Page 255 - sons-and-lovers

land, and they felt the touch of these two magical places.
In Ilkeston the colliers were waiting in gangs for the pub-
lic-houses to open. It was a town of idleness and lounging.
At Stanton Gate the iron foundry blazed. Over everything
there were great discussions. At Trowell they crossed again
from Derbyshire into Nottinghamshire. They came to the
Hemlock Stone at dinner-time. Its field was crowded with
folk from Nottingham and Ilkeston.
They had expected a venerable and dignified monument.
They found a little, gnarled, twisted stump of rock, some-
thing like a decayed mushroom, standing out pathetically
on the side of a field. Leonard and Dick immediately pro-
ceeded to carve their initials, ‘L. W.’ and ‘R. P.’, in the old
red sandstone; but Paul desisted, because he had read in
the newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who
could find no other road to immortality. Then all the lads
climbed to the top of the rock to look round.
Everywhere in the field below, factory girls and lads were
eating lunch or sporting about. Beyond was the garden of
an old manor. It had yew-hedges and thick clumps and bor-
ders of yellow crocuses round the lawn.
‘See,’ said Paul to Miriam, ‘what a quiet garden!’
She saw the dark yews and the golden crocuses, then
she looked gratefully. He had not seemed to belong to her
among all these others; he was different then—not her Paul,
who understood the slightest quiver of her innermost soul,
but something else, speaking another language than hers.
How it hurt her, and deadened her very perceptions. Only
when he came right back to her, leaving his other, his lesser

Sons and Lovers