England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction
It was noticeable that Miriam did not venture on the moor in the days
that followed, but every day Helen went there with Jim, who needed
exercise and was only restrained from chasing sheep by timely employment
of his energy, and every day Halkett, watching the house, saw these two
sally forth together. They went at an easy pace, the woman with her
skirt outblown, her breast fronting the wind, her head thrown back, her
hands behind her, the dog marching by her side, and in their clearness
of cut, their pale colour, for which the moor was dado and the sky
frieze, he found some memory of sculptures he had seen and hardly
heeded, ancient things with the eternity of youth on them, the captured
splendour of moving limb and passionate brain. Then he was aware of
fresh wind and fruitful earth, but as she passed out of sight, he was
imprisoned again by stifling furies. He had begun to love Miriam with a
sincerity that wished to win and not to force her; he had controlled the
wild heritage of his fathers and tried to forget the sweetness of her
body in the larch-wood; he was determined not to take what she would not
give him gladly; and now, by her own act, she had changed his striving
love into desire--desire to hurt, to feel her struggling in his arms,
hating his kisses, paying a bitter price for her misuse of him. He had a
vicious pleasure in waiting for the hour when he should feel her body
straining away from his, and each night, as he sat drinking, he lived
through that ecstasy; each day, as he went about his work, he kept an
eye on the comings and goings of the Canipers, waiting for his chance.
Miriam did not appear, and that sign of fear inflamed him; but on Sunday
morning she walked on the moor with Rupert, holding him by the arm and
making a parade of happiness, and in the afternoon, Daniel was added to
the train.
Monday came, and no small, black-haired figure darted from the house:
only Helen and the majestic dog walked together like some memory of a
younger world.
His mind held two pictures as he sat alone at night, and, corresponding
to them, two natures had command of him. He saw Helen like dawn and
Miriam like night, and as one irritated him with her calm, the other
roused him with her fire, and he came to watch for Helen that he might
sneer inwardly at her, with almost as much eagerness as he watched for
Miriam that he might mutter foul language, like loathed caresses.
Drink and desire and craving for peace were all at work in him. The
dreams he had been building were broken by a callous hand, and he sat
among the ruins. He could laugh, now, at his fair hopes, but they had
had their part in him, and he could never go back to the days when he
rode and drank and loved promiscuously, with a light heart. She had
robbed, too, when she cast down his house, but there was no end to her
offence, for when, out of coarser things, this timid love had begun to
creep, it had been thrown back at him with a gibe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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