Sons and Lovers
the bigger man like a wild cat, till at last Dawes fell with a crash,
losing his presence of mind. Paul went down with him. Pure instinct
brought his hands to the man’s neck, and before Dawes, in frenzy and
agony, could wrench him free, he had got his fists twisted in the scarf
and his knuckles dug in the throat of the other man. He was a pure
instinct, without reason or feeling. His body, hard and wonderful in
itself, cleaved against the struggling body of the other man; not a
muscle in him relaxed. He was quite unconscious, only his body had
taken upon itself to kill this other man. For himself, he had neither
feeling nor reason. He lay pressed hard against his adversary, his body
adjusting itself to its one pure purpose of choking the other man,
resisting exactly at the right moment, with exactly the right amount of
strength, the struggles of the other, silent, intent, unchanging,
gradually pressing its knuckles deeper, feeling the struggles of the
other body become wilder and more frenzied. Tighter and tighter grew
his body, like a screw that is gradually increasing in pressure, till
something breaks.
Then suddenly he relaxed, full of wonder and misgiving. Dawes had been
yielding. Morel felt his body flame with pain, as he realised what he
was doing; he was all bewildered. Dawes’s struggles suddenly renewed
themselves in a furious spasm. Paul’s hands were wrenched, torn out of
the scarf in which they were knotted, and he was flung away, helpless.
He heard the horrid sound of the other’s gasping, but he lay stunned;
then, still dazed, he felt the blows of the other’s feet, and lost
consciousness.
Dawes, grunting with pain like a beast, was kicking the prostrate body
of his rival. Suddenly the whistle of the train shrieked two fields
away. He turned round and glared suspiciously. What was coming? He saw
the lights of the train draw across his vision. It seemed to him people
were approaching. He made off across the field into Nottingham, and
dimly in his consciousness as he went, he felt on his foot the place
where his boot had knocked against one of the lad’s bones. The knock
seemed to re-echo inside him; he hurried to get away from it.
Morel gradually came to himself. He knew where he was and what had
happened, but he did not want to move. He lay still, with tiny bits of
snow tickling his face. It was pleasant to lie quite, quite still. The
time passed. It was the bits of snow that kept rousing him when he did
not want to be roused. At last his will clicked into action.
“I mustn’t lie here,” he said; “it’s silly.”
But still he did not move.
“I said I was going to get up,” he repeated. “Why don’t I?”
And still it was some time before he had sufficiently pulled himself
together to stir; then gradually he got up. Pain made him sick and
dazed, but his brain was clear. Reeling, he groped for his coats and
got them on, buttoning his overcoat up to his ears. It was some time
before he found his cap. He did not know whether his face was still
bleeding. Walking blindly, every step making him sick with pain, he
went back to the pond and washed his face and hands. The icy water
hurt, but helped to bring him back to himself. He crawled back up the
hill to the tram. He wanted to get to his mother—he must get to his
mother—that was his blind intention. He covered his face as much as he
could, and struggled sickly along. Continually the ground seemed to
fall away from him as he walked, and he felt himself dropping with a
sickening feeling into space; so, like a nightmare, he got through with
the journey home.
Everybody was in bed. He looked at himself. His face was discoloured
and smeared with blood, almost like a dead man’s face. He washed it,
and went to bed. The night went by in delirium. In the morning he found
his mother looking at him. Her blue eyes—they were all he wanted to
see. She was there; he was in her hands.
“It’s not much, mother,” he said. “It was Baxter Dawes.”
“Tell me where it hurts you,” she said quietly.
“I don’t know—my shoulder. Say it was a bicycle accident, mother.”
He could not move his arm. Presently Minnie, the little servant, came
upstairs with some tea.
“Your mother’s nearly frightened me out of my wits—fainted away,” she
said.
He felt he could not bear it. His mother nursed him; he told her about
it.
“And now I should have done with them all,” she said quietly.
“I will, mother.”
She covered him up.
“And don’t think about it,” she said—“only try to go to sleep. The
doctor won’t be here till eleven.”
He had a dislocated shoulder, and the second day acute bronchitis set
in. His mother was pale as death now, and very thin. She would sit and
look at him, then away into space. There was something between them
that neither dared mention. Clara came to see him. Afterwards he said
to his mother:
“She makes me tired, mother.”
“Yes; I wish she wouldn’t come,” Mrs. Morel replied.
Another day Miriam came, but she seemed almost like a stranger to him.
“You know, I don’t care about them, mother,” he said.
“I’m afraid you don’t, my son,” she replied sadly.
It was given out everywhere that it was a bicycle accident. Soon he was
able to go to work again, but now there was a constant sickness and
gnawing at his heart. He went to Clara, but there seemed, as it were,
nobody there. He could not work. He and his mother seemed almost to
avoid each other. There was some secret between them which they could
not bear. He was not aware of it. He only knew that his life seemed
unbalanced, as if it were going to smash into pieces.
Clara did not know what was the matter with him. She realised that he
seemed unaware of her. Even when he came to her he seemed unaware of
her; always he was somewhere else. She felt she was clutching for him,
and he was somewhere else. It tortured her, and so she tortured him.
For a month at a time she kept him at arm’s length. He almost hated
her, and was driven to her in spite of himself. He went mostly into the
company of men, was always at the George or the White Horse. His mother
was ill, distant, quiet, shadowy. He was terrified of something; he
dared not look at her. Her eyes seemed to grow darker, her face more
waxen; still she dragged about at her work.
At Whitsuntide he said he would go to Blackpool for four days with his
friend Newton. The latter was a big, jolly fellow, with a touch of the
bounder about him. Paul said his mother must go to Sheffield to stay a
week with Annie, who lived there. Perhaps the change would do her good.
Mrs. Morel was attending a woman’s doctor in Nottingham. He said her
heart and her digestion were wrong. She consented to go to Sheffield,
though she did not want to; but now she would do everything her son
wished of her. Paul said he would come for her on the fifth day, and
stay also in Sheffield till the holiday was up. It was agreed.
The two young men set off gaily for Blackpool. Mrs. Morel was quite
lively as Paul kissed her and left her. Once at the station, he forgot
everything. Four days were clear—not an anxiety, not a thought. The two
young men simply enjoyed themselves. Paul was like another man. None of
himself remained—no Clara, no Miriam, no mother that fretted him. He
wrote to them all, and long letters to his mother; but they were jolly
letters that made her laugh. He was having a good time, as young
fellows will in a place like Blackpool. And underneath it all was a
shadow for her.
Paul was very gay, excited at the thought of staying with his mother in
Sheffield. Newton was to spend the day with them. Their train was late.
Joking, laughing, with their pipes between their teeth, the young men
swung their bags on to the tram-car. Paul had bought his mother a
little collar of real lace that he wanted to see her wear, so that he
could tease her about it.
Annie lived in a nice house, and had a little maid. Paul ran gaily up
the steps. He expected his mother laughing in the hall, but it was
Annie who opened to him. She seemed distant to him. He stood a second
in dismay. Annie let him kiss her cheek.
“Is my mother ill?” he said.
“Yes; she’s not very well. Don’t upset her.”
“Is she in bed?”
“Yes.”
And then the queer feeling went over him, as if all the sunshine had
gone out of him, and it was all shadow. He dropped the bag and ran
upstairs. Hesitating, he opened the door. His mother sat up in bed,
wearing a dressing-gown of old-rose colour. She looked at him almost as
if she were ashamed of herself, pleading to him, humble. He saw the
ashy look about her.
“Mother!” he said.
“I thought you were never coming,” she answered gaily.
But he only fell on his knees at the bedside, and buried his face in
the bedclothes, crying in agony, and saying:
“Mother—mother—mother!”
She stroked his hair slowly with her thin hand.
“Don’t cry,” she said. “Don’t cry—it’s nothing.”
But he felt as if his blood was melting into tears, and he cried in
terror and pain.
“Don’t—don’t cry,” his mother faltered.
Slowly she stroked his hair. Shocked out of himself, he cried, and the
tears hurt in every fibre of his body. Suddenly he stopped, but he
dared not lift his face out of the bedclothes.
“You _are_ late. Where have you been?” his mother asked.
“The train was late,” he replied, muffled in the sheet.
“Yes; that miserable Central! Is Newton come?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure you must be hungry, and they’ve kept dinner waiting.”
With a wrench he looked up at her.
“What is it, mother?” he asked brutally.
She averted her eyes as she answered:
“Only a bit of a tumour, my boy. You needn’t trouble. It’s been
there—the lump has—a long time.”
Up came the tears again. His mind was clear and hard, but his body was
crying.
“Where?” he said.
She put her hand on her side.
“Here. But you know they can sweal a tumour away.”
He stood feeling dazed and helpless, like a child. He thought perhaps
it was as she said. Yes; he reassured himself it was so. But all the
while his blood and his body knew definitely what it was. He sat down
on the bed, and took her hand. She had never had but the one ring—her
wedding-ring.
“When were you poorly?” he asked.
“It was yesterday it began,” she answered submissively.
“Pains?”
“Yes; but not more than I’ve often had at home. I believe Dr. Ansell is
an alarmist.”
“You ought not to have travelled alone,” he said, to himself more than
to her.
“As if that had anything to do with it!” she answered quickly.
They were silent for a while.
“Now go and have your dinner,” she said. “You _must_ be hungry.”
“Have you had yours?”
“Yes; a beautiful sole I had. Annie _is_ good to me.”
They talked a little while, then he went downstairs. He was very white
and strained. Newton sat in miserable sympathy.
After dinner he went into the scullery to help Annie to wash up. The
little maid had gone on an errand.
“Is it really a tumour?” he asked.
Annie began to cry again.
“The pain she had yesterday—I never saw anybody suffer like it!” she
cried. “Leonard ran like a madman for Dr. Ansell, and when she’d got to
bed she said to me: ‘Annie, look at this lump on my side. I wonder what
it is?’ And there I looked, and I thought I should have dropped. Paul,
as true as I’m here, it’s a lump as big as my double fist. I said:
‘Good gracious, mother, whenever did that come?’ ‘Why, child,’ she
said, ‘it’s been there a long time.’ I thought I should have died, our
Paul, I did. She’s been having these pains for months at home, and
nobody looking after her.”
The tears came to his eyes, then dried suddenly.
“But she’s been attending the doctor in Nottingham—and she never told
me,” he said.
“If I’d have been at home,” said Annie, “I should have seen for
myself.”