“What is happiness!” he cried. “It's nothing to me! How AM I to be happy?”
The plump question disturbed her.
“That's for you to judge, my lad. But if you could meet some GOOD woman who would MAKE you happy—and you began to think of settling your life—when you have the means—so that you could work without all this fretting—it would be much better for you.”
He frowned. His mother caught him on the raw of his wound of Miriam. He pushed the tumbled hair off his forehead, his eyes full of pain and fire.
“You mean easy, mother,” he cried. “That's a woman's whole doctrine for life—ease of soul and physical comfort. And I do despise it.”
“Oh, do you!” replied his mother. “And do you call yours a divine discontent?”
“Yes. I don't care about its divinity. But damn your happiness! So long as life's full, it doesn't matter whether it's happy or not. I'm afraid your happiness would bore me.”
“You never give it a chance,” she said. Then suddenly all her passion of grief over him broke out. “But it does matter!” she cried. “And you OUGHT to be happy, you ought to try to be happy, to live to be happy. How could I bear to think your life wouldn't be a happy one!”
“Your own's been bad enough, mater, but it hasn't left you so much worse off than the folk who've been happier. I reckon you've done well. And I am the same. Aren't I well enough off?”
“You're not, my son. Battle—battle—and suffer. It's about all you do, as far as I can see.”
“But why not, my dear? I tell you it's the best—”
“It isn't. And one OUGHT to be happy, one OUGHT.”
By this time Mrs. Morel was trembling violently. Struggles of this kind often took place between her and her son, when she seemed to fight for his very life against his own will to die. He took her in his arms. She was ill and pitiful.
“Never mind, Little,” he murmured. “So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness.”
She pressed him to her.
“But I want you to be happy,” she said pathetically.
“Eh, my dear—say rather you want me to live.”
Mrs. Morel felt as if her heart would break for him. At this rate she knew he would not live. He had that poignant carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life, which is a form of slow suicide. It almost broke her heart. With all the passion of her strong nature she hated Miriam for having in this subtle way undermined his joy. It did not matter to her that Miriam could not help it. Miriam did it, and she hated her.
She wished so much he would fall in love with a girl equal to be his mate—educated and strong. But he would not look at anybody above him in station. He seemed to like Mrs. Dawes. At any rate that feeling was wholesome. His mother prayed and prayed for him, that he might not be wasted. That was all her prayer—not for his soul or his righteousness, but that he might not be wasted. And while he slept, for hours and hours she thought and prayed for him.
He drifted away from Miriam imperceptibly, without knowing he was going. Arthur only left the army to be married. The baby was born six months after his wedding. Mrs. Morel got him a job under the firm again, at twenty-one shillings a week. She furnished for him, with the help of Beatrice's mother, a little cottage of two rooms. He was caught now. It did not matter how he kicked and struggled, he was fast. For a time he chafed, was irritable with his young wife, who loved him; he went almost distracted when the baby, which was delicate, cried or gave trouble. He grumbled for hours to his mother. She only said: “Well, my lad, you did it yourself, now you must make the best of it.” And then the grit came out in him. He buckled to work, undertook his responsibilities, acknowledged that he belonged to his wife and child, and did make a good best of it. He had never been very closely inbound into the family. Now he was gone altogether.
The months went slowly along. Paul had more or less got into connection with the Socialist, Suffragette, Unitarian people in Nottingham, owing to his acquaintance with Clara. One day a friend of his and of Clara's, in Bestwood, asked him to take a message to Mrs. Dawes. He went in the evening across Sneinton Market to Bluebell Hill. He found the house in a mean little street paved with granite cobbles and having causeways of dark blue, grooved bricks. The front door went up a step from off this rough pavement, where the feet of the passersby rasped and clattered. The brown paint on the door was so old that the naked wood showed between the rents. He stood on the street below and knocked. There came a heavy footstep; a large, stout woman of about sixty towered above him. He looked up at her from the pavement. She had a rather severe face.
She admitted him into the parlour, which opened on to the street. It was a small, stuffy, defunct room, of mahogany, and deathly enlargements of photographs of departed people done in carbon. Mrs. Radford left him. She was stately, almost martial. In a moment Clara appeared. She flushed deeply, and he was covered with confusion. It seemed as if she did not like being discovered in her home circumstances.
“I thought it couldn't be your voice,” she said.
But she might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. She invited him out of the mausoleum of a parlour into the kitchen.
That was a little, darkish room too, but it was smothered in white lace. The mother had seated herself again by the cupboard, and was drawing thread from a vast web of lace. A clump of fluff and ravelled cotton was at her right hand, a heap of three-quarter-inch lace lay on her left, whilst in front of her was the mountain of lace web, piling the hearthrug. Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between the lengths of lace, strewed over the fender and the fireplace. Paul dared not go forward, for fear of treading on piles of white stuff.
On the table was a jenny for carding the lace. There was a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace, a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay a heap of drawn lace.
The room was all lace, and it was so dark and warm that the white, snowy stuff seemed the more distinct.
“If you're coming in you won't have to mind the work,” said Mrs. Radford. “I know we're about blocked up. But sit you down.”
Clara, much embarrassed, gave him a chair against the wall opposite the white heaps. Then she herself took her place on the sofa, shamedly.
“Will you drink a bottle of stout?” Mrs. Radford asked. “Clara, get him a bottle of stout.”
He protested, but Mrs. Radford insisted.
“You look as if you could do with it,” she said. “Haven't you never any more colour than that?”
“It's only a thick skin I've got that doesn't show the blood through,” he answered.
Clara, ashamed and chagrined, brought him a bottle of stout and a glass. He poured out some of the black stuff.
“Well,” he said, lifting the glass, “here's health!”
“And thank you,” said Mrs. Radford.
He took a drink of stout.
“And light yourself a cigarette, so long as you don't set the house on fire,” said Mrs. Radford.
“Thank you,” he replied.
“Nay, you needn't thank me,” she answered. “I s'll be glad to smell a bit of smoke in th' 'ouse again. A house o' women is as dead as a house wi' no fire, to my thinkin'. I'm not a spider as likes a corner to myself. I like a man about, if he's only something to snap at.”
Clara began to work. Her jenny spun with a subdued buzz; the white lace hopped from between her fingers on to the card. It was filled; she snipped off the length, and pinned the end down to the banded lace. Then she