Page 144 - sons-and-lovers

go walking down Piccadilly with an elegant figure and fine
clothes, rather than with a woman who was near to him.
But she congratulated him in her doubtful fashion. And, as
she stood over the washing-tub, the mother brooded over
her son. She saw him saddled with an elegant and expen-
sive wife, earning little money, dragging along and getting
draggled in some small, ugly house in a suburb. ‘But there,’
she told herself, ‘I am very likely a silly—meeting trouble
halfway.’ Nevertheless, the load of anxiety scarcely ever left
her heart, lest William should do the wrong thing by him-
self.
Presently, Paul was bidden call upon Thomas Jordan,
Manufacturer of Surgical Appliances, at 21, Spaniel Row,
Nottingham. Mrs. Morel was all joy.
‘There, you see!’ she cried, her eyes shining. ‘You’ve only
written four letters, and the third is answered. You’re lucky,
my boy, as I always said you were.’
Paul looked at the picture of a wooden leg, adorned with
elastic stockings and other appliances, that figured on Mr.
Jordan’s notepaper, and he felt alarmed. He had not known
that elastic stockings existed. And he seemed to feel the
business world, with its regulated system of values, and its
impersonality, and he dreaded it. It seemed monstrous also
that a business could be run on wooden legs.
Mother and son set off together one Tuesday morning. It
was August and blazing hot. Paul walked with something
screwed up tight inside him. He would have suffered much
physical pain rather than this unreasonable suffering at be-
ing exposed to strangers, to be accepted or rejected. Yet he

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