Page 477 - women-in-love

his strange, imminent being put the father into a fever of
fretful irritation. He could not bear to meet the uncanny,
downward look of Gerald’s blue eyes. But it was only for a
moment. Each on the brink of departure, the father and son
looked at each other, then parted.
For a long time Gerald preserved a perfect sang froid, he
remained quite collected. But at last, fear undermined him.
He was afraid of some horrible collapse in himself. He had
to stay and see this thing through. Some perverse will made
him watch his father drawn over the borders of life. And
yet, now, every day, the great red-hot stroke of horrified fear
through the bowels of the son struck a further inflamma-
tion. Gerald went about all day with a tendency to cringe, as
if there were the point of a sword of Damocles pricking the
nape of his neck.
There was no escape—he was bound up with his father,
he had to see him through. And the father’s will never re-
laxed or yielded to death. It would have to snap when death
at last snapped it,—if it did not persist after a physical death.
In the same way, the will of the son never yielded. He stood
firm and immune, he was outside this death and this dy-
ing.
It was a trial by ordeal. Could he stand and see his fa-
ther slowly dissolve and disappear in death, without once
yielding his will, without once relenting before the om-
nipotence of death. Like a Red Indian undergoing torture,
Gerald would experience the whole process of slow death
without wincing or flinching. He even triumphed in it. He
somehow WANTED this death, even forced it. It was as if

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