“I s’ll die, mother!” he cried,
heaving for breath on the pillow.
She lifted him up, crying in a small voice:
“Oh, my son—my son!”
That brought him to. He realised her. His
whole will rose up and arrested him. He put his
head on her breast, and took ease of her for love.
“For some things,” said his aunt, “it
was a good thing Paul was ill that Christmas.
I believe it saved his mother.”
Paul was in bed for seven weeks. He got up white
and fragile. His father had bought him a pot
of scarlet and gold tulips. They used to flame
in the window in the March sunshine as he sat on the
sofa chattering to his mother. The two knitted
together in perfect intimacy. Mrs. Morel’s
life now rooted itself in Paul.
William had been a prophet. Mrs. Morel had a
little present and a letter from Lily at Christmas.
Mrs. Morel’s sister had a letter at the New
Year.
“I was at a ball last night. Some delightful
people were there, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly,”
said the letter. “I had every dance—did
not sit out one.”
Mrs. Morel never heard any more of her.
Morel and his wife were gentle with each other for
some time after the death of their son. He would
go into a kind of daze, staring wide-eyed and blank
across the room. Then he got up suddenly and hurried
out to the Three Spots, returning in his normal state.
But never in his life would he go for a walk up Shepstone,
past the office where his son had worked, and he always
avoided the cemetery.
LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE
Paul had been many times up to Willey Farm during
the autumn. He was friends with the two youngest
boys. Edgar the eldest, would not condescend
at first. And Miriam also refused to be approached.
She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own
brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul.
Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved
by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps.
She herself was something of a princess turned into
a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she
was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked
something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint
and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and
who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider
her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the
princess beneath; so she held aloof.
Her great companion was her mother. They were
both brown-eyed, and inclined to be mystical, such
women as treasure religion inside them, breathe it
in their nostrils, and see the whole of life in a mist
thereof. So to Miriam, Christ and God made one
great figure, which she loved tremblingly and passionately
when a tremendous sunset burned out the western sky,
and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian de Bois
Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings, rustled the
