"Are they all for her?" cried the others, rushing up.
"Of course they're not," he said.
The girls clamoured round. Pussy drew back from her mates.
"Come out!" she cried. "I can have first pick, can't I, Paul?"
"Be nice with 'em," he said, and went away.
"You ARE a dear," the girls cried.
"Tenpence," he answered.
He went past Clara without speaking. She felt the threechocolate creams would burn her if she touched them. It neededall her courage to slip them into the pocket of her apron.
The girls loved him and were afraid of him. He was so nicewhile he was nice, but if he were offended, so distant, treating themas if they scarcely existed, or not more than the bobbins of thread. And then, if they were impudent, he said quietly: "Do you mindgoing on with your work," and stood and watched.
When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house wasin trouble. Arthur was just going to be married. His mother wasnot well. His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents,was given a paltry, poor job. Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed himself to her, yet could not give himself. The house,moreover, needed his support. He was pulled in all directions. He was not glad it was his birthday. It made him bitter.
He got to work at eight o'clock. Most of the clerks had notturned up. The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was changinghis coat, he heard a voice behind him say:
"Paul, Paul, I want you."
It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs,her face radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment.
"I want you," she said.
He stood, at a loss.
"Come on," she coaxed. "Come before you begin on the letters."
He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow,"finishing-off" room. Fanny walked before him: her black bodice wasshort--the waist was under her armpits--and her green-black cashmere skirtseemed very long, as she strode with big strides before the young man,himself so graceful. She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room,where the window opened on to chimney-pots. Paul watched her thinhands and her flat red wrists as she excitedly twitched her whiteapron, which was spread on the bench in front of her. She hesitated.
"You didn't think we'd forgot you?" she asked, reproachful.
"Why?" he asked. He had forgotten his birthday himself.
"'Why,' he says! 'Why!' Why, look here!" She pointedto the calendar, and he saw, surrounding the big black number"21", hundreds of little crosses in black-lead.
"Oh, kisses for my birthday," he laughed. "How did you know?"
"Yes, you want to know, don't you?" Fanny mocked, hugely delighted. "There's one from everybody--except Lady Clara--and two from some. But I shan't tell you how many I put."
"Oh, I know, you're spooney," he said.
"There you ARE mistaken!" she cried, indignant. "I couldnever be so soft." Her voice was strong and contralto.
"You always pretend to be such a hard-hearted hussy," he laughed. "And you know you're as sentimental---"
"I'd rather be called sentimental than frozen meat,"Fanny blurted. Paul knew she referred to Clara, and he smiled.
"Do you say such nasty things about me?" he laughed.
"No, my duck," the hunchback woman answered, lavishly tender. She was thirty-nine. "No, my duck, because you don't think yourselfa fine figure in marble and us nothing but dirt. I'm as good as you,aren't I, Paul?" and the question delighted her.
"Why, we're not better than one another, are we?" he replied.
"But I'm as good as you, aren't I, Paul?" she persisted daringly.
"Of course you are. If it comes to goodness, you're better."
She was rather afraid of the situation. She might get hysterical.
"I thought I'd get here before the others--won't they say I'm deep! Now shut your eyes---" she said.
"And open your mouth, and see what God sends you," he continued,suiting action to words, and expecting a piece of chocolate. He heard the rustle of the apron, and a faint clink of metal. "I'm going to look," he said.
He opened his eyes. Fanny, her long cheeks flushed,her blue eyes shining, was gazing at him. There was a littlebundle of paint-tubes on the bench before him. He turned pale.
"No, Fanny," he said quickly.
"From us all," she answered hastily.
"No, but---"
"Are they the right sort?" she asked, rocking herself with delight.
"Jove! they're the best in the catalogue."
"But they're the right sorts?" she cried.
"They're off the little list I'd made to get when my shipcame in." He bit his lip.
Fanny was overcome with emotion. She must turn the conversation.
"They was all on thorns to do it; they all paid their shares,all except the Queen of Sheba."
The Queen of Sheba was Clara.
"And wouldn't she join?" Paul asked.
"She didn't get the chance; we never told her; we wasn't goingto have HER bossing THIS show. We didn't WANT her to join."
Paul laughed at the woman. He was much moved. At last hemust go. She was very close to him. Suddenly she flung her armsround his neck and kissed him vehemently.
"I can give you a kiss to-day," she said apologetically. "You've looked so white, it's made my heart ache."
Paul kissed her, and left her. Her arms were so pitifullythin that his heart ached also.
That day he met Clara as he ran downstairs to wash his handsat dinner-time.
"You have stayed to dinner!" he exclaimed. It was unusualfor her.
"Yes; and I seem to have dined on old surgical-appliance stock. I MUST go out now, or I shall feel stale india-rubber right through."
She lingered. He instantly caught at her wish.
"You are going anywhere?" he asked.
They went together up to the Castle. Outdoors she dressedvery plainly, down to ugliness; indoors she always looked nice. She walked with hesitating steps alongside Paul, bowing and turningaway from him. Dowdy in dress, and drooping, she showed togreat disadvantage. He could scarcely recognise her strong form,that seemed to slumber with power. She appeared almost insignificant,drowning her stature in her stoop, as she shrank from the public gaze.
The Castle grounds were very green and fresh. Climbing theprecipitous ascent, he laughed and chattered, but she was silent,seeming to brood over something. There was scarcely time to goinside the squat, square building that crowns the bluff of rock. They leaned upon the wall where the cliff runs sheer down to the Park. Below them, in their holes in the sandstone, pigeons preenedthemselves and cooed softly. Away down upon the boulevard atthe foot of the rock, tiny trees stood in their own pools of shadow,and tiny people went scurrying about in almost ludicrous importance.
"You feel as if you could scoop up the folk like tadpoles,and have a handful of them," he said.
She laughed, answering:
"Yes; it is not necessary to get far off in order to seeus proportionately. The trees are much more significant."
"Bulk only," he said.
She laughed cynically.
Away beyond the boulevard the thin stripes of the metalsshowed upon the railway-track, whose margin was crowded with littlestacks of timber, beside which smoking toy engines fussed. Then the silver string of the canal lay at random among theblack heaps. Beyond, the dwellings, very dense on the river flat,looked like black, poisonous herbage, in thick rows and crowded beds,stretching right away, broken now and then by taller plants,right to where the river glistened in a hieroglyph across the country. The steep scarp cliffs across the river looked puny. Great stretchesof country darkened with trees and faintly brightened with corn-land,spread towards the haze, where the hills rose blue beyond grey.
"It is comforting," said Mrs. Dawes, "to think the town goesno farther. It is only a LITTLE sore upon the country yet."
"A little scab," Paul said.
She shivered. She loathed the town. Looking drearily acrossat the country which was forbidden her, her impassive face, paleand hostile, she reminded Paul of one of the bitter, remorseful angels.
"But the town's all right," he said; "it's only temporary. This is the crude, clumsy make-shift we've practised on, till we findout what the idea is. The town will come all right."
The pigeons in the pockets of rock, among the perched bushes,cooed comfortably. To the left the large church of St. Mary roseinto space, to keep close company with the Castle, above the heapedrubble of the town. Mrs. Dawes smiled brightly as she looked acrossthe country.
"I feel better," she said.
"Thank you," he replied. "Great compliment!"
"Oh, my brother!" she laughed.
"H'm! that's snatching back with the left hand what you gavewith the right, and no mistake," he said.
She laughed in amusement at him.
"But what was the matter with you?" he asked. "I know youwere brooding something special. I can see the stamp of iton your face yet."
"I think I will not tell you," she said.
"All right, hug it," he answered.
She flushed and bit her lip.
"No," she said, "it was the girls."
"What about 'em?" Paul asked.
"They have been plotting something for a week now, and to-daythey seem particularly full of it. All alike; they insult mewith their secrecy."
"Do they?" he asked in concern.
"I should not mind," she went on, in the metallic, angry tone,"if they did not thrust it into my face--the fact that they havea secret."
"Just like women," said he.
"It is hateful, their mean gloating," she said intensely.
Paul was silent. He knew what the girls gloated over. He was sorry to be the cause of this new dissension.
"They can have all the secrets in the world," she went on,brooding bitterly; "but they might refrain from glorying in them,and making me feel more out of it than ever. It is--it isalmost unbearable."
Paul thought for a few minutes. He was much perturbed.
"I will tell you what it's all about," he said, pale and nervous. "It's my birthday, and they've bought me a fine lot of paints,all the girls. They're jealous of you"--he felt her stiffen coldlyat the word 'jealous'--"merely because I sometimes bring you a book,"he added slowly. "But, you see, it's only a trifle. Don't botherabout it, will you--because"--he laughed quickly--"well, what would theysay if they saw us here now, in spite of their victory?"
She was angry with him for his clumsy reference totheir present intimacy. It was almost insolent of him. Yet he was so quiet, she forgave him, although it cost her an effort.
Their two hands lay on the rough stone parapet of the Castle wall. He had inherited from his mother a fineness of mould, so thathis hands were small and vigorous. Hers were large, to match herlarge limbs, but white and powerful looking. As Paul looked at themhe knew her. "She is wanting somebody to take her hands--for all sheis so contemptuous of us," he said to himself. And she saw nothing buthis two hands, so warm and alive, which seemed to live for her. He wasbrooding now, staring out over the country from under sullen brows. The little, interesting diversity of shapes had vanished from the scene;all that remained was a vast, dark matrix of sorrow and tragedy,the same in all the houses and the river-flats and the people andthe birds; they were only shapen differently. And now that the formsseemed to have melted away, there remained the mass from which allthe landscape was composed, a dark mass of struggle and pain. The factory, the girls, his mother, the large, uplifted church,the thicket of the town, merged into one atmosphere--dark, brooding,and sorrowful, every bit.
"Is that two o'clock striking?" Mrs. Dawes said in surprise.
Paul started, and everything sprang into form, regainedits individuality, its forgetfulness, and its cheerfulness.
They hurried back to work.
When he was in the rush of preparing for the night's post,examining the work up from Fanny's room, which smelt of ironing,the evening postman came in.
"'Mr. Paul Morel,'" he said, smiling, handing Paul a package. "A lady's handwriting! Don't let the girls see it."
The postman, himself a favourite, was pleased to make funof the girls' affection for Paul.
It was a volume of verse with a brief note: "You will allow meto send you this, and so spare me my isolation. I also sympathiseand wish you well.--C.D." Paul flushed hot.
"Good Lord! Mrs. Dawes. She can't afford it. Good Lord,who ever'd have thought it!"
He was suddenly intensely moved. He was filled with the warmthof her. In the glow he could almost feel her as if she werepresent--her arms, her shoulders, her bosom, see them, feel them,almost contain them.
This move on the part of Clara brought them into closer intimacy. The other girls noticed that when Paul met Mrs. Dawes his eyes liftedand gave that peculiar bright greeting which they could interpret. Knowing he was unaware, Clara made no sign, save thatoccasionally she turned aside her face from him when he came upon her.
They walked out together very often at dinner-time; it wasquite open, quite frank. Everybody seemed to feel that he was quiteunaware of the state of his own feeling, and that nothing was wrong. He talked to her now with some of the old fervour with which hehad talked to Miriam, but he cared less about the talk; he didnot bother about his conclusions.
One day in October they went out to Lambley for tea. Suddenly they came to a halt on top of the hill. He climbed and saton a gate, she sat on the stile. The afternoon was perfectly still,with a dim haze, and yellow sheaves glowing through. They were quiet.
"How old were you when you married?" he asked quietly.
