"Tha tickled me, Beat," he said thickly.
Like a flash her small white hand went out and smacked his face. He started up, glaring at her. They stared at each other. Slowly the flush mounted her cheek, she dropped her eyes, then her head. He sat down sulkily. She went into the scullery to adjust her hair. In private there she shed a few tears, she did not know what for.
When she returned she was pursed up close. But it was only a filmover her fire. He, with ruffled hair, was sulking upon the sofa. She sat down opposite, in the armchair, and neither spoke. The clock ticked in the silence like blows.
"You are a little cat, Beat," he said at length, half apologetically.
"Well, you shouldn't be brazen," she replied.
There was again a long silence. He whistled to himselflike a man much agitated but defiant. Suddenly she went acrossto him and kissed him.
"Did it, pore fing!" she mocked.
He lifted his face, smiling curiously.
"Kiss?" he invited her.
"Daren't I?" she asked.
"Go on!" he challenged, his mouth lifted to her.
Deliberately, and with a peculiar quivering smile thatseemed to overspread her whole body, she put her mouth on his. Immediately his arms folded round her. As soon as the long kiss wasfinished she drew back her head from him, put her delicate fingerson his neck, through the open collar. Then she closed her eyes,giving herself up again in a kiss.
She acted of her own free will. What she would do she did,and made nobody responsible.
Paul felt life changing around him. The conditions of youthwere gone. Now it was a home of grown-up people. Annie wasa married woman, Arthur was following his own pleasure in a wayunknown to his folk. For so long they had all lived at home,and gone out to pass their time. But now, for Annie and Arthur,life lay outside their mother's house. They came home for holidayand for rest. So there was that strange, half-empty feeling aboutthe house, as if the birds had flown. Paul became more and moreunsettled. Annie and Arthur had gone. He was restless to follow.Yet home was for him beside his mother. And still there wassomething else, something outside, something he wanted.
He grew more and more restless. Miriam did not satisfy him. His old mad desire to be with her grew weaker. Sometimes he metClara in Nottingham, sometimes he went to meetings with her,sometimes he saw her at Willey Farm. But on these last occasionsthe situation became strained. There was a triangle of antagonismbetween Paul and Clara and Miriam. With Clara he took on a smart,worldly, mocking tone very antagonistic to Miriam. It did notmatter what went before. She might be intimate and sad with him. Then as soon as Clara appeared, it all vanished, and he played tothe newcomer.
Miriam had one beautiful evening with him in the hay. He had been on the horse-rake, and having finished, came to helpher to put the hay in cocks. Then he talked to her of his hopesand despairs, and his whole soul seemed to lie bare before her. She felt as if she watched the very quivering stuff of life in him. The moon came out: they walked home together: he seemed to havecome to her because he needed her so badly, and she listened to him,gave him all her love and her faith. It seemed to her he broughther the best of himself to keep, and that she would guard it allher life. Nay, the sky did not cherish the stars more surely andeternally than she would guard the good in the soul of Paul Morel. She went on home alone, feeling exalted, glad in her faith.
And then, the next day, Clara came. They were to have teain the hayfield. Miriam watched the evening drawing to goldand shadow. And all the time Paul was sporting with Clara. He made higher and higher heaps of hay that they were jumping over. Miriam did not care for the game, and stood aside. Edgar and Geoffreyand Maurice and Clara and Paul jumped. Paul won, because hewas light. Clara's blood was roused. She could run like an Amazon. Paul loved the determined way she rushed at the hay-cock and leaped,landed on the other side, her breasts shaken, her thick haircome undone.
"You touched!" he cried. "You touched!"
"No!" she flashed, turning to Edgar. "I didn't touch, did I? Wasn't I clear?"
"I couldn't say," laughed Edgar.
None of them could say.
"But you touched," said Paul. "You're beaten."
"I did NOT touch!" she cried.
"As plain as anything," said Paul.
"Box his ears for me!" she cried to Edgar.
"Nay," Edgar laughed. "I daren't. You must do it yourself."
"And nothing can alter the fact that you touched," laughed Paul.
She was furious with him. Her little triumph before theselads and men was gone. She had forgotten herself in the game. Now he was to humble her.
"I think you are despicable!" she said.
And again he laughed, in a way that tortured Miriam.
"And I KNEW you couldn't jump that heap," he teased.
She turned her back on him. Yet everybody could see thatthe only person she listened to, or was conscious of, was he,and he of her. It pleased the men to see this battle between them. But Miriam was tortured.
Paul could choose the lesser in place of the higher, she saw. He could be unfaithful to himself, unfaithful to the real,deep Paul Morel. There was a danger of his becoming frivolous, of hisrunning after his satisfaction like any Arthur, or like his father. It made Miriam bitter to think that he should throw away his soulfor this flippant traffic of triviality with Clara. She walkedin bitterness and silence, while the other two rallied each other,and Paul sported.
And afterwards, he would not own it, but he was ratherashamed of himself, and prostrated himself before Miriam. Then again he rebelled.
"It's not religious to be religious," he said. "I reckona crow is religious when it sails across the sky. But it onlydoes it because it feels itself carried to where it's going,not because it thinks it is being eternal."
But Miriam knew that one should be religious in everything,have God, whatever God might be, present in everything.
"I don't believe God knows such a lot about Himself,"he cried. "God doesn't KNOW things, He IS things.And I'm sure He's not soulful."
And then it seemed to her that Paul was arguing God on to hisown side, because he wanted his own way and his own pleasure. There was a long battle between him and her. He was utterlyunfaithful to her even in her own presence; then he was ashamed,then repentant; then he hated her, and went off again. Those werethe ever-recurring conditions.
She fretted him to the bottom of his soul. There sheremained--sad, pensive, a worshipper. And he caused her sorrow. Half the time he grieved for her, half the time he hated her. She was his conscience; and he felt, somehow, he had got a consciencethat was too much for him. He could not leave her, because in oneway she did hold the best of him. He could not stay with herbecause she did not take the rest of him, which was three-quarters.So he chafed himself into rawness over her.
When she was twenty-one he wrote her a letter which couldonly have been written to her.
"May I speak of our old, worn love, this last time. It, too,is changing, is it not? Say, has not the body of that love died,and left you its invulnerable soul? You see, I can give youa spirit love, I have given it you this long, long time; but notembodied passion. See, you are a nun. I have given you what Iwould give a holy nun--as a mystic monk to a mystic nun. Surely youesteem it best. Yet you regret--no, have regretted--the other. In all our relations no body enters. I do not talk to you throughthe senses--rather through the spirit. That is why we cannot lovein the common sense. Ours is not an everyday affection. As yet weare mortal, and to live side by side with one another would be dreadful,for somehow with you I cannot long be trivial, and, you know,to be always beyond this mortal state would be to lose it. If people marry, they must live together as affectionate humans,who may be commonplace with each other without feeling awkward--notas two souls. So I feel it.
"Ought I to send this letter?--I doubt it. But there--itis best to understand. Au revoir."
Miriam read this letter twice, after which she sealed it up. A year later she broke the seal to show her mother the letter.
"You are a nun--you are a nun." The words went into her heartagain and again. Nothing he ever had said had gone into herso deeply, fixedly, like a mortal wound.
She answered him two days after the party.
"'Our intimacy would have been all-beautiful but for onelittle mistake,'" she quoted. "Was the mistake mine?"
Almost immediately he replied to her from Nottingham,sending her at the same time a little "Omar Khayyam."
"I am glad you answered; you are so calm and natural you putme to shame. What a ranter I am! We are often out of sympathy. But in fundamentals we may always be together I think.
"I must thank you for your sympathy with my painting and drawing. Many a sketch is dedicated to you. I do look forward to your criticisms,which, to my shame and glory, are always grand appreciations. It is a lovely joke, that. Au revoir."
This was the end of the first phase of Paul's love affair. He was now about twenty-three years old, and, though still virgin,the sex instinct that Miriam had over-refined for so long nowgrew particularly strong. Often, as he talked to Clara Dawes,came that thickening and quickening of his blood, that peculiarconcentration in the breast, as if something were alive there,a new self or a new centre of consciousness, warning him thatsooner or later he would have to ask one woman or another. But hebelonged to Miriam. Of that she was so fixedly sure that he allowedher right.
CHAPTER X
CLARA （I）
WHEN he was twenty-three years old, Paul sent in a landscape tothe winter exhibition at Nottingham Castle. Miss Jordan had takena good deal of interest in him, and invited him to her house,where he met other artists. He was beginning to grow ambitious.
One morning the postman came just as he was washing inthe scullery. Suddenly he heard a wild noise from his mother. Rushing into the kitchen, he found her standing on the hearthrugwildly waving a letter and crying "Hurrah!" as if she had gone mad. He was shocked and frightened.
"Why, mother!" he exclaimed.
She flew to him, flung her arms round him for a moment,then waved the letter, crying:
"Hurrah, my boy! I knew we should do it!"
He was afraid of her--the small, severe woman with graying hairsuddenly bursting out in such frenzy. The postman came running back,afraid something had happened. They saw his tipped cap over theshort curtains. Mrs. Morel rushed to the door.
"His picture's got first prize, Fred," she cried, "and is soldfor twenty guineas."
"My word, that's something like!" said the young postman,whom they had known all his life.
"And Major Moreton has bought it!" she cried.
"It looks like meanin' something, that does, Mrs. Morel,"said the postman, his blue eyes bright. He was glad to have broughtsuch a lucky letter. Mrs. Morel went indoors and sat down, trembling. Paul was afraid lest she might have misread the letter, and might bedisappointed after all. He scrutinised it once, twice. Yes, he becameconvinced it was true. Then he sat down, his heart beating with joy.
"Mother!" he exclaimed.
"Didn't I SAY we should do it!" she said, pretending shewas not crying.
He took the kettle off the fire and mashed the tea.
"You didn't think, mother--" he began tentatively.
"No, my son--not so much--but I expected a good deal."
"But not so much," he said.
"No--no--but I knew we should do it."
And then she recovered her composure, apparently at least. He sat with his shirt turned back, showing his young throat almostlike a girl's, and the towel in his hand, his hair sticking up wet.
"Twenty guineas, mother! That's just what you wanted to buyArthur out. Now you needn't borrow any. It'll just do."
"Indeed, I shan't take it all," she said.
"But why?"
"Because I shan't."
"Well--you have twelve pounds, I'll have nine."
They cavilled about sharing the twenty guineas. She wantedto take only the five pounds she needed. He would not hear of it. So they got over the stress of emotion by quarrelling.
Morel came home at night from the pit, saying:
"They tell me Paul's got first prize for his picture, and soldit to Lord Henry Bentley for fifty pound."
"Oh, what stories people do tell!" she cried.
"Ha!" he answered. "I said I wor sure it wor a lie. But they said tha'd told Fred Hodgkisson."
"As if I would tell him such stuff!"
"Ha!" assented the miner.
But he was disappointed nevertheless.
"It's true he has got the first prize," said Mrs. Morel.
The miner sat heavily in his chair.
"Has he, beguy!" he exclaimed.
He stared across the room fixedly.
"But as for fifty pounds--such nonsense!" She was silent awhile. "Major Moreton bought it for twenty guineas, that's true."
"Twenty guineas! Tha niver says!" exclaimed Morel.
"Yes, and it was worth it."
"Ay!" he said. "I don't misdoubt it. But twenty guineasfor a bit of a paintin' as he knocked off in an hour or two!"
He was silent with conceit of his son. Mrs. Morel sniffed,as if it were nothing.
"And when does he handle th' money?" asked the collier.
"That I couldn't tell you. When the picture is sent home,I suppose."
There was silence. Morel stared at the sugar-basin insteadof eating his dinner. His black arm, with the hand all gnarledwith work lay on the table. His wife pretended not to see him rubthe back of his hand across his eyes, nor the smear in the coal-duston his black face.
"Yes, an' that other lad 'ud 'a done as much if they hadnaha' killed 'im," he said quietly.
The thought of William went through Mrs. Morel like a cold blade. It left her feeling she was tired, and wanted rest.
Paul was invited to dinner at Mr. Jordan's. Afterwards he said:
