IXHe was not unhappy in the pit. He was admired by the men, and well enough liked. It was only he himself who felt the difference between himself and the others. He seemed to hide his own stigma. But he was never sure that the others did not really despise him for a ninny, as being less a man than they were. Only he pretended to be more manly, and was surprised by the ease with which they were deceived. And, being naturally cheerful, he was happy at his work. He was sure of himself there. Naked to the waist, hot and grimy with labour, they squatted on their heels for a few minutes and talked, seeing each other dimly by the light of the safety lamps, while the black coal rose jutting round them, and the props of wood stood like little pillars in the low, black, very dark temple. Then the pony came and the gang-lad with a message from Number 7, or with a bottle of water from the horse-trough or some news of the world above. The day passed pleasantly enough. There was an ease, a go-as-you-please about the day underground, a delightful camaraderie of men shut off alone from the rest of the world, in a dangerous place, and a variety of labour, holing, loading, timbering, and a glamour of mystery and adventure in the atmosphere, that made the pit not unattractive to him when he had again got over his anguish of desire for the open air and the sea.This day there was much to do and Durant was not in humour to talk. He went on working in silence through the afternoon.“Loose-all” came, and they tramped to the bottom. The whitewashed underground office shone brightly. Men were putting out their lamps. They sat in dozens round the bottom of the shaft, down which black, heavy drops of water fell continuously into the sump. The electric lights shone away down the main underground road.“Is it raining?” asked Durant.“Snowing,” said an old man, and the younger was pleased. He liked to go up when it was snowing.“It’ll just come right for Christmas,” said the old man.“Ay,” replied Durant.“A green Christmas, a fat churchyard,” said the other sententiously.Durant laughed, showing his small, rather pointed teeth.The cage came down, a dozen men lined on. Durant noticed tufts of snow on the perforated, arched roof of the chain, and he was pleased.He wondered how it liked its excursion underground. But already it was getting soppy with black water.He liked things about him. There was a little smile on his face. But underlying it was the curious consciousness he felt in himself.The upper world came almost with a flash, because of the glimmer of snow. Hurrying along the bank, giving up his lamp at the office, he smiled to feel the open about him again, all glimmering round him with snow. The hills on either side were pale blue in the dusk, and the hedges looked savage and dark. The snow was trampled between the railway lines. But far ahead, beyond the black figures of miners moving home, it became smooth again, spreading right up to the dark wall of the coppice.To the west there was a pinkness, and a big star hovered half revealed. Below, the lights of the pit came out crisp and yellow among the darkness of the buildings, and the lights of Old Aldecross twinkled in rows down the bluish twilight.Durant walked glad with life among the miners, who were all talking animatedly because of the snow. He liked their company, he liked the white dusky world. It gave him a little thrill to stop at the garden gate and see the light of home down below, shining on the silent blue snow.XBy the big gate of the railway, in the fence, was a little gate, that he kept locked. As he unfastened it, he watched the kitchen light that shone on to the bushes and the snow outside. It was a candle burning till night set in, he thought to himself. He slid down the steep path to the level below. He liked making the first marks in the smooth snow. Then he came through the bushes to the house. The two women heard his heavy boots ring outside on the scraper, and his voice as he opened the door:“How much worth of oil do you reckon to save by that candle, mother?” He liked a good light from the lamp.He had just put down his bottle and snap-bag and was hanging his coat behind the scullery door, when Miss Louisa came upon him. He was startled, but he smiled.His eyes began to laugh—then his face went suddenly straight, and he was afraid.“Your mother’s had an accident,” she said.“How?” he exclaimed.“In the garden,” she answered. He hesitated with his coat in his hands. Then he hung it up and turned to the kitchen.“Is she in bed?” he asked.“Yes,” said Miss Louisa, who found it hard to deceive him. He was silent. He went into the kitchen, sat down heavily in his father’s old chair, and began to pull off his boots. His head was small, rather finely shapen. His brown hair, close and crisp, would look jolly whatever happened. He wore heavy moleskin trousers that gave off the stale, exhausted scent of the pit. Having put on his slippers, he carried his boots into the scullery.“What is it?” he asked, afraid.“Something internal,” she replied.He went upstairs. His mother kept herself calm for his coming. Louisa felt his tread shake the plaster floor of the bedroom above.“What have you done?” he asked.“It’s nothing, my lad,” said the old woman, rather hard. “It’s nothing. You needn’t fret, my boy, it’s nothing more the matter with me than I had yesterday, or last week. The doctor said I’d done nothing serious.”“What were you doing?” asked her son.“I was pulling up a cabbage, and I suppose I pulled too hard; for, oh—there was such a pain——”Her son looked at her quickly. She hardened herself.“But who doesn’t have a sudden pain sometimes, my boy. We all do.”“And what’s it done?”“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t suppose it’s anything.”The big lamp in the corner was screened with a dark green, so that he could scarcely see her face. He was strung tight with apprehension and many emotions. Then his brow knitted.“What did you go pulling your inside out at cabbages for,” he asked, “and the ground frozen? You’d go on dragging and dragging, if you killed yourself.”“Somebody’s got to get them,” she said.“You needn’t do yourself harm.”But they had reached futility.Miss Louisa could hear plainly downstairs. Her heart sank. It seemed so hopeless between them.“Are you sure it’s nothing much, mother?” he asked, appealing, after a little silence.“Ay, it’s nothing,” said the old woman, rather bitter.“I don’t want you to—to—to be badly—you know.”“Go an’ get your dinner,” she said. She knew she was going to die: moreover, the pain was torture just then. “They’re only cosseting me up a bit because I’m an old woman. Miss Louisa’sverygood—and she’ll have got your dinner ready, so you’d better go and eat it.”He felt stupid and ashamed. His mother put him off. He had to turn away. The pain burned in his bowels. He went downstairs. The mother was glad he was gone, so that she could moan with pain.He had resumed the old habit of eating before he washed himself. Miss Louisa served his dinner. It was strange and exciting to her. She was strung up tense, trying to understand him and his mother. She watched him as he sat. He was turned away from his food, looking in the fire. Her soul watched him, trying to see what he was. His black face and arms were uncouth, he was foreign. His face was masked black with coal-dust. She could not see him, she could not even know him. The brown eyebrows, the steady eyes, the coarse, small moustache above the closed mouth—these were the only familiar indications. What was he, as he sat there in his pit-dirt? She could not see him, and it hurt her.She ran upstairs, presently coming down with the flannels and the bran-bag, to heat them, because the pain was on again.He was half-way through his dinner. He put down the fork, suddenly nauseated.“They will soothe the wrench,” she said. He watched, useless and left out.“Is she bad?” he asked.“I think she is,” she answered.It was useless for him to stir or comment. Louisa was busy. She went upstairs. The poor old woman was in a white, cold sweat of pain. Louisa’s face was sullen with suffering as she went about to relieve her. Then she sat and waited. The pain passed gradually, the old woman sank into a state of coma. Louisa still sat silent by the bed. She heard the sound of water downstairs. Then came the voice of the old mother, faint but unrelaxing:“Alfred’s washing himself—he’ll want his back washing——”Louisa listened anxiously, wondering what the sick woman wanted.“He can’t bear if his back isn’t washed——” the old woman persisted, in a cruel attention to his needs. Louisa rose and wiped the sweat from the yellowish brow.“I will go down,” she said soothingly.“If you would,” murmured the sick woman.Louisa waited a moment. Mrs Durant closed her eyes, having discharged her duty. The young woman went downstairs. Herself, or the man, what did they matter? Only the suffering woman must be considered.Alfred was kneeling on the hearthrug, stripped to the waist, washing himself in a large panchion of earthenware. He did so every evening, when he had eaten his dinner; his brothers had done so before him. But Miss Louisa was strange in the house.He was mechanically rubbing the white lather on his head, with a repeated, unconscious movement, his hand every now and then passing over his neck. Louisa watched. She had to brace herself to this also. He bent his head into the water, washed it free of soap, and pressed the water out of his eyes.“Your mother said you would want your back washing,” she said.Curious how it hurt her to take part in their fixed routine of life! Louisa felt the almost repulsive intimacy being forced upon her. It was all so common, so like herding. She lost her own distinctness.He ducked his face round, looking up at her in what was a very comical way. She had to harden herself.“How funny he looks with his face upside down,” she thought. After all, there was a difference between her and the common people. The water in which his arms were plunged was quite black, the soap-froth was darkish. She could scarcely conceive him as human. Mechanically, under the influence of habit, he groped in the black water, fished out soap and flannel, and handed them backward to Louisa. Then he remained rigid and submissive, his two arms thrust straight in the panchion, supporting the weight of his shoulders. His skin was beautifully white and unblemished, of an opaque, solid whiteness. Gradually Louisa saw it: this also was what he was. It fascinated her. Her feeling of separateness passed away: she ceased to draw back from contact with him and his mother. There was this living centre. Her heart ran hot. She had reached some goal in this beautiful, clear, male body. She loved him in a white, impersonal heat. But the sun-burnt, reddish neck and ears: they were more personal, more curious. A tenderness rose in her, she loved even his queer ears. A person—an intimate being he was to her. She put down the towel and went upstairs again, troubled in her heart. She had only seen one human being in her life—and that was Mary. All the rest were strangers. Now her soul was going to open, she was going to see another. She felt strange and pregnant.“He’ll be more comfortable,” murmured the sick woman abstractedly, as Louisa entered the room. The latter did not answer. Her own heart was heavy with its own responsibility. Mrs Durant lay silent awhile, then she murmured plaintively:“You mustn’t mind, Miss Louisa.”“Why should I?” replied Louisa, deeply moved.“It’s what we’re used to,” said the old woman.And Louisa felt herself excluded again from their life. She sat in pain, with the tears of disappointment distilling her heart. Was that all?Alfred came upstairs. He was clean, and in his shirt-sleeves. He looked a workman now. Louisa felt that she and he were foreigners, moving in different lives. It dulled her again. Oh, if she could only find some fixed relations, something sure and abiding.“How do you feel?” he said to his mother.“It’s a bit better,” she replied wearily, impersonally. This strange putting herself aside, this abstracting herself and answering him only what she thought good for him to hear, made the relations between mother and son poignant and cramping to Miss Louisa. It made the man so ineffectual, so nothing. Louisa groped as if she had lost him. The mother was real and positive—he was not very actual. It puzzled and chilled the young woman.“I’d better fetch Mrs Harrison?” he said, waiting for his mother to decide.“I suppose we shall have to have somebody,” she replied.Miss Louisa stood by, afraid to interfere in their business. They did not include her in their lives, they felt she had nothing to do with them, except as a help from outside. She was quite external to them. She felt hurt and powerless against this unconscious difference. But something patient and unyielding in her made her say:“I will stay and do the nursing: you can’t be left.”The other two were shy, and at a loss for an answer.“Wes’ll manage to get somebody,” said the old woman wearily. She did not care very much what happened, now.“I will stay until tomorrow, in any case,” said Louisa. “Then we can see.”“I’m sure you’ve no right to trouble yourself,” moaned the old woman. But she must leave herself in any hands.Miss Louisa felt glad that she was admitted, even in an official capacity. She wanted to share their lives. At home they would need her, now Mary had come. But they must manage without her.“I must write a note to the vicarage,” she said.Alfred Durant looked at her inquiringly, for her service. He had always that intelligent readiness to serve, since he had been in the Navy. But there was a simple independence in his willingness, which she loved. She felt nevertheless it was hard to get at him. He was so deferential, quick to take the slightest suggestion of an order from her, implicitly, that she could not get at the man in him.He looked at her very keenly. She noticed his eyes were golden brown, with a very small pupil, the kind of eyes that can see a long way off. He stood alert, at military attention. His face was still rather weather-reddened.“Do you want pen and paper?” he asked, with deferential suggestion to a superior, which was more difficult for her than reserve.“Yes, please,” she said.He turned and went downstairs. He seemed to her so self-contained, so utterly sure in his movement. How was she to approach him? For he would take not one step towards her. He would only put himself entirely and impersonally at her service, glad to serve her, but keeping himself quite removed from her. She could see he felt real joy in doing anything for her, but any recognition would confuse him and hurt him. Strange it was to her, to have a man going about the house in his shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his throat bare, waiting on her. He moved well, as if he had plenty of life to spare. She was attracted by his completeness. And yet, when all was ready, and there was nothing more for him to do, she quivered, meeting his questioning look.As she sat writing, he placed another candle near her. The rather dense light fell in two places on the overfoldings of her hair till it glistened heavy and bright, like a dense golden plumage folded up. Then the nape of her neck was very white, with fine down and pointed wisps of gold. He watched it as it were a vision, losing himself. She was all that was beyond him, of revelation and exquisiteness. All that was ideal and beyond him, she was that—and he was lost to himself in looking at her. She had no connection with him. He did not approach her. She was there like a wonderful distance. But it was a treat, having her in the house. Even with this anguish for his mother tightening about him, he was sensible of the wonder of living this evening. The candles glistened on her hair, and seemed to fascinate him. He felt a little awe of her, and a sense of uplifting, that he and she and his mother should be together for a time, in the strange, unknown atmosphere. And, when he got out of the house, he was afraid. He saw the stars above ringing with fine brightness, the snow beneath just visible, and a new night was gathering round him. He was afraid almost with obliteration. What was this new night ringing about him, and what was he? He could not recognize himself nor any of his surroundings. He was afraid to think of his mother. And yet his chest was conscious of her, and of what was happening to her. He could not escape from her, she carried him with her into an unformed, unknown chaos.XIHe went up the road in an agony, not knowing what it was all about, but feeling as if a red-hot iron were gripped round his chest. Without thinking, he shook two or three tears on to the snow. Yet in his mind he did not believe his mother would die. He was in the grip of some greater consciousness. As he sat in the hall of the vicarage, waiting whilst Mary put things for Louisa into a bag, he wondered why he had been so upset. He felt abashed and humbled by the big house, he felt again as if he were one of the rank and file. When Miss Mary spoke to him, he almost saluted.“An honest man,” thought Mary. And the patronage was applied as salve to her own sickness. She had station, so she could patronize: it was almost all that was left to her. But she could not have lived without having a certain position. She could never have trusted herself outside a definite place, nor respected herself except as a woman of superior class.As Alfred came to the latch-gate, he felt the grief at his heart again, and saw the new heavens. He stood a moment looking northward to the Plough climbing up the night, and at the far glimmer of snow in distant fields. Then his grief came on like physical pain. He held tight to the gate, biting his mouth, whispering “Mother!” It was a fierce, cutting, physical pain of grief, that came on in bouts, as his mother’s pain came on in bouts, and was so acute he could scarcely keep erect. He did not know where it came from, the pain, nor why. It had nothing to do with his thoughts. Almost it had nothing to do with him. Only it gripped him and he must submit. The whole tide of his soul, gathering in its unknown towards this expansion into death, carried him with it helplessly, all the fritter of his thought and consciousness caught up as nothing, the heave passing on towards its breaking, taking him further than he had ever been. When the young man had regained himself, he went indoors, and there he was almost gay. It seemed to excite him. He felt in high spirits: he made whimsical fun of things. He sat on one side of his mother’s bed, Louisa on the other, and a certain gaiety seized them all. But the night and the dread was coming on.Alfred kissed his mother and went to bed. When he was half undressed the knowledge of his mother came upon him, and the suffering seized him in its grip like two hands, in agony. He lay on the bed screwed up tight. It lasted so long, and exhausted him so much, that he fell asleep, without having the energy to get up and finish undressing. He awoke after midnight to find himself stone cold. He undressed and got into bed, and was soon asleep again.At a quarter to six he woke, and instantly remembered. Having pulled on his trousers and lighted a candle, he went into his mother’s room. He put his hand before the candle flame so that no light fell on the bed.“Mother!” he whispered.“Yes,” was the reply.There was a hesitation.“Should I go to work?”He waited, his heart was beating heavily.“I think I’d go, my lad.”His heart went down in a kind of despair.“You want me to?”He let his hand down from the candle flame. The light fell on the bed. There he saw Louisa lying looking up at him. Her eyes were upon him. She quickly shut her eyes and half buried her face in the pillow, her back turned to him. He saw the rough hair like bright vapour about her round head, and the two plaits flung coiled among the bedclothes. It gave him a shock. He stood almost himself, determined. Louisa cowered down. He looked, and met his mother’s eyes. Then he gave way again, and ceased to be sure, ceased to be himself.“Yes, go to work, my boy,” said the mother.“All right,” replied he, kissing her. His heart was down at despair, and bitter. He went away.“Alfred!” cried his mother faintly.He came back with beating heart.“What, mother?”“You’ll always do what’s right, Alfred?” the mother asked, beside herself in terror now he was leaving her. He was too terrified and bewildered to know what she meant.“Yes,” he said.She turned her cheek to him. He kissed her, then went away, in bitter despair. He went to work.XIIBy midday his mother was dead. The word met him at the pit-mouth. As he had known, inwardly, it was not a shock to him, and yet he trembled. He went home quite calmly, feeling only heavy in his breathing.Miss Louisa was still at the house. She had seen to everything possible. Very succinctly, she informed him of what he needed to know. But there was one point of anxiety for her.“Youdidhalf expect it—it’s not come as a blow to you?” she asked, looking up at him. Her eyes were dark and calm and searching. She too felt lost. He was so dark and inchoate.“I suppose—yes,” he said stupidly. He looked aside, unable to endure her eyes on him.“I could not bear to think you might not have guessed,” she said.He did not answer.He felt it a great strain to have her near him at this time. He wanted to be alone. As soon as the relatives began to arrive, Louisa departed and came no more. While everything was arranging, and a crowd was in the house, whilst he had business to settle, he went well enough, with only those uncontrollable paroxysms of grief. For the rest, he was superficial. By himself, he endured the fierce, almost insane bursts of grief which passed again and left him calm, almost clear, just wondering. He had not known before that everything could break down, that he himself could break down, and all be a great chaos, very vast and wonderful. It seemed as if life in him had burst its bounds, and he was lost in a great, bewildering flood, immense and unpeopled. He himself was broken and spilled out amid it all. He could only breathe panting in silence. Then the anguish came on again.When all the people had gone from the Quarry Cottage, leaving the young man alone with an elderly housekeeper, then the long trial began. The snow had thawed and frozen, a fresh fall had whitened the grey, this then began to thaw. The world was a place of loose grey slosh. Alfred had nothing to do in the evenings. He was a man whose life had been filled up with small activities. Without knowing it, he had been centralized, polarized in his mother. It was she who had kept him. Even now, when the old housekeeper had left him, he might still have gone on in his old way. But the force and balance of his life was lacking. He sat pretending to read, all the time holding his fists clenched, and holding himself in, enduring he did not know what. He walked the black and sodden miles of field-paths, till he was tired out: but all this was only running away from whence he must return. At work he was all right. If it had been summer he might have escaped by working in the garden till bedtime. But now, there was no escape, no relief, no help. He, perhaps, was made for action rather than for understanding; for doing than for being. He was shocked out of his activities, like a swimmer who forgets to swim.For a week, he had the force to endure this suffocation and struggle, then he began to get exhausted, and knew it must come out. The instinct of self-preservation became strongest. But there was the question: Where was he to go? The public-house really meant nothing to him, it was no good going there. He began to think of emigration. In another country he would be all right. He wrote to the emigration offices.On the Sunday after the funeral, when all the Durant people had attended church, Alfred had seen Miss Louisa, impassive and reserved, sitting with Miss Mary, who was proud and very distant, and with the other Lindleys, who were people removed. Alfred saw them as people remote. He did not think about it. They had nothing to do with his life. After service Louisa had come to him and shaken hands.“My sister would like you to come to supper one evening, if you would be so good.”He looked at Miss Mary, who bowed. Out of kindness, Mary had proposed this to Louisa, disapproving of herself even as she did so. But she did not examine herself closely.“Yes,” said Durant awkwardly, “I’ll come if you want me.” But he vaguely felt that it was misplaced.“You’ll come tomorrow evening, then, about half-past six.”He went. Miss Louisa was very kind to him. There could be no music, because of the babies. He sat with his fists clenched on his thighs, very quiet and unmoved, lapsing, among all those people, into a kind of muse or daze. There was nothing between him and them. They knew it as well as he. But he remained very steady in himself, and the evening passed slowly. Mrs Lindley called him “young man”.“Will you sit here, young man?”He sat there. One name was as good as another. What had they to do with him?Mr Lindley kept a special tone for him, kind, indulgent, but patronizing. Durant took it all without criticism or offence, just submitting. But he did not want to eat—that troubled him, to have to eat in their presence. He knew he was out of place. But it was his duty to stay yet awhile. He answered precisely, in monosyllables.When he left he winced with confusion. He was glad it was finished. He got away as quickly as possible. And he wanted still more intensely to go right away, to Canada.Miss Louisa suffered in her soul, indignant with all of them, with him too, but quite unable to say why she was indignant.XIIITwo evenings after, Louisa tapped at the door of the Quarry Cottage, at half-pas six. He had finished dinner, the woman had washed up and gone away, but still he sat in his pit dirt. He was going later to the New Inn. He had begun to go there because he must go somewhere. The mere contact with other men was necessary to him, the noise, the warmth, the forgetful flight of the hours. But still he did not move. He sat alone in the empty house till it began to grow on him like something unnatural.He was in his pit dirt when he opened the door.“I have been wanting to call—I thought I would,” she said, and she went to the sofa. He wondered why she wouldn’t use his mother’s round armchair. Yet something stirred in him, like anger, when the housekeeper placed herself in it.“I ought to have been washed by now,” he said, glancing at the clock, which was adorned with butterflies and cherries, and the name of “T. Brooks, Mansfield.” He laid his black hands along his mottled dirty arms. Louisa looked at him. There was the reserve, and the simple neutrality towards her, which she dreaded in him. It made it impossible for her to approach him.“I am afraid,” she said, “that I wasn’t kind in asking you to supper.”“I’m not used to it,” he said, smiling with his mouth, showing the interspaced white teeth. His eyes, however, were steady and unseeing.“It’s notthat,” she said hastily. Her repose was exquisite and her dark grey eyes rich with understanding. He felt afraid of her as she sat there, as he began to grow conscious of her.“How do you get on alone?” she asked.He glanced away to the fire.“Oh——” he answered, shifting uneasily, not finishing his answer.Her face settled heavily.“How close it is in this room. You have such immense fires. I will take off my coat,” she said.He watched her take off her hat and coat. She wore a cream cashmir blouse embroidered with gold silk. It seemed to him a very fine garment, fitting her throat and wrists close. It gave him a feeling of pleasure and cleanness and relief from himself.“What were you thinking about, that you didn’t get washed?” she asked, half intimately. He laughed, turning aside his head. The whites of his eyes showed very distinct in his black face.“Oh,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you.”There was a pause.“Are you going to keep this house on?” she asked.He stirred in his chair, under the question.“I hardly know,” he said. “I’m very likely going to Canada.”Her spirit became very quiet and attentive.“What for?” she asked.Again he shifted restlessly on his seat.“Well”—he said slowly—“to try the life.”“But which life?”“There’s various things—farming or lumbering or mining. I don’t mind much what it is.”“And is that what you want?”He did not think in these times, so he could not answer.“I don’t know,” he said, “till I’ve tried.”She saw him drawing away from her for ever.“Aren’t you sorry to leave this house and garden?” she asked.“I don’t know,” he answered reluctantly. “I suppose our Fred would come in—that’s what he’s wanting.”“You don’t want to settle down?” she asked.He was leaning forward on the arms of his chair. He turned to her. Her face was pale and set. It looked heavy and impassive, her hair shone richer as she grew white. She was to him something steady and immovable and eternal presented to him. His heart was hot in an anguish of suspense. Sharp twitches of fear and pain were in his limbs. He turned his whole body away from her. The silence was unendurable. He could not bear her to sit there any more. It made his heart go hot and stifled in his breast.“Were you going out tonight?” she asked.“Only to the New Inn,” he said.Again there was silence.She reached for her hat. Nothing else was suggested to her. Shehadto go. He sat waiting for her to be gone, for relief. And she knew that if she went out of that house as she was, she went out a failure. Yet she continued to pin on her hat; in a moment she would have to go. Something was carrying her.Then suddenly a sharp pang, like lightning, seared her from head to foot, and she was beyond herself.“Do you want me to go?” she asked, controlled, yet speaking out of a fiery anguish, as if the words were spoken from her without her intervention.He went white under his dirt.“Why?” he asked, turning to her in fear, compelled.“Do you want me to go?” she repeated.“Why?” he asked again.“Because I wanted to stay with you,” she said, suffocated, with her lungs full of fire.His face worked, he hung forward a little, suspended, staring straight into her eyes, in torment, in an agony of chaos, unable to collect himself. And as if turned to stone, she looked back into his eyes. Their souls were exposed bare for a few moments. It was agony. They could not bear it. He dropped his head, whilst his body jerked with little sharp twitchings.She turned away for her coat. Her soul had gone dead in her. Her hands trembled, but she could not feel any more. She drew on her coat. There was a cruel suspense in the room. The moment had come for her to go. He lifted his head. His eyes were like agate, expressionless, save for the black points of torture. They held her, she had no will, no life any more. She felt broken.“Don’t you want me?” she said helplessly.A spasm of torture crossed his eyes, which held her fixed.“I—I——” he began, but he could not speak. Something drew him from his chair to her. She stood motionless, spellbound, like a creature given up as prey. He put his hand tentatively, uncertainly, on her arm. The expression of his face was strange and inhuman. She stood utterly motionless. Then clumsily he put his arms round her, and took her, cruelly, blindly, straining her till she nearly lost consciousness, till he himself had almost fallen.Then, gradually, as he held her gripped, and his brain reeled round, and he felt himself falling, falling from himself, and whilst she, yielded up, swooned to a kind of death of herself, a moment of utter darkness came over him, and they began to wake up again as if from a long sleep. He was himself.After a while his arms slackened, she loosened herself a little, and put her arms round him, as he held her. So they held each other close, and hid each against the other for assurance, helpless in speech. And it was ever her hands that trembled more closely upon him, drawing him nearer into her, with love.And at last she drew back her face and looked up at him, her eyes wet, and shining with light. His heart, which saw, was silent with fear. He was with her. She saw his face all sombre and inscrutable, and he seemed eternal to her. And all the echo of pain came back into the rarity of bliss, and all her tears came up.“I love you,” she said, her lips drawn and sobbing. He put down his head against her, unable to hear her, unable to bear the sudden coming of the peace and passion that almost broke his heart. They stood together in silence whilst the thing moved away a little.At last she wanted to see him. She looked up. His eyes were strange and glowing, with a tiny black pupil. Strange, they were, and powerful over her. And his mouth came to hers, and slowly her eyelids closed, as his mouth sought hers closer and closer, and took possession of her.They were silent for a long time, too much mixed up with passion and grief and death to do anything but hold each other in pain and kiss with long, hurting kisses wherein fear was transfused into desire. At last she disengaged herself. He felt as if his heart were hurt, but glad, and he scarcely dared look at her.“I’m glad,” she said also.He held her hands in passionate gratitude and desire. He had not yet the presence of mind to say anything. He was dazed with relief.“I ought to go,” she said.He looked at her. He could not grasp the thought of her going, he knew he could never be separated from her any more. Yet he dared not assert himself. He held her hands tight.“Your face is black,” she said.He laughed.“Yours is a bit smudged,” he said.They were afraid of each other, afraid to talk. He could only keep her near to him. After a while she wanted to wash her face. He brought her some warm water, standing by and watching her. There was something he wanted to say, that he dared not. He watched her wiping her face, and making tidy her hair.“They’ll see your blouse is dirty,” he said.She looked at her sleeves and laughed for joy.He was sharp with pride.“What shall you do?” he asked.“How?” she said.He was awkward at a reply.“About me,” he said.“What do you want me to do?” she laughed.He put his hand out slowly to her. What did it matter!“But make yourself clean,” she said.XIVAs they went up the hill, the night seemed dense with the unknown. They kept close together, feeling as if the darkness were alive and full of knowledge, all around them. In silence they walked up the hill. At first the street lamps went their way. Several people passed them. He was more shy than she, and would have let her go had she loosened in the least. But she held firm.Then they came into the true darkness, between the fields. They did not want to speak, feeling closer together in silence. So they arrived at the Vicarage gate. They stood under the naked horse-chestnut tree.“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said.She laughed a quick little laugh.“Come tomorrow,” she said, in a low tone, “and ask father.”She felt his hand close on hers.She gave the same sorrowful little laugh of sympathy. Then she kissed him, sending him home.At home, the old grief came on in another paroxysm, obliterating Louisa, obliterating even his mother for whom the stress was raging like a burst of fever in a wound. But something was sound in his heart.XVThe next evening he dressed to go to the vicarage, feeling it was to be done, not imagining what it would be like. He would not take this seriously. He was sure of Louisa, and this marriage was like fate to him. It filled him also with a blessed feeling of fatality. He was not responsible, neither had her people anything really to do with it.They ushered him into the little study, which was fireless. By and by the vicar came in. His voice was cold and hostile as he said:“What can I do for you, young man?”He knew already, without asking.Durant looked up at him, again like a sailor before a superior. He had the subordinate manner. Yet his spirit was clear.“I wanted, Mr Lindley——” he began respectfully, then all the colour suddenly left his face. It seemed now a violation to say what he had to say. What was he doing there? But he stood on, because it had to be done. He held firmly to his own independence and self-respect. He must not be indecisive. He must put himself aside: the matter was bigger than just his personal self. He must not feel. This was his highest duty.“You wanted——” said the vicar.Durant’s mouth was dry, but he answered with steadiness:“Miss Louisa—Louisa—promised to marry me——”“You asked Miss Louisa if she would marry you—yes——” corrected the vicar. Durant reflected he had not asked her this:“If she would marry me, sir. I hope you—don’t mind.”He smiled. He was a good-looking man, and the vicar could not help seeing it.“And my daughter was willing to marry you?” said Mr Lindley.“Yes,” said Durant seriously. It was pain to him, nevertheless. He felt the natural hostility between himself and the elder man.“Will you come this way?” said the vicar. He led into the dining-room, where were Mary, Louisa, and Mrs Lindley. Mr Massy sat in a corner with a lamp.“This young man has come on your account, Louisa?” said Mr Lindley.“Yes,” said Louisa, her eyes on Durant, who stood erect, in discipline. He dared not look at her, but he was aware of her.“You don’t want to marry a collier, you little fool,” cried Mrs Lindley harshly. She lay obese and helpless upon the couch, swathed in a loose, dove-grey gown.“Oh, hush, mother,” cried Mary, with quiet intensity and pride.“What means have you to support a wife?” demanded the vicar’s wife roughly.“I!” Durant replied, starting. “I think I can earn enough.”“Well, and how much?” came the rough voice.“Seven and six a day,” replied the young man.“And will it get to be any more?”“I hope so.”“And are you going to live in that poky little house?”“I think so,” said Durant, “if it’s all right.”He took small offence, only was upset, because they would not think him good enough. He knew that, in their sense, he was not.“Then she’s a fool, I tell you, if she marries you,” cried the mother roughly, casting her decision.“After all, mama, it is Louisa’s affair,” said Mary distinctly, “and we must remember——”“As she makes her bed, she must lie—but she’ll repent it,” interrupted Mrs Lindley.“And after all,” said Mr Lindley, “Louisa cannot quite hold herself free to act entirely without consideration for her family.”“What do you want, papa?” asked Louisa sharply.“I mean that if you marry this man, it will make my position very difficult for me, particularly if you stay in this parish. If you were moving quite away, it would be simpler. But living here in a collier’s cottage, under my nose, as it were—it would be almost unseemly. I have my position to maintain, and a position which may not be taken lightly.”“Come over here, young man,” cried the mother, in her rough voice, “and let us look at you.”Durant, flushing, went over and stood—not quite at attention, so that he did not know what to do with his hands. Miss Louisa was angry to see him standing there, obedient and acquiescent. He ought to show himself a man.“Can’t you take her away and live out of sight?” said the mother. “You’d both of you be better off.”“Yes, we can go away,” he said.“Do you want to?” asked Miss Mary clearly.He faced round. Mary looked very stately and impressive. He flushed.“I do if it’s going to be a trouble to anybody,” he said.“For yourself, you would rather stay?” said Mary.“It’s my home,” he said, “and that’s the house I was born in.”“Then”—Mary turned clearly to her parents, “I really don’t see how you can make the conditions, papa. He has his own rights, and if Louisa wants to marry him——”“Louisa, Louisa!” cried the father impatiently. “I cannot understand why Louisa should not behave in the normal way. I cannot see why she should only think of herself, and leave her family out of count. The thing is enough in itself, and she ought to try to ameliorate it as much as possible. And if——”“But I love the man, papa,” said Louisa.“And I hope you love your parents, and I hope you want to spare them as much of the—the loss of prestige, as possible.”“Wecango away to live,” said Louisa, her face breaking to tears. At last she was really hurt.“Oh, yes, easily,” Durant replied hastily, pale, distressed.There was dead silence in the room.“I think it would really be better,” murmured the vicar, mollified.“Very likely it would,” said the rough-voiced invalid.“Though I think we ought to apologize for asking such a thing,” said Mary haughtily.“No,” said Durant. “It will be best all round.” He was glad there was no more bother.“And shall we put up the banns here or go to the registrar?” he asked clearly, like a challenge.“We will go to the registrar,” replied Louisa decidedly.Again there was a dead silence in the room.“Well, if you will have your own way, you must go your own way,” said the mother emphatically.All the time Mr Massy had sat obscure and unnoticed in a corner of the room. At this juncture he got up, saying:“There is baby, Mary.”Mary rose and went out of the room, stately; her little husband padded after her. Durant watched the fragile, small man go, wondering.“And where,” asked the vicar, almost genial, “do you think you will go when you are married?”Durant started.“I was thinking of emigrating,” he said.“To Canada? or where?”“I think to Canada.”“Yes, that would be very good.”Again there was a pause.“We shan’t see much of you then, as a son-in-law,” said the mother, roughly but amicably.“Not much,” he said.Then he took his leave. Louisa went with him to the gate. She stood before him in distress.“You won’t mind them, will you?” she said humbly.“I don’t mind them, if they don’t mind me!” he said. Then he stooped and kissed her.“Let us be married soon,” she murmured, in tears.“All right,” he said. “I’ll go tomorrow to Barford.”
He was not unhappy in the pit. He was admired by the men, and well enough liked. It was only he himself who felt the difference between himself and the others. He seemed to hide his own stigma. But he was never sure that the others did not really despise him for a ninny, as being less a man than they were. Only he pretended to be more manly, and was surprised by the ease with which they were deceived. And, being naturally cheerful, he was happy at his work. He was sure of himself there. Naked to the waist, hot and grimy with labour, they squatted on their heels for a few minutes and talked, seeing each other dimly by the light of the safety lamps, while the black coal rose jutting round them, and the props of wood stood like little pillars in the low, black, very dark temple. Then the pony came and the gang-lad with a message from Number 7, or with a bottle of water from the horse-trough or some news of the world above. The day passed pleasantly enough. There was an ease, a go-as-you-please about the day underground, a delightful camaraderie of men shut off alone from the rest of the world, in a dangerous place, and a variety of labour, holing, loading, timbering, and a glamour of mystery and adventure in the atmosphere, that made the pit not unattractive to him when he had again got over his anguish of desire for the open air and the sea.
This day there was much to do and Durant was not in humour to talk. He went on working in silence through the afternoon.
“Loose-all” came, and they tramped to the bottom. The whitewashed underground office shone brightly. Men were putting out their lamps. They sat in dozens round the bottom of the shaft, down which black, heavy drops of water fell continuously into the sump. The electric lights shone away down the main underground road.
“Is it raining?” asked Durant.
“Snowing,” said an old man, and the younger was pleased. He liked to go up when it was snowing.
“It’ll just come right for Christmas,” said the old man.
“Ay,” replied Durant.
“A green Christmas, a fat churchyard,” said the other sententiously.
Durant laughed, showing his small, rather pointed teeth.
The cage came down, a dozen men lined on. Durant noticed tufts of snow on the perforated, arched roof of the chain, and he was pleased.
He wondered how it liked its excursion underground. But already it was getting soppy with black water.
He liked things about him. There was a little smile on his face. But underlying it was the curious consciousness he felt in himself.
The upper world came almost with a flash, because of the glimmer of snow. Hurrying along the bank, giving up his lamp at the office, he smiled to feel the open about him again, all glimmering round him with snow. The hills on either side were pale blue in the dusk, and the hedges looked savage and dark. The snow was trampled between the railway lines. But far ahead, beyond the black figures of miners moving home, it became smooth again, spreading right up to the dark wall of the coppice.
To the west there was a pinkness, and a big star hovered half revealed. Below, the lights of the pit came out crisp and yellow among the darkness of the buildings, and the lights of Old Aldecross twinkled in rows down the bluish twilight.
Durant walked glad with life among the miners, who were all talking animatedly because of the snow. He liked their company, he liked the white dusky world. It gave him a little thrill to stop at the garden gate and see the light of home down below, shining on the silent blue snow.
By the big gate of the railway, in the fence, was a little gate, that he kept locked. As he unfastened it, he watched the kitchen light that shone on to the bushes and the snow outside. It was a candle burning till night set in, he thought to himself. He slid down the steep path to the level below. He liked making the first marks in the smooth snow. Then he came through the bushes to the house. The two women heard his heavy boots ring outside on the scraper, and his voice as he opened the door:
“How much worth of oil do you reckon to save by that candle, mother?” He liked a good light from the lamp.
He had just put down his bottle and snap-bag and was hanging his coat behind the scullery door, when Miss Louisa came upon him. He was startled, but he smiled.
His eyes began to laugh—then his face went suddenly straight, and he was afraid.
“Your mother’s had an accident,” she said.
“How?” he exclaimed.
“In the garden,” she answered. He hesitated with his coat in his hands. Then he hung it up and turned to the kitchen.
“Is she in bed?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Miss Louisa, who found it hard to deceive him. He was silent. He went into the kitchen, sat down heavily in his father’s old chair, and began to pull off his boots. His head was small, rather finely shapen. His brown hair, close and crisp, would look jolly whatever happened. He wore heavy moleskin trousers that gave off the stale, exhausted scent of the pit. Having put on his slippers, he carried his boots into the scullery.
“What is it?” he asked, afraid.
“Something internal,” she replied.
He went upstairs. His mother kept herself calm for his coming. Louisa felt his tread shake the plaster floor of the bedroom above.
“What have you done?” he asked.
“It’s nothing, my lad,” said the old woman, rather hard. “It’s nothing. You needn’t fret, my boy, it’s nothing more the matter with me than I had yesterday, or last week. The doctor said I’d done nothing serious.”
“What were you doing?” asked her son.
“I was pulling up a cabbage, and I suppose I pulled too hard; for, oh—there was such a pain——”
Her son looked at her quickly. She hardened herself.
“But who doesn’t have a sudden pain sometimes, my boy. We all do.”
“And what’s it done?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t suppose it’s anything.”
The big lamp in the corner was screened with a dark green, so that he could scarcely see her face. He was strung tight with apprehension and many emotions. Then his brow knitted.
“What did you go pulling your inside out at cabbages for,” he asked, “and the ground frozen? You’d go on dragging and dragging, if you killed yourself.”
“Somebody’s got to get them,” she said.
“You needn’t do yourself harm.”
But they had reached futility.
Miss Louisa could hear plainly downstairs. Her heart sank. It seemed so hopeless between them.
“Are you sure it’s nothing much, mother?” he asked, appealing, after a little silence.
“Ay, it’s nothing,” said the old woman, rather bitter.
“I don’t want you to—to—to be badly—you know.”
“Go an’ get your dinner,” she said. She knew she was going to die: moreover, the pain was torture just then. “They’re only cosseting me up a bit because I’m an old woman. Miss Louisa’sverygood—and she’ll have got your dinner ready, so you’d better go and eat it.”
He felt stupid and ashamed. His mother put him off. He had to turn away. The pain burned in his bowels. He went downstairs. The mother was glad he was gone, so that she could moan with pain.
He had resumed the old habit of eating before he washed himself. Miss Louisa served his dinner. It was strange and exciting to her. She was strung up tense, trying to understand him and his mother. She watched him as he sat. He was turned away from his food, looking in the fire. Her soul watched him, trying to see what he was. His black face and arms were uncouth, he was foreign. His face was masked black with coal-dust. She could not see him, she could not even know him. The brown eyebrows, the steady eyes, the coarse, small moustache above the closed mouth—these were the only familiar indications. What was he, as he sat there in his pit-dirt? She could not see him, and it hurt her.
She ran upstairs, presently coming down with the flannels and the bran-bag, to heat them, because the pain was on again.
He was half-way through his dinner. He put down the fork, suddenly nauseated.
“They will soothe the wrench,” she said. He watched, useless and left out.
“Is she bad?” he asked.
“I think she is,” she answered.
It was useless for him to stir or comment. Louisa was busy. She went upstairs. The poor old woman was in a white, cold sweat of pain. Louisa’s face was sullen with suffering as she went about to relieve her. Then she sat and waited. The pain passed gradually, the old woman sank into a state of coma. Louisa still sat silent by the bed. She heard the sound of water downstairs. Then came the voice of the old mother, faint but unrelaxing:
“Alfred’s washing himself—he’ll want his back washing——”
Louisa listened anxiously, wondering what the sick woman wanted.
“He can’t bear if his back isn’t washed——” the old woman persisted, in a cruel attention to his needs. Louisa rose and wiped the sweat from the yellowish brow.
“I will go down,” she said soothingly.
“If you would,” murmured the sick woman.
Louisa waited a moment. Mrs Durant closed her eyes, having discharged her duty. The young woman went downstairs. Herself, or the man, what did they matter? Only the suffering woman must be considered.
Alfred was kneeling on the hearthrug, stripped to the waist, washing himself in a large panchion of earthenware. He did so every evening, when he had eaten his dinner; his brothers had done so before him. But Miss Louisa was strange in the house.
He was mechanically rubbing the white lather on his head, with a repeated, unconscious movement, his hand every now and then passing over his neck. Louisa watched. She had to brace herself to this also. He bent his head into the water, washed it free of soap, and pressed the water out of his eyes.
“Your mother said you would want your back washing,” she said.
Curious how it hurt her to take part in their fixed routine of life! Louisa felt the almost repulsive intimacy being forced upon her. It was all so common, so like herding. She lost her own distinctness.
He ducked his face round, looking up at her in what was a very comical way. She had to harden herself.
“How funny he looks with his face upside down,” she thought. After all, there was a difference between her and the common people. The water in which his arms were plunged was quite black, the soap-froth was darkish. She could scarcely conceive him as human. Mechanically, under the influence of habit, he groped in the black water, fished out soap and flannel, and handed them backward to Louisa. Then he remained rigid and submissive, his two arms thrust straight in the panchion, supporting the weight of his shoulders. His skin was beautifully white and unblemished, of an opaque, solid whiteness. Gradually Louisa saw it: this also was what he was. It fascinated her. Her feeling of separateness passed away: she ceased to draw back from contact with him and his mother. There was this living centre. Her heart ran hot. She had reached some goal in this beautiful, clear, male body. She loved him in a white, impersonal heat. But the sun-burnt, reddish neck and ears: they were more personal, more curious. A tenderness rose in her, she loved even his queer ears. A person—an intimate being he was to her. She put down the towel and went upstairs again, troubled in her heart. She had only seen one human being in her life—and that was Mary. All the rest were strangers. Now her soul was going to open, she was going to see another. She felt strange and pregnant.
“He’ll be more comfortable,” murmured the sick woman abstractedly, as Louisa entered the room. The latter did not answer. Her own heart was heavy with its own responsibility. Mrs Durant lay silent awhile, then she murmured plaintively:
“You mustn’t mind, Miss Louisa.”
“Why should I?” replied Louisa, deeply moved.
“It’s what we’re used to,” said the old woman.
And Louisa felt herself excluded again from their life. She sat in pain, with the tears of disappointment distilling her heart. Was that all?
Alfred came upstairs. He was clean, and in his shirt-sleeves. He looked a workman now. Louisa felt that she and he were foreigners, moving in different lives. It dulled her again. Oh, if she could only find some fixed relations, something sure and abiding.
“How do you feel?” he said to his mother.
“It’s a bit better,” she replied wearily, impersonally. This strange putting herself aside, this abstracting herself and answering him only what she thought good for him to hear, made the relations between mother and son poignant and cramping to Miss Louisa. It made the man so ineffectual, so nothing. Louisa groped as if she had lost him. The mother was real and positive—he was not very actual. It puzzled and chilled the young woman.
“I’d better fetch Mrs Harrison?” he said, waiting for his mother to decide.
“I suppose we shall have to have somebody,” she replied.
Miss Louisa stood by, afraid to interfere in their business. They did not include her in their lives, they felt she had nothing to do with them, except as a help from outside. She was quite external to them. She felt hurt and powerless against this unconscious difference. But something patient and unyielding in her made her say:
“I will stay and do the nursing: you can’t be left.”
The other two were shy, and at a loss for an answer.
“Wes’ll manage to get somebody,” said the old woman wearily. She did not care very much what happened, now.
“I will stay until tomorrow, in any case,” said Louisa. “Then we can see.”
“I’m sure you’ve no right to trouble yourself,” moaned the old woman. But she must leave herself in any hands.
Miss Louisa felt glad that she was admitted, even in an official capacity. She wanted to share their lives. At home they would need her, now Mary had come. But they must manage without her.
“I must write a note to the vicarage,” she said.
Alfred Durant looked at her inquiringly, for her service. He had always that intelligent readiness to serve, since he had been in the Navy. But there was a simple independence in his willingness, which she loved. She felt nevertheless it was hard to get at him. He was so deferential, quick to take the slightest suggestion of an order from her, implicitly, that she could not get at the man in him.
He looked at her very keenly. She noticed his eyes were golden brown, with a very small pupil, the kind of eyes that can see a long way off. He stood alert, at military attention. His face was still rather weather-reddened.
“Do you want pen and paper?” he asked, with deferential suggestion to a superior, which was more difficult for her than reserve.
“Yes, please,” she said.
He turned and went downstairs. He seemed to her so self-contained, so utterly sure in his movement. How was she to approach him? For he would take not one step towards her. He would only put himself entirely and impersonally at her service, glad to serve her, but keeping himself quite removed from her. She could see he felt real joy in doing anything for her, but any recognition would confuse him and hurt him. Strange it was to her, to have a man going about the house in his shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his throat bare, waiting on her. He moved well, as if he had plenty of life to spare. She was attracted by his completeness. And yet, when all was ready, and there was nothing more for him to do, she quivered, meeting his questioning look.
As she sat writing, he placed another candle near her. The rather dense light fell in two places on the overfoldings of her hair till it glistened heavy and bright, like a dense golden plumage folded up. Then the nape of her neck was very white, with fine down and pointed wisps of gold. He watched it as it were a vision, losing himself. She was all that was beyond him, of revelation and exquisiteness. All that was ideal and beyond him, she was that—and he was lost to himself in looking at her. She had no connection with him. He did not approach her. She was there like a wonderful distance. But it was a treat, having her in the house. Even with this anguish for his mother tightening about him, he was sensible of the wonder of living this evening. The candles glistened on her hair, and seemed to fascinate him. He felt a little awe of her, and a sense of uplifting, that he and she and his mother should be together for a time, in the strange, unknown atmosphere. And, when he got out of the house, he was afraid. He saw the stars above ringing with fine brightness, the snow beneath just visible, and a new night was gathering round him. He was afraid almost with obliteration. What was this new night ringing about him, and what was he? He could not recognize himself nor any of his surroundings. He was afraid to think of his mother. And yet his chest was conscious of her, and of what was happening to her. He could not escape from her, she carried him with her into an unformed, unknown chaos.
He went up the road in an agony, not knowing what it was all about, but feeling as if a red-hot iron were gripped round his chest. Without thinking, he shook two or three tears on to the snow. Yet in his mind he did not believe his mother would die. He was in the grip of some greater consciousness. As he sat in the hall of the vicarage, waiting whilst Mary put things for Louisa into a bag, he wondered why he had been so upset. He felt abashed and humbled by the big house, he felt again as if he were one of the rank and file. When Miss Mary spoke to him, he almost saluted.
“An honest man,” thought Mary. And the patronage was applied as salve to her own sickness. She had station, so she could patronize: it was almost all that was left to her. But she could not have lived without having a certain position. She could never have trusted herself outside a definite place, nor respected herself except as a woman of superior class.
As Alfred came to the latch-gate, he felt the grief at his heart again, and saw the new heavens. He stood a moment looking northward to the Plough climbing up the night, and at the far glimmer of snow in distant fields. Then his grief came on like physical pain. He held tight to the gate, biting his mouth, whispering “Mother!” It was a fierce, cutting, physical pain of grief, that came on in bouts, as his mother’s pain came on in bouts, and was so acute he could scarcely keep erect. He did not know where it came from, the pain, nor why. It had nothing to do with his thoughts. Almost it had nothing to do with him. Only it gripped him and he must submit. The whole tide of his soul, gathering in its unknown towards this expansion into death, carried him with it helplessly, all the fritter of his thought and consciousness caught up as nothing, the heave passing on towards its breaking, taking him further than he had ever been. When the young man had regained himself, he went indoors, and there he was almost gay. It seemed to excite him. He felt in high spirits: he made whimsical fun of things. He sat on one side of his mother’s bed, Louisa on the other, and a certain gaiety seized them all. But the night and the dread was coming on.
Alfred kissed his mother and went to bed. When he was half undressed the knowledge of his mother came upon him, and the suffering seized him in its grip like two hands, in agony. He lay on the bed screwed up tight. It lasted so long, and exhausted him so much, that he fell asleep, without having the energy to get up and finish undressing. He awoke after midnight to find himself stone cold. He undressed and got into bed, and was soon asleep again.
At a quarter to six he woke, and instantly remembered. Having pulled on his trousers and lighted a candle, he went into his mother’s room. He put his hand before the candle flame so that no light fell on the bed.
“Mother!” he whispered.
“Yes,” was the reply.
There was a hesitation.
“Should I go to work?”
He waited, his heart was beating heavily.
“I think I’d go, my lad.”
His heart went down in a kind of despair.
“You want me to?”
He let his hand down from the candle flame. The light fell on the bed. There he saw Louisa lying looking up at him. Her eyes were upon him. She quickly shut her eyes and half buried her face in the pillow, her back turned to him. He saw the rough hair like bright vapour about her round head, and the two plaits flung coiled among the bedclothes. It gave him a shock. He stood almost himself, determined. Louisa cowered down. He looked, and met his mother’s eyes. Then he gave way again, and ceased to be sure, ceased to be himself.
“Yes, go to work, my boy,” said the mother.
“All right,” replied he, kissing her. His heart was down at despair, and bitter. He went away.
“Alfred!” cried his mother faintly.
He came back with beating heart.
“What, mother?”
“You’ll always do what’s right, Alfred?” the mother asked, beside herself in terror now he was leaving her. He was too terrified and bewildered to know what she meant.
“Yes,” he said.
She turned her cheek to him. He kissed her, then went away, in bitter despair. He went to work.
By midday his mother was dead. The word met him at the pit-mouth. As he had known, inwardly, it was not a shock to him, and yet he trembled. He went home quite calmly, feeling only heavy in his breathing.
Miss Louisa was still at the house. She had seen to everything possible. Very succinctly, she informed him of what he needed to know. But there was one point of anxiety for her.
“Youdidhalf expect it—it’s not come as a blow to you?” she asked, looking up at him. Her eyes were dark and calm and searching. She too felt lost. He was so dark and inchoate.
“I suppose—yes,” he said stupidly. He looked aside, unable to endure her eyes on him.
“I could not bear to think you might not have guessed,” she said.
He did not answer.
He felt it a great strain to have her near him at this time. He wanted to be alone. As soon as the relatives began to arrive, Louisa departed and came no more. While everything was arranging, and a crowd was in the house, whilst he had business to settle, he went well enough, with only those uncontrollable paroxysms of grief. For the rest, he was superficial. By himself, he endured the fierce, almost insane bursts of grief which passed again and left him calm, almost clear, just wondering. He had not known before that everything could break down, that he himself could break down, and all be a great chaos, very vast and wonderful. It seemed as if life in him had burst its bounds, and he was lost in a great, bewildering flood, immense and unpeopled. He himself was broken and spilled out amid it all. He could only breathe panting in silence. Then the anguish came on again.
When all the people had gone from the Quarry Cottage, leaving the young man alone with an elderly housekeeper, then the long trial began. The snow had thawed and frozen, a fresh fall had whitened the grey, this then began to thaw. The world was a place of loose grey slosh. Alfred had nothing to do in the evenings. He was a man whose life had been filled up with small activities. Without knowing it, he had been centralized, polarized in his mother. It was she who had kept him. Even now, when the old housekeeper had left him, he might still have gone on in his old way. But the force and balance of his life was lacking. He sat pretending to read, all the time holding his fists clenched, and holding himself in, enduring he did not know what. He walked the black and sodden miles of field-paths, till he was tired out: but all this was only running away from whence he must return. At work he was all right. If it had been summer he might have escaped by working in the garden till bedtime. But now, there was no escape, no relief, no help. He, perhaps, was made for action rather than for understanding; for doing than for being. He was shocked out of his activities, like a swimmer who forgets to swim.
For a week, he had the force to endure this suffocation and struggle, then he began to get exhausted, and knew it must come out. The instinct of self-preservation became strongest. But there was the question: Where was he to go? The public-house really meant nothing to him, it was no good going there. He began to think of emigration. In another country he would be all right. He wrote to the emigration offices.
On the Sunday after the funeral, when all the Durant people had attended church, Alfred had seen Miss Louisa, impassive and reserved, sitting with Miss Mary, who was proud and very distant, and with the other Lindleys, who were people removed. Alfred saw them as people remote. He did not think about it. They had nothing to do with his life. After service Louisa had come to him and shaken hands.
“My sister would like you to come to supper one evening, if you would be so good.”
He looked at Miss Mary, who bowed. Out of kindness, Mary had proposed this to Louisa, disapproving of herself even as she did so. But she did not examine herself closely.
“Yes,” said Durant awkwardly, “I’ll come if you want me.” But he vaguely felt that it was misplaced.
“You’ll come tomorrow evening, then, about half-past six.”
He went. Miss Louisa was very kind to him. There could be no music, because of the babies. He sat with his fists clenched on his thighs, very quiet and unmoved, lapsing, among all those people, into a kind of muse or daze. There was nothing between him and them. They knew it as well as he. But he remained very steady in himself, and the evening passed slowly. Mrs Lindley called him “young man”.
“Will you sit here, young man?”
He sat there. One name was as good as another. What had they to do with him?
Mr Lindley kept a special tone for him, kind, indulgent, but patronizing. Durant took it all without criticism or offence, just submitting. But he did not want to eat—that troubled him, to have to eat in their presence. He knew he was out of place. But it was his duty to stay yet awhile. He answered precisely, in monosyllables.
When he left he winced with confusion. He was glad it was finished. He got away as quickly as possible. And he wanted still more intensely to go right away, to Canada.
Miss Louisa suffered in her soul, indignant with all of them, with him too, but quite unable to say why she was indignant.
Two evenings after, Louisa tapped at the door of the Quarry Cottage, at half-pas six. He had finished dinner, the woman had washed up and gone away, but still he sat in his pit dirt. He was going later to the New Inn. He had begun to go there because he must go somewhere. The mere contact with other men was necessary to him, the noise, the warmth, the forgetful flight of the hours. But still he did not move. He sat alone in the empty house till it began to grow on him like something unnatural.
He was in his pit dirt when he opened the door.
“I have been wanting to call—I thought I would,” she said, and she went to the sofa. He wondered why she wouldn’t use his mother’s round armchair. Yet something stirred in him, like anger, when the housekeeper placed herself in it.
“I ought to have been washed by now,” he said, glancing at the clock, which was adorned with butterflies and cherries, and the name of “T. Brooks, Mansfield.” He laid his black hands along his mottled dirty arms. Louisa looked at him. There was the reserve, and the simple neutrality towards her, which she dreaded in him. It made it impossible for her to approach him.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that I wasn’t kind in asking you to supper.”
“I’m not used to it,” he said, smiling with his mouth, showing the interspaced white teeth. His eyes, however, were steady and unseeing.
“It’s notthat,” she said hastily. Her repose was exquisite and her dark grey eyes rich with understanding. He felt afraid of her as she sat there, as he began to grow conscious of her.
“How do you get on alone?” she asked.
He glanced away to the fire.
“Oh——” he answered, shifting uneasily, not finishing his answer.
Her face settled heavily.
“How close it is in this room. You have such immense fires. I will take off my coat,” she said.
He watched her take off her hat and coat. She wore a cream cashmir blouse embroidered with gold silk. It seemed to him a very fine garment, fitting her throat and wrists close. It gave him a feeling of pleasure and cleanness and relief from himself.
“What were you thinking about, that you didn’t get washed?” she asked, half intimately. He laughed, turning aside his head. The whites of his eyes showed very distinct in his black face.
“Oh,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you.”
There was a pause.
“Are you going to keep this house on?” she asked.
He stirred in his chair, under the question.
“I hardly know,” he said. “I’m very likely going to Canada.”
Her spirit became very quiet and attentive.
“What for?” she asked.
Again he shifted restlessly on his seat.
“Well”—he said slowly—“to try the life.”
“But which life?”
“There’s various things—farming or lumbering or mining. I don’t mind much what it is.”
“And is that what you want?”
He did not think in these times, so he could not answer.
“I don’t know,” he said, “till I’ve tried.”
She saw him drawing away from her for ever.
“Aren’t you sorry to leave this house and garden?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered reluctantly. “I suppose our Fred would come in—that’s what he’s wanting.”
“You don’t want to settle down?” she asked.
He was leaning forward on the arms of his chair. He turned to her. Her face was pale and set. It looked heavy and impassive, her hair shone richer as she grew white. She was to him something steady and immovable and eternal presented to him. His heart was hot in an anguish of suspense. Sharp twitches of fear and pain were in his limbs. He turned his whole body away from her. The silence was unendurable. He could not bear her to sit there any more. It made his heart go hot and stifled in his breast.
“Were you going out tonight?” she asked.
“Only to the New Inn,” he said.
Again there was silence.
She reached for her hat. Nothing else was suggested to her. Shehadto go. He sat waiting for her to be gone, for relief. And she knew that if she went out of that house as she was, she went out a failure. Yet she continued to pin on her hat; in a moment she would have to go. Something was carrying her.
Then suddenly a sharp pang, like lightning, seared her from head to foot, and she was beyond herself.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked, controlled, yet speaking out of a fiery anguish, as if the words were spoken from her without her intervention.
He went white under his dirt.
“Why?” he asked, turning to her in fear, compelled.
“Do you want me to go?” she repeated.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because I wanted to stay with you,” she said, suffocated, with her lungs full of fire.
His face worked, he hung forward a little, suspended, staring straight into her eyes, in torment, in an agony of chaos, unable to collect himself. And as if turned to stone, she looked back into his eyes. Their souls were exposed bare for a few moments. It was agony. They could not bear it. He dropped his head, whilst his body jerked with little sharp twitchings.
She turned away for her coat. Her soul had gone dead in her. Her hands trembled, but she could not feel any more. She drew on her coat. There was a cruel suspense in the room. The moment had come for her to go. He lifted his head. His eyes were like agate, expressionless, save for the black points of torture. They held her, she had no will, no life any more. She felt broken.
“Don’t you want me?” she said helplessly.
A spasm of torture crossed his eyes, which held her fixed.
“I—I——” he began, but he could not speak. Something drew him from his chair to her. She stood motionless, spellbound, like a creature given up as prey. He put his hand tentatively, uncertainly, on her arm. The expression of his face was strange and inhuman. She stood utterly motionless. Then clumsily he put his arms round her, and took her, cruelly, blindly, straining her till she nearly lost consciousness, till he himself had almost fallen.
Then, gradually, as he held her gripped, and his brain reeled round, and he felt himself falling, falling from himself, and whilst she, yielded up, swooned to a kind of death of herself, a moment of utter darkness came over him, and they began to wake up again as if from a long sleep. He was himself.
After a while his arms slackened, she loosened herself a little, and put her arms round him, as he held her. So they held each other close, and hid each against the other for assurance, helpless in speech. And it was ever her hands that trembled more closely upon him, drawing him nearer into her, with love.
And at last she drew back her face and looked up at him, her eyes wet, and shining with light. His heart, which saw, was silent with fear. He was with her. She saw his face all sombre and inscrutable, and he seemed eternal to her. And all the echo of pain came back into the rarity of bliss, and all her tears came up.
“I love you,” she said, her lips drawn and sobbing. He put down his head against her, unable to hear her, unable to bear the sudden coming of the peace and passion that almost broke his heart. They stood together in silence whilst the thing moved away a little.
At last she wanted to see him. She looked up. His eyes were strange and glowing, with a tiny black pupil. Strange, they were, and powerful over her. And his mouth came to hers, and slowly her eyelids closed, as his mouth sought hers closer and closer, and took possession of her.
They were silent for a long time, too much mixed up with passion and grief and death to do anything but hold each other in pain and kiss with long, hurting kisses wherein fear was transfused into desire. At last she disengaged herself. He felt as if his heart were hurt, but glad, and he scarcely dared look at her.
“I’m glad,” she said also.
He held her hands in passionate gratitude and desire. He had not yet the presence of mind to say anything. He was dazed with relief.
“I ought to go,” she said.
He looked at her. He could not grasp the thought of her going, he knew he could never be separated from her any more. Yet he dared not assert himself. He held her hands tight.
“Your face is black,” she said.
He laughed.
“Yours is a bit smudged,” he said.
They were afraid of each other, afraid to talk. He could only keep her near to him. After a while she wanted to wash her face. He brought her some warm water, standing by and watching her. There was something he wanted to say, that he dared not. He watched her wiping her face, and making tidy her hair.
“They’ll see your blouse is dirty,” he said.
She looked at her sleeves and laughed for joy.
He was sharp with pride.
“What shall you do?” he asked.
“How?” she said.
He was awkward at a reply.
“About me,” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” she laughed.
He put his hand out slowly to her. What did it matter!
“But make yourself clean,” she said.
As they went up the hill, the night seemed dense with the unknown. They kept close together, feeling as if the darkness were alive and full of knowledge, all around them. In silence they walked up the hill. At first the street lamps went their way. Several people passed them. He was more shy than she, and would have let her go had she loosened in the least. But she held firm.
Then they came into the true darkness, between the fields. They did not want to speak, feeling closer together in silence. So they arrived at the Vicarage gate. They stood under the naked horse-chestnut tree.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said.
She laughed a quick little laugh.
“Come tomorrow,” she said, in a low tone, “and ask father.”
She felt his hand close on hers.
She gave the same sorrowful little laugh of sympathy. Then she kissed him, sending him home.
At home, the old grief came on in another paroxysm, obliterating Louisa, obliterating even his mother for whom the stress was raging like a burst of fever in a wound. But something was sound in his heart.
The next evening he dressed to go to the vicarage, feeling it was to be done, not imagining what it would be like. He would not take this seriously. He was sure of Louisa, and this marriage was like fate to him. It filled him also with a blessed feeling of fatality. He was not responsible, neither had her people anything really to do with it.
They ushered him into the little study, which was fireless. By and by the vicar came in. His voice was cold and hostile as he said:
“What can I do for you, young man?”
He knew already, without asking.
Durant looked up at him, again like a sailor before a superior. He had the subordinate manner. Yet his spirit was clear.
“I wanted, Mr Lindley——” he began respectfully, then all the colour suddenly left his face. It seemed now a violation to say what he had to say. What was he doing there? But he stood on, because it had to be done. He held firmly to his own independence and self-respect. He must not be indecisive. He must put himself aside: the matter was bigger than just his personal self. He must not feel. This was his highest duty.
“You wanted——” said the vicar.
Durant’s mouth was dry, but he answered with steadiness:
“Miss Louisa—Louisa—promised to marry me——”
“You asked Miss Louisa if she would marry you—yes——” corrected the vicar. Durant reflected he had not asked her this:
“If she would marry me, sir. I hope you—don’t mind.”
He smiled. He was a good-looking man, and the vicar could not help seeing it.
“And my daughter was willing to marry you?” said Mr Lindley.
“Yes,” said Durant seriously. It was pain to him, nevertheless. He felt the natural hostility between himself and the elder man.
“Will you come this way?” said the vicar. He led into the dining-room, where were Mary, Louisa, and Mrs Lindley. Mr Massy sat in a corner with a lamp.
“This young man has come on your account, Louisa?” said Mr Lindley.
“Yes,” said Louisa, her eyes on Durant, who stood erect, in discipline. He dared not look at her, but he was aware of her.
“You don’t want to marry a collier, you little fool,” cried Mrs Lindley harshly. She lay obese and helpless upon the couch, swathed in a loose, dove-grey gown.
“Oh, hush, mother,” cried Mary, with quiet intensity and pride.
“What means have you to support a wife?” demanded the vicar’s wife roughly.
“I!” Durant replied, starting. “I think I can earn enough.”
“Well, and how much?” came the rough voice.
“Seven and six a day,” replied the young man.
“And will it get to be any more?”
“I hope so.”
“And are you going to live in that poky little house?”
“I think so,” said Durant, “if it’s all right.”
He took small offence, only was upset, because they would not think him good enough. He knew that, in their sense, he was not.
“Then she’s a fool, I tell you, if she marries you,” cried the mother roughly, casting her decision.
“After all, mama, it is Louisa’s affair,” said Mary distinctly, “and we must remember——”
“As she makes her bed, she must lie—but she’ll repent it,” interrupted Mrs Lindley.
“And after all,” said Mr Lindley, “Louisa cannot quite hold herself free to act entirely without consideration for her family.”
“What do you want, papa?” asked Louisa sharply.
“I mean that if you marry this man, it will make my position very difficult for me, particularly if you stay in this parish. If you were moving quite away, it would be simpler. But living here in a collier’s cottage, under my nose, as it were—it would be almost unseemly. I have my position to maintain, and a position which may not be taken lightly.”
“Come over here, young man,” cried the mother, in her rough voice, “and let us look at you.”
Durant, flushing, went over and stood—not quite at attention, so that he did not know what to do with his hands. Miss Louisa was angry to see him standing there, obedient and acquiescent. He ought to show himself a man.
“Can’t you take her away and live out of sight?” said the mother. “You’d both of you be better off.”
“Yes, we can go away,” he said.
“Do you want to?” asked Miss Mary clearly.
He faced round. Mary looked very stately and impressive. He flushed.
“I do if it’s going to be a trouble to anybody,” he said.
“For yourself, you would rather stay?” said Mary.
“It’s my home,” he said, “and that’s the house I was born in.”
“Then”—Mary turned clearly to her parents, “I really don’t see how you can make the conditions, papa. He has his own rights, and if Louisa wants to marry him——”
“Louisa, Louisa!” cried the father impatiently. “I cannot understand why Louisa should not behave in the normal way. I cannot see why she should only think of herself, and leave her family out of count. The thing is enough in itself, and she ought to try to ameliorate it as much as possible. And if——”
“But I love the man, papa,” said Louisa.
“And I hope you love your parents, and I hope you want to spare them as much of the—the loss of prestige, as possible.”
“Wecango away to live,” said Louisa, her face breaking to tears. At last she was really hurt.
“Oh, yes, easily,” Durant replied hastily, pale, distressed.
There was dead silence in the room.
“I think it would really be better,” murmured the vicar, mollified.
“Very likely it would,” said the rough-voiced invalid.
“Though I think we ought to apologize for asking such a thing,” said Mary haughtily.
“No,” said Durant. “It will be best all round.” He was glad there was no more bother.
“And shall we put up the banns here or go to the registrar?” he asked clearly, like a challenge.
“We will go to the registrar,” replied Louisa decidedly.
Again there was a dead silence in the room.
“Well, if you will have your own way, you must go your own way,” said the mother emphatically.
All the time Mr Massy had sat obscure and unnoticed in a corner of the room. At this juncture he got up, saying:
“There is baby, Mary.”
Mary rose and went out of the room, stately; her little husband padded after her. Durant watched the fragile, small man go, wondering.
“And where,” asked the vicar, almost genial, “do you think you will go when you are married?”
Durant started.
“I was thinking of emigrating,” he said.
“To Canada? or where?”
“I think to Canada.”
“Yes, that would be very good.”
Again there was a pause.
“We shan’t see much of you then, as a son-in-law,” said the mother, roughly but amicably.
“Not much,” he said.
Then he took his leave. Louisa went with him to the gate. She stood before him in distress.
“You won’t mind them, will you?” she said humbly.
“I don’t mind them, if they don’t mind me!” he said. Then he stooped and kissed her.
“Let us be married soon,” she murmured, in tears.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll go tomorrow to Barford.”