Then Hilda, strangely enough, had started to drop in with the hot milk and the biscuits. She had begun by treating him — not like the person who came in with dirty boots — but like the actual dirt upon the boots. He took no notice, he was quick enough to see it as the symptom of Hilda’s conflict. Hilda interested him. She was twenty-four; her forbidding manner and dark unattractiveness ingrained more deeply now. Hilda, he thought, is not like most unattractive women. They will go on deluding themselves, dressing up, making the best of themselves, reflecting before the mirror, this blue does suit me, or my profile is really quite good, or isn’t my hair charming with this middle parting? deluding themselves until they die. But Hilda from the start had resolutely made up her mind that she was ugly, and with that forbidding manner, she resolutely made the worst of her ugliness. Apart from this, he saw that Hilda lived in conflict: perhaps her father’s strength fought against her mother’s weakness within her. Hilda always struck David as the unwilling union of these two elements, as if she had been conceived unwillingly, fought with herself in embryo and came into the world finally in a state of threshing discord. Hilda was not happy. She revealed herself gradually, not knowing that she revealed herself. She was missing Grace, who was now at school in Harrogate, acutely. Though her remarks usually took this form: “They’ll never teach her anything, she’s a perfect little jay!” or, as when reading a letter: “She can’t even spell yet!”—David saw that Hilda adored Grace. She was a queer sort of feminist, she was militant within herself. On March 12th the papers were full of a campaign of destruction organised by suffragists in the West End of London. Windows had been smashed in all the principal streets and many hundreds arrested, including Mrs. Pankhurst. Hilda glowed. She started a magnificent argument that night, quite taken out of herself. She wanted to be part of the movement, she said, to do something, go into the active whirl of life, work madly to relieve the crushing oppressions on her sex. Her eyes flashed as she instanced the Armenian women and the white-slave traffic. She was disdainful, magnificent. Men? Of course she detested men! Hated and detested them. She launched into arguments, she knew her Doll’s House by heart. It was another symptom of her conflict, her ugliness, her psychosis.
Though she never openly revealed the fact, it was evident that Hilda’s aversion to men was rooted in her father. He was MAN, the phallic symbol, her father. His calm suppression of all her wishes inverted her more fiercely, magnified and deepened her repressions. She wanted to get away from the Law and out of Sleescale, she wanted to work for her living — anything and anywhere so long as she was amongst her own sex. She wanted to do something. But all her frantic desires beat themselves out against her father’s calm detachment. He laughed at her, made her feel a fool with one inattentive word. She swore she would get away, that she would fight. Yet she remained, and the fight took place only within herself. Hilda waited… waited for what?
From Hilda, David got one view of Barras. The other, of course, came from Arthur. At the Law David never came in contact with Barras, he remained a remote and unapproachable figure. But Arthur talked a great deal about his father, he was never happier than when talking about him. After the quadratic equations were disposed of Arthur would begin… anything would serve to set him going. But while Hilda’s disclosures wore the taint of hatred, Arthur’s rang out like an ecstasy.
David grew very fond of Arthur — yet through his fondness lingered that same sense of pity which had come to him in the pit yard when he first saw Arthur upon the high seat of the dogcart. Arthur was so earnest, so pathetically earnest. And yet so weak! He would waver even upon the kind of pencil he must use — an H or an HB. A quick decision comforted him like a kindness. He took everything to heart, he was inordinately sensitive. Often David tried gently to move Arthur from his shyness with a joke. It was no use, Arthur had not the faintest sense of humour.
As for Arthur’s mother, David came to know her too. One evening Aunt Carrie brought the hot milk into the schoolroom with an air of conferring a favour even greater than usual.
She said with dignity:
“Mrs. Barras, my sister, would like to see you.”
Lying back upon her pillows, Harriet wanted to know about Arthur, just his “opinion,” of course, about Arthur. He was a great anxiety to her, Arthur, her son, and a great responsibility. Oh, a great responsibility, she said, asking him if he would mind handing her the bottle of Cologne from the little side table. Just there, if he please, by his elbow. Cologne soothed her headaches when Caroline was too busy to brush her hair. Yes, she went on, it would be such a disappointment to Arthur’s father if Arthur did not turn out well. Perhaps he might try, in his own way, since Caroline spoke so highly of him, to influence Arthur’s character for good to prepare him for life. And, without taking breath, she asked him if he believed in thought healing. She had felt lately that she might try thought healing for herself, the difficulty being that in thought healing the bed should, strictly speaking, face to the north and it was awkward in this room from the position of the window and the gas stove. She could not, naturally, dispense with her gas stove. Impossible! Now, she continued, since he knew mathematics did he honestly believe that thought healing would be equally effective if the bed faced north-west which could be managed with a little difficulty by moving the chest of drawers against the other wall.
Jenny was delighted that David had made such a good impression at the Law, delighted that he had become “so friendly with the Barrases.” Jenny’s desire for society was such that it pleased her even to take it by proxy. When he came back at night she would urge David to tell her all that had happened: now did she really say that, and did they hand the biscuits round or just leave the barrel on the tray? That Hilda might have an interest in David did not worry her in the least. She had no jealousy, she was “dead sure” of David, and in any case Hilda was the dowdiest thing.
Jenny’s reactions to the Law amused David, often he invented the most elaborate incidents to tease her. But Jenny was not so easily taken in. Jenny, in her own words, had a head on her shoulders. Jenny was Jenny.
David, all this time, was becoming acquainted with Jenny. It often struck him as strange that he should only now be getting to know his own wife, but it was not so strange when he reflected that he certainly had not known her before her marriage. Then Jenny had been the projection of his love, a flower, a sweetness, the very breath of spring.
Now he began to know the real Jenny, the Jenny who wanted “society,” clothes, amusement, who liked “going about” and was fond of a glass of port, who was passionate yet easily shocked, who smilingly put up with big discomforts and cried over the little ones, who suddenly demanded love and sympathy and “petting,” who had a habit of flat contradiction with no argument to support it, who combined logic and wild unreason in the same sweet breath.
He still loved Jenny, he would never stop loving her, he knew. But they started now to have frequent and violent quarrels. Jenny was stubborn and he was stubborn. And there were certain things in which Jenny must not have her way. He would not have her drinking port. On the night when she had ordered herself a port in the Percy Grill he had felt that Jenny was too fond of port. He would not let her have port in the house. They fought over that port: “You’re a killjoy right enough… you ought to join the Salvation Army… I hate you. I hate you…” Then would come a burst of tears, a big reconciliation and love. “Oh, I do love you, David, I do, I do…”