Page 294 - sons-and-lovers

stalls. She prayed earnestly for his safety that night. When
he left her, she often lay in anxiety, wondering if he had got
home safely.
He dropped down the hills on his bicycle. The roads
were greasy, so he had to let it go. He felt a pleasure as the
machine plunged over the second, steeper drop in the hill.
‘Here goes!’ he said. It was risky, because of the curve in the
darkness at the bottom, and because of the brewers’ wag-
gons with drunken waggoners asleep. His bicycle seemed to
fall beneath him, and he loved it. Recklessness is almost a
man’s revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he
will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.
The stars on the lake seemed to leap like grasshoppers,
silver upon the blackness, as he spun past. Then there was
the long climb home.
‘See, mother!’ he said, as he threw her the berries and
leaves on to the table.
‘H’m!’ she said, glancing at them, then away again. She
sat reading, alone, as she always did.
‘Aren’t they pretty?’
‘Yes.’
He knew she was cross with him. After a few minutes
he said:
‘Edgar and Miriam are coming to tea tomorrow.’
She did not answer.
‘You don’t mind?’
Still she did not answer.
‘Do you?’ he asked.
‘You know whether I mind or not.’