PART II: 11. The Test On Miriam
WITH the spring came again the old madness and battle. Now he knew he would have to go to Miriam. But what was his reluctance? He told himself it was only a sort of overstrong virginity in her and him which neither could break through. He might have married her; but his circumstances at home made it difficult, and, moreover, he did not want to marry. Marriage was for life, and because they had become close companions, he and she, he did not see that it should inevitably follow they should be man and wife. He did not feel that he wanted marriage with Miriam. He wished he did. He would have given his head to have felt a joyous desire to marry her and to have her. Then why couldn't he bring it off? There was some obstacle; and what was the obstacle? It lay in the physical bondage. He shrank from the physical contact. But why? With her he felt bound up inside himself. He could not go out to her. Something struggled in him, but he could not get to her. Why? She loved him. Clara said she even wanted him; then why couldn't he go to her, make love to her, kiss her? Why, when she put her arm in his, timidly, as they walked, did he feel he would burst forth in brutality and recoil? He owed himself to her; he wanted to belong to her. Perhaps the recoil and the shrinking from her was love in its first fierce modesty. He had no aversion for her. No, it was the opposite; it was a strong desire battling with a still stronger shyness and virginity. It seemed as if virginity were a positive force, which fought and won in both of them. And with her he felt it so hard to overcome; yet he was nearest to her, and with her alone could he deliberately break through. And he owed himself to her. Then, if they could get things right, they could marry; but he would not marry unless he could feel strong in the joy of it---never. He could not have faced his mother. It seemed to him that to sacrifice himself in a marriage he did not want would be degrading, and would undo all his life, make it a nullity. He would try what he could do.
And he had a great tenderness for Miriam. Always, she was sad, dreaming her religion; and he was nearly a religion to her. He could not bear to fail her. It would all come right if they tried.
He looked round. A good many of the nicest men he knew were like himself, bound in by their own virginity, which they could not break out of. They were so sensitive to their women that they would go without them for ever rather than do them a hurt, an injustice. Being the sons of mothers whose husbands had blundered rather brutally through their feminine sanctities, they were themselves too diffident and shy. They could easier deny themselves than incur any reproach from a woman; for a woman was like their mother, and they were full of the sense of their mother. They preferred themselves to suffer the misery of celibacy, rather than risk the other person.
He went back to her. Something in her, when he looked at her, brought the tears almost to his eyes. One day he stood behind her as she sang. Annie was playing a song on the piano. As Miriam sang her mouth seemed hopeless. She sang like a nun singing to heaven. It reminded him so much of the mouth and eyes of one who sings beside a Botticelli Madonna, so spiritual. Again, hot as steel, came up the pain in him. Why must he ask her for the other thing? Why was there his blood battling with her? If only he could have been always gentle, tender with her, breathing with her the atmosphere of reverie and religious dreams, he would give his right hand. It was not fair to hurt her. There seemed an eternal maidenhood about her; and when he thought of her mother, he saw the great brown eyes of a maiden who was nearly scared and shocked out of her virgin maidenhood, but not quite, in spite of her seven children. They had been born almost leaving her out of count, not of her, but upon her. So she could never let them go, because she never had possessed them.
Mrs. Morel saw him going again frequently to Miriam, and was astonished. He said nothing to his mother. He did not explain nor excuse himself. If he came home late, and she reproached him, he frowned and turned on her in an overbearing way:
"I shall come home when I like," he said; "I am old enough."
"Must she keep you till this time?"
"It is I who stay," he answered.
"And she lets you? But very well," she said.
And she went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for him; but she lay listening until he came, often long after. It was a great bitterness to her that he had gone back to Miriam. She recognised, however, the uselessness of any further interference. He went to Willey Farm as a man now, not as a youth. She had no right over him. There was a coldness between him and her. He hardly told her anything. Discarded, she waited on him, cooked for him still, and loved to slave for him; but her face closed again like a mask. There was nothing for her to do now but the housework; for all the rest he had gone to Miriam. She could not forgive him. Miriam killed the joy and the warmth in him. He had been such a jolly lad, and full of the warmest affection; now he grew colder, more and more irritable and gloomy. It reminded her of William; but Paul was worse. He did things with more intensity, and more realisation of what he was about. His mother knew how he was suffering for want of a woman, and she saw him going to Miriam. If he had made up his mind, nothing on earth would alter him. Mrs. Morel was tired. She began to give up at last; she had finished. She was in the way.
He went on determinedly. He realised more or less what his mother felt. It only hardened his soul. He made himself callous towards her; but it was like being callous to his own health. It undermined him quickly; yet he persisted.
He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one evening. He had been talking to Miriam for some weeks, but had not come to the point. Now he said suddenly:
"I am twenty-four, almost."
She had been brooding. She looked up at him suddenly in surprise. "Yes. What makes you say it?"
There was something in the charged atmosphere that she dreaded. "Sir Thomas More says one can marry at twenty-four."
She laughed quaintly, saying:
"Does it need Sir Thomas More's sanction?"
"No; but one ought to marry about then."
"Ay," she answered broodingly; and she waited.
"I can't marry you," he continued slowly, "not now, because we've no money, and they depend on me at home."
She sat half-guessing what was coming. "But I want to marry now---"
"You want to marry?" she repeated. "A woman---you know what I mean." She was silent.
"Now, at last, I must," he said. "Ay," she answered.
"And you love me?" She laughed bitterly.
"Why are you ashamed of it," he answered. "You wouldn't be ashamed before your God, why are you before people?"
"Nay," she answered deeply, "I am not ashamed."
"You are," he replied bitterly; "and it's my fault. But you know I can't help being--- as I am---don't you?"
"I know you can't help it," she replied.
"I love you an awful lot---then there is something short."
"Where?" she answered, looking at him.
"Oh, in me! It is I who ought to be ashamed---like a spiritual cripple. And I am ashamed. It is misery. Why is it?"
"I don't know," replied Miriam.
"And I don't know," he repeated. "Don't you think we have been too fierce in our what they call purity? Don't you think that to be so much afraid and averse is a sort of dirtiness?"
She looked at him with startled dark eyes.
"You recoiled away from anything of the sort, and I took the motion from you, and recoiled also, perhaps worse."
There was silence in the room for some time. "Yes," she said, "it is so."
"There is between us," he said, "all these years of intimacy. I feel naked enough before you. Do you understand?"
"I think so," she answered. "And you love me?"
She laughed.
"Don't be bitter," he pleaded.
She looked at him and was sorry for him; his eyes were dark with torture. She was sorry for him; it was worse for him to have this deflated love than for herself, who could never be properly mated. He was restless, for ever urging forward and trying to find a way out. He might do as he liked, and have what he liked of her. "Nay," she said softly, "I am not bitter."
She felt she could bear anything for him; she would suffer for him. She put her hand on his knee as he leaned forward in his chair. He took it and kissed it; but it hurt to do so. He felt he was putting himself aside. He sat there sacrificed to her purity, which felt more like nullity. How could he kiss her hand passionately, when it would drive her away, and leave nothing but pain? Yet slowly he drew her to him and kissed her.
They knew each other too well to pretend anything. As she kissed him, she watched his eyes; they were staring across the room, with a peculiar dark blaze in them that fascinated her. He was perfectly still. She could feel his heart throbbing heavily in his breast.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
The blaze in his eyes shuddered, became uncertain.
"I was thinking, all the while, I love you. I have been obstinate." She sank her head on his breast.
"Yes," she answered.
"That's all," he said, and his voice seemed sure, and his mouth was kissing her throat.
Then she raised her head and looked into his eyes with her full gaze of love. The blaze struggled, seemed to try to get away from her, and then was quenched. He turned his head quickly aside. It was a moment of anguish.
"Kiss me," she whispered.
He shut his eyes, and kissed her, and his arms folded her closer and closer. When she walked home with him over the fields, he said:
"I am glad I came back to you. I feel so simple with you--as if there was nothing to hide. We will be happy?"
"Yes," she murmured, and the tears came to her eyes.
"Some sort of perversity in our souls," he said, "makes us not want, get away from, the very thing we