The Complete Novels. D. H. LawrenceЧитать онлайн книгу.
set on her work. Her arms were creamy and full of life beside the white lace; her large, well-kept hands worked with a balanced movement, as if nothing would hurry them. He, not knowing, watched her all the time. He saw the arch of her neck from the shoulder, as she bent her head; he saw the coil of dun hair; he watched her moving, gleaming arms.
“I've heard a bit about you from Clara,” continued the mother. “You're in Jordan's, aren't you?” She drew her lace unceasing.
“Yes.”
“Ay, well, and I can remember when Thomas Jordan used to ask ME for one of my toffies.”
“Did he?” laughed Paul. “And did he get it?”
“Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't—which was latterly. For he's the sort that takes all and gives naught, he is—or used to be.”
“I think he's very decent,” said Paul.
“Yes; well, I'm glad to hear it.”
Mrs. Radford looked across at him steadily. There was something determined about her that he liked. Her face was falling loose, but her eyes were calm, and there was something strong in her that made it seem she was not old; merely her wrinkles and loose cheeks were an anachronism. She had the strength and sang-froid of a woman in the prime of life. She continued drawing the lace with slow, dignified movements. The big web came up inevitably over her apron; the length of lace fell away at her side. Her arms were finely shapen, but glossy and yellow as old ivory. They had not the peculiar dull gleam that made Clara's so fascinating to him.
“And you've been going with Miriam Leivers?” the mother asked him.
“Well—” he answered.
“Yes, she's a nice girl,” she continued. “She's very nice, but she's a bit too much above this world to suit my fancy.”
“She is a bit like that,” he agreed.
“She'll never be satisfied till she's got wings and can fly over everybody's head, she won't,” she said.
Clara broke in, and he told her his message. She spoke humbly to him. He had surprised her in her drudgery. To have her humble made him feel as if he were lifting his head in expectation.
“Do you like jennying?” he asked.
“What can a woman do!” she replied bitterly.
“Is it sweated?”
“More or less. Isn't ALL woman's work? That's another trick the men have played, since we force ourselves into the labour market.”
“Now then, you shut up about the men,” said her mother. “If the women wasn't fools, the men wouldn't be bad uns, that's what I say. No man was ever that bad wi' me but what he got it back again. Not but what they're a lousy lot, there's no denying it.”
“But they're all right really, aren't they?” he asked.
“Well, they're a bit different from women,” she answered.
“Would you care to be back at Jordan's?” he asked Clara.
“I don't think so,” she replied.
“Yes, she would!” cried her mother; “thank her stars if she could get back. Don't you listen to her. She's for ever on that 'igh horse of hers, an' it's back's that thin an' starved it'll cut her in two one of these days.”
Clara suffered badly from her mother. Paul felt as if his eyes were coming very wide open. Wasn't he to take Clara's fulminations so seriously, after all? She spun steadily at her work. He experienced a thrill of joy, thinking she might need his help. She seemed denied and deprived of so much. And her arm moved mechanically, that should never have been subdued to a mechanism, and her head was bowed to the lace, that never should have been bowed. She seemed to be stranded there among the refuse that life has thrown away, doing her jennying. It was a bitter thing to her to be put aside by life, as if it had no use for her. No wonder she protested.
She came with him to the door. He stood below in the mean street, looking up at her. So fine she was in her stature and her bearing, she reminded him of Juno dethroned. As she stood in the doorway, she winced from the street, from her surroundings.
“And you will go with Mrs. Hodgkisson to Hucknall?”
He was talking quite meaninglessly, only watching her. Her grey eyes at last met his. They looked dumb with humiliation, pleading with a kind of captive misery. He was shaken and at a loss. He had thought her high and mighty.
When he left her, he wanted to run. He went to the station in a sort of dream, and was at home without realising he had moved out of her street.
He had an idea that Susan, the overseer of the Spiral girls, was about to be married. He asked her the next day.
“I say, Susan, I heard a whisper of your getting married. What about it?”
Susan flushed red.
“Who's been talking to you?” she replied.
“Nobody. I merely heard a whisper that you WERE thinking—”
“Well, I am, though you needn't tell anybody. What's more, I wish I wasn't!”
“Nay, Susan, you won't make me believe that.”
“Shan't I? You CAN believe it, though. I'd rather stop here a thousand times.”
Paul was perturbed.
“Why, Susan?”
The girl's colour was high, and her eyes flashed.
“That's why!”
“And must you?”
For answer, she looked at him. There was about him a candour and gentleness which made the women trust him. He understood.
“Ah, I'm sorry,” he said.
Tears came to her eyes.
“But you'll see it'll turn out all right. You'll make the best of it,” he continued rather wistfully.
“There's nothing else for it.”
“Yea, there's making the worst of it. Try and make it all right.”
He soon made occasion to call again on Clara.
“Would you,” he said, “care to come back to Jordan's?”
She put down her work, laid her beautiful arms on the table, and looked at him for some moments without answering. Gradually the flush mounted her cheek.
“Why?” she asked.
Paul felt rather awkward.
“Well, because Susan is thinking of leaving,” he said.
Clara went on with her jennying. The white lace leaped in little jumps and bounds on to the card. He waited for her. Without raising her head, she said at last, in a peculiar low voice:
“Have you said anything about it?”
“Except to you, not a word.”
There was again a long silence.
“I will apply when the advertisement is out,” she said.
“You will apply before that. I will let you know exactly when.”
She went on spinning her little machine, and did not contradict him.
Clara came to Jordan's. Some of the older hands, Fanny among them, remembered her earlier rule, and cordially disliked the memory. Clara had always been “ikey”, reserved, and superior. She had never mixed with the girls as one of themselves. If she had occasion to find fault, she did it coolly and with perfect politeness, which the defaulter felt to be a bigger insult than crassness. Towards Fanny, the poor, overstrung hunchback, Clara was unfailingly compassionate and gentle, as a result of which Fanny shed more bitter tears than ever the rough tongues of the other overseers had caused her.
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