Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/272

260 Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between the lengths of lace, strewed over the fender and the fireplace. Paul dared not go forward, for fear of treading on piles of white stuff.

On the table was a jenny for carding the lace. There was a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace, a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay a heap of drawn lace.

The room was all lace, and it was so dark and warm that the white, snowy stuff seemed the more distinct.

“If you’re coming in you won’t have to mind the work,” said Mrs. Radford. “I know we’re about blocked up. But sit you down.”

Clara, much embarrassed, gave him a chair against the wall opposite the white heaps. Then she herself took her place on the sofa, shamedly.

“Will you drink a bottle of stout?” Mrs. Radford asked. “Clara, get him a bottle of stout.”

He protested, but Mrs. Radford insisted.

“You look as if you could do with it,” she said. “Haven’t you never any more colour than that?”

“It’s only a thick skin I’ve got that doesn’t show the blood through,” he answered.

Clara, ashamed and chagrined, brought him a bottle of stout and a glass. He poured out some of the black stuff.

“Well,” he said, lifting the glass, “here’s health!”

“And thank you,” said Mrs. Radford.

He took a drink of stout.

“And light yourself a cigarette, so long as you don’t set the house on fire,” said Mrs. Radford.

“Thank you,” he replied.

“Nay, you needn’t thank me,” she answered. “I s’ll be glad to smell a bit of smoke in th’ ’ouse again. A house o’ women is as dead as a house wi’ no fire, to my thinkin’. I’m not a spider as likes a corner to myself. I like a man about, if he’s only something to snap at.”

Clara began to work. Her jenny spun with a subdued buzz; the white lace hopped from between her fingers on to the card. It was filled; she snipped off the length, and pinned the end down to the banded lace. Then she put a new card in her jenny. Paul watched her. She sat square and magnificent. Her throat and arms were bare. The blood still mantled below her ears; she bent her head in shame of her humility. Her face was set on her work. Her arms were creamy and full of life beside the white lace; her large, well-kept hands