Page 369 - sons-and-lovers

He looked at his mother. Her blue eyes were watching
the cathedral quietly. She seemed again to be beyond him.
Something in the eternal repose of the uplifted cathedral,
blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her, some-
thing of the fatality. What was, WAS. With all his young
will he could not alter it. He saw her face, the skin still fresh
and pink and downy, but crow’s-feet near her eyes, her eye-
lids steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with
disillusion; and there was on her the same eternal look, as if
she knew fate at last. He beat against it with all the strength
of his soul.
‘Look, mother, how big she is above the town! Think,
there are streets and streets below her! She looks bigger
than the city altogether.’
‘So she does!’ exclaimed his mother, breaking bright into
life again. But he had seen her sitting, looking steady out of
the window at the cathedral, her face and eyes fixed, reflect-
ing the relentlessness of life. And the crow’s-feet near her
eyes, and her mouth shut so hard, made him feel he would
go mad.
They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant.
‘Don’t imagine I like it,’ she said, as she ate her cutlet. ‘I
DON’T like it, I really don’t! Just THINK of your money
wasted!’
‘You never mind my money,’ he said. ‘You forget I’m a
fellow taking his girl for an outing.’
And he bought her some blue violets.
‘Stop it at once, sir!’ she commanded. ‘How can I do it?’
‘You’ve got nothing to do. Stand still!’

Sons and Lovers