Page 208 - sons-and-lovers

seemed unnatural and intense. Sometimes he was exagger-
atedly jolly, usually he was flat and bitter in his letter.
‘Ah,’ his mother said, ‘I’m afraid he’s ruining himself
against that creature, who isn’t worthy of his love—no, no
more than a rag doll.’
He wanted to come home. The midsummer holiday was
gone; it was a long while to Christmas. He wrote in wild ex-
citement, saying he could come for Saturday and Sunday at
Goose Fair, the first week in October.
‘You are not well, my boy,’ said his mother, when she
saw him. She was almost in tears at having him to herself
again.
‘No, I’ve not been well,’ he said. ‘I’ve seemed to have a
dragging cold all the last month, but it’s going, I think.’
It was sunny October weather. He seemed wild with
joy, like a schoolboy escaped; then again he was silent and
reserved. He was more gaunt than ever, and there was a
haggard look in his eyes.
‘You are doing too much,’ said his mother to him.
He was doing extra work, trying to make some money
to marry on, he said. He only talked to his mother once on
the Saturday night; then he was sad and tender about his
beloved.
‘And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she’d
be broken-hearted for two months, and then she’d start to
forget me. You’d see, she’d never come home here to look at
my grave, not even once.’
‘Why, William,’ said his mother, ‘you’re not going to die,
so why talk about it?’

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