Page 129 - sons-and-lovers

flowing in the house. For his mother there was an umbrella
with gold on the pale handle. She kept it to her dying day,
and would have lost anything rather than that. Everybody
had something gorgeous, and besides, there were pounds
of unknown sweets: Turkish delight, crystallised pineapple,
and such-like things which, the children thought, only the
splendour of London could provide. And Paul boasted of
these sweets among his friends.
‘Real pineapple, cut off in slices, and then turned into
crystal—fair grand!’
Everybody was mad with happiness in the family. Home
was home, and they loved it with a passion of love, what-
ever the suffering had been. There were parties, there were
rejoicings. People came in to see William, to see what dif-
ference London had made to him. And they all found him
‘such a gentleman, and SUCH a fine fellow, my word’!
When he went away again the children retired to various
places to weep alone. Morel went to bed in misery, and Mrs.
Morel felt as if she were numbed by some drug, as if her feel-
ings were paralysed. She loved him passionately.
He was in the office of a lawyer connected with a large
shipping firm, and at the midsummer his chief offered him
a trip in the Mediterranean on one of the boats, for quite
a small cost. Mrs. Morel wrote: ‘Go, go, my boy. You may
never have a chance again, and I should love to think of
you cruising there in the Mediterranean almost better than
to have you at home.’ But William came home for his fort-
night’s holiday. Not even the Mediterranean, which pulled
at all his young man’s desire to travel, and at his poor man’s

1 Sons and Lovers