Page 276 - women-in-love

young man, choking him.
‘She killed him,’ said Gerald.
The moon sloped down the sky and sank at last. The lake
was sunk to quarter size, it had horrible raw banks of clay,
that smelled of raw rottenish water. Dawn roused faintly be-
hind the eastern hill. The water still boomed through the
sluice.
As the birds were whistling for the first morning, and
the hills at the back of the desolate lake stood radiant with
the new mists, there was a straggling procession up to
Shortlands, men bearing the bodies on a stretcher, Gerald
going beside them, the two grey-bearded fathers following
in silence. Indoors the family was all sitting up, waiting.
Somebody must go to tell the mother, in her room. The doc-
tor in secret struggled to bring back his son, till he himself
was exhausted.
Over all the outlying district was a hush of dreadful ex-
citement on that Sunday morning. The colliery people felt
as if this catastrophe had happened directly to themselves,
indeed they were more shocked and frightened than if their
own men had been killed. Such a tragedy in Shortlands, the
high home of the district! One of the young mistresses, per-
sisting in dancing on the cabin roof of the launch, wilful
young madam, drowned in the midst of the festival, with
the young doctor! Everywhere on the Sunday morning, the
colliers wandered about, discussing the calamity. At all the
Sunday dinners of the people, there seemed a strange pres-
ence. It was as if the angel of death were very near, there was
a sense of the supernatural in the air. The men had excited,

276 Women in Love