Sons and Lovers
“It’s not been much of a week-end,” said Morel.
“How’s your mother?” asked the other.
“Hardly any different.”
“I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn’t come on Sunday.”
“I was at Skegness,” said Paul. “I wanted a change.”
The other looked at him with dark eyes. He seemed to be waiting, not
quite daring to ask, trusting to be told.
“I went with Clara,” said Paul.
“I knew as much,” said Dawes quietly.
“It was an old promise,” said Paul.
“You have it your own way,” said Dawes.
This was the first time Clara had been definitely mentioned between
them.
“Nay,” said Morel slowly; “she’s tired of me.”
Again Dawes looked at him.
“Since August she’s been getting tired of me,” Morel repeated.
The two men were very quiet together. Paul suggested a game of
draughts. They played in silence.
“I s’ll go abroad when my mother’s dead,” said Paul.
“Abroad!” repeated Dawes.
“Yes; I don’t care what I do.”
They continued the game. Dawes was winning.
“I s’ll have to begin a new start of some sort,” said Paul; “and you as
well, I suppose.”
He took one of Dawes’s pieces.
“I dunno where,” said the other.
“Things have to happen,” Morel said. “It’s no good doing anything—at
least—no, I don’t know. Give me some toffee.”
The two men ate sweets, and began another game of draughts.
“What made that scar on your mouth?” asked Dawes.
Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over the garden.
“I had a bicycle accident,” he said.
Dawes’s hand trembled as he moved the piece.
“You shouldn’t ha’ laughed at me,” he said, very low.
“When?”
“That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed me—you with
your hand on her shoulder.”
“I never laughed at you,” said Paul.
Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.
“I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed,”
said Morel.
“It was that as did me,” Dawes said, very low.
Paul took another sweet.
“I never laughed,” he said, “except as I’m always laughing.”
They finished the game.
That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have
something to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the
black clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of
highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black
levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room.
If he walked and walked for ever, there was only that place to come to.
He was not tired when he got near home, or he did not know it. Across
the field he could see the red firelight leaping in her bedroom window.
“When she’s dead,” he said to himself, “that fire will go out.”
He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. His mother’s door was
wide open, because she slept alone still. The red firelight dashed its
glow on the landing. Soft as a shadow, he peeped in her doorway.
“Paul!” she murmured.
His heart seemed to break again. He went in and sat by the bed.
“How late you are!” she murmured.
“Not very,” he said.
“Why, what time is it?” The murmur came plaintive and helpless.
“It’s only just gone eleven.”
That was not true; it was nearly one o’clock.
“Oh!” she said; “I thought it was later.”
And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that would not go.
“Can’t you sleep, my pigeon?” he said.
“No, I can’t,” she wailed.
“Never mind, Little!” He said crooning. “Never mind, my love. I’ll stop
with you half an hour, my pigeon; then perhaps it will be better.”
And he sat by the bedside, slowly, rhythmically stroking her brows with
his finger-tips, stroking her eyes shut, soothing her, holding her
fingers in his free hand. They could hear the sleepers’ breathing in
the other rooms.
“Now go to bed,” she murmured, lying quite still under his fingers and
his love.
“Will you sleep?” he asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“You feel better, my Little, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child.
Still the days and the weeks went by. He hardly ever went to see Clara
now. But he wandered restlessly from one person to another for some
help, and there was none anywhere. Miriam had written to him tenderly.
He went to see her. Her heart was very sore when she saw him, white,
gaunt, with his eyes dark and bewildered. Her pity came up, hurting her
till she could not bear it.
“How is she?” she asked.
“The same—the same!” he said. “The doctor says she can’t last, but I
know she will. She’ll be here at Christmas.”
Miriam shuddered. She drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom;
she kissed him and kissed him. He submitted, but it was torture. She
could not kiss his agony. That remained alone and apart. She kissed his
face, and roused his blood, while his soul was apart writhing with the
agony of death. And she kissed him and fingered his body, till at last,
feeling he would go mad, he got away from her. It was not what he
wanted just then—not that. And she thought she had soothed him and done
him good.
December came, and some snow. He stayed at home all the while now. They
could not afford a nurse. Annie came to look after her mother; the
parish nurse, whom they loved, came in morning and evening. Paul shared
the nursing with Annie. Often, in the evenings, when friends were in
the kitchen with them, they all laughed together and shook with
laughter. It was reaction. Paul was so comical, Annie was so quaint.
The whole party laughed till they cried, trying to subdue the sound.
And Mrs. Morel, lying alone in the darkness heard them, and among her
bitterness was a feeling of relief.
Then Paul would go upstairs gingerly, guiltily, to see if she had
heard.
“Shall I give you some milk?” he asked.
“A little,” she replied plaintively.
And he would put some water with it, so that it should not nourish her.
Yet he loved her more than his own life.
She had morphia every night, and her heart got fitful. Annie slept
beside her. Paul would go in in the early morning, when his sister got
up. His mother was wasted and almost ashen in the morning with the
morphia. Darker and darker grew her eyes, all pupil, with the torture.
In the mornings the weariness and ache were too much to bear. Yet she
could not—would not—weep, or even complain much.
“You slept a bit later this morning, little one,” he would say to her.
“Did I?” she answered, with fretful weariness.
“Yes; it’s nearly eight o’clock.”
He stood looking out of the window. The whole country was bleak and
pallid under the snow. Then he felt her pulse. There was a strong
stroke and a weak one, like a sound and its echo. That was supposed to
betoken the end. She let him feel her wrist, knowing what he wanted.
Sometimes they looked in each other’s eyes. Then they almost seemed to
make an agreement. It was almost as if he were agreeing to die also.
But she did not consent to die; she would not. Her body was wasted to a
fragment of ash. Her eyes were dark and full of torture.
“Can’t you give her something to put an end to it?” he asked the doctor
at last.
But the doctor shook his head.
“She can’t last many days now, Mr. Morel,” he said.
Paul went indoors.
“I can’t bear it much longer; we shall all go mad,” said Annie.
The two sat down to breakfast.
“Go and sit with her while we have breakfast, Minnie,” said Annie. But
the girl was frightened.
Paul went through the country, through the woods, over the snow. He saw
the marks of rabbits and birds in the white snow. He wandered miles and
miles. A smoky red sunset came on slowly, painfully, lingering. He
thought she would die that day. There was a donkey that came up to him
over the snow by the wood’s edge, and put its head against him, and
walked with him alongside. He put his arms round the donkey’s neck, and
stroked his cheeks against his ears.
His mother, silent, was still alive, with her hard mouth gripped
grimly, her eyes of dark torture only living.
It was nearing Christmas; there was more snow. Annie and he felt as if
they could go on no more. Still her dark eyes were alive. Morel, silent
and frightened, obliterated himself. Sometimes he would go into the
sick-room and look at her. Then he backed out, bewildered.
She kept her hold on life still. The miners had been out on strike, and
returned a fortnight or so before Christmas. Minnie went upstairs with
the feeding-cup. It was two days after the men had been in.
“Have the men been saying their hands are sore, Minnie?” she asked, in
the faint, querulous voice that would not give in. Minnie stood
surprised.
“Not as I know of, Mrs. Morel,” she answered.
“But I’ll bet they are sore,” said the dying woman, as she moved her
head with a sigh of weariness. “But, at any rate, there’ll be something
to buy in with this week.”
Not a thing did she let slip.
“Your father’s pit things will want well airing, Annie,” she said, when
the men were going back to work.
“Don’t you bother about that, my dear,” said Annie.
One night Annie and Paul were alone. Nurse was upstairs.
“She’ll live over Christmas,” said Annie. They were both full of
horror. “She won’t,” he replied grimly. “I s’ll give her morphia.”
“Which?” said Annie.
“All that came from Sheffield,” said Paul.
“Ay—do!” said Annie.
The next day he was painting in the bedroom. She seemed to be asleep.
He stepped softly backwards and forwards at his painting. Suddenly her
small voice wailed:
“Don’t walk about, Paul.”
He looked round. Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face, were looking
at him.
“No, my dear,” he said gently. Another fibre seemed to snap in his
heart.
That evening he got all the morphia pills there were, and took them
downstairs. Carefully he crushed them to powder.
“What are you doing?” said Annie.
“I s’ll put ’em in her night milk.”
Then they both laughed together like two conspiring children. On top of
all their horror flicked this little sanity.
Nurse did not come that night to settle Mrs. Morel down. Paul went up
with the hot milk in a feeding-cup. It was nine o’clock.
She was reared up in bed, and he put the feeding-cup between her lips
that he would have died to save from any hurt. She took a sip, then put
the spout of the cup away and looked at him with her dark, wondering
eyes. He looked at her.
“Oh, it _is_ bitter, Paul!” she said, making a little grimace.
“It’s a new sleeping draught the doctor gave me for you,” he said. “He
thought it would leave you in such a state in the morning.”
“And I hope it won’t,” she said, like a child.
She drank some more of the milk.
“But it _is_ horrid!” she said.
He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making a little move.
“I know—I tasted it,” he said. “But I’ll give you some clean milk
afterwards.”
“I think so,” she said, and she went on with the draught. She was
obedient to him like a child. He wondered if she knew. He saw her poor
wasted throat moving as she drank with difficulty. Then he ran
downstairs for more milk. There were no grains in the bottom of the
cup.
“Has she had it?” whispered Annie.
“Yes—and she said it was bitter.”
“Oh!” laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her teeth.
“And I told her it was a new draught. Where’s that milk?”
They both went upstairs.
“I wonder why nurse didn’t come to settle me down?” complained the
mother, like a child, wistfully.
“She said she was going to a concert, my love,” replied Annie.
“Did she?”
They were silent a minute. Mrs. Morel gulped the little clean milk.
“Annie, that draught _was_ horrid!” she said plaintively.
“Was it, my love? Well, never mind.”
The mother sighed again with weariness. Her pulse was very irregular.
“Let _us_ settle you down,” said Annie. “Perhaps nurse will be so
late.”
“Ay,” said the mother—“try.”