Complete Works. D. H. Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ with regard to her. It was only a friendship between man and woman, such as any civilised persons might have.

      He was like so many young men of his own age. Sex had become so complicated in him that he would have denied that he ever could want Clara or Miriam or any woman whom he knew. Sex desire was a sort of detached thing, that did not belong to a woman. He loved Miriam with his soul. He grew warm at the thought of Clara, he battled with her, he knew the curves of her breast and shoulders as if they had been moulded inside him; and yet he did not positively desire her. He would have denied it for ever. He believed himself really bound to Miriam. If ever he should marry, some time in the far future, it would be his duty to marry Miriam. That he gave Clara to understand, and she said nothing, but left him to his courses. He came to her, Mrs. Dawes, whenever he could. Then he wrote frequently to Miriam, and visited the girl occasionally. So he went on through the winter; but he seemed not so fretted. His mother was easier about him. She thought he was getting away from Miriam.

      Miriam knew now how strong was the attraction of Clara for him; but still she was certain that the best in him would triumph. His feeling for Mrs. Dawes—who, moreover, was a married woman—was shallow and temporal, compared with his love for herself. He would come back to her, she was sure; with some of his young freshness gone, perhaps, but cured of his desire for the lesser things which other women than herself could give him. She could bear all if he were inwardly true to her and must come back.

      He saw none of the anomaly of his position. Miriam was his old friend, lover, and she belonged to Bestwood and home and his youth. Clara was a newer friend, and she belonged to Nottingham, to life, to the world. It seemed to him quite plain.

      Mrs. Dawes and he had many periods of coolness, when they saw little of each other; but they always came together again.

      “Were you horrid with Baxter Dawes?” he asked her. It was a thing that seemed to trouble him.

      “In what way?”

      “Oh, I don't know. But weren't you horrid with him? Didn't you do something that knocked him to pieces?”

      “What, pray?”

      “Making him feel as if he were nothing—I know,” Paul declared.

      “You are so clever, my friend,” she said coolly.

      The conversation broke off there. But it made her cool with him for some time.

      She very rarely saw Miriam now. The friendship between the two women was not broken off, but considerably weakened.

      “Will you come in to the concert on Sunday afternoon?” Clara asked him just after Christmas.

      “I promised to go up to Willey Farm,” he replied.

      “Oh, very well.”

      “You don't mind, do you?” he asked.

      “Why should I?” she answered.

      Which almost annoyed him.

      “You know,” he said, “Miriam and I have been a lot to each other ever since I was sixteen—that's seven years now.”

      “It's a long time,” Clara replied.

      “Yes; but somehow she—it doesn't go right—”

      “How?” asked Clara.

      “She seems to draw me and draw me, and she wouldn't leave a single hair of me free to fall out and blow away—she'd keep it.”

      “But you like to be kept.”

      “No,” he said, “I don't. I wish it could be normal, give and take—like me and you. I want a woman to keep me, but not in her pocket.”

      “But if you love her, it couldn't be normal, like me and you.”

      “Yes; I should love her better then. She sort of wants me so much that I can't give myself.”

      “Wants you how?”

      “Wants the soul out of my body. I can't help shrinking back from her.”

      “And yet you love her!”

      “No, I don't love her. I never even kiss her.”

      “Why not?” Clara asked.

      “I don't know.”

      “I suppose you're afraid,” she said.

      “I'm not. Something in me shrinks from her like hell—she's so good, when I'm not good.”

      “How do you know what she is?”

      “I do! I know she wants a sort of soul union.”

      “But how do you know what she wants?”

      “I've been with her for seven years.”

      “And you haven't found out the very first thing about her.”

      “What's that?”

      “That she doesn't want any of your soul communion. That's your own imagination. She wants you.”

      He pondered over this. Perhaps he was wrong.

      “But she seems—” he began.

      “You've never tried,” she answered.

      Chapter XI

       The Test on Miriam

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      With the spring came again the old madness and battle. Now he knew he would have to go to Miriam. But what was his reluctance? He told himself it was only a sort of overstrong virginity in her and him which neither could break through. He might have married her; but his circumstances at home made it difficult, and, moreover, he did not want to marry. Marriage was for life, and because they had become close companions, he and she, he did not see that it should inevitably follow they should be man and wife. He did not feel that he wanted marriage with Miriam. He wished he did. He would have given his head to have felt a joyous desire to marry her and to have her. Then why couldn't he bring it off? There was some obstacle; and what was the obstacle? It lay in the physical bondage. He shrank from the physical contact. But why? With her he felt bound up inside himself. He could not go out to her. Something struggled in him, but he could not get to her. Why? She loved him. Clara said she even wanted him; then why couldn't he go to her, make love to her, kiss her? Why, when she put her arm in his, timidly, as they walked, did he feel he would burst forth in brutality and recoil? He owed himself to her; he wanted to belong to her. Perhaps the recoil and the shrinking from her was love in its first fierce modesty. He had no aversion for her. No, it was the opposite; it was a strong desire battling with a still stronger shyness and virginity. It seemed as if virginity were a positive force, which fought and won in both of them. And with her he felt it so hard to overcome; yet he was nearest to her, and with her alone could he deliberately break through. And he owed himself to her. Then, if they could get things right, they could marry; but he СКАЧАТЬ