“Mother, mother!”
He was still with her when the undertakers came, young men who had been to school with him. They touched her reverently, and in a quiet, businesslike fashion. They did not look at her. He watched jealously. He and Annie guarded her fiercely. They would not let anybody come to see her, and the neighbours were offended.
After a while Paul went out of the house, and played cards at a friend’s. It was midnight when he got back. His father rose from the couch as he entered, saying in a plaintive way:
“I thought tha wor niver comin’, lad.”
“I didn’t think you’d sit up,” said Paul.
His father looked so forlorn. Morel had been a man without fear — simply nothing frightened him. Paul realised with a start that he had been afraid to go to bed, alone in the house with his dead. He was sorry.
“I forgot you’d be alone, father,” he said.
“Dost want owt to eat?” asked Morel.
“No.”
“Sithee — I made thee a drop o’ hot milk. Get it down thee; it’s cold enough for owt.”
Paul drank it.
After a while Morel went to bed. He hurried past the closed door, and left his own door open. Soon the son came upstairs also. He went in to kiss her good-night, as usual. It was cold and dark. He wished they had kept her fire burning. Still she dreamed her young dream. But she would be cold.
“My dear!” he whispered. “My dear!”
And he did not kiss her, for fear she should be cold and strange to him. It eased him she slept so beautifully. He shut her door softly, not to wake her, and went to bed.
In the morning Morel summoned his courage, hearing Annie downstairs and Paul coughing in the room across the landing. He opened her door, and went into the darkened room. He saw the white uplifted form in the twilight, but her he dared not see. Bewildered, too frightened to possess any of his faculties, he got out of the room again and left her. He never looked at her again. He had not seen her for months, because he had not dared to look. And she looked like his young wife again.
“Have you seen her?” Annie asked of him sharply after breakfast.
“Yes,” he said.
“And don’t you think she looks nice?”
“Yes.”
He went out of the house soon after. And all the time He seemed to be creeping aside to avoid it.
Paul went about from place to place, doing the business of the death. He met Clara in Nottingham, and they had tea together in a cafe, when they were quite jolly again. She was infinitely relieved to find he did not take it tragically.
Later, when the relatives began to come for the funeral, the affair became public, and the children became social beings. They put themselves aside. They buried her in a furious storm of rain and wind. The wet clay glistened, all the white flowers were soaked. Annie gripped his arm and leaned forward. Down below she saw a dark corner of William’s coffin. The oak box sank steadily. She was gone. The rain poured in the grave. The procession of black, with its umbrellas glistening, turned away. The cemetery was deserted under the drenching cold rain.
Paul went home and busied himself supplying the guests with drinks. His father sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Morel’s relatives, “superior” people, and wept, and said what a good lass she’d been, and how he’d tried to do everything he could for her — everything. He had striven all his life to do what he could for her, and he’d nothing to reproach himself with. She was gone, but he’d done his best for her. He wiped his eyes with his white handkerchief. He’d nothing to reproach himself for, he repeated. All his life he’d done his best for her.
And that was how he tried to dismiss her. He never thought of her personally. Everything deep in him he denied. Paul hated his father for sitting sentimentalising over her. He knew he would do it in the public-houses. For the real tragedy went on in Morel in spite of himself. Sometimes, later, he came down from his afternoon sleep, white and cowering.
“I HAVE been dreaming of thy mother,” he said in a small voice.
“Have you, father? When I dream of her it’s always just as she was when she was well. I dream of her often, but it seems quite nice and natural, as if nothing had altered.”
But Morel crouched in front of the fire in terror.
The weeks passed half-real, not much pain, not much of anything, perhaps a little relief, mostly a nuit blanche. Paul went restless from place to place. For some months, since his mother had been worse, he had not made love to Clara. She was, as it were, dumb to him, rather distant. Dawes saw her very occasionally, but the two could not get an inch across the great distance between them. The three of them were drifting forward.
Dawes mended very slowly. He was in the convalescent home at Skegness at Christmas, nearly well again. Paul went to the seaside for a few days. His father was with Annie in Sheffield. Dawes came to Paul’s lodgings. His time in the home was up. The two men, between whom was such a big reserve, seemed faithful to each other. Dawes depended on Morel now. He knew Paul and Clara had practically separated.
Two days after Christmas Paul was to go back to Nottingham. The evening before he sat with Dawes smoking before the fire.
“You know Clara’s coming down for the day to-morrow?” he said.
The other man glanced at him.
“Yes, you told me,” he replied.
Paul drank the remainder of his glass of whisky.
“I told the landlady your wife was coming,” he said.
“Did you?” said Dawes, shrinking, but almost leaving himself in the other’s hands. He got up rather stiffly, and reached for Morel’s glass.
“Let me fill you up,” he said.
Paul jumped up.
“You sit still,” he said.
But Dawes, with rather shaky hand, continued to mix the drink.
“Say when,” he said.
“Thanks!” replied the other. “But you’ve no business to get up.”
“It does me good, lad,” replied Dawes. “I begin to think I’m right again, then.”
“You are about right, you know.”
“I am, certainly I am,” said Dawes, nodding to him.
“And Len says he can get you on in Sheffield.”
Dawes glanced at him again, with dark eyes that agreed with everything the other would say, perhaps a trifle dominated by him.
“It’s funny,” said Paul, “starting again. I feel in a lot bigger mess than you.”
“In what way, lad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s as if I was in a tangled sort of hole, rather dark and dreary, and no road anywhere.”
“I know — I understand it,” Dawes said, nodding. “But you’ll find it’ll come all right.”
He spoke caressingly.
“I suppose so,” said Paul.
Dawes knocked his pipe in a hopeless fashion.
“You’ve not done for yourself like I have,” he said.
Morel saw the wrist and the white hand of the other man gripping the stem of the pipe and knocking out the ash, as if he had given up.
“How old are you?” Paul asked.
“Thirty-nine,” replied Dawes, glancing at him.
Those brown eyes, full of the consciousness of failure, almost pleading for reassurance, for someone to re-establish the man in himself, to warm him, to set him up firm again, troubled Paul.
“You’ll just be in your prime,” said Morel. “You don’t look as if much life had gone out of you.”
The brown eyes of the other flashed suddenly.
“It hasn’t,” he said. “The go is there.”
Paul looked up and laughed.
“We’ve both got plenty of life in us yet to make things fly,” he said.
The eyes of the two men met. They exchanged one look. Having recognised the stress of passion each in the other, they both drank their whisky.
“Yes, begod!” said Dawes, breathless.
There was a pause.
“And I don’t see,” s
aid Paul, “why you shouldn’t go on where you left off.”
“What — ” said Dawes, suggestively.
“Yes — fit your old home together again.”
Dawes hid his face and shook his head.
“Couldn’t be done,” he said, and looked up with an ironic smile.
“Why? Because you don’t want?”
“Perhaps.”
They smoked in silence. Dawes showed his teeth as he bit his pipe stem.
“You mean you don’t want her?” asked Paul.
Dawes stared up at the picture with a caustic expression on his face.
“I hardly know,” he said.
The smoke floated softly up.
“I believe she wants you,” said Paul.
“Do you?” replied the other, soft, satirical, abstract.
“Yes. She never really hitched on to me — you were always there in the background. That’s why she wouldn’t get a divorce.”
Dawes continued to stare in a satirical fashion at the picture over the mantelpiece.
“That’s how women are with me,” said Paul. “They want me like mad, but they don’t want to belong to me. And she BELONGED to you all the time. I knew.”
The triumphant male came up in Dawes. He showed his teeth more distinctly.
“Perhaps I was a fool,” he said.
“You were a big fool,” said Morel.
“But perhaps even THEN you were a bigger fool,” said Dawes.
There was a touch of triumph and malice in it.
“Do you think so?” said Paul.
They were silent for some time.
“At any rate, I’m clearing out to-morrow,” said Morel.
“I see,” answered Dawes.
Then they did not talk any more. The instinct to murder each other had returned. They almost avoided each other.
They shared the same bedroom. When they retired Dawes seemed abstract, thinking of something. He sat on the side of the bed in his shirt, looking at his legs.
“Aren’t you getting cold?” asked Morel.
“I was lookin’ at these legs,” replied the other.
“What’s up with ‘em? They look all right,” replied Paul, from his bed.
“They look all right. But there’s some water in ‘em yet.”
“And what about it?”
“Come and look.”
Paul reluctantly got out of bed and went to look at the rather handsome legs of the other man that were covered with glistening, dark gold hair.
“Look here,” said Dawes, pointing to his shin. “Look at the water under here.”
“Where?” said Paul.
The man pressed in his finger-tips. They left little dents that filled up slowly.
“It’s nothing,” said Paul.
“You feel,” said Dawes.
Paul tried with his fingers. It made little dents.
“H’m!” he said.
“Rotten, isn’t it?” said Dawes.
“Why? It’s nothing much.”
“You’re not much of a man with water in your legs.”
“I can’t see as it makes any difference,” said Morel. “I’ve got a weak chest.”
He returned to his own bed.
“I suppose the rest of me’s all right,” said Dawes, and he put out the light.
In the morning it was raining. Morel packed his bag. The sea was grey and shaggy and dismal. He seemed to be cutting himself off from life more and more. It gave him a wicked pleasure to do it.
The two men were at the station. Clara stepped out of the train, and came along the platform, very erect and coldly composed. She wore a long coat and a tweed hat. Both men hated her for her composure. Paul shook hands with her at the barrier. Dawes was leaning against the bookstall, watching. His black overcoat was buttoned up to the chin because of the rain. He was pale, with almost a touch of nobility in his quietness. He came forward, limping slightly.
“You ought to look better than this,” she said.
“Oh, I’m all right now.”
The three stood at a loss. She kept the two men hesitating near her.
“Shall we go to the lodging straight off,” said Paul, “or somewhere else?”
“We may as well go home,” said Dawes.
Paul walked on the outside of the pavement, then Dawes, then Clara. They made polite conversation. The sitting-room faced the sea, whose tide, grey and shaggy, hissed not far off.
Morel swung up the big arm-chair.
“Sit down, Jack,” he said.
“I don’t want that chair,” said Dawes.
“Sit down!” Morel repeated.
Clara took off her things and laid them on the couch. She had a slight air of resentment. Lifting her hair with her fingers, she sat down, rather aloof and composed. Paul ran downstairs to speak to the landlady.
“I should think you’re cold,” said Dawes to his wife. “Come nearer to the fire.”
“Thank you, I’m quite warm,” she answered.
She looked out of the window at the rain and at the sea.
“When are you going back?” she asked.
“Well, the rooms are taken until to-morrow, so he wants me to stop. He’s going back to-night.”
“And then you’re thinking of going to Sheffield?”
“Yes.”
“Are you fit to start work?”
“I’m going to start.”
“You’ve really got a place?”
“Yes — begin on Monday.”
“You don’t look fit.”
“Why don’t I?”
She looked again out of the window instead of answering.
“And have you got lodgings in Sheffield?”
“Yes.”
Again she looked away out of the window. The panes were blurred with streaming rain.
“And can you manage all right?” she asked.
“I s’d think so. I s’ll have to!”
They were silent when Morel returned.
“I shall go by the four-twenty,” he said as he entered.
Nobody answered.
“I wish you’d take your boots off,” he said to Clara.
“There’s a pair of slippers of mine.”
“Thank you,” she said. “They aren’t wet.”
He put the slippers near her feet. She left them there.
Morel sat down. Both the men seemed helpless, and each of them had a rather hunted look. But Dawes now carried himself quietly, seemed to yield himself, while Paul seemed to screw himself up. Clara thought she had never seen him look so small and mean. He was as if trying to get himself into the smallest possible compass. And as he went about arranging, and as he sat talking, there seemed something false about him and out of tune. Watching him unknown, she said to herself there was no stability about him. He was fine in his way, passionate, and able to give her drinks of pure life when he was in one mood. And now he looked paltry and insignificant. There was nothing stable about him. Her husband had more manly dignity. At any rate HE did not waft about with any wind. There was something evanescent about Morel, she thought, something shifting and false. He would never make sure ground for any woman to stand on. She despised him rather for his shrinking together, getting smaller. Her husband at least was manly, and when he was beaten gave in. But this other would never own to being beaten. He would shift round and round, prowl, get smaller. She despised him. And yet she watched him rather than Dawes, and it seemed as if their three fates lay in his hands. She hated him for it.
She seemed to understand better now about men, and what they could or would do. She was less afraid of them, more sure of herself. That they were not the small egoists she had imagined them made her more comfortable. She had learned a good deal — almost as much as she wanted to learn. Her cup had been full. It was still as full as she could carry. On the whole, she would not be sorry when he was gone.
They had dinner, and sat eating nuts and drinking by the fire. Not a serious word had been spoken. Yet Clara
realised that Morel was withdrawing from the circle, leaving her the option to stay with her husband. It angered her. He was a mean fellow, after all, to take what he wanted and then give her back. She did not remember that she herself had had what she wanted, and really, at the bottom of her heart, wished to be given back.
Paul felt crumpled up and lonely. His mother had really supported his life. He had loved her; they two had, in fact, faced the world together. Now she was gone, and for ever behind him was the gap in life, the tear in the veil, through which his life seemed to drift slowly, as if he were drawn towards death. He wanted someone of their own free initiative to help him. The lesser things he began to let go from him, for fear of this big thing, the lapse towards death, following in the wake of his beloved. Clara could not stand for him to hold on to. She wanted him, but not to understand him. He felt she wanted the man on top, not the real him that was in trouble. That would be too much trouble to her; he dared not give it her. She could not cope with him. It made him ashamed. So, secretly ashamed because he was in such a mess, because his own hold on life was so unsure, because nobody held him, feeling unsubstantial, shadowy, as if he did not count for much in this concrete world, he drew himself together smaller and smaller. He did not want to die; he would not give in. But he was not afraid of death. If nobody would help, he would go on alone.
Dawes had been driven to the extremity of life, until he was afraid. He could go to the brink of death, he could lie on the edge and look in. Then, cowed, afraid, he had to crawl back, and like a beggar take what offered. There was a certain nobility in it. As Clara saw, he owned himself beaten, and he wanted to be taken back whether or not. That she could do for him. It was three o’clock.
“I am going by the four-twenty,” said Paul again to Clara. “Are you coming then or later?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’m meeting my father in Nottingham at seven-fifteen,” he said.
“Then,” she answered, “I’ll come later.”
Dawes jerked suddenly, as if he had been held on a strain. He looked out over the sea, but he saw nothing.
“There are one or two books in the corner,” said Morel. “I’ve done with ‘em.”
At about four o’clock he went.
“I shall see you both later,” he said, as he shook hands.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 110