All the life of Miriam's body was in her eyes, which were usually dark as a dark church, but could flame with light like a conflagration. Her face scarcely ever altered from its look of brooding. She might have been one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body was not flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather heavily, her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not clumsy, and yet none of her movements seemed quite THE movement. Often, when wiping the dishes, she would stand in bewilderment and chagrin because she had pulled in two halves a cup or a tumbler. It was as if, in her fear and self-mistrust, she put too much strength into the effort. There was no looseness or abandon about her. Everything was gripped stiff with intensity, and her effort, overcharged, closed in on itself.
She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense walk. Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields. Then her eyes blazed naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened him. But she was physically afraid. If she were getting over a stile, she gripped his hands in a little hard anguish, and began to lose her presence of mind. And he could not persuade her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes dilated, became exposed and palpitating.
“No!” she cried, half laughing in terror—“no!”
“You shall!” he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he brought her falling from the fence. But her wild “Ah!” of pain, as if she were losing consciousness, cut him. She landed on her feet safely, and afterwards had courage in this respect.
She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.
“Don't you like being at home?” Paul asked her, surprised.
“Who would?” she answered, low and intense. “What is it? I'm all day cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five minutes. I don't WANT to be at home.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody else. Why should I, because I'm a girl, be kept at home and not allowed to be anything? What chance HAVE I?”
“Chance of what?”
“Of knowing anything—of learning, of doing anything. It's not fair, because I'm a woman.”
She seemed very bitter. Paul wondered. In his own home Annie was almost glad to be a girl. She had not so much responsibility; things were lighter for her. She never wanted to be other than a girl. But Miriam almost fiercely wished she were a man. And yet she hated men at the same time.
“But it's as well to be a woman as a man,” he said, frowning.
“Ha! Is it? Men have everything.”
“I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as men are to be men,” he answered.
“No!”—she shook her head—“no! Everything the men have.”
“But what do you want?” he asked.
“I want to learn. Why SHOULD it be that I know nothing?”
“What! such as mathematics and French?”
“Why SHOULDN'T I know mathematics? Yes!” she cried, her eye expanding in a kind of defiance.
“Well, you can learn as much as I know,” he said. “I'll teach you, if you like.”
Her eyes dilated. She mistrusted him as teacher.
“Would you?” he asked.
Her head had dropped, and she was sucking her finger broodingly.
“Yes,” she said hesitatingly.
He used to tell his mother all these things.
“I'm going to teach Miriam algebra,” he said.
“Well,” replied Mrs. Morel, “I hope she'll get fat on it.”
When he went up to the farm on the Monday evening, it was drawing twilight. Miriam was just sweeping up the kitchen, and was kneeling at the hearth when he entered. Everyone was out but her. She looked round at him, flushed, her dark eyes shining, her fine hair falling about her face.
“Hello!” she said, soft and musical. “I knew it was you.”
“How?”
“I knew your step. Nobody treads so quick and firm.”
He sat down, sighing.
“Ready to do some algebra?” he asked, drawing a little book from his pocket.
“But—”
He could feel her backing away.
“You said you wanted,” he insisted.
“To-night, though?” she faltered.
“But I came on purpose. And if you want to learn it, you must begin.”
She took up her ashes in the dustpan and looked at him, half tremulously, laughing.
“Yes, but to-night! You see, I haven't thought of it.”
“Well, my goodness! Take the ashes and come.”
He went and sat on the stone bench in the back-yard, where the big milk-cans were standing, tipped up, to air. The men were in the cowsheds. He could hear the little sing-song of the milk spurting into the pails. Presently she came, bringing some big greenish apples.
“You know you like them,” she said.
He took a bite.
“Sit down,” he said, with his mouth full.
She was short-sighted, and peered over his shoulder. It irritated him. He gave her the book quickly.
“Here,” he said. “It's only letters for figures. You put down 'a' instead of '2' or '6'.”
They worked, he talking, she with her head down on the book. He was quick and hasty. She never answered. Occasionally, when he demanded of her, “Do you see?” she looked up at him, her eyes wide with the half-laugh that comes of fear. “Don't you?” he cried.
He had been too fast. But she said nothing. He questioned her more, then got hot. It made his blood rouse to see her there, as it were, at his mercy, her mouth open, her eyes dilated with laughter that was afraid, apologetic, ashamed. Then Edgar came along with two buckets of milk.
“Hello!” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Algebra,” replied Paul.
“Algebra!” repeated Edgar curiously. Then he passed on with a laugh. Paul took a bite at his forgotten apple, looked at the miserable cabbages in the garden, pecked into lace by the fowls, and he wanted to pull them up. Then he glanced at Miriam. She was poring over the book, seemed absorbed in it, yet trembling lest she could not get at it. It made him cross. She was ruddy and beautiful. Yet her soul seemed to be intensely supplicating. The algebra-book she closed, shrinking, knowing he was angered; and at the same instant he grew gentle, seeing her hurt because she did not understand.
But things came slowly to her. And when she held herself in a grip, seemed so utterly humble before the lesson, it made his blood rouse. He stormed at her, got ashamed, continued the lesson, and grew furious again, abusing her. She listened in silence. Occasionally, very rarely, she defended herself. Her liquid dark eyes blazed at him.
“You don't give me time to learn it,” she said.
“All right,” he answered, throwing the book on the table and lighting a cigarette. Then, after a while, he went back to her repentant. So the lessons went. He was always either in a rage or very gentle.
“What do you tremble your SOUL before it for?” he cried. “You don't learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can't you look at it with your clear simple wits?”
Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would look at him reproachfully, saying: