Page 562 - sons-and-lovers

pain, he went back to the pond and washed his face and
hands. The icy water hurt, but helped to bring him back to
himself. He crawled back up the hill to the tram. He want-
ed to get to his mother—he must get to his mother—that
was his blind intention. He covered his face as much as he
could, and struggled sickly along. Continually the ground
seemed to fall away from him as he walked, and he felt him-
self dropping with a sickening feeling into space; so, like a
nightmare, he got through with the journey home.
Everybody was in bed. He looked at himself. His face
was discoloured and smeared with blood, almost like a dead
man’s face. He washed it, and went to bed. The night went
by in delirium. In the morning he found his mother looking
at him. Her blue eyes—they were all he wanted to see. She
was there; he was in her hands.
‘It’s not much, mother,’ he said. ‘It was Baxter Dawes.’
‘Tell me where it hurts you,’ she said quietly.
‘I don’t know—my shoulder. Say it was a bicycle accident,
mother.’
He could not move his arm. Presently Minnie, the little
servant, came upstairs with some tea.
‘Your mother’s nearly frightened me out of my wits—
fainted away,’ she said.
He felt he could not bear it. His mother nursed him; he
told her about it.
‘And now I should have done with them all,’ she said qui-
etly.
‘I will, mother.’
She covered him up.

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