Sons and Lovers

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 eyes 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.