Page 616 - sons-and-lovers

‘And Len says he can get you on in Sheffield.’
Dawes glanced at him again, with dark eyes that agreed
with everything the other would say, perhaps a trifle domi-
nated by him.
‘It’s funny,’ said Paul, ‘starting again. I feel in a lot bigger
mess than you.’
‘In what way, lad?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s as if I was in a tangled sort
of hole, rather dark and dreary, and no road anywhere.’
‘I know—I understand it,’ Dawes said, nodding. ‘But
you’ll find it’ll come all right.’
He spoke caressingly.
‘I suppose so,’ said Paul.
Dawes knocked his pipe in a hopeless fashion.
‘You’ve not done for yourself like I have,’ he said.
Morel saw the wrist and the white hand of the other man
gripping the stem of the pipe and knocking out the ash, as
if he had given up.
‘How old are you?’ Paul asked.
‘Thirty-nine,’ replied Dawes, glancing at him.
Those brown eyes, full of the consciousness of failure, al-
most pleading for reassurance, for someone to re-establish
the man in himself, to warm him, to set him up firm again,
troubled Paul.
‘You’ll just be in your prime,’ said Morel. ‘You don’t look
as if much life had gone out of you.’
The brown eyes of the other flashed suddenly.
‘It hasn’t,’ he said. ‘The go is there.’
Paul looked up and laughed.

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