Page 631 - sons-and-lovers

away from him. He could not get at them. He felt he couldn’t
touch the lamp-posts, not if he reached. Where could he go?
There was nowhere to go, neither back into the inn, or for-
ward anywhere. He felt stifled. There was nowhere for him.
The stress grew inside him; he felt he should smash.
‘I mustn’t,’ he said; and, turning blindly, he went in and
drank. Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it
made him worse. He ran down the road. For ever restless,
he went here, there, everywhere. He determined to work.
But when he had made six strokes, he loathed the pencil
violently, got up, and went away, hurried off to a club where
he could play cards or billiards, to a place where he could
flirt with a barmaid who was no more to him than the brass
pump-handle she drew.
He was very thin and lantern-jawed. He dared not meet
his own eyes in the mirror; he never looked at himself. He
wanted to get away from himself, but there was nothing to
get hold of. In despair he thought of Miriam. Perhaps—per-
haps—-?
Then, happening to go into the Unitarian Church one
Sunday evening, when they stood up to sing the second
hymn he saw her before him. The light glistened on her low-
er lip as she sang. She looked as if she had got something, at
any rate: some hope in heaven, if not in earth. Her comfort
and her life seemed in the after-world. A warm, strong feel-
ing for her came up. She seemed to yearn, as she sang, for
the mystery and comfort. He put his hope in her. He longed
for the sermon to be over, to speak to her.
The throng carried her out just before him. He could

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