Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/280

268 “Are they all for her?” cried the others, rushing up.

“Of course they’re not,” he said.

The girls clamoured round. Pussy drew back from her mates.

“Come out!” she cried. “I can have first pick, can’t I, Paul?”

“Be nice with ’em,” he said, and went away.

“You are a dear,” the girls cried.

“Ten pence,” he answered.

He went past Clara without speaking. She felt the three chocolate creams would burn her if she touched them. It needed all her courage to slip them into the pocket of her apron.

The girls loved him and were afraid of him. He was so nice while he was nice, but if he were offended, so distant, treating them as if they scarcely existed, or not more than the bobbins of thread. And then, if they were impudent, he said quietly: “Do you mind going on with your work,” and stood and watched.

When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house was in trouble. Arthur was just going to be married. His mother was not well. His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents, was given a paltry, poor job. Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed himself to her, yet could not give himself. The house, moreover, needed his support. He was pulled in all directions. He was not glad it was his birthday. It made him bitter.

He got to work at eight o’clock. Most of the clerks had not turned up. The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was changing his coat, he heard a voice behind him say:

“Paul, Paul, I want you.”

It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs, her face radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment.

“I want you,” she said.

He stood, at a loss.

“Come on,” she coaxed. “Come before you begin of the letters.”

He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow, “finishing-off” room. Fanny walked before him: her black bodice was short—the waist was under her armpits—and her green-black cashmere skirt seemed very long, as she strode with big strides before the young man, himself so graceful. She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room, where