She answered him two days after the party.
“’Our intimacy would have been all-beautiful
but for one little mistake,’” she quoted.
“Was the mistake mine?”
Almost immediately he replied to her from Nottingham,
sending her at the same time a little “Omar
Khayyam.”
“I am glad you answered; you are so calm and
natural you put me to shame. What a ranter I
am! We are often out of sympathy. But in
fundamentals we may always be together I think.
“I must thank you for your sympathy with my
painting and drawing. Many a sketch is dedicated
to you. I do look forward to your criticisms,
which, to my shame and glory, are always grand appreciations.
It is a lovely joke, that. Au revoir.”
This was the end of the first phase of Paul’s
love affair. He was now about twenty-three years
old, and, though still virgin, the sex instinct that
Miriam had over-refined for so long now grew particularly
strong. Often, as he talked to Clara Dawes, came
that thickening and quickening of his blood, that
peculiar concentration in the breast, as if something
were alive there, a new self or a new centre of consciousness,
warning him that sooner or later he would have to
ask one woman or another. But he belonged to
Miriam. Of that she was so fixedly sure that he
allowed her right.
CLARA
When he was twenty-three years old, Paul sent
in a landscape to the winter exhibition at Nottingham
Castle. Miss Jordan had taken a good deal of
interest in him, and invited him to her house, where
he met other artists. He was beginning to grow
ambitious.
One morning the postman came just as he was washing
in the scullery. Suddenly he heard a wild noise
from his mother. Rushing into the kitchen, he
found her standing on the hearthrug wildly waving a
letter and crying “Hurrah!” as if she had
gone mad. He was shocked and frightened.
“Why, mother!” he exclaimed.
She flew to him, flung her arms round him for a moment,
then waved the letter, crying:
“Hurrah, my boy! I knew we should do it!”
He was afraid of her—the small, severe
woman with graying hair suddenly bursting out in such
frenzy. The postman came running back, afraid
something had happened. They saw his tipped cap
over the short curtains. Mrs. Morel rushed to
the door.
“His picture’s got first prize, Fred,”
she cried, “and is sold for twenty guineas.”
“My word, that’s something like!”
said the young postman, whom they had known all his
life.
“And Major Moreton has bought it!” she
cried.
“It looks like meanin’ something, that
does, Mrs. Morel,” said the postman, his blue
eyes bright. He was glad to have brought such
a lucky letter. Mrs. Morel went indoors and sat
down, trembling. Paul was afraid lest she might
have misread the letter, and might be disappointed
after all. He scrutinised it once, twice.
Yes, he became convinced it was true. Then he
sat down, his heart beating with joy.
