bag,

his fingers touching; and the place was golden as a vision.

At last they came into the straggling grey village of Crich, that lies

high. Beyond the village was the famous Crich Stand that Paul could

see from the garden at home. The party pushed on. Great expanse of

country spread around and below. The lads were eager to get to the top

of the hill. It was capped by a round knoll, half of which was by now

cut away, and on the top of which stood an ancient monument, sturdy

and squat, for signalling in old days far down into the level lands of

Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire.

It was blowing so hard, high up there in the exposed place, that the

only way to be safe was to stand nailed by the wind to the wall of

the tower. At their feet fell the precipice where the limestone was

quarried away. Below was a jumble of hills and tiny villages--Matlock,

Ambergate, Stoney Middleton. The lads were eager to spy out the church

of Bestwood, far away among the rather crowded country on the left.

They were disgusted that it seemed to stand on a plain. They saw the

hills of Derbyshire fall into the monotony of the Midlands that swept

away South.

Miriam was somewhat scared by the wind, but the lads enjoyed it. They

went on, miles and miles, to Whatstandwell. All the food was eaten,

everybody was hungry, and there was very little money to get home with.

But they managed to procure a loaf and a currant-loaf, which they

hacked into pieces with shut-knives, and ate sitting on the wall near

the bridge, watching the bright Derwent rushing by, and the brakes from

Matlock pulling up at the inn.

Paul was now pale with weariness. He had been responsible for the party

all day, and now he was done. Miriam understood, and kept close to him,

and he left himself in her hands.

They had an hour to wait at Ambergate Station. Trains came, crowded

with excursionists returning to Manchester, Birmingham, and London.

"We might be going there--folk easily might think we're going that

far," said Paul.

They got back rather late. Miriam, walking home with Geoffrey, watched

the moon rise big and red and misty. She felt something was fulfilled

in her.

She had an elder sister, Agatha, who was a school-teacher. Between the

two girls was a feud. Miriam considered Agatha worldly. And she wanted

herself to be a school-teacher.

One Saturday afternoon Agatha and Miriam were upstairs dressing.

Their bedroom was over the stable. It was a low room, not very large,

and bare. Miriam had nailed on the wall a reproduction of Veronese's

"St. Catherine." She loved the woman who sat in the window, dreaming.

Her own windows were too small to sit in. But the front one was

dripped over with honeysuckle and Virginia creeper, and looked upon

the tree-tops of the oak-wood across the yard, while the little back

window, no bigger than a handkerchief, was a loophole to the east, to

the dawn beating up against the beloved round hills.

The two sisters did not talk much to each other. Agatha, who was fair

and small and determined, had rebelled against the home atmosphere,

against the doctrine of "the other cheek." She was out in the world

now, in a fair way to be independent. And she insisted on worldly

values, on appearance, on manners, on position, which Miriam would fain

have ignored.

Both girls liked to be upstairs, out of the way, when Paul came. They

preferred to come running down, open the stairfoot door, and see him

watching, expectant of them. Miriam stood painfully pulling over her

head a rosary he had given her. It caught in the fine mesh of her

hair. But at last she had it on, and the red-brown wooden beads looked

well against her cool brown neck. She was a well-developed girl, and

very handsome. But in the little looking-glass nailed against the

whitewashed wall she could only see a fragment of herself at a time.

Agatha had bought a little mirror of her own, which she propped up

to suit herself. Miriam was near the window. Suddenly she heard the

well-known click of the chain, and she saw Paul fling open the gate,

push his bicycle into the yard. She saw him look at the house, and she

shrank away. He walked in a nonchalant fashion, and his bicycle went

with him as if it were a live thing.

"Paul's come!" she exclaimed.

"Aren't you glad?" said Agatha cuttingly.

Miriam stood still in amazement and bewilderment.

"Well, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes, but I'm not going to let him see it, and think I wanted him."

Miriam was startled. She heard him putting his bicycle in the stable

underneath, and talking to Jimmy, who had been a pit-horse, and who was

seedy.

"Well, Jimmy my lad, how are ter? Nobbut sick an' sadly, like? Why,

then, it's a shame, my owd lad."

She heard the rope run through the hole as the horse lifted its head

from the lad's caress. How she loved to listen when he thought only the

horse could hear. But there was a serpent in her Eden. She searched

earnestly in herself to see if she wanted Paul Morel. She felt there

would be some disgrace in it. Full of twisted feeling, she was afraid

she did want him. She stood self-convicted. Then came an agony of new

shame. She shrank within herself in a coil of torture. Did she want

Paul Morel, and did he know she wanted him? What a subtle infamy upon

her! She felt as if her whole soul coiled into knots of shame.

Agatha was dressed first, and ran downstairs. Miriam heard her greet

the lad gaily, knew exactly how brilliant her grey eyes became with

that tone. She herself would have felt it bold to have greeted him in

such wise. Yet there she stood under the self-accusation of wanting

him, tied to that stake of torture. In bitter perplexity she kneeled

down and prayed:

"O Lord, let me not love Paul Morel. Keep me from loving him, if I

ought not to love him."

Something anomalous in the prayer arrested her. She lifted her head

and pondered. How could it be wrong to love him? Love was God's gift.

And yet it caused her shame. That was because of him, Paul Morel. But,

then, it was not his affair, it was her own, between herself and God.

She was to be a sacrifice. But it was God's sacrifice, not Paul Morel's

or her own. After a few minutes she hid her face in the pillow again,

and said:

"But, Lord, if it is Thy will that I should love him, make me love

him--as Christ would, who died for the souls of men. Make me love him

splendidly, because he is Thy son."

She remained kneeling for some time, quite still, and deeply moved, her

black hair against the red squares and the lavender-sprigged squares of

the patchwork-quilt. Prayer was almost essential to her. Then she fell

into that rapture of self-sacrifice, identifying herself with a God who

was sacrificed, which gives to so many human souls their deepest bliss.

When she went downstairs Paul was lying back in an arm-chair, holding

forth with much vehemence to Agatha, who was scorning a little painting

he had brought to show her. Miriam glanced at the two, and avoided

their levity. She went into the parlour to be alone.

It was teatime before she was able to speak to Paul, and then her

manner was so distant he thought he had offended her.

Miriam discontinued her practice of going each Thursday evening to the

library in Bestwood. After calling for Paul regularly during the whole

spring, a number of trifling incidents and tiny insults from his family

awakened her to their attitude towards her, and she decided to go no

more. So she announced to Paul one evening she would not call at his

house again for him on Thursday nights.

"Why?" he asked, very short.

"Nothing. Only I'd rather not."

"Very well."

"But," she faltered, "if you'd care to meet me, we could still go

together."

"Meet you where?"

"Somewhere--where you like."

"I shan't meet you anywhere. I don't see why you shouldn't keep calling

for me. But if you won't, I don't want to meet you."

So the Thursday evenings which had been so precious to her, and to him,

were dropped. He worked instead. Mrs. Morel sniffed with satisfaction

at this arrangement.

He would not have it that they were lovers. The intimacy between them

had been kept so abstract, such a matter of the soul, all thought and

weary struggle into consciousness, that he saw it only as a platonic

friendship. He stoutly denied there was anything else between them.

Miriam was silent, or else she very quietly agreed. He was a fool who

did not know what was happening to himself. By tacit agreement they

ignored the remarks and insinuations of their acquaintances.

"We aren't lovers, we are friends," he said to her. "_We_ know it. Let

them talk. What does it matter what they say?"

Sometimes, as they were walking together, she slipped her arm timidly

into his. But he always resented it, and she knew it. It caused a

violent conflict in him. With Miriam he was always on the high plane of

abstraction, when his natural fire of love was transmitted into the

fine stream of thought. She would have it so. If he were jolly and, as

she put it, flippant, she waited till he came back to her, till the

change had taken place in him again, and he was wrestling with his own

soul, frowning, passionate in his desire for understanding. And in this

passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to

herself. But he must be made abstract first.

Then, if she put her arm in his, it caused him almost torture. His

consciousness seemed to split. The place where she was touching him ran

hot with friction. He was one internecine battle, and he became cruel

to her because of it.

One evening in midsummer Miriam called at the house, warm from

climbing. Paul was alone in the kitchen; his mother could be heard

moving about upstairs.

"Come and look at the sweet-peas," he said to the girl.

They went into the garden. The sky behind the townlet and the church

was orange-red; the flower-garden was flooded with a strange warm

light that lifted every leaf into significance. Paul passed along a

fine row of sweet-peas, gathering a blossom here and there, all cream

and pale blue. Miriam followed, breathing the fragrance. To her,

flowers appealed with such strength she felt she must make them part of

herself. When she bent and breathed a flower, it was as if she and the

flower were loving each other. Paul hated her for it. There seemed a

sort of exposure about the action, something too intimate.

When he had got a fair bunch, they returned to the house. He listened

for a moment to his mother's quiet movements upstairs, then he said:

"Come here, and let me pin them in for you." He arranged them two or

three at a time in the bosom of her dress, stepping back now and then

to see the effect. "You know," he said, taking the pin out of his

mouth, "a woman ought always to arrange her flowers before her glass."

Miriam laughed. She thought flowers ought to be pinned in one's dress

without any care. That Paul should take pains to fix her flowers for

her was his whim.

He was rather offended at her laughter.

"Some women do--those who look decent," he said.

Miriam laughed again, but mirthlessly, to hear him thus mix her up with

women in a general way. From most men she would have ignored it. But

from him it hurt her.

He had nearly finished arranging the flowers when he heard his mother's

footstep on the stairs. Hurriedly he pushed in the last pin and turned

away.

"Don't let mater know," he said.

Miriam picked up her books and stood in the doorway looking with

chagrin at the beautiful sunset. She would call for Paul no more, she

said.

"Good-evening, Mrs. Morel," she said, in a deferential way. She sounded

as if she felt she had no right to be there.

"Oh, is it you, Miriam?" replied Mrs. Morel coolly.

But Paul insisted on everybody's accepting his friendship with the

girl, and Mrs. Morel was too wise to have any open rupture.

It was not till he was twenty years old that the family could ever

afford to go away for a holiday. Mrs. Morel had never been away for a

holiday, except to see her sister, since she had been married. Now at

last Paul had saved enough money, and they were all going. There was to

be a party: some of Annie's friends, one friend of Paul's, a young man

in the same office where William had previously been, and Miriam.

It was great excitement writing for rooms. Paul and his mother debated

it endlessly between them. They wanted a furnished cottage for two

weeks. She thought one week would be enough, but he insisted on two.

At last they got an answer from Mablethorpe, a cottage such as they

wished for thirty shillings a week. There was immense jubilation. Paul

was wild with joy for his mother's sake. She would have a real holiday

now. He and she sat at evening picturing what it would be like. Annie

came in, and Leonard, and Alice, and Kitty. There was wild rejoicing

and anticipation. Paul told Miriam. She seemed to brood with joy over

it. But the Morels' house rang with excitement.

They were to go on Saturday morning by the seven train. Paul suggested

that Miriam should sleep at his house, because it was so far for her

to walk. She came down for supper. Everybody was so excited that even

Miriam was accepted with warmth. But almost as soon as she entered

the feeling in the family became close and tight. He had discovered

a poem by Jean Ingelow which mentioned Mablethorpe, and so he must

read it to Miriam. He would never have got so far in the direction

of sentimentality as to read poetry to his own family. But now they

condescended to listen. Miriam sat on the sofa absorbed in him. She

always seemed absorbed in him, and by him, when he was present. Mrs.

Morel sat jealously in her own chair. She was going to hear also. And

even Annie and the father attended, Morel with his head cocked on one

side, like somebody listening to a sermon and feeling conscious of

the fact. Paul ducked his head over the book. He had got now all the

audience he cared for. And Mrs. Morel and Annie almost contested with

Miriam who should listen best and win his favour. He was in very high

feather.

"But," interrupted Mrs. Morel, "what _is_ the 'Bride of Enderby' that

the bells are supposed to ring?"

"It's an old tune they used to play on the bells for a warning against

water. I suppose the Bride of Enderby was drowned in a flood," he

replied. He had not the faintest knowledge what it really was, but he

would have never sunk so low as to confess that to his womenfolk. They

listened and believed him. He believed himself.

"And the people knew what that tune meant?" said his mother.

"Yes--just like the Scotch when they heard 'The Flowers o' the

Forest'--and when they used to ring the bells backward for alarm."

"How?" said Annie. "A bell sounds the same whether it's rung backwards

or forwards."

"But," he said, "if you start with the deep bell and ring up to the

high one--der--der--der--der--der--der--der--der!"

He ran up the scale. Everybody thought it clever. He thought so too.

Then, waiting a minute, he continued the poem.

"H'm!" said Mrs. Morel curiously, when he finished. "But I wish

everything that's written weren't so sad."

"_I_ canna see what they want drownin' theirselves for," said Morel.

There was a pause. Annie got up to clear the table.

Miriam rose to help with the pots.

"Let _me_ help to wash up," she said.

"Certainly not," cried Annie. "You sit down again. There aren't many."

And Miriam, who could not be familiar and insist, sat down again to

look at the book with Paul.

He was master of the party; his father was no good. And great tortures

he suffered lest the tin box should be put out at Firsby instead of at

Mablethorpe. And he wasn't equal to getting a carriage. His bold little

mother did that.

"Here!" she cried to a man. "Here!"

Paul and Annie got behind the rest, convulsed with shamed laughter.

"How much will it be to drive to Brook Cottage?" said Mrs. Morel.

"Two shillings."

"Why, how far is it?"

"A good way."

"I don't believe it," she said.

But she scrambled in. There were eight crowded in one old seaside

carriage.

"You see," said Mrs. Morel, "it's only threepence each, and if it were

a tram-car----"

They drove along. Each cottage they came to, Mrs. Morel cried:

"Is it this? Now, this is it!"

Everybody sat breathless. They drove past. There was a universal sigh.

"I'm thankful it wasn't that brute," said Mrs. Morel. "I _was_

frightened." They drove on and on.

At last they descended at a house that stood alone over the dyke by

the highroad. There was wild excitement because they had to cross a

little bridge to get into the front garden. But they loved the house

that lay so solitary, with a sea-meadow on one side, and immense

expanse of land patched in white barley, yellow oats, red wheat, and

green root-crops, flat and stretching level to the sky.

Paul kept accounts. He and his mother ran the show. The total

expenses--lodging, food, everything--was sixteen shillings a week per

person. He and Leonard went bathing in the morning. Morel was wandering

abroad quite early.

"You, Paul," his mother called from the bedroom, "eat a piece of

bread-and-butter."

"All right," he answered.

And when he got back he saw his mother presiding in state at the

breakfast-table. The woman of the house was young. Her husband was

blind, and she did laundry work. So Mrs. Morel always washed the pots

in the kitchen and made the beds.

"But you said you'd have a real holiday," said Paul, "and now you work."

"Work!" she exclaimed. "What are you talking about!"

He loved to go with her across the fields to the village and the sea.

She was afraid of the plank bridges, and he abused her for being a

baby. On the whole he stuck to her as if he were _her_ man.

Miriam did not get much of him, except, perhaps, when all the others

went to the "Coons." Coons were insufferably stupid to Miriam, so he

thought they were to himself also, and he preached priggishly to Annie

about the fatuity of listening to them. Yet he, too, knew all their

songs, and sang them along the roads roisterously. And if he found

himself listening, the stupidity pleased him very much. Yet to Annie he

said:

"Such rot! there isn't a grain of intelligence in it. Nobody with more

gumption than a grasshopper could go and sit and listen." And to Miriam

he said, with much scorn of Annie and the others: "I suppose they're at

the 'Coons.'"

It was queer to see Miriam singing coon songs. She had a straight chin

that went in a perpendicular line from the lower lip to the turn. She

always reminded Paul of some sad Botticelli angel when she sang, even

when it was:

"Come down lover's lane

For a walk with me, talk with me."

Only when he sketched, or at evening when the others were at the

"Coons," she had him to himself. He talked to her endlessly about his

love of horizontals: how they, the great levels of sky and land in

Lincolnshire, meant to him the eternality of the will, just as the

bowed Norman arches of the church, repeating themselves, meant the

dogged leaping forward of the persistent human soul, on and on, nobody

knows where; in contradiction to the perpendicular lines and to the

Gothic arch, which, he said, leapt up at heaven and touched the ecstasy

and lost itself in the divine. Himself, he said, was Norman, Miriam was

Gothic. She bowed in consent even to that.

One evening he and she went up the great sweeping shore of sand

towards Theddlethorpe. The long breakers plunged and ran in a hiss of

foam along the coast. It was a warm evening. There was not a figure

but themselves on the far reaches of sand, no noise but the sound of

the sea. Paul loved to see it clanging at the land. He loved to feel

himself between the noise of it and the silence of the sandy shore.

Miriam was with him. Everything grew very intense. It was quite

dark when they turned again. The way home was through a gap in the

sandhills, and then along a raised grass road between two dykes. The

country was black and still. From behind the sandhills came the whisper

of the sea. Paul and Miriam walked in silence. Suddenly he started. The

whole of his blood seemed to burst into flame, and he could scarcely

breathe. An enormous orange moon was staring at them from the rim of

the sandhills. He stood still, looking at it.

"Ah!" cried Miriam, when she saw it.

He remained perfectly still, staring at the immense and ruddy moon, the

only thing in the far-reaching darkness of the level. His heart beat

heavily, the muscles of his arms contracted.

"What is it?" murmured Miriam, waiting for him.

He turned and looked at her. She stood beside him, for ever in shadow.

Her face, covered with the darkness of her hat, was watching him

unseen. But she was brooding. She was slightly afraid--deeply moved and

religious. That was her best state. He was impotent against it. His

blood was concentrated like a flame in his chest. But he could not get

across to her. There were flashes in his blood. But somehow she ignored

them. She was expecting some religious state in him. Still yearning,

she was half aware of his passion, and gazed at him, troubled.

"What is it?" she murmured again.

"It's the moon," he answered, frowning.

"Yes," she assented. "Isn't it wonderful?" She was curious about him.

The crisis was past.

He did not know himself what was the matter. He was naturally so

young, and their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he wanted

to crush her on to his breast to ease the ache there. He was afraid

of her. The fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in

him been suppressed into a shame. When she shrank in her convulsed

coiled torture from the thought of such a thing, he had winced to the

depths of his soul. And now this "purity" prevented even their first

love-kiss. It was as if she could scarcely stand the shock of physical

love, even a passionate kiss, and then he was too shrinking and

sensitive to give it.

As they walked along the dark fen-meadow he watched the moon and did

not speak. She plodded beside him. He hated her, for she seemed in some

way to make him despise himself. Looking ahead--he saw the one light in

the darkness, the window of their lamp-lit cottage.

He loved to think of his mother, and the other jolly people.

"Well, everybody else has been in long ago!" said his mother as they

entered.

"What does that matter!" he cried irritably. "I can go a walk if I

like, can't I?"

"And I should have thought you could get in to supper with the rest,"

said Mrs. Morel.

"I shall please myself," he retorted. "It's _not_ late. I shall do as I

like."

"Very well," said his mother cuttingly, "then _do_ as you like." And

she took no further notice of him that evening. Which he pretended

neither to notice nor to care about, but sat reading. Miriam read also,

obliterating herself. Mrs. Morel hated her for making her son like

this. She watched Paul growing irritable, priggish, and melancholic.

For this she put the blame on Miriam. Annie and all her friends joined

against the girl. Miriam had no friend of her own, only Paul. But she

did not suffer so much, because she despised the triviality of these

other people.

And Paul hated her because, somehow, she spoilt his ease and

naturalness. And he writhed himself with a feeling of humiliation.