Miriam came later. But he had come into her life before shemade any mark on his. One dull afternoon, when the men were onthe land and the rest at school, only Miriam and her motherat 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 dearthings--the valuable things to her--her brothers had so often mockedor 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 wentforward for the great thick rope which hung from the beam in thedarkness 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 bagson 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 pleasureof 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 throughthe air, almost out of the door of the shed, the upper half of whichwas open, showing outside the drizzling rain, the filthy yard,the cattle standing disconsolate against the black cartshed, and atthe back of all the grey-green wall of the wood. She stood belowin 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 downat her. Her crimson cap hung over her dark curls, her beautifulwarm face, so still in a kind of brooding, was lifted towards him. It was dark and rather cold in the shed. Suddenly a swallow camedown 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 liftingthrough the air, as if he were lying on some force.
"Now I'll die," he said, in a detached, dreamy voice, as thoughhe 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 treatof a swing--it's a real treat of a swing!"
Miriam was amused that he took a swing so seriously and feltso 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 yourheels up, or they'll bang the manger wall."
She felt the accuracy with which he caught her, exactly at theright 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 atthe 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 meltedin 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 keepyou 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 loseherself so, nor could her brothers. It roused a warmth in her. It was almost as if he were a flame that had lit a warmth in herwhilst he swung in the middle air.
And gradually the intimacy with the family concentratedfor Paul on three persons--the mother, Edgar, and Miriam. To the mother he went for that sympathy and that appeal which seemedto draw him out. Edgar was his very close friend. And to Miriamhe more or less condescended, because she seemed so humble.
But the girl gradually sought him out. If he brought up hissketch-book, it was she who pondered longest over the last picture. Then she would look up at him. Suddenly, her dark eyes alight likewater 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 protoplasmin 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 ponderthese sayings. They gave her a feeling of life again, and vivifiedthings which had meant nothing to her. She managed to find somemeaning in his struggling, abstract speeches. And they werethe medium through which she came distinctly at her beloved objects.
Another day she sat at sunset whilst he was painting somepine-trees which caught the red glare from the west. He had been quiet.
"There you are!" he said suddenly. "I wanted that. Now, look atthem and tell me, are they pine trunks or are they red coals,standing-up pieces of fire in that darkness? There's God's burningbush for you, that burned not away."
Miriam looked, and was frightened. But the pine trunks werewonderful 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 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 justlike 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.
CHAPTER VII
LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE （II）
Then sometimes he hated her. Her youngest brother was only five. He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragileface--one of Reynolds'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 surchargedwith love. "Eh, my Hubert!"
And, folding him in her arms, she swayed slightly from sideto 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 wereswooned 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 sufferingbecause 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 youthinto a frenzy. And this fearful, naked contact of her on smalloccasions shocked him. He was used to his mother's reserve. And on such occasions he was thankful in his heart and soul that hehad his mother, so sane and wholesome.
All the life of Miriam's body was in her eyes, which were usuallydark 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 Jesuswas dead. Her body was not flexible and living. She walkedwith a swing, rather heavily, her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not clumsy, and yet none of her movements seemed quiteTHE movement. Often, when wiping the dishes, she would standin bewilderment and chagrin because she had pulled in two halvesa 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 loosenessor 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 eyesblazed naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened him. But she wasphysically afraid. If she were getting over a stile, she gripped hishands 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 broughther falling from the fence. But her wild "Ah!" of pain, as if shewere 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 1, because I'm a girl, be kept at home and not allowedto 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 Anniewas 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 hatedmen 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 menare 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 eyeexpanding 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 wasdrawing twilight. Miriam was just sweeping up the kitchen, and waskneeling at the hearth when he entered. Everyone was out but her. She looked round at him, flushed, her dark eyes shining, her finehair 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 bookfrom his pocket.
"But---"
He could feel her backing away.
"You said you wanted," he insisted.
"To-night, 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 to-night! 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, wherethe big milk-cans were standing, tipped up, to air. The men werein the cowsheds. He could hear the little sing-song of the milkspurting into the pails. Presently she came, bringing some biggreenish 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 putdown '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 hedemanded of her, "Do you see?" she looked up at him, her eyes widewith the half-laugh that comes of fear. "Don't you?" he cried.
