Sons and Lovers - D. H. Lawrence (find a book to read txt) 📗

staring, quite unconscious. And when he came round again he felt sick, and trembled in his limbs. He never questioned what it was. His mind did not try to analyse or understand. He merely submitted, and kept his eyes shut; let the thing go over him.

His mother did the same. She thought of the pain, of the morphia, of the next day; hardly ever of the death. That was coming, she knew. She had to submit to it. But she would never entreat it or make friends with it. Blind, with her face shut hard and blind, she was pushed towards the door. The days passed, the weeks, the months.

Sometimes, in the sunny afternoons, she seemed almost happy.

“I try to think of the nice times⁠—when we went to Mablethorpe, and Robin Hood’s Bay, and Shanklin,” she said. “After all, not everybody has seen those beautiful places. And wasn’t it beautiful! I try to think of that, not of the other things.”

Then, again, for a whole evening she spoke not a word; neither did he. They were together, rigid, stubborn, silent. He went into his room at last to go to bed, and leaned against the doorway as if paralysed, unable to go any farther. His consciousness went. A furious storm, he knew not what, seemed to ravage inside him. He stood leaning there, submitting, never questioning.

In the morning they were both normal again, though her face was grey with the morphia, and her body felt like ash. But they were bright again, nevertheless. Often, especially if Annie or Arthur were at home, he neglected her. He did not see much of Clara. Usually he was with men. He was quick and active and lively; but when his friends saw him go white to the gills, his eyes dark and glittering, they had a certain mistrust of him. Sometimes he went to Clara, but she was almost cold to him.

“Take me!” he said simply.

Occasionally she would. But she was afraid. When he had her then, there was something in it that made her shrink away from him⁠—something unnatural. She grew to dread him. He was so quiet, yet so strange. She was afraid of the man who was not there with her, whom she could feel behind this make-belief lover; somebody sinister, that filled her with horror. She began to have a kind of horror of him. It was almost as if he were a criminal. He wanted her⁠—he had her⁠—and it made her feel as if death itself had her in its grip. She lay in horror. There was no man there loving her. She almost hated him. Then came little bouts of tenderness. But she dared not pity him.

Dawes had come to Colonel Seely’s Home near Nottingham. There Paul visited him sometimes, Clara very occasionally. Between the two men the friendship developed peculiarly. Dawes, who mended very slowly and seemed very feeble, seemed to leave himself in the hands of Morel.

In the beginning of November Clara reminded Paul that it was her birthday.

“I’d nearly forgotten,” he said.

“I’d thought quite,” she replied.

“No. Shall we go to the seaside for the weekend?”

They went. It was cold and rather dismal. She waited for him to be warm and tender with her, instead of which he seemed hardly aware of her. He sat in the railway-carriage, looking out, and was startled when she spoke to him. He was not definitely thinking. Things seemed as if they did not exist. She went across to him.

“What is it, dear?” she asked.

“Nothing!” he said. “Don’t those windmill sails look monotonous?”

He sat holding her hand. He could not talk nor think. It was a comfort, however, to sit holding her hand. She was dissatisfied and miserable. He was not with her; she was nothing.

And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking at the black, heavy sea.

“She will never give in,” he said quietly.

Clara’s heart sank.

“No,” she replied.

“There are different ways of dying. My father’s people are frightened, and have to be hauled out of life into death like cattle into a slaughterhouse, pulled by the neck; but my mother’s people are pushed from behind, inch by inch. They are stubborn people, and won’t die.”

“Yes,” said Clara.

“And she won’t die. She can’t. Mr. Renshaw, the parson, was in the other day. ‘Think!’ he said to her; ‘you will have your mother and father, and your sisters, and your son, in the Other Land.’ And she said: ‘I have done without them for a long time, and can do without them now. It is the living I want, not the dead.’ She wants to live even now.”

“Oh, how horrible!” said Clara, too frightened to speak.

“And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me,” he went on monotonously. “She’s got such a will, it seems as if she would never go⁠—never!”

“Don’t think of it!” cried Clara.

“And she was religious⁠—she is religious now⁠—but it is no good. She simply won’t give in. And do you know, I said to her on Thursday: ‘Mother, if I had to die, I’d die. I’d will to die.’ And she said to me, sharp: ‘Do you think I haven’t? Do you think you can die when you like?’ ”

His voice ceased. He did not cry, only went on speaking monotonously. Clara wanted to run. She looked round. There was the black, reechoing shore, the dark sky down on her. She got up terrified. She wanted to be where there was light, where there were other people. She wanted to be away from him. He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle.

“And I don’t want her to eat,” he said, “and she knows it. When I ask her: ‘Shall you have anything?’ she’s almost afraid to say ‘Yes.’ ‘I’ll have a cup of Benger’s,’ she says. ‘It’ll only keep your strength up,’ I said to her. ‘Yes’⁠—and she almost cried⁠—‘but there’s such a gnawing when I eat nothing, I can’t bear it.’ So I went and made her the food. It’s