Sons and Lovers
On Sunday morning she looked very beautiful in a dress of foulard,
silky and sweeping, and blue as a jay-bird’s feather, and in a large
cream hat covered with many roses, mostly crimson. Nobody could admire
her enough. But in the evening, when she was going out, she asked
again:
“Chubby, have you got my gloves?”
“Which?” asked William.
“My new black _suède_.”
“No.”
There was a hunt. She had lost them.
“Look here, mother,” said William, “that’s the fourth pair she’s lost
since Christmas—at five shillings a pair!”
“You only gave me _two_ of them,” she remonstrated.
And in the evening, after supper, he stood on the hearthrug whilst she
sat on the sofa, and he seemed to hate her. In the afternoon he had
left her whilst he went to see some old friend. She had sat looking at
a book. After supper William wanted to write a letter.
“Here is your book, Lily,” said Mrs. Morel. “Would you care to go on
with it for a few minutes?”
“No, thank you,” said the girl. “I will sit still.”
“But it is so dull.”
William scribbled irritably at a great rate. As he sealed the envelope
he said:
“Read a book! Why, she’s never read a book in her life.”
“Oh, go along!” said Mrs. Morel, cross with the exaggeration,
“It’s true, mother—she hasn’t,” he cried, jumping up and taking his old
position on the hearthrug. “She’s never read a book in her life.”
“’Er’s like me,” chimed in Morel. “’Er canna see what there is i’
books, ter sit borin’ your nose in ’em for, nor more can I.”
“But you shouldn’t say these things,” said Mrs. Morel to her son.
“But it’s true, mother—she _can’t_ read. What did you give her?”
“Well, I gave her a little thing of Annie Swan’s. Nobody wants to read
dry stuff on Sunday afternoon.”
“Well, I’ll bet she didn’t read ten lines of it.”
“You are mistaken,” said his mother.
All the time Lily sat miserably on the sofa. He turned to her swiftly.
“_Did_ you read any?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” she replied.
“How much?”
“I don’t know how many pages.”
“Tell me _one thing_ you read.”
She could not.
She never got beyond the second page. He read a great deal, and had a
quick, active intelligence. She could understand nothing but
love-making and chatter. He was accustomed to having all his thoughts
sifted through his mother’s mind; so, when he wanted companionship, and
was asked in reply to be the billing and twittering lover, he hated his
betrothed.
“You know, mother,” he said, when he was alone with her at night,
“she’s no idea of money, she’s so wessel-brained. When she’s paid,
she’ll suddenly buy such rot as _marrons glacés_, and then _I_ have to
buy her season-ticket, and her extras, even her underclothing. And she
wants to get married, and I think myself we might as well get married
next year. But at this rate—”
“A fine mess of a marriage it would be,” replied his mother. “I should
consider it again, my boy.”
“Oh, well, I’ve gone too far to break off now,” he said, “and so I
shall get married as soon as I can.”
“Very well, my boy. If you will, you will, and there’s no stopping you;
but I tell you, I can’t sleep when I think about it.”
“Oh, she’ll be all right, mother. We shall manage.”
“And she lets you buy her underclothing?” asked the mother.
“Well,” he began apologetically, “she didn’t ask me; but one
morning—and it _was_ cold—I found her on the station shivering, not
able to keep still; so I asked her if she was well wrapped up. She
said: ‘I think so.’ So I said: ‘Have you got warm underthings on?’ And
she said: ‘No, they were cotton.’ I asked her why on earth she hadn’t
got something thicker on in weather like that, and she said because she
_had_ nothing. And there she is—a bronchial subject! I _had_ to take
her and get some warm things. Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind the money
if we had any. And, you know, she _ought_ to keep enough to pay for her
season-ticket; but no, she comes to me about that, and I have to find
the money.”
“It’s a poor lookout,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly.
He was pale, and his rugged face, that used to be so perfectly careless
and laughing, was stamped with conflict and despair.
“But I can’t give her up now; it’s gone too far,” he said. “And,
besides, for _some_ things I couldn’t do without her.”
“My boy, remember you’re taking your life in your hands,” said Mrs.
Morel. “_Nothing_ is as bad as a marriage that’s a hopeless failure.
Mine was bad enough, God knows, and ought to teach you something; but
it might have been worse by a long chalk.”
He leaned with his back against the side of the chimney-piece, his
hands in his pockets. He was a big, raw-boned man, who looked as if he
would go to the world’s end if he wanted to. But she saw the despair on
his face.
“I couldn’t give her up now,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “remember there are worse wrongs than breaking off an
engagement.”
“I can’t give her up _now_,” he said.
The clock ticked on; mother and son remained in silence, a conflict
between them; but he would say no more. At last she said:
“Well, go to bed, my son. You’ll feel better in the morning, and
perhaps you’ll know better.”
He kissed her, and went. She raked the fire. Her heart was heavy now as
it had never been. Before, with her husband, things had seemed to be
breaking down in her, but they did not destroy her power to live. Now
her soul felt lamed in itself. It was her hope that was struck.
And so often William manifested the same hatred towards his betrothed.
On the last evening at home he was railing against her.
“Well,” he said, “if you don’t believe me, what she’s like, would you
believe she has been confirmed three times?”
“Nonsense!” laughed Mrs. Morel.
“Nonsense or not, she _has!_ That’s what confirmation means for her—a
bit of a theatrical show where she can cut a figure.”
“I haven’t, Mrs. Morel!” cried the girl—“I haven’t! it is not true!”
“What!” he cried, flashing round on her. “Once in Bromley, once in
Beckenham, and once somewhere else.”
“Nowhere else!” she said, in tears—“nowhere else!”
“It _was!_ And if it wasn’t why were you confirmed _twice?_”
“Once I was only fourteen, Mrs. Morel,” she pleaded, tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel; “I can quite understand it, child. Take no
notice of him. You ought to be ashamed, William, saying such things.”
“But it’s true. She’s religious—she had blue velvet Prayer-Books—and
she’s not as much religion, or anything else, in her than that
table-leg. Gets confirmed three times for show, to show herself off,
and that’s how she is in _everything_—_everything!_”
The girl sat on the sofa, crying. She was not strong.
“As for _love!_” he cried, “you might as well ask a fly to love you!
It’ll love settling on you—”
“Now, say no more,” commanded Mrs. Morel. “If you want to say these
things, you must find another place than this. I am ashamed of you,
William! Why don’t you be more manly. To do nothing but find fault with
a girl, and then pretend you’re engaged to her!”
Mrs. Morel subsided in wrath and indignation.
William was silent, and later he repented, kissed and comforted the
girl. Yet it was true, what he had said. He hated her.
When they were going away, Mrs. Morel accompanied them as far as
Nottingham. It was a long way to Keston station.
“You know, mother,” he said to her, “Gyp’s shallow. Nothing goes deep
with her.”
“William, I _wish_ you wouldn’t say these things,” said Mrs. Morel,
very uncomfortable for the girl who walked beside her.
“But it doesn’t, mother. She’s very much in love with me now, but if I
died she’d have forgotten me in three months.”
Mrs. Morel was afraid. Her heart beat furiously, hearing the quiet
bitterness of her son’s last speech.
“How do you know?” she replied. “You _don’t_ know, and therefore you’ve
no right to say such a thing.”
“He’s always saying these things!” cried the girl.
“In three months after I was buried you’d have somebody else, and I
should be forgotten,” he said. “And that’s your love!”
Mrs. Morel saw them into the train in Nottingham, then she returned
home.
“There’s one comfort,” she said to Paul—“he’ll never have any money to
marry on, that I _am_ sure of. And so she’ll save him that way.”
So she took cheer. Matters were not yet very desperate. She firmly
believed William would never marry his Gipsy. She waited, and she kept
Paul near to her.
All summer long William’s letters had a feverish tone; he seemed
unnatural and intense. Sometimes he was exaggeratedly jolly, usually he
was flat and bitter in his letter.
“Ay,” his mother said, “I’m afraid he’s ruining himself against that
creature, who isn’t worthy of his love—no, no more than a rag doll.”
He wanted to come home. The midsummer holiday was gone; it was a long
while to Christmas. He wrote in wild excitement, saying he could come
for Saturday and Sunday at Goose Fair, the first week in October.
“You are not well, my boy,” said his mother, when she saw him. She was
almost in tears at having him to herself again.
“No, I’ve not been well,” he said. “I’ve seemed to have a dragging cold
all the last month, but it’s going, I think.”
It was sunny October weather. He seemed wild with joy, like a schoolboy
escaped; then again he was silent and reserved. He was more gaunt than
ever, and there was a haggard look in his eyes.
“You are doing too much,” said his mother to him.
He was doing extra work, trying to make some money to marry on, he
said. He only talked to his mother once on the Saturday night; then he
was sad and tender about his beloved.
“And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she’d be
broken-hearted for two months, and then she’d start to forget me. You’d
see, she’d never come home here to look at my grave, not even once.”
“Why, William,” said his mother, “you’re not going to die, so why talk
about it?”
“But whether or not—” he replied.
“And she can’t help it. She is like that, and if you choose her—well,
you can’t grumble,” said his mother.
On the Sunday morning, as he was putting his collar on:
“Look,” he said to his mother, holding up his chin, “what a rash my
collar’s made under my chin!”
Just at the junction of chin and throat was a big red inflammation.
“It ought not to do that,” said his mother. “Here, put a bit of this
soothing ointment on. You should wear different collars.”
He went away on Sunday midnight, seeming better and more solid for his
two days at home.
On Tuesday morning came a telegram from London that he was ill. Mrs.
Morel got off her knees from washing the floor, read the telegram,
called a neighbour, went to her landlady and borrowed a sovereign, put
on her things, and set off. She hurried to Keston, caught an express
for London in Nottingham. She had to wait in Nottingham nearly an hour.
A small figure in her black bonnet, she was anxiously asking the
porters if they knew how to get to Elmers End. The journey was three
hours. She sat in her corner in a kind of stupor, never moving. At
King’s Cross still no one could tell her how to get to Elmers End.
Carrying her string bag, that contained her nightdress, a comb and
brush, she went from person to person. At last they sent her
underground to Cannon Street.
It was six o’clock when she arrived at William’s lodging. The blinds
were not down.
“How is he?” she asked.
“No better,” said the landlady.
She followed the woman upstairs. William lay on the bed, with bloodshot
eyes, his face rather discoloured. The clothes were tossed about, there
was no fire in the room, a glass of milk stood on the stand at his
bedside. No one had been with him.
“Why, my son!” said the mother bravely.
He did not answer. He looked at her, but did not see her. Then he began
to say, in a dull voice, as if repeating a letter from dictation: