Chapter: DERELICT

CLARA went with her husband to Sheffield, and Paul scarcely saw her
again. Walter Morel seemed to have let all the trouble go over him, and
there he was, crawling about on the mud of it, just the same. There was
scarcely any bond between father and son, save that each felt he must
not let the other go in any actual want. As there was no one to keep on
the home, and as they could neither of them bear the emptiness of the
house, Paul took lodgings in Nottingham, and Morel went to live with a
friendly family in Bestwood.

Everything seemed to have gone smash for the young man. He could not
paint. The picture he finished on the day of his mother's death--one
that satisfied him--was the last thing he did. At work there was no
Clara. When he came home he could not take up his brushes again. There
was nothing left.

So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking,
knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to
barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in
his eyes, as if he were hunting something.

Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why
people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight.
There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead
of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and
he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not
understand.

He was most himself when he was alone, or working hard and mechanically
at the factory. In the latter case there was pure forgetfulness, when he
lapsed from consciousness. But it had to come to an end. It hurt him so,
that things had lost their reality. The first snowdrops came. He saw the
tiny drop-pearls among the grey. They would have given him the liveliest
emotion at one time. Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean
anything. In a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and
just the space would be, where they had been. Tall, brilliant tram-cars
ran along the street at night. It seemed almost a wonder they should
trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. "Why trouble to go tilting
down to Trent Bridges?" he asked of the big trams. It seemed they just
as well might NOT be as be.

The realest thing was the thick darkness at night. That seemed to him
whole and comprehensible and restful. He could leave himself to it.
Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew along down the
pavement. He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists, a flame of agony
going over him. And he saw again the sick-room, his mother, her eyes.
Unconsciously he had been with her, in her company. The swift hop of
the paper reminded him she was gone. But he had been with her. He wanted
everything to stand still, so that he could be with her again.

The days passed, the weeks. But everything seemed to have fused, gone
into a conglomerated mass. He could not tell one day from another, one
week from another, hardly one place from another. Nothing was distinct
or distinguishable. Often he lost himself for an hour at a time, could
not remember what he had done.

One evening he came home late to his lodging. The fire was burning low;
everybody was in bed. He threw on some more coal, glanced at the table,
and decided he wanted no supper. Then he sat down in the arm-chair. It
was perfectly still. He did not know anything, yet he saw the dim
smoke wavering up the chimney. Presently two mice came out, cautiously,
nibbling the fallen crumbs. He watched them as it were from a long
way off. The church clock struck two. Far away he could hear the sharp
clinking of the trucks on the railway. No, it was not they that were far
away. They were there in their places. But where was he himself?

The time passed. The two mice, careering wildly, scampered cheekily over
his slippers. He had not moved a muscle. He did not want to move. He
was not thinking of anything. It was easier so. There was no wrench of
knowing anything. Then, from time to time, some other consciousness,
working mechanically, flashed into sharp phrases.

"What am I doing?"

And out of the semi-intoxicated trance came the answer:

"Destroying myself."

Then a dull, live feeling, gone in an instant, told him that it was
wrong. After a while, suddenly came the question:

"Why wrong?"

Again there was no answer, but a stroke of hot stubbornness inside his
chest resisted his own annihilation.

There was a sound of a heavy cart clanking down the road. Suddenly
the electric light went out; there was a bruising thud in the
penny-in-the-slot meter. He did not stir, but sat gazing in front of
him. Only the mice had scuttled, and the fire glowed red in the dark
room.

Then, quite mechanically and more distinctly, the conversation began
again inside him.

"She's dead. What was it all for--her struggle?"

That was his despair wanting to go after her.

"You're alive."

"She's not."

"She is--in you."

Suddenly he felt tired with the burden of it.

"You've got to keep alive for her sake," said his will in him.

Something felt sulky, as if it would not rouse.

"You've got to carry forward her living, and what she had done, go on
with it."

But he did not want to. He wanted to give up.

"But you can go on with your painting," said the will in him. "Or else
you can beget children. They both carry on her effort."

"Painting is not living."

"Then live."

"Marry whom?" came the sulky question.

"As best you can."

"Miriam?"

But he did not trust that.

He rose suddenly, went straight to bed. When he got inside his bedroom
and closed the door, he stood with clenched fist.

"Mater, my dear--" he began, with the whole force of his soul. Then he
stopped. He would not say it. He would not admit that he wanted to die,
to have done. He would not own that life had beaten him, or that death
had beaten him. Going straight to bed, he slept at once, abandoning
himself to the sleep.

So the weeks went on. Always alone, his soul oscillated, first on the
side of death, then on the side of life, doggedly. The real agony
was that he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to say, and WAS
nothing himself. Sometimes he ran down the streets as if he were mad:
sometimes he was mad; things weren't there, things were there. It made
him pant. Sometimes he stood before the bar of the public-house where he
called for a drink. Everything suddenly stood back away from him. He
saw the face of the barmaid, the gobbling drinkers, his own glass on the
slopped, mahogany board, in the distance. There was something between
him and them. He could not get into touch. He did not want them; he did
not want his drink. Turning abruptly, he went out. On the threshold he
stood and looked at the lighted street. But he was not of it or in it.
Something separated him. Everything went on there below those lamps,
shut away from him. He could not get at them. He felt he couldn't touch
the lamp-posts, not if he reached. Where could he go? There was nowhere
to go, neither back into the inn, or forward anywhere. He felt stifled.
There was nowhere for him. The stress grew inside him; he felt he should
smash.

"I mustn't," he said; and, turning blindly, he went in and drank.
Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it made him worse. He ran
down the road. For ever restless, he went here, there, everywhere. He
determined to work. But when he had made six strokes, he loathed the
pencil violently, got up, and went away, hurried off to a club where he
could play cards or billiards, to a place where he could flirt with a
barmaid who was no more to him than the brass pump-handle she drew.

He was very thin and lantern-jawed. He dared not meet his own eyes
in the mirror; he never looked at himself. He wanted to get away from
himself, but there was nothing to get hold of. In despair he thought of
Miriam. Perhaps--perhaps--?

Then, happening to go into the Unitarian Church one Sunday evening, when
they stood up to sing the second hymn he saw her before him. The light
glistened on her lower lip as she sang. She looked as if she had got
something, at any rate: some hope in heaven, if not in earth. Her
comfort and her life seemed in the after-world. A warm, strong feeling
for her came up. She seemed to yearn, as she sang, for the mystery and
comfort. He put his hope in her. He longed for the sermon to be over, to
speak to her.

The throng carried her out just before him. He could nearly touch her.
She did not know he was there. He saw the brown, humble nape of her neck
under its black curls. He would leave himself to her. She was better and
bigger than he. He would depend on her.

She went wandering, in her blind way, through the little throngs of
people outside the church. She always looked so lost and out of place
among people. He went forward and put his hand on her arm. She started
violently. Her great brown eyes dilated in fear, then went questioning
at the sight of him. He shrank slightly from her.

"I didn't know--" she faltered.

"Nor I," he said.

He looked away. His sudden, flaring hope sank again.

"What are you doing in town?" he asked.

"I'm staying at Cousin Anne's."

"Ha! For long?"

"No; only till to-morrow."

"Must you go straight home?"

She looked at him, then hid her face under her hat-brim.

"No," she said--"no; it's not necessary."

He turned away, and she went with him. They threaded through the throng
of church people. The organ was still sounding in St. Mary's. Dark
figures came through the lighted doors; people were coming down the
steps. The large coloured windows glowed up in the night. The church was
like a great lantern suspended. They went down Hollow Stone, and he took
the car for the Bridges.

"You will just have supper with me," he said: "then I'll bring you
back."

"Very well," she replied, low and husky.

They scarcely spoke while they were on the car. The Trent ran dark and
full under the bridge. Away towards Colwick all was black night. He
lived down Holme Road, on the naked edge of the town, facing across the
river meadows towards Sneinton Hermitage and the steep scrap of Colwick
Wood. The floods were out. The silent water and the darkness spread away
on their left. Almost afraid, they hurried along by the houses.

Supper was laid. He swung the curtain over the window. There was a bowl
of freesias and scarlet anemones on the table. She bent to them. Still
touching them with her finger-tips, she looked up at him, saying:

"Aren't they beautiful?"

"Yes," he said. "What will you drink--coffee?"

"I should like it," she said.

"Then excuse me a moment."

He went out to the kitchen.

Miriam took off her things and looked round. It was a bare, severe
room. Her photo, Clara's, Annie's, were on the wall. She looked on
the drawing-board to see what he was doing. There were only a few
meaningless lines. She looked to see what books he was reading.
Evidently just an ordinary novel. The letters in the rack she saw
were from Annie, Arthur, and from some man or other she did not know.
Everything he had touched, everything that was in the least personal to
him, she examined with lingering absorption. He had been gone from her
for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was
now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her
feel rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless.

She was curiously examining a sketch-book when he returned with the
coffee.

"There's nothing new in it," he said, "and nothing very interesting."

He put down the tray, and went to look over her shoulder. She turned the
pages slowly, intent on examining everything.

"H'm!" he said, as she paused at a sketch. "I'd forgotten that. It's not
bad, is it?"

"No," she said. "I don't quite understand it."

He took the book from her and went through it. Again he made a curious
sound of surprise and pleasure.

"There's some not bad stuff in there," he said.

"Not at all bad," she answered gravely.

He felt again her interest in his work. Or was it for himself? Why was
she always most interested in him as he appeared in his work?

They sat down to supper.

"By the way," he said, "didn't I hear something about your earning your
own living?"

"Yes," she replied, bowing her dark head over her cup. "And what of it?"

"I'm merely going to the farming college at Broughton for three months,
and I shall probably be kept on as a teacher there."

"I say--that sounds all right for you! You always wanted to be
independent."

"Yes.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I only knew last week."

"But I heard a month ago," he said.

"Yes; but nothing was settled then."

"I should have thought," he said, "you'd have told me you were trying."

She ate her food in the deliberate, constrained way, almost as if she
recoiled a little from doing anything so publicly, that he knew so well.

"I suppose you're glad," he said.

"Very glad."

"Yes--it will be something."

He was rather disappointed.

"I think it will be a great deal," she said, almost haughtily,
resentfully.

He laughed shortly.

"Why do you think it won't?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't think it won't be a great deal. Only you'll find earning
your own living isn't everything."

"No," she said, swallowing with difficulty; "I don't suppose it is."

"I suppose work CAN be nearly everything to a man," he said, "though it
isn't to me. But a woman only works with a part of herself. The real and
vital part is covered up."

"But a man can give ALL himself to work?" she asked.

"Yes, practically."

"And a woman only the unimportant part of herself?"

"That's it."

She looked up at him, and her eyes dilated with anger.

"Then," she said, "if it's true, it's a great shame."

"It is. But I don't know everything," he answered.

After supper they drew up to the fire. He swung her a chair facing him,
and they sat down. She was wearing a dress of dark claret colour, that
suited her dark complexion and her large features. Still, the curls
were fine and free, but her face was much older, the brown throat much
thinner. She seemed old to him, older than Clara. Her bloom of youth had
quickly gone. A sort of stiffness, almost of woodenness, had come upon
her. She meditated a little while, then looked at him.

"And how are things with you?" she asked.

"About all right," he answered.

She looked at him, waiting.

"Nay," she said, very low.

Her brown, nervous hands were clasped over her knee. They had still the
lack of confidence or repose, the almost hysterical look. He winced as
he saw them. Then he laughed mirthlessly. She put her fingers between
her lips. His slim, black, tortured body lay quite still in the chair.
She suddenly took her finger from her mouth and looked at him.

"And you have broken off with Clara?"

"Yes."

His body lay like an abandoned thing, strewn in the chair.

"You know," she said, "I think we ought to be married."

He opened his eyes for the first time since many months, and attended to
her with respect.

"Why?" he said.

"See," she said, "how you waste yourself! You might be ill, you might
die, and I never know--be no more then than if I had never known you."

"And if we married?" he asked.

"At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and being a prey to
other women--like--like Clara."

"A prey?" he repeated, smiling.

She bowed her head in silence. He lay feeling his despair come up again.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly, "that marriage would be much good."

"I only think of you," she replied.

"I know you do. But--you love me so much, you want to put me in your
pocket. And I should die there smothered."

She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips, while the
bitterness surged up in her heart.

"And what will you do otherwise?" she asked.

"I don't know--go on, I suppose. Perhaps I shall soon go abroad."

The despairing doggedness in his tone made her go on her knees on the
rug before the fire, very near to him. There she crouched as if she were
crushed by something, and could not raise her head. His hands lay quite
inert on the arms of his chair. She was aware of them. She felt that
now he lay at her mercy. If she could rise, take him, put her arms round
him, and say, "You are mine," then he would leave himself to her.
But dare she? She could easily sacrifice herself. But dare she assert
herself? She was aware of his dark-clothed, slender body, that seemed
one stroke of life, sprawled in the chair close to her. But no; she
dared not put her arms round it, take it up, and say, "It is mine, this
body. Leave it to me." And she wanted to. It called to all her woman's
instinct. But she crouched, and dared not. She was afraid he would
not let her. She was afraid it was too much. It lay there, his body,
abandoned. She knew she ought to take it up and claim it, and claim
every right to it. But--could she do it? Her impotence before him,
before the strong demand of some unknown thing in him, was her
extremity. Her hands fluttered; she half-lifted her head. Her eyes,
shuddering, appealing, gone, almost distracted, pleaded to him suddenly.
His heart caught with pity. He took her hands, drew her to him, and
comforted her.

"Will you have me, to marry me?" he said very low.

Oh, why did not he take her? Her very soul belonged to him. Why would he
not take what was his? She had borne so long the cruelty of belonging to
him and not being claimed by him. Now he was straining her again. It
was too much for her. She drew back her head, held his face between her
hands, and looked him in the eyes. No, he was hard. He wanted something
else. She pleaded to him with all her love not to make it her choice.
She could not cope with it, with him, she knew not with what. But it
strained her till she felt she would break.

"Do you want it?" she asked, very gravely.

"Not much," he replied, with pain.

She turned her face aside; then, raising herself with dignity, she took
his head to her bosom, and rocked him softly. She was not to have him,
then! So she could comfort him. She put her fingers through his hair.
For her, the anguished sweetness of self-sacrifice. For him, the hate
and misery of another failure. He could not bear it--that breast which
was warm and which cradled him without taking the burden of him. So much
he wanted to rest on her that the feint of rest only tortured him. He
drew away.

"And without marriage we can do nothing?" he asked.

His mouth was lifted from his teeth with pain. She put her little finger
between her lips.

"No," she said, low and like the toll of a bell. "No, I think not."

It was the end then between them. She could not take him and relieve him
of the responsibility of himself. She could only sacrifice herself to
him--sacrifice herself every day, gladly. And that he did not want. He
wanted her to hold him and say, with joy and authority: "Stop all this
restlessness and beating against death. You are mine for a mate." She
had not the strength. Or was it a mate she wanted? or did she want a
Christ in him?

He felt, in leaving her, he was defrauding her of life. But he knew
that, in staying, stilling the inner, desperate man, he was denying his
own life. And he did not hope to give life to her by denying his own.

She sat very quiet. He lit a cigarette. The smoke went up from it,
wavering. He was thinking of his mother, and had forgotten Miriam. She
suddenly looked at him. Her bitterness came surging up. Her sacrifice,
then, was useless. He lay there aloof, careless about her. Suddenly
she saw again his lack of religion, his restless instability. He would
destroy himself like a perverse child. Well, then, he would!

"I think I must go," she said softly.

By her tone he knew she was despising him. He rose quietly.

"I'll come along with you," he answered.

She stood before the mirror pinning on her hat. How bitter, how
unutterably bitter, it made her that he rejected her sacrifice! Life
ahead looked dead, as if the glow were gone out. She bowed her face over
the flowers--the freesias so sweet and spring-like, the scarlet anemones
flaunting over the table. It was like him to have those flowers.

He moved about the room with a certain sureness of touch, swift and
relentless and quiet. She knew she could not cope with him. He would
escape like a weasel out of her hands. Yet without him her life would
trail on lifeless. Brooding, she touched the flowers.

"Have them!" he said; and he took them out of the jar, dripping as they
were, and went quickly into the kitchen. She waited for him, took the
flowers, and they went out together, he talking, she feeling dead.

She was going from him now. In her misery she leaned against him as they
sat on the car. He was unresponsive. Where would he go? What would
be the end of him? She could not bear it, the vacant feeling where he
should be. He was so foolish, so wasteful, never at peace with himself.
And now where would he go? And what did he care that he wasted her? He
had no religion; it was all for the moment's attraction that he cared,
nothing else, nothing deeper. Well, she would wait and see how it turned
out with him. When he had had enough he would give in and come to her.

He shook hands and left her at the door of her cousin's house. When he
turned away he felt the last hold for him had gone. The town, as he sat
upon the car, stretched away over the bay of railway, a level fume of
lights. Beyond the town the country, little smouldering spots for
more towns--the sea--the night--on and on! And he had no place in it!
Whatever spot he stood on, there he stood alone. From his breast,
from his mouth, sprang the endless space, and it was there behind him,
everywhere. The people hurrying along the streets offered no obstruction
to the void in which he found himself. They were small shadows whose
footsteps and voices could be heard, but in each of them the same night,
the same silence. He got off the car. In the country all was dead
still. Little stars shone high up; little stars spread far away in the
flood-waters, a firmament below. Everywhere the vastness and terror of
the immense night which is roused and stirred for a brief while by
the day, but which returns, and will remain at last eternal, holding
everything in its silence and its living gloom. There was no Time, only
Space. Who could say his mother had lived and did not live? She had been
in one place, and was in another; that was all. And his soul could not
leave her, wherever she was. Now she was gone abroad into the night, and
he was with her still. They were together. But yet there was his body,
his chest, that leaned against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar.
They seemed something. Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh,
less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it.
On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny
a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be
extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond
stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round
for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness
that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and
himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing.

"Mother!" he whispered--"mother!"

She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And
she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him
alongside with her.

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the
city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He
would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked
towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.


THE END

 Clara goes back to Sheffield with her husband, and Paul is left alone with his father. There is no point in keeping their house any longer, so they each take lodgings nearby. Paul is lost without his mother. He can no longer paint, and he puts all of his energy into his work at the factory. He has debates within himself, telling himself that he must stay alive for his mother's sake. However, he wants to give up. One Sunday evening, however, he sees Miriam at the Unitarian Church. He asks her to have supper with him quickly and she agrees. She tells him that she has been going to a farming college and will probably be kept on as a teacher there. She says that she thinks they should be married, and he says he's not sure that would be much good. He says he does not want it very much, and so she gives up. That is the end between them. She leaves him, realizing that "his soul could not leave her, wherever she was." Paul, alone, yearns for his mother and considers following her into death. However, he decides to leave off thinking about suicide, and instead walks toward the town.

