blackness of the chimney.
The next day he kissed her before going back to work. It was very early in the morning, and they were alone.
“You won't fret, my boy!” she said.
“No, mother.”
“No; it would be silly. And take care of yourself.”
“Yes,” he answered. Then, after a while: “And I shall come next Saturday, and shall bring my father?”
“I suppose he wants to come,” she replied. “At any rate, if he does you'll have to let him.”
He kissed her again, and stroked the hair from her temples, gently, tenderly, as if she were a lover.
“Shan't you be late?” she murmured.
“I'm going,” he said, very low.
Still he sat a few minutes, stroking the brown and grey hair from her temples.
“And you won't be any worse, mother?”
“No, my son.”
“You promise me?”
“Yes; I won't be any worse.”
He kissed her, held her in his arms for a moment, and was gone. In the early sunny morning he ran to the station, crying all the way; he did not know what for. And her blue eyes were wide and staring as she thought of him.
In the afternoon he went a walk with Clara. They sat in the little wood where bluebells were standing. He took her hand.
“You'll see,” he said to Clara, “she'll never be better.”
“Oh, you don't know!” replied the other.
“I do,” he said.
She caught him impulsively to her breast.
“Try and forget it, dear,” she said; “try and forget it.”
“I will,” he answered.
Her breast was there, warm for him; her hands were in his hair. It was comforting, and he held his arms round her. But he did not forget. He only talked to Clara of something else. And it was always so. When she felt it coming, the agony, she cried to him:
“Don't think of it, Paul! Don't think of it, my darling!”
And she pressed him to her breast, rocked him, soothed him like a child. So he put the trouble aside for her sake, to take it up again immediately he was alone. All the time, as he went about, he cried mechanically. His mind and hands were busy. He cried, he did not know why. It was his blood weeping. He was just as much alone whether he was with Clara or with the men in the White Horse. Just himself and this pressure inside him, that was all that existed. He read sometimes. He had to keep his mind occupied. And Clara was a way of occupying his mind.
On the Saturday Walter Morel went to Sheffield. He was a forlorn figure, looking rather as if nobody owned him. Paul ran upstairs.
“My father's come,” he said, kissing his mother.
“Has he?” she answered wearily.
The old collier came rather frightened into the bedroom.
“How dun I find thee, lass?” he said, going forward and kissing her in a hasty, timid fashion.
“Well, I'm middlin',” she replied.
“I see tha art,” he said. He stood looking down on her. Then he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Helpless, and as if nobody owned him, he looked.
“Have you gone on all right?” asked the wife, rather wearily, as if it were an effort to talk to him.
“Yis,” he answered. “'Er's a bit behint-hand now and again, as yer might expect.”
“Does she have your dinner ready?” asked Mrs. Morel.
“Well, I've 'ad to shout at 'er once or twice,” he said.
“And you MUST shout at her if she's not ready. She WILL leave things to the last minute.”
She gave him a few instructions. He sat looking at her as if she were almost a stranger to him, before whom he was awkward and humble, and also as if he had lost his presence of mind, and wanted to run. This feeling that he wanted to run away, that he was on thorns to be gone from so trying a situation, and yet must linger because it looked better, made his presence so trying. He put up his eyebrows for misery, and clenched his fists on his knees, feeling so awkward in presence of big trouble.
Mrs. Morel did not change much. She stayed in Sheffield for two months. If anything, at the end she was rather worse. But she wanted to go home. Annie had her children. Mrs. Morel wanted to go home. So they got a motor-car from Nottingham—for she was too ill to go by train—and she was driven through the sunshine. It was just August; everything was bright and warm. Under the blue sky they could all see she was dying. Yet she was jollier than she had been for weeks. They all laughed and talked.
“Annie,” she exclaimed, “I saw a lizard dart on that rock!”
Her eyes were so quick; she was still so full of life.
Morel knew she was coming. He had the front door open. Everybody was on tiptoe. Half the street turned out. They heard the sound of the great motor-car. Mrs. Morel, smiling, drove home down the street.
“And just look at them all come out to see me!” she said. “But there, I suppose I should have done the same. How do you do, Mrs. Mathews? How are you, Mrs. Harrison?”
They none of them could hear, but they saw her smile and nod. And they all saw death on her face, they said. It was a great event in the street.
Morel wanted to carry her indoors, but he was too old. Arthur took her as if she were a child. They had set her a big, deep chair by the hearth where her rocking-chair used to stand. When she was unwrapped and seated, and had drunk a little brandy, she looked round the room.
“Don't think I don't like your house, Annie,” she said; “but it's nice to be in my own home again.”
And Morel answered huskily:
“It is, lass, it is.”
And Minnie, the little quaint maid, said:
“An' we glad t' 'ave yer.”
There was a lovely yellow ravel of sunflowers in the garden. She looked out of the window.
“There are my sunflowers!” she said.
Chapter XIV
The Release
“By the way,” said Dr. Ansell
