“And what have you been doing lately?”
“I—oh, not much! I made a sketch of Bestwood from the garden, that is nearly right at last. It's the hundredth try.”
So they went on. Then she said:
“You've not been out, then, lately?”
“Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with Clara.”
“It was not very nice weather,” said Miriam, “was it?”
“But I wanted to go out, and it was all right. The Trent IS full.”
“And did you go to Barton?” she asked.
“No; we had tea in Clifton.”
“DID you! That would be nice.”
“It was! The jolliest old woman! She gave us several pompom dahlias, as pretty as you like.”
Miriam bowed her head and brooded. He was quite unconscious of concealing anything from her.
“What made her give them you?” she asked.
He laughed.
“Because she liked us—because we were jolly, I should think.”
Miriam put her finger in her mouth.
“Were you late home?” she asked.
At last he resented her tone.
“I caught the seven-thirty.”
“Ha!”
They walked on in silence, and he was angry.
“And how IS Clara?” asked Miriam.
“Quite all right, I think.”
“That's good!” she said, with a tinge of irony. “By the way, what of her husband? One never hears anything of him.”
“He's got some other woman, and is also quite all right,” he replied. “At least, so I think.”
“I see—you don't know for certain. Don't you think a position like that is hard on a woman?”
“Rottenly hard!”
“It's so unjust!” said Miriam. “The man does as he likes—”
“Then let the woman also,” he said.
“How can she? And if she does, look at her position!”
“What of it?”
“Why, it's impossible! You don't understand what a woman forfeits—”
“No, I don't. But if a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!”
So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she knew he would act accordingly.
She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know enough.
Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned to marriage, then to Clara's marriage with Dawes.
“You see,” he said, “she never knew the fearful importance of marriage. She thought it was all in the day's march—it would have to come—and Dawes—well, a good many women would have given their souls to get him; so why not him? Then she developed into the femme incomprise, and treated him badly, I'll bet my boots.”
“And she left him because he didn't understand her?”
“I suppose so. I suppose she had to. It isn't altogether a question of understanding; it's a question of living. With him, she was only half-alive; the rest was dormant, deadened. And the dormant woman was the femme incomprise, and she HAD to be awakened.”
“And what about him.”
“I don't know. I rather think he loves her as much as he can, but he's a fool.”
“It was something like your mother and father,” said Miriam.
“Yes; but my mother, I believe, got real joy and satisfaction out of my father at first. I believe she had a passion for him; that's why she stayed with him. After all, they were bound to each other.”
“Yes,” said Miriam.
“That's what one MUST HAVE, I think,” he continued—“the real, real flame of feeling through another person—once, only once, if it only lasts three months. See, my mother looks as if she'd HAD everything that was necessary for her living and developing. There's not a tiny bit of feeling of sterility about her.”
“No,” said Miriam.
“And with my father, at first, I'm sure she had the real thing. She knows; she has been there. You can feel it about her, and about him, and about hundreds of people you meet every day; and, once it has happened to you, you can go on with anything and ripen.”
“What happened, exactly?” asked Miriam.
“It's so hard to say, but the something big and intense that changes you when you really come together with somebody else. It almost seems to fertilise your soul and make it that you can go on and mature.”
“And you think your mother had it with your father?”
“Yes; and at the bottom she feels grateful to him for giving it her, even now, though they are miles apart.”
“And you think Clara never had it?”
“I'm sure.”
Miriam pondered this. She saw what he was seeking—a sort of baptism of fire in passion, it seemed to her. She realised that he would never be satisfied till he had it. Perhaps it was essential to him, as to some men, to sow wild oats; and afterwards, when he was satisfied, he would not rage with restlessness any more, but could settle down and give her his life into her hands. Well, then, if he must go, let him go and have his fill—something big and intense, he called it. At any rate, when he had got it, he would not want it—that he said himself; he would want the other thing that she could give him. He would want to be owned, so that he could work. It seemed to her a bitter thing that he must go, but she could let him go into an inn for a glass of whisky, so she could let him go to Clara, so long as it was something that would satisfy a need in him, and leave him free for herself to possess.
“Have you told your mother about Clara?” she asked.
She knew this would be a test of the seriousness of his feeling for the other woman: she knew he was going to Clara for something vital, not as a man goes for pleasure to a prostitute, if he told his mother.
“Yes,” he said, “and she is coming to tea on Sunday.”
“To your house?”
“Yes; I want mater to see her.”
“Ah!”
There was a silence. Things had gone quicker than she thought. She felt a sudden bitterness that he could leave her so soon and so entirely. And was Clara to be accepted by his people, who had been so hostile to herself?
“I may call in as I go to chapel,” she said. “It is a long time since I saw Clara.”
“Very well,” he said, astonished, and unconsciously angry.
On the Sunday afternoon he went to Keston to meet Clara at the station. As he stood on the platform he was trying to examine in himself if he had a premonition.
“Do I FEEL as if she'd come?” he said to himself, and he tried to find out. His heart felt queer and contracted. That seemed like foreboding. Then he HAD a foreboding she would not come! Then she would not come, and instead of taking her over the fields home, as he had imagined, he would have to go alone. The train was late; the afternoon would be wasted, and the