Page 136 - sons-and-lovers

clean-blooded man, with wonderful healing flesh, and so
I see no reason why it SHOULD take bad ways. Of course
there’s a wound—-‘
She was pale now with emotion and anxiety. The three
children realised that it was very bad for their father, and
the house was silent, anxious.
‘But he always gets better,’ said Paul after a while.
‘That’s what I tell him,’ said the mother.
Everybody moved about in silence.
‘And he really looked nearly done for,’ she said. ‘But the
Sister says that is the pain.’
Annie took away her mother’s coat and bonnet.
‘And he looked at me when I came away! I said: ‘I s’ll
have to go now, Walter, because of the train—and the chil-
dren.’ And he looked at me. It seems hard.’
Paul took up his brush again and went on painting. Ar-
thur went outside for some coal. Annie sat looking dismal.
And Mrs. Morel, in her little rocking-chair that her husband
had made for her when the first baby was coming, remained
motionless, brooding. She was grieved, and bitterly sorry
for the man who was hurt so much. But still, in her heart
of hearts, where the love should have burned, there was a
blank. Now, when all her woman’s pity was roused to its full
extent, when she would have slaved herself to death to nurse
him and to save him, when she would have taken the pain
herself, if she could, somewhere far away inside her, she felt
indifferent to him and to his suffering. It hurt her most of
all, this failure to love him, even when he roused her strong
emotions. She brooded a while.

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