Page 312 - women-in-love

SHE took no trouble for them. But they must just have their
way, they mustn’t be spoken to. And Master Gerald was the
beauty. I left when he was a year and a half, I could stand no
more. But I pinched his little bottom for him when he was
in arms, I did, when there was no holding him, and I’m not
sorry I did—‘
Gudrun went away in fury and loathing. The phrase,
‘I pinched his little bottom for him,’ sent her into a white,
stony fury. She could not bear it, she wanted to have the
woman taken out at once and strangled. And yet there the
phrase was lodged in her mind for ever, beyond escape. She
felt, one day, she would HAVE to tell him, to see how he
took it. And she loathed herself for the thought.
But at Shortlands the life-long struggle was coming to
a close. The father was ill and was going to die. He had bad
internal pains, which took away all his attentive life, and
left him with only a vestige of his consciousness. More and
more a silence came over him, he was less and less acute-
ly aware of his surroundings. The pain seemed to absorb
his activity. He knew it was there, he knew it would come
again. It was like something lurking in the darkness within
him. And he had not the power, or the will, to seek it out
and to know it. There it remained in the darkness, the great
pain, tearing him at times, and then being silent. And when
it tore him he crouched in silent subjection under it, and
when it left him alone again, he refused to know of it. It was
within the darkness, let it remain unknown. So he never
admitted it, except in a secret corner of himself, where all
his never-revealed fears and secrets were accumulated. For

312 Women in Love