Page 210 - sons-and-lovers

The blinds were not down.
‘How is he?’ she asked.
‘No better,’ said the landlady.
She followed the woman upstairs. William lay on the
bed, with bloodshot eyes, his face rather discoloured. The
clothes were tossed about, there was no fire in the room, a
glass of milk stood on the stand at his bedside. No one had
been with him.
‘Why, my son!’ said the mother bravely.
He did not answer. He looked at her, but did not see her.
Then he began to say, in a dull voice, as if repeating a letter
from dictation: ‘Owing to a leakage in the hold of this ves-
sel, the sugar had set, and become converted into rock. It
needed hacking—-‘
He was quite unconscious. It had been his business to ex-
amine some such cargo of sugar in the Port of London.
‘How long has he been like this?’ the mother asked the
landlady.
‘He got home at six o’clock on Monday morning, and he
seemed to sleep all day; then in the night we heard him talk-
ing, and this morning he asked for you. So I wired, and we
fetched the doctor.’
‘Will you have a fire made?’
Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still.
The doctor came. It was pneumonia, and, he said, a pecu-
liar erysipelas, which had started under the chin where the
collar chafed, and was spreading over the face. He hoped it
would not get to the brain.
Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse. She prayed for Wil-

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