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As he went into the house, flinging down his cap, his mother looked up at the clock. She had been sitting thinking, because a chill to her eyes prevented her reading. She could feel Paul being drawn away by this girl. And she did not care for Miriam. “She is one of those who will want to suck a man's soul out till he has none of his own left,” she said to herself; “and he is just such a gaby as to let himself be absorbed. She will never let him become a man; she never will.” So, while he was away with Miriam, Mrs. Morel grew more and more worked up.
She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather tired:
“You have been far enough to-night.”
His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl, shrank.
“You must have been right home with her,” his mother continued.
He would not answer. Mrs. Morel, looking at him quickly, saw his hair was damp on his forehead with haste, saw him frowning in his heavy fashion, resentfully.
“She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can't get away from her, but must go trailing eight miles at this time of night.”
He was hurt between the past glamour with Miriam and the knowledge that his mother fretted. He had meant not to say anything, to refuse to answer. But he could not harden his heart to ignore his mother.
“I DO like to talk to her,” he answered irritably.
“Is there nobody else to talk to?”
“You wouldn't say anything if I went with Edgar.”
“You know I should. You know, whoever you went with, I should say it was too far for you to go trailing, late at night, when you've been to Nottingham. Besides”—her voice suddenly flashed into anger and contempt—“it is disgusting—bits of lads and girls courting.”
“It is NOT courting,” he cried.
“I don't know what else you call it.”
“It's not! Do you think we SPOON and do? We only talk.”
“Till goodness knows what time and distance,” was the sarcastic rejoinder.
Paul snapped at the laces of his boots angrily.
“What are you so mad about?” he asked. “Because you don't like her.”
“I don't say I don't like her. But I don't hold with children keeping company, and never did.”
“But you don't mind our Annie going out with Jim Inger.”
“They've more sense than you two.”
“Why?”
“Our Annie's not one of the deep sort.”
He failed to see the meaning of this remark. But his mother looked tired. She was never so strong after William's death; and her eyes hurt her.
“Well,” he said, “it's so pretty in the country. Mr. Sleath asked about you. He said he'd missed you. Are you a bit better?”
“I ought to have been in bed a long time ago,” she replied.
“Why, mother, you know you wouldn't have gone before quarter-past ten.”
“Oh, yes, I should!”
“Oh, little woman, you'd say anything now you're disagreeable with me, wouldn't you?”
He kissed her forehead that he knew so well: the deep marks between the brows, the rising of the fine hair, greying now, and the proud setting of the temples. His hand lingered on her shoulder after his kiss. Then he went slowly to bed. He had forgotten Miriam; he only saw how his mother's hair was lifted back from her warm, broad brow. And somehow, she was hurt.
Then the next time he saw Miriam he said to her:
“Don't let me be late to-night—not later than ten o'clock. My mother gets so upset.”
Miriam dropped her bead, brooding.
“Why does she get upset?” she asked.
“Because she says I oughtn't to be out late when I have to get up early.”
“Very well!” said Miriam, rather quietly, with just a touch of a sneer.
He resented that. And he was usually late again.
That there was any love growing between him and Miriam neither of them would have acknowledged. He thought he was too sane for such sentimentality, and she thought herself too lofty. They both were late in coming to maturity, and psychical ripeness was much behind even the physical. Miriam was exceedingly sensitive, as her mother had always been. The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish. Her brothers were brutal, but never coarse in speech. The men did all the discussing of farm matters outside. But, perhaps, because of the continual business of birth and of begetting which goes on upon every farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such intercourse. Paul took his pitch from her, and their intimacy went on in an utterly blanched and chaste fashion. It could never be mentioned that the mare was in foal.
When he was nineteen, he was earning only twenty shillings a week, but he was happy. His painting went well, and life went well enough. On the Good Friday he organised a walk to the Hemlock Stone. There were three lads of his own age, then Annie and Arthur, Miriam and Geoffrey. Arthur, apprenticed as an electrician in Nottingham, was home for the holiday. Morel, as usual, was up early, whistling and sawing in the yard. At seven o'clock the family heard him buy threepennyworth of hot-cross buns; he talked with gusto to the little girl who brought them, calling her “my darling”. He turned away several boys who came with more buns, telling them they had been “kested” by a little lass. Then Mrs. Morel got up, and the family straggled down. It was an immense luxury to everybody, this lying in bed just beyond the ordinary time on a weekday. And Paul and Arthur read before breakfast, and had the meal unwashed, sitting in their shirt-sleeves. This was another holiday luxury. The room was warm. Everything felt free of care and anxiety. There was a sense of plenty in the house.
While the boys were reading, Mrs. Morel went into the garden. They were now in another house, an old one, near the Scargill Street home, which had been left soon after William had died. Directly came an excited cry from the garden:
“Paul! Paul! come and look!”
It was his mother's voice. He threw down his book and went out. There was a long garden that ran to a field. It was a grey, cold day, with a sharp wind blowing out of Derbyshire. Two fields away Bestwood began, with a jumble of roofs and red house-ends, out of which rose the church tower and the spire of the Congregational Chapel. And beyond went woods and hills, right away to the pale grey heights of the Pennine Chain.
Paul looked down the garden for his mother. Her head appeared among the young currant-bushes.
“Come here!” she cried.
“What for?” he answered.
“Come and see.”
She had been looking at the buds on the currant trees. Paul went up.
“To think,” she said, “that here I might never have seen them!”
Her son went to her side. Under the fence, in a little bed, was a ravel of poor grassy leaves, such as come from very immature bulbs, and three scyllas in bloom. Mrs. Morel pointed to the deep blue flowers.
“Now, just see those!” she exclaimed. “I was looking at the currant bushes, when, thinks I to myself, 'There's something very blue; is it a bit of sugar-bag?' and there, behold you! Sugar-bag! Three glories of the snow, and such beauties! But where on earth did they come from?”
“I don't know,” said Paul.
“Well, that's a marvel, now! I THOUGHT I knew every weed and blade in this garden. But HAVEN'T they done well? You see, that gooseberry-bush just shelters them. Not nipped, not touched!”
He crouched