Page 297 - women-in-love

some reserve made him keep this back from Birkin.
‘And you resent it?’ Birkin asked.
‘I don’t resent it. I don’t care a tinker’s curse about it.’ He
was silent a moment, then he added, laughing. ‘No, I’ll see it
through, that’s all. She seemed sorry afterwards.’
‘Did she? You’ve not met since that night?’
Gerald’s face clouded.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve been—you can imagine how it’s
been, since the accident.’
‘Yes. Is it calming down?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a shock, of course. But I don’t believe
mother minds. I really don’t believe she takes any notice.
And what’s so funny, she used to be all for the children—
nothing mattered, nothing whatever mattered but the
children. And now, she doesn’t take any more notice than if
it was one of the servants.’
‘No? Did it upset YOU very much?’
‘It’s a shock. But I don’t feel it very much, really. I don’t
feel any different. We’ve all got to die, and it doesn’t seem to
make any great difference, anyhow, whether you die or not.
I can’t feel any GRIEF you know. It leaves me cold. I can’t
quite account for it.’
‘You don’t care if you die or not?’ asked Birkin.
Gerald looked at him with eyes blue as the blue-fibred
steel of a weapon. He felt awkward, but indifferent. As a
matter of fact, he did care terribly, with a great fear.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to die, why should I? But I
never trouble. The question doesn’t seem to be on the carpet
for me at all. It doesn’t interest me, you know.’

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