Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX

DEFEAT OF MIRIAM

PAUL was dissatisfied with himself and with everything.
The deepest of his love belonged to his mother. When he felt he
had hurt her, or wounded his love for her, he could not bear it.
Now it was spring, and there was battle between him and Miriam.
This year he had a good deal against her. She was vaguely aware
of it. The old feeling that she was to be a sacrifice to this love,
which she had had when she prayed, was mingled in all her emotions.
She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him. She did
not believe in herself primarily: doubted whether she could ever
be what he would demand of her. Certainly she never saw herself
living happily through a lifetime with him. She saw tragedy, sorrow,
and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she
was proud, in renunciation she was strong, for she did not trust
herself to support everyday life. She was prepared for the big
things and the deep things, like tragedy. It was the sufficiency
of the small day-life she could not trust.

The Easter holidays began happily. Paul was his own frank self.
Yet she felt it would go wrong. On the Sunday afternoon she stood
at her bedroom window, looking across at the oak-trees of the wood,
in whose branches a twilight was tangled, below the bright sky
of the afternoon. Grey-green rosettes of honeysuckle leaves
hung before the window, some already, she fancied, showing bud.
It was spring, which she loved and dreaded.

Hearing the clack of the gate she stood in suspense.
It was a bright grey day. Paul came into the yard with his bicycle,
which glittered as he walked. Usually he rang his bell and laughed
towards the house. To-day he walked with shut lips and cold,
cruel bearing, that had something of a slouch and a sneer in it.
She knew him well by now, and could tell from that keen-looking,
aloof young body of his what was happening inside him. There was
a cold correctness in the way he put his bicycle in its place,
that made her heart sink.

She came downstairs nervously. She was wearing a new net blouse
that she thought became her. It had a high collar with a tiny ruff,
reminding her of Mary, Queen of Scots, and making her, she thought,
look wonderfully a woman, and dignified. At twenty she was
full-breasted and luxuriously formed. Her face was still like a soft
rich mask, unchangeable. But her eyes, once lifted, were wonderful.
She was afraid of him. He would notice her new blouse.

He, being in a hard, ironical mood, was entertaining the family
to a description of a service given in the Primitive Methodist Chapel,
conducted by one of the well-known preachers of the sect.
He sat at the head of the table, his mobile face, with the eyes
that