1.
Frequently he hated Miriam. He hated her as she bent forward
and pored over his things. He hated her way of patiently casting
him up, as if he were an endless psychological account. When he
was with her, he hated her for having got him, and yet not got him,
and he tortured her. She took all and gave nothing, he said. At least,
she gave no living warmth. She was never alive, and giving off life.
Looking for her was like looking for something which did not exist.
She was only his conscience, not his mate. He hated her violently,
and was more cruel to her. They dragged on till the next summer.
He saw more and more of Clara.
At last he spoke. He had been sitting working at home
one evening. There was between him and his mother a peculiar condition
of people frankly finding fault with each other. Mrs. Morel was
strong on her feet again. He was not going to stick to Miriam.
Very well; then she would stand aloof till he said something.
It had been coming a long time, this bursting of the storm in him,
when he would come back to her. This evening there was between them
a peculiar condition of suspense. He worked feverishly and mechanically,
so that he could escape from himself. It grew late. Through the
open door, stealthily, came the scent of madonna lilies, almost as
if it were prowling abroad. Suddenly he got up and went out of doors.
The beauty of the night made him want to shout. A half-moon,
dusky gold, was sinking behind the black sycamore at the end of
the garden, making the sky dull purple with its glow. Nearer, a dim
white fence of lilies went across the garden, and the air all round
seemed to stir with scent, as if it were alive. He went across
the bed of pinks, whose keen perfume came sharply across the rocking,
heavy scent of the lilies, and stood alongside the white barrier
of flowers. They flagged all loose, as if they were panting.
The scent made him drunk. He went down to the field to watch
the moon sink under.
A corncrake in the hay-close called insistently. The moon
slid quite quickly downwards, growing more flushed. Behind him
the great flowers leaned as if they were calling. And then,
like a shock, he caught another perfume, something raw and coarse.
Hunting round, he found the purple iris, touched their fleshy throats
and their dark, grasping hands. At any rate, he had found something.
They stood stiff in the darkness. Their scent was brutal.
The moon was melting down upon the crest of the hill. It was gone;
all was dark. The corncrake called still.
Breaking off a pink, he suddenly went indoors.
"Come, my boy," said his mother. "I'm sure it's time you went
to bed."
He stood with the pink against his lips.
"I shall break off with Miriam, mother," he answered calmly.
2
She rocked slightly to the tram's motion, and as she leaned
against him, rocked upon him. He was a vigorous, slender man,
with exhaustless energy. His face was rough, with rough-hewn features,
like the common people's; but his eyes under the deep brows were
so full of life that they fascinated her. They seemed to dance,
and yet they were still trembling on the finest balance of laughter.
His mouth the same was just going to spring into a laugh of triumph,
yet did not. There was a sharp suspense about him. She bit her
lip moodily. His hand was hard clenched over hers.
They paid their two halfpennies at the turnstile and crossed
the bridge. The Trent was very full. It swept silent and insidious
under the bridge, travelling in a soft body. There had been a great
deal of rain. On the river levels were flat gleams of flood water.
The sky was grey, with glisten of silver here and there. In Wilford
churchyard the dahlias were sodden with rain--wet black-crimson balls.
No one was on the path that went along the green river meadow,
along the elm-tree colonnade.
There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water
and the green meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were spangled
with gold. The river slid by in a body, utterly silent and swift,
intertwining among itself like some subtle, complex creature.
Clara walked moodily beside him.
"Why," she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, "did you
leave Miriam?"
He frowned.
"Because I WANTED to leave her," he said.
3
Paul would have died rather than his mother should get
to know of this affair. He suffered tortures of humiliation
and self-consciousness. There was now a good deal of his life
of which necessarily he could not speak to his mother. He had
a life apart from her--his sexual life. The rest she still kept.
But he felt he had to conceal something from her, and it irked him.
There was a certain silence between them, and he felt he had,
in that silence, to defend himself against her; he felt condemned
by her. Then sometimes he hated her, and pulled at her bondage.
His life wanted to free itself of her. It was like a circle where life
turned back on itself, and got no farther. She bore him, loved him,
kept him, and his love turned back into her, so that he could not
be free to go forward with his own life, really love another woman.
At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother's influence.
He did not tell her things; there was a distance between them.
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