prompt:
Chapter: THE RELEASE

"By the way," said Dr. Ansell one evening when Morel was in
Sheffield, "we've got a man in the fever hospital here who comes from
Nottingham--Dawes. He doesn't seem to have many belongings in this
world."

"Baxter Dawes!" Paul exclaimed.

"That's the man--has been a fine fellow, physically, I should think.
Been in a bit of a mess lately. You know him?"

"He used to work at the place where I am."

"Did he? Do you know anything about him? He's just sulking, or he'd be a
lot better than he is by now."

"I don't know anything of his home circumstances, except that he's
separated from his wife and has been a bit down, I believe. But tell him
about me, will you? Tell him I'll come and see him."

The next time Morel saw the doctor he said:

"And what about Dawes?"

"I said to him," answered the other, "'Do you know a man from Nottingham
named Morel?' and he looked at me as if he'd jump at my throat. So I
said: 'I see you know the name; it's Paul Morel.' Then I told him about
your saying you would go and see him. 'What does he want?' he said, as
if you were a policeman."

"And did he say he would see me?" asked Paul.

"He wouldn't say anything--good, bad or indifferent," replied the
doctor.

"Why not?"

"That's what I want to know. There he lies and sulks, day in, day out.
Can't get a word of information out of him."

"Do you think I might go?" asked Paul.

"You might."

There was a feeling of connection between the rival men, more than ever
since they had fought. In a way Morel felt guilty towards the other, and
more or less responsible. And being in such a state of soul himself,
he felt an almost painful nearness to Dawes, who was suffering and
despairing, too. Besides, they had met in a naked extremity of hate, and
it was a bond. At any rate, the elemental man in each had met.

He went down to the isolation hospital, with Dr. Ansell's card. This
sister, a healthy young Irishwoman, led him down the ward.

"A visitor to see you, Jim Crow," she said.

Dawes turned over suddenly with a startled grunt.

"Eh?"

"Caw!" she mocked. "He can only say 'Caw!' I have brought you a
gentleman to see you. Now say 'Thank you,' and show some manners."

Dawes looked swiftly with his dark, startled eyes beyond the sister at
Paul. His look was full of fear, mistrust, hate, and misery. Morel met
the swift, dark eyes, and hesitated. The two men were afraid of the
naked selves they had been.

"Dr. Ansell told me you were here," said Morel, holding out his hand.

Dawes mechanically shook hands.

"So I thought I'd come in," continued Paul.

There was no answer. Dawes lay staring at the opposite wall.

"Say 'Caw!"' mocked the nurse. "Say 'Caw!' Jim Crow."

"He is getting on all right?" said Paul to her.

"Oh yes! He lies and imagines he's going to die," said the nurse, "and
it frightens every word out of his mouth."

"And you MUST have somebody to talk to," laughed Morel.

"That's it!" laughed the nurse. "Only two old men and a boy who always
cries. It is hard lines! Here am I dying to hear Jim Crow's voice, and
nothing but an odd 'Caw!' will he give!"

"So rough on you!" said Morel.

"Isn't it?" said the nurse.

"I suppose I am a godsend," he laughed.

"Oh, dropped straight from heaven!" laughed the nurse.

Presently she left the two men alone. Dawes was thinner, and handsome
again, but life seemed low in him. As the doctor said, he was lying
sulking, and would not move forward towards convalescence. He seemed to
grudge every beat of his heart.

"Have you had a bad time?" asked Paul.

Suddenly again Dawes looked at him.

"What are you doing in Sheffield?" he asked.

"My mother was taken ill at my sister's in Thurston Street. What are you
doing here?"

There was no answer.

"How long have you been in?" Morel asked.

"I couldn't say for sure," Dawes answered grudgingly.

He lay staring across at the wall opposite, as if trying to believe
Morel was not there. Paul felt his heart go hard and angry.

"Dr. Ansell told me you were here," he said coldly.

The other man did not answer.

"Typhoid's pretty bad, I know," Morel persisted.

Suddenly Dawes said:

"What did you come for?"

"Because Dr. Ansell said you didn't know anybody here. Do you?"

"I know nobody nowhere," said Dawes.

"Well," said Paul, "it's because you don't choose to, then."

There was another silence.

"We s'll be taking my mother home as soon as we can," said Paul.

"What's a-matter with her?" asked Dawes, with a sick man's interest in
illness.

"She's got a cancer."

There was another silence.

"But we want to get her home," said Paul. "We s'll have to get a
motor-car."

Dawes lay thinking.

"Why don't you ask Thomas Jordan to lend you his?" said Dawes.

"It's not big enough," Morel answered.

Dawes blinked his dark eyes as he lay thinking.

"Then ask Jack Pilkington; he'd lend it you. You know him."

"I think I s'll hire one," said Paul.

"You're a fool if you do," said Dawes.

The sick man was gaunt and handsome again. Paul was sorry for him
because his eyes looked so tired.

"Did you get a job here?" he asked.

"I was only here a day or two before I was taken bad," Dawes replied.

"You want to get in a convalescent home," said Paul.

The other's face clouded again.

"I'm goin' in no convalescent home," he said.

"My father's been in the one at Seathorpe, an' he liked it. Dr. Ansell
would get you a recommend."

Dawes lay thinking. It was evident he dared not face the world again.

"The seaside would be all right just now," Morel said. "Sun on those
sandhills, and the waves not far out."

The other did not answer.

"By Gad!" Paul concluded, too miserable to bother much; "it's all right
when you know you're going to walk again, and swim!"

Dawes glanced at him quickly. The man's dark eyes were afraid to meet
any other eyes in the world. But the real misery and helplessness in
Paul's tone gave him a feeling of relief.

"Is she far gone?" he asked.

"She's going like wax," Paul answered; "but cheerful--lively!"

He bit his lip. After a minute he rose.

"Well, I'll be going," he said. "I'll leave you this half-crown."

"I don't want it," Dawes muttered.

Morel did not answer, but left the coin on the table.

"Well," he said, "I'll try and run in when I'm back in Sheffield. Happen
you might like to see my brother-in-law? He works in Pyecrofts."

"I don't know him," said Dawes.

"He's all right. Should I tell him to come? He might bring you some
papers to look at."

The other man did not answer. Paul went. The strong emotion that Dawes
aroused in him, repressed, made him shiver.

He did not tell his mother, but next day he spoke to Clara about this
interview. It was in the dinner-hour. The two did not often go out
together now, but this day he asked her to go with him to the Castle
grounds. There they sat while the scarlet geraniums and the yellow
calceolarias blazed in the sunlight. She was now always rather
protective, and rather resentful towards him.

"Did you know Baxter was in Sheffield Hospital with typhoid?" he asked.

She looked at him with startled grey eyes, and her face went pale.

"No," she said, frightened.

"He's getting better. I went to see him yesterday--the doctor told me."

Clara seemed stricken by the news.

"Is he very bad?" she asked guiltily.

"He has been. He's mending now."

"What did he say to you?"

"Oh, nothing! He seems to be sulking."

There was a distance between the two of them. He gave her more
information.

She went about shut up and silent. The next time they took a walk
together, she disengaged herself from his arm, and walked at a distance
from him. He was wanting her comfort badly.

"Won't you be nice with me?" he asked.

She did not answer.

"What's the matter?" he said, putting his arm across her shoulder.

"Don't!" she said, disengaging herself.

He left her alone, and returned to his own brooding.

"Is it Baxter that upsets you?" he asked at length.

"I HAVE been VILE to him!" she said.

"I've said many a time you haven't treated him well," he replied.

And there was a hostility between them. Each pursued his own train of
thought.

"I've treated him--no, I've treated him badly," she said. "And now you
treat ME badly. It serves me right."

"How do I treat you badly?" he said.

"It serves me right," she repeated. "I never considered him worth
having, and now you don't consider ME. But it serves me right. He loved
me a thousand times better than you ever did."

"He didn't!" protested Paul.

"He did! At any rate, he did respect me, and that's what you don't do."

"It looked as if he respected you!" he said.

"He did! And I MADE him horrid--I know I did! You've taught me that. And
he loved me a thousand times better than ever you do."

"All right," said Paul.

He only wanted to be left alone now. He had his own trouble, which was
almost too much to bear. Clara only tormented him and made him tired. He
was not sorry when he left her.

She went on the first opportunity to Sheffield to see her husband. The
meeting was not a success. But she left him roses and fruit and money.
She wanted to make restitution. It was not that she loved him. As she
looked at him lying there her heart did not warm with love. Only she
wanted to humble herself to him, to kneel before him. She wanted now to
be self-sacrificial. After all, she had failed to make Morel really
love her. She was morally frightened. She wanted to do penance. So she
kneeled to Dawes, and it gave him a subtle pleasure. But the distance
between them was still very great--too great. It frightened the man. It
almost pleased the woman. She liked to feel she was serving him across
an insuperable distance. She was proud now.

Morel went to see Dawes once or twice. There was a sort of friendship
between the two men, who were all the while deadly rivals. But they
never mentioned the woman who was between them.

Mrs. Morel got gradually worse. At first they used to carry her
downstairs, sometimes even into the garden. She sat propped in her
chair, smiling, and so pretty. The gold wedding-ring shone on her
white hand; her hair was carefully brushed. And she watched the tangled
sunflowers dying, the chrysanthemums coming out, and the dahlias.

Paul and she were afraid of each other. He knew, and she knew, that she
was dying. But they kept up a pretence of cheerfulness. Every morning,
when he got up, he went into her room in his pyjamas.

"Did you sleep, my dear?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered.

"Not very well?"

"Well, yes!"

Then he knew she had lain awake. He saw her hand under the bedclothes,
pressing the place on her side where the pain was.

"Has it been bad?" he asked.

"No. It hurt a bit, but nothing to mention."

And she sniffed in her old scornful way. As she lay she looked like a
girl. And all the while her blue eyes watched him. But there were the
dark pain-circles beneath that made him ache again.

"It's a sunny day," he said.

"It's a beautiful day."

"Do you think you'll be carried down?"

"I shall see."

Then he went away to get her breakfast. All day long he was conscious of
nothing but her. It was a long ache that made him feverish. Then, when
he got home in the early evening, he glanced through the kitchen window.
She was not there; she had not got up.

He ran straight upstairs and kissed her. He was almost afraid to ask:

"Didn't you get up, pigeon?"

"No," she said, "it was that morphia; it made me tired."

"I think he gives you too much," he said.

"I think he does," she answered.

He sat down by the bed, miserably. She had a way of curling and lying on
her side, like a child. The grey and brown hair was loose over her ear.

"Doesn't it tickle you?" he said, gently putting it back.

"It does," she replied.

His face was near hers. Her blue eyes smiled straight into his, like a
girl's--warm, laughing with tender love. It made him pant with terror,
agony, and love.

"You want your hair doing in a plait," he said. "Lie still."

And going behind her, he carefully loosened her hair, brushed it out. It
was like fine long silk of brown and grey. Her head was snuggled between
her shoulders. As he lightly brushed and plaited her hair, he bit his
lip and felt dazed. It all seemed unreal, he could not understand it.

At night he often worked in her room, looking up from time to time. And
so often he found her blue eyes fixed on him. And when their eyes met,
she smiled. He worked away again mechanically, producing good stuff
without knowing what he was doing.

Sometimes he came in, very pale and still, with watchful, sudden eyes,
like a man who is drunk almost to death. They were both afraid of the
veils that were ripping between them.

Then she pretended to be better, chattered to him gaily, made a great
fuss over some scraps of news. For they had both come to the condition
when they had to make much of the trifles, lest they should give in to
the big thing, and their human independence would go smash. They were
afraid, so they made light of things and were gay.

Sometimes as she lay he knew she was thinking of the past. Her mouth
gradually shut hard in a line. She was holding herself rigid, so that
she might die without ever uttering the great cry that was tearing from
her. He never forgot that hard, utterly lonely and stubborn clenching
of her mouth, which persisted for weeks. Sometimes, when it was lighter,
she talked about her husband. Now she hated him. She did not forgive
him. She could not bear him to be in the room. And a few things, the
things that had been most bitter to her, came up again so strongly that
they broke from her, and she told her son.

He felt as if his life were being destroyed, piece by piece, within him.
Often the tears came suddenly. He ran to the station, the tear-drops
falling on the pavement. Often he could not go on with his work. The
pen stopped writing. He sat staring, quite unconscious. And when he came
round again he felt sick, and trembled in his limbs. He never questioned
what it was. His mind did not try to analyse or understand. He merely
submitted, and kept his eyes shut; let the thing go over him.

His mother did the same. She thought of the pain, of the morphia, of the
next day; hardly ever of the death. That was coming, she knew. She had
to submit to it. But she would never entreat it or make friends with
it. Blind, with her face shut hard and blind, she was pushed towards the
door. The days passed, the weeks, the months.

Sometimes, in the sunny afternoons, she seemed almost happy.

"I try to think of the nice times--when we went to Mablethorpe, and
Robin Hood's Bay, and Shanklin," she said. "After all, not everybody has
seen those beautiful places. And wasn't it beautiful! I try to think of
that, not of the other things."

Then, again, for a whole evening she spoke not a word; neither did he.
They were together, rigid, stubborn, silent. He went into his room
at last to go to bed, and leaned against the doorway as if paralysed,
unable to go any farther. His consciousness went. A furious storm, he
knew not what, seemed to ravage inside him. He stood leaning there,
submitting, never questioning.

In the morning they were both normal again, though her face was grey
with the morphia, and her body felt like ash. But they were bright
again, nevertheless. Often, especially if Annie or Arthur were at home,
he neglected her. He did not see much of Clara. Usually he was with
men. He was quick and active and lively; but when his friends saw him
go white to the gills, his eyes dark and glittering, they had a certain
mistrust of him. Sometimes he went to Clara, but she was almost cold to
him.

"Take me!" he said simply.

Occasionally she would. But she was afraid. When he had her then,
there was something in it that made her shrink away from him--something
unnatural. She grew to dread him. He was so quiet, yet so strange. She
was afraid of the man who was not there with her, whom she could feel
behind this make-belief lover; somebody sinister, that filled her with
horror. She began to have a kind of horror of him. It was almost as if
he were a criminal. He wanted her--he had her--and it made her feel as
if death itself had her in its grip. She lay in horror. There was no
man there loving her. She almost hated him. Then came little bouts of
tenderness. But she dared not pity him.

Dawes had come to Colonel Seely's Home near Nottingham. There Paul
visited him sometimes, Clara very occasionally. Between the two men
the friendship developed peculiarly. Dawes, who mended very slowly and
seemed very feeble, seemed to leave himself in the hands of Morel.

In the beginning of November Clara reminded Paul that it was her
birthday.

"I'd nearly forgotten," he said.

"I'd thought quite," she replied.

"No. Shall we go to the seaside for the week-end?"

They went. It was cold and rather dismal. She waited for him to be warm
and tender with her, instead of which he seemed hardly aware of her.
He sat in the railway-carriage, looking out, and was startled when she
spoke to him. He was not definitely thinking. Things seemed as if they
did not exist. She went across to him.

"What is it dear?" she asked.

"Nothing!" he said. "Don't those windmill sails look monotonous?"

He sat holding her hand. He could not talk nor think. It was a comfort,
however, to sit holding her hand. She was dissatisfied and miserable. He
was not with her; she was nothing.

And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking at the black,
heavy sea.

"She will never give in," he said quietly.

Clara's heart sank.

"No," she replied.

"There are different ways of dying. My father's people are frightened,
and have to be hauled out of life into death like cattle into a
slaughter-house, pulled by the neck; but my mother's people are pushed
from behind, inch by inch. They are stubborn people, and won't die."

"Yes," said Clara.

"And she won't die. She can't. Mr. Renshaw, the parson, was in the other
day. 'Think!' he said to her; 'you will have your mother and father, and
your sisters, and your son, in the Other Land.' And she said: 'I have
done without them for a long time, and CAN do without them now. It is
the living I want, not the dead.' She wants to live even now."

"Oh, how horrible!" said Clara, too frightened to speak.

"And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me," he went on
monotonously. "She's got such a will, it seems as if she would never
go--never!"

"Don't think of it!" cried Clara.

"And she was religious--she is religious now--but it is no good. She
simply won't give in. And do you know, I said to her on Thursday:
'Mother, if I had to die, I'd die. I'd WILL to die.' And she said to
me, sharp: 'Do you think I haven't? Do you think you can die when you
like?'"

His voice ceased. He did not cry, only went on speaking monotonously.
Clara wanted to run. She looked round. There was the black, re-echoing
shore, the dark sky down on her. She got up terrified. She wanted to be
where there was light, where there were other people. She wanted to be
away from him. He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle.

"And I don't want her to eat," he said, "and she knows it. When I ask
her: 'Shall you have anything' she's almost afraid to say 'Yes.' 'I'll
have a cup of Benger's,' she says. 'It'll only keep your strength up,'
I said to her. 'Yes'--and she almost cried--'but there's such a gnawing
when I eat nothing, I can't bear it.' So I went and made her the food.
It's the cancer that gnaws like that at her. I wish she'd die!"

"Come!" said Clara roughly. "I'm going."

He followed her down the darkness of the sands. He did not come to her.
He seemed scarcely aware of her existence. And she was afraid of him,
and disliked him.

In the same acute daze they went back to Nottingham. He was always
busy, always doing something, always going from one to the other of his
friends.

On the Monday he went to see Baxter Dawes. Listless and pale, the man
rose to greet the other, clinging to his chair as he held out his hand.

"You shouldn't get up," said Paul.

Dawes sat down heavily, eyeing Morel with a sort of suspicion.

"Don't you waste your time on me," he said, "if you've owt better to
do."

"I wanted to come," said Paul. "Here! I brought you some sweets."

The invalid put them aside.

"It's not been much of a week-end," said Morel.

"How's your mother?" asked the other.

"Hardly any different."

"I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn't come on Sunday."

"I was at Skegness," said Paul. "I wanted a change."

The other looked at him with dark eyes. He seemed to be waiting, not
quite daring to ask, trusting to be told.

"I went with Clara," said Paul.

"I knew as much," said Dawes quietly.

"It was an old promise," said Paul.

"You have it your own way," said Dawes.

This was the first time Clara had been definitely mentioned between
them.

"Nay," said Morel slowly; "she's tired of me."

Again Dawes looked at him.

"Since August she's been getting tired of me," Morel repeated.

The two men were very quiet together. Paul suggested a game of draughts.
They played in silence.

"I s'll go abroad when my mother's dead," said Paul.

"Abroad!" repeated Dawes.

"Yes; I don't care what I do."

They continued the game. Dawes was winning.

"I s'll have to begin a new start of some sort," said Paul; "and you as
well, I suppose."

He took one of Dawes's pieces.

"I dunno where," said the other.

"Things have to happen," Morel said. "It's no good doing anything--at
least--no, I don't know. Give me some toffee."

The two men ate sweets, and began another game of draughts.

"What made that scar on your mouth?" asked Dawes.

Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over the garden.

"I had a bicycle accident," he said.

Dawes's hand trembled as he moved the piece.

"You shouldn't ha' laughed at me," he said, very low.

"When?"

"That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed me--you with
your hand on her shoulder."

"I never laughed at you," said Paul.

Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.

"I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed," said
Morel.

"It was that as did me," Dawes said, very low.

Paul took another sweet.

"I never laughed," he said, "except as I'm always laughing."

They finished the game.

That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have something
to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the black
clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of
highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black
levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room.
If he walked and walked for ever, there was only that place to come to.

He was not tired when he got near home, or He did not know it. Across
the field he could see the red firelight leaping in her bedroom window.

"When she's dead," he said to himself, "that fire will go out."

He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. His mothers door was
wide open, because she slept alone still. The red firelight dashed its
glow on the landing. Soft as a shadow, he peeped in her doorway.

"Paul!" she murmured.

His heart seemed to break again. He went in and sat by the bed.

"How late you are!" she murmured.

"Not very," he said.

"Why, what time is it?" The murmur came plaintive and helpless.

"It's only just gone eleven."

That was not true; it was nearly one o'clock.

"Oh!" she said; "I thought it was later."

And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that would not go.

"Can't you sleep, my pigeon?" he said.

"No, I can't," she wailed.

"Never mind, Little!" He said crooning. "Never mind, my love. I'll stop
with you half an hour, my pigeon; then perhaps it will be better."

And he sat by the bedside, slowly, rhythmically stroking her brows
with his finger-tips, stroking her eyes shut, soothing her, holding her
fingers in his free hand. They could hear the sleepers' breathing in the
other rooms.

"Now go to bed," she murmured, lying quite still under his fingers and
his love.

"Will you sleep?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"You feel better, my Little, don't you?"

"Yes," she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child.

Still the days and the weeks went by. He hardly ever went to see Clara
now. But he wandered restlessly from one person to another for some
help, and there was none anywhere. Miriam had written to him tenderly.
He went to see her. Her heart was very sore when she saw him, white,
gaunt, with his eyes dark and bewildered. Her pity came up, hurting her
till she could not bear it.

"How is she?" she asked.

"The same--the same!" he said. "The doctor says she can't last, but I
know she will. She'll be here at Christmas."

Miriam shuddered. She drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom; she
kissed him and kissed him. He submitted, but it was torture. She could
not kiss his agony. That remained alone and apart. She kissed his face,
and roused his blood, while his soul was apart writhing with the agony
of death. And she kissed him and fingered his body, till at last,
feeling he would go mad, he got away from her. It was not what he wanted
just then--not that. And she thought she had soothed him and done him
good.

December came, and some snow. He stayed at home all the while now.
They could not afford a nurse. Annie came to look after her mother; the
parish nurse, whom they loved, came in morning and evening. Paul shared
the nursing with Annie. Often, in the evenings, when friends were in the
kitchen with them, they all laughed together and shook with laughter. It
was reaction. Paul was so comical, Annie was so quaint. The whole party
laughed till they cried, trying to subdue the sound. And Mrs. Morel,
lying alone in the darkness heard them, and among her bitterness was a
feeling of relief.

Then Paul would go upstairs gingerly, guiltily, to see if she had heard.

"Shall I give you some milk?" he asked.

"A little," she replied plaintively.

And he would put some water with it, so that it should not nourish her.
Yet he loved her more than his own life.

She had morphia every night, and her heart got fitful. Annie slept
beside her. Paul would go in in the early morning, when his sister
got up. His mother was wasted and almost ashen in the morning with the
morphia. Darker and darker grew her eyes, all pupil, with the torture.
In the mornings the weariness and ache were too much to bear. Yet she
could not--would not--weep, or even complain much.

"You slept a bit later this morning, little one," he would say to her.

"Did I?" she answered, with fretful weariness.

"Yes; it's nearly eight o'clock."

He stood looking out of the window. The whole country was bleak and
pallid under the snow. Then he felt her pulse. There was a strong stroke
and a weak one, like a sound and its echo. That was supposed to betoken
the end. She let him feel her wrist, knowing what he wanted.

Sometimes they looked in each other's eyes. Then they almost seemed to
make an agreement. It was almost as if he were agreeing to die also.
But she did not consent to die; she would not. Her body was wasted to a
fragment of ash. Her eyes were dark and full of torture.

"Can't you give her something to put an end to it?" he asked the doctor
at last.

But the doctor shook his head.

"She can't last many days now, Mr. Morel," he said.

Paul went indoors.

"I can't bear it much longer; we shall all go mad," said Annie.

The two sat down to breakfast.

"Go and sit with her while we have breakfast, Minnie," said Annie. But
the girl was frightened.

Paul went through the country, through the woods, over the snow. He saw
the marks of rabbits and birds in the white snow. He wandered miles
and miles. A smoky red sunset came on slowly, painfully, lingering. He
thought she would die that day. There was a donkey that came up to him
over the snow by the wood's edge, and put its head against him, and
walked with him alongside. He put his arms round the donkey's neck, and
stroked his cheeks against his ears.

His mother, silent, was still alive, with her hard mouth gripped grimly,
her eyes of dark torture only living.

It was nearing Christmas; there was more snow. Annie and he felt as if
they could go on no more. Still her dark eyes were alive. Morel, silent
and frightened, obliterated himself. Sometimes he would go into the
sick-room and look at her. Then he backed out, bewildered.

She kept her hold on life still. The miners had been out on strike, and
returned a fortnight or so before Christmas. Minnie went upstairs with
the feeding-cup. It was two days after the men had been in.

"Have the men been saying their hands are sore, Minnie?" she asked,
in the faint, querulous voice that would not give in. Minnie stood
surprised.

"Not as I know of, Mrs. Morel," she answered.

"But I'll bet they are sore," said the dying woman, as she moved her
head with a sigh of weariness. "But, at any rate, there'll be something
to buy in with this week."

Not a thing did she let slip.

"Your father's pit things will want well airing, Annie," she said, when
the men were going back to work.

"Don't you bother about that, my dear," said Annie.

One night Annie and Paul were alone. Nurse was upstairs.

"She'll live over Christmas," said Annie. They were both full of horror.
"She won't," he replied grimly. "I s'll give her morphia."

"Which?" said Annie.

"All that came from Sheffield," said Paul.

"Ay--do!" said Annie.

The next day he was painting in the bedroom. She seemed to be asleep.
He stepped softly backwards and forwards at his painting. Suddenly her
small voice wailed:

"Don't walk about, Paul."

He looked round. Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face, were looking
at him.

"No, my dear," he said gently. Another fibre seemed to snap in his
heart.

That evening he got all the morphia pills there were, and took them
downstairs. Carefully he crushed them to powder.

"What are you doing?" said Annie.

"I s'll put 'em in her night milk."

Then they both laughed together like two conspiring children. On top of
all their horror flicked this little sanity.

Nurse did not come that night to settle Mrs. Morel down. Paul went up
with the hot milk in a feeding-cup. It was nine o'clock.

She was reared up in bed, and he put the feeding-cup between her lips
that he would have died to save from any hurt. She took a sip, then put
the spout of the cup away and looked at him with her dark, wondering
eyes. He looked at her.

"Oh, it IS bitter, Paul!" she said, making a little grimace.

"It's a new sleeping draught the doctor gave me for you," he said. "He
thought it would leave you in such a state in the morning."

"And I hope it won't," she said, like a child.

She drank some more of the milk.

"But it IS horrid!" she said.

He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making a little move.

"I know--I tasted it," he said. "But I'll give you some clean milk
afterwards."

"I think so," she said, and she went on with the draught. She was
obedient to him like a child. He wondered if she knew. He saw her
poor wasted throat moving as she drank with difficulty. Then he ran
downstairs for more milk. There were no grains in the bottom of the cup.

"Has she had it?" whispered Annie.

"Yes--and she said it was bitter."

"Oh!" laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her teeth.

"And I told her it was a new draught. Where's that milk?"

They both went upstairs.

"I wonder why nurse didn't come to settle me down?" complained the
mother, like a child, wistfully.

"She said she was going to a concert, my love," replied Annie.

"Did she?"

They were silent a minute. Mrs. Morel gulped the little clean milk.

"Annie, that draught WAS horrid!" she said plaintively.

"Was it, my love? Well, never mind."

The mother sighed again with weariness. Her pulse was very irregular.

"Let US settle you down," said Annie. "Perhaps nurse will be so late."

"Ay," said the mother--"try."

They turned the clothes back. Paul saw his mother like a girl curled up
in her flannel nightdress. Quickly they made one half of the bed, moved
her, made the other, straightened her nightgown over her small feet, and
covered her up.

"There," said Paul, stroking her softly. "There!--now you'll sleep."

"Yes," she said. "I didn't think you could do the bed so nicely," she
added, almost gaily. Then she curled up, with her cheek on her hand, her
head snugged between her shoulders. Paul put the long thin plait of grey
hair over her shoulder and kissed her.

"You'll sleep, my love," he said.

"Yes," she answered trustfully. "Good-night."

They put out the light, and it was still.

Morel was in bed. Nurse did not come. Annie and Paul came to look at her
at about eleven. She seemed to be sleeping as usual after her draught.
Her mouth had come a bit open.

"Shall we sit up?" said Paul.

"I s'll lie with her as I always do," said Annie. "She might wake up."

"All right. And call me if you see any difference."

"Yes."

They lingered before the bedroom fire, feeling the night big and black
and snowy outside, their two selves alone in the world. At last he went
into the next room and went to bed.

He slept almost immediately, but kept waking every now and again. Then
he went sound asleep. He started awake at Annie's whispered, "Paul,
Paul!" He saw his sister in her white nightdress, with her long plait of
hair down her back, standing in the darkness.

"Yes?" he whispered, sitting up.

"Come and look at her."

He slipped out of bed. A bud of gas was burning in the sick chamber.
His mother lay with her cheek on her hand, curled up as she had gone
to sleep. But her mouth had fallen open, and she breathed with great,
hoarse breaths, like snoring, and there were long intervals between.

"She's going!" he whispered.

"Yes," said Annie.

"How long has she been like it?"

"I only just woke up."

Annie huddled into the dressing-gown, Paul wrapped himself in a brown
blanket. It was three o'clock. He mended the fire. Then the two sat
waiting. The great, snoring breath was taken--held awhile--then given
back. There was a space--a long space. Then they started. The great,
snoring breath was taken again. He bent close down and looked at her.

"Isn't it awful!" whispered Annie.

He nodded. They sat down again helplessly. Again came the great, snoring
breath. Again they hung suspended. Again it was given back, long and
harsh. The sound, so irregular, at such wide intervals, sounded through
the house. Morel, in his room, slept on. Paul and Annie sat crouched,
huddled, motionless. The great snoring sound began again--there was a
painful pause while the breath was held--back came the rasping breath.
Minute after minute passed. Paul looked at her again, bending low over
her.

"She may last like this," he said.

They were both silent. He looked out of the window, and could faintly
discern the snow on the garden.

"You go to my bed," he said to Annie. "I'll sit up."

"No," she said, "I'll stop with you."

"I'd rather you didn't," he said.

At last Annie crept out of the room, and he was alone. He hugged himself
in his brown blanket, crouched in front of his mother, watching. She
looked dreadful, with the bottom jaw fallen back. He watched. Sometimes
he thought the great breath would never begin again. He could not bear
it--the waiting. Then suddenly, startling him, came the great harsh
sound. He mended the fire again, noiselessly. She must not be disturbed.
The minutes went by. The night was going, breath by breath. Each time
the sound came he felt it wring him, till at last he could not feel so
much.

His father got up. Paul heard the miner drawing his stockings on,
yawning. Then Morel, in shirt and stockings, entered.

"Hush!" said Paul.

Morel stood watching. Then he looked at his son, helplessly, and in
horror.

"Had I better stop a-whoam?" he whispered.

"No. Go to work. She'll last through to-morrow."

"I don't think so."

"Yes. Go to work."

The miner looked at her again, in fear, and went obediently out of the
room. Paul saw the tape of his garters swinging against his legs.

After another half-hour Paul went downstairs and drank a cup of tea,
then returned. Morel, dressed for the pit, came upstairs again.

"Am I to go?" he said.

"Yes."

And in a few minutes Paul heard his father's heavy steps go thudding
over the deadening snow. Miners called in the streets as they
tramped in gangs to work. The terrible, long-drawn breaths
continued--heave--heave--heave; then a long pause--then--ah-h-h-h-h!
as it came back. Far away over the snow sounded the hooters of the
ironworks. One after another they crowed and boomed, some small and far
away, some near, the blowers of the collieries and the other works.
Then there was silence. He mended the fire. The great breaths broke the
silence--she looked just the same. He put back the blind and peered out.
Still it was dark. Perhaps there was a lighter tinge. Perhaps the snow
was bluer. He drew up the blind and got dressed. Then, shuddering, he
drank brandy from the bottle on the wash-stand. The snow WAS growing
blue. He heard a cart clanking down the street. Yes, it was seven
o'clock, and it was coming a little bit light. He heard some people
calling. The world was waking. A grey, deathly dawn crept over the snow.
Yes, he could see the houses. He put out the gas. It seemed very dark.
The breathing came still, but he was almost used to it. He could see
her. She was just the same. He wondered if he piled heavy clothes on top
of her it would stop. He looked at her. That was not her--not her a bit.
If he piled the blanket and heavy coats on her--

Suddenly the door opened, and Annie entered. She looked at him
questioningly.

"Just the same," he said calmly.

They whispered together a minute, then he went downstairs to get
breakfast. It was twenty to eight. Soon Annie came down.

"Isn't it awful! Doesn't she look awful!" she whispered, dazed with
horror.

He nodded.

"If she looks like that!" said Annie.

"Drink some tea," he said.

They went upstairs again. Soon the neighbours came with their frightened
question:

"How is she?"

It went on just the same. She lay with her cheek in her hand, her mouth
fallen open, and the great, ghastly snores came and went.

At ten o'clock nurse came. She looked strange and woebegone.

"Nurse," cried Paul, "she'll last like this for days?"

"She can't, Mr. Morel," said nurse. "She can't."

There was a silence.

"Isn't it dreadful!" wailed the nurse. "Who would have thought she could
stand it? Go down now, Mr. Morel, go down."

At last, at about eleven o'clock, he went downstairs and sat in the
neighbour's house. Annie was downstairs also. Nurse and Arthur were
upstairs. Paul sat with his head in his hand. Suddenly Annie came flying
across the yard crying, half mad:

"Paul--Paul--she's gone!"

In a second he was back in his own house and upstairs. She lay curled
up and still, with her face on her hand, and nurse was wiping her mouth.
They all stood back. He kneeled down, and put his face to hers and his
arms round her:

"My love--my love--oh, my love!" he whispered again and again. "My
love--oh, my love!"

Then he heard the nurse behind him, crying, saying:

"She's better, Mr. Morel, she's better."

When he took his face up from his warm, dead mother he went straight
downstairs and began blacking his boots.

There was a good deal to do, letters to write, and so on. The doctor
came and glanced at her, and sighed.

"Ay--poor thing!" he said, then turned away. "Well, call at the surgery
about six for the certificate."

The father came home from work at about four o'clock. He dragged
silently into the house and sat down. Minnie bustled to give him his
dinner. Tired, he laid his black arms on the table. There were swede
turnips for his dinner, which he liked. Paul wondered if he knew. It was
some time, and nobody had spoken. At last the son said:

"You noticed the blinds were down?"

Morel looked up.

"No," he said. "Why--has she gone?"

"Yes."

"When wor that?"

"About twelve this morning."

"H'm!"

The miner sat still for a moment, then began his dinner. It was as
if nothing had happened. He ate his turnips in silence. Afterwards he
washed and went upstairs to dress. The door of her room was shut.

"Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him when he came down.

"No," he said.

In a little while he went out. Annie went away, and Paul called on the
undertaker, the clergyman, the doctor, the registrar. It was a long
business. He got back at nearly eight o'clock. The undertaker was coming
soon to measure for the coffin. The house was empty except for her. He
took a candle and went upstairs.

The room was cold, that had been warm for so long. Flowers, bottles,
plates, all sick-room litter was taken away; everything was harsh and
austere. She lay raised on the bed, the sweep of the sheet from the
raised feet was like a clean curve of snow, so silent. She lay like a
maiden asleep. With his candle in his hand, he bent over her. She lay
like a girl asleep and dreaming of her love. The mouth was a little open
as if wondering from the suffering, but her face was young, her brow
clear and white as if life had never touched it. He looked again at the
eyebrows, at the small, winsome nose a bit on one side. She was young
again. Only the hair as it arched so beautifully from her temples was
mixed with silver, and the two simple plaits that lay on her shoulders
were filigree of silver and brown. She would wake up. She would lift her
eyelids. She was with him still. He bent and kissed her passionately.
But there was coldness against his mouth. He bit his lips with horror.
Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go. No! He stroked
the hair from her temples. That, too, was cold. He saw the mouth so dumb
and wondering at the hurt. Then he crouched on the floor, whispering to
her:

"Mother, mother!"

He was still with her when the undertakers came, young men who had
been to school with him. They touched her reverently, and in a quiet,
businesslike fashion. They did not look at her. He watched jealously. He
and Annie guarded her fiercely. They would not let anybody come to see
her, and the neighbours were offended.

After a while Paul went out of the house, and played cards at a
friend's. It was midnight when he got back. His father rose from the
couch as he entered, saying in a plaintive way:

"I thought tha wor niver comin', lad."

"I didn't think you'd sit up," said Paul.

His father looked so forlorn. Morel had been a man without fear--simply
nothing frightened him. Paul realised with a start that he had been
afraid to go to bed, alone in the house with his dead. He was sorry.

"I forgot you'd be alone, father," he said.

"Dost want owt to eat?" asked Morel.

"No."

"Sithee--I made thee a drop o' hot milk. Get it down thee; it's cold
enough for owt."

Paul drank it.

After a while Morel went to bed. He hurried past the closed door, and
left his own door open. Soon the son came upstairs also. He went in to
kiss her good-night, as usual. It was cold and dark. He wished they had
kept her fire burning. Still she dreamed her young dream. But she would
be cold.

"My dear!" he whispered. "My dear!"

And he did not kiss her, for fear she should be cold and strange to him.
It eased him she slept so beautifully. He shut her door softly, not to
wake her, and went to bed.

In the morning Morel summoned his courage, hearing Annie downstairs and
Paul coughing in the room across the landing. He opened her door, and
went into the darkened room. He saw the white uplifted form in the
twilight, but her he dared not see. Bewildered, too frightened to
possess any of his faculties, he got out of the room again and left her.
He never looked at her again. He had not seen her for months, because he
had not dared to look. And she looked like his young wife again.

"Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him sharply after breakfast.

"Yes," he said.

"And don't you think she looks nice?"

"Yes."

He went out of the house soon after. And all the time he seemed to be
creeping aside to avoid it.

Paul went about from place to place, doing the business of the death. He
met Clara in Nottingham, and they had tea together in a cafe, when they
were quite jolly again. She was infinitely relieved to find he did not
take it tragically.

Later, when the relatives began to come for the funeral, the affair
became public, and the children became social beings. They put
themselves aside. They buried her in a furious storm of rain and wind.
The wet clay glistened, all the white flowers were soaked. Annie
gripped his arm and leaned forward. Down below she saw a dark corner
of William's coffin. The oak box sank steadily. She was gone. The
rain poured in the grave. The procession of black, with its umbrellas
glistening, turned away. The cemetery was deserted under the drenching
cold rain.

Paul went home and busied himself supplying the guests with drinks.
His father sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Morel's relatives, "superior"
people, and wept, and said what a good lass she'd been, and how he'd
tried to do everything he could for her--everything. He had striven
all his life to do what he could for her, and he'd nothing to reproach
himself with. She was gone, but he'd done his best for her. He wiped his
eyes with his white handkerchief. He'd nothing to reproach himself for,
he repeated. All his life he'd done his best for her.

And that was how he tried to dismiss her. He never thought of her
personally. Everything deep in him he denied. Paul hated his father
for sitting sentimentalising over her. He knew he would do it in
the public-houses. For the real tragedy went on in Morel in spite of
himself. Sometimes, later, he came down from his afternoon sleep, white
and cowering.

"I HAVE been dreaming of thy mother," he said in a small voice.

"Have you, father? When I dream of her it's always just as she was when
she was well. I dream of her often, but it seems quite nice and natural,
as if nothing had altered."

But Morel crouched in front of the fire in terror.

The weeks passed half-real, not much pain, not much of anything, perhaps
a little relief, mostly a _nuit blanche_. Paul went restless from place
to place. For some months, since his mother had been worse, he had not
made love to Clara. She was, as it were, dumb to him, rather distant.
Dawes saw her very occasionally, but the two could not get an inch
across the great distance between them. The three of them were drifting
forward.

Dawes mended very slowly. He was in the convalescent home at Skegness at
Christmas, nearly well again. Paul went to the seaside for a few days.
His father was with Annie in Sheffield. Dawes came to Paul's lodgings.
His time in the home was up. The two men, between whom was such a big
reserve, seemed faithful to each other. Dawes depended on Morel now. He
knew Paul and Clara had practically separated.

Two days after Christmas Paul was to go back to Nottingham. The evening
before he sat with Dawes smoking before the fire.

"You know Clara's coming down for the day to-morrow?" he said.

The other man glanced at him.

"Yes, you told me," he replied.

Paul drank the remainder of his glass of whisky.

"I told the landlady your wife was coming," he said.

"Did you?" said Dawes, shrinking, but almost leaving himself in the
other's hands. He got up rather stiffly, and reached for Morel's glass.

"Let me fill you up," he said.

Paul jumped up.

"You sit still," he said.

But Dawes, with rather shaky hand, continued to mix the drink.

"Say when," he said.

"Thanks!" replied the other. "But you've no business to get up."

"It does me good, lad," replied Dawes. "I begin to think I'm right
again, then."

"You are about right, you know."

"I am, certainly I am," said Dawes, nodding to him.

"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 dominated 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, almost 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.

"We've both got plenty of life in us yet to make things fly," he said.

The eyes of the two men met. They exchanged one look. Having recognised
the stress of passion each in the other, they both drank their whisky.

"Yes, begod!" said Dawes, breathless.

There was a pause.

"And I don't see," said Paul, "why you shouldn't go on where you left
off."

"What--" said Dawes, suggestively.

"Yes--fit your old home together again."

Dawes hid his face and shook his head.

"Couldn't be done," he said, and looked up with an ironic smile.

"Why? Because you don't want?"

"Perhaps."

They smoked in silence. Dawes showed his teeth as he bit his pipe stem.

"You mean you don't want her?" asked Paul.

Dawes stared up at the picture with a caustic expression on his face.

"I hardly know," he said.

The smoke floated softly up.

"I believe she wants you," said Paul.

"Do you?" replied the other, soft, satirical, abstract.

"Yes. She never really hitched on to me--you were always there in the
background. That's why she wouldn't get a divorce."

Dawes continued to stare in a satirical fashion at the picture over the
mantelpiece.

"That's how women are with me," said Paul. "They want me like mad, but
they don't want to belong to me. And she BELONGED to you all the time. I
knew."

The triumphant male came up in Dawes. He showed his teeth more
distinctly.

"Perhaps I was a fool," he said.

"You were a big fool," said Morel.

"But perhaps even THEN you were a bigger fool," said Dawes.

There was a touch of triumph and malice in it.

"Do you think so?" said Paul.

They were silent for some time.

"At any rate, I'm clearing out to-morrow," said Morel.

"I see," answered Dawes.

Then they did not talk any more. The instinct to murder each other had
returned. They almost avoided each other.

They shared the same bedroom. When they retired Dawes seemed abstract,
thinking of something. He sat on the side of the bed in his shirt,
looking at his legs.

"Aren't you getting cold?" asked Morel.

"I was lookin' at these legs," replied the other.

"What's up with 'em? They look all right," replied Paul, from his bed.

"They look all right. But there's some water in 'em yet."

"And what about it?"

"Come and look."

Paul reluctantly got out of bed and went to look at the rather handsome
legs of the other man that were covered with glistening, dark gold hair.

"Look here," said Dawes, pointing to his shin. "Look at the water under
here."

"Where?" said Paul.

The man pressed in his finger-tips. They left little dents that filled
up slowly.

"It's nothing," said Paul.

"You feel," said Dawes.

Paul tried with his fingers. It made little dents.

"H'm!" he said.

"Rotten, isn't it?" said Dawes.

"Why? It's nothing much."

"You're not much of a man with water in your legs."

"I can't see as it makes any difference," said Morel. "I've got a weak
chest."

He returned to his own bed.

"I suppose the rest of me's all right," said Dawes, and he put out the
light.

In the morning it was raining. Morel packed his bag. The sea was grey
and shaggy and dismal. He seemed to be cutting himself off from life
more and more. It gave him a wicked pleasure to do it.

The two men were at the station. Clara stepped out of the train, and
came along the platform, very erect and coldly composed. She wore a long
coat and a tweed hat. Both men hated her for her composure. Paul shook
hands with her at the barrier. Dawes was leaning against the bookstall,
watching. His black overcoat was buttoned up to the chin because of the
rain. He was pale, with almost a touch of nobility in his quietness. He
came forward, limping slightly.

"You ought to look better than this," she said.

"Oh, I'm all right now."

The three stood at a loss. She kept the two men hesitating near her.

"Shall we go to the lodging straight off," said Paul, "or somewhere
else?"

"We may as well go home," said Dawes.

Paul walked on the outside of the pavement, then Dawes, then Clara. They
made polite conversation. The sitting-room faced the sea, whose tide,
grey and shaggy, hissed not far off.

Morel swung up the big arm-chair.

"Sit down, Jack," he said.

"I don't want that chair," said Dawes.

"Sit down!" Morel repeated.

Clara took off her things and laid them on the couch. She had a slight
air of resentment. Lifting her hair with her fingers, she sat down,
rather aloof and composed. Paul ran downstairs to speak to the landlady.

"I should think you're cold," said Dawes to his wife. "Come nearer to
the fire."

"Thank you, I'm quite warm," she answered.

She looked out of the window at the rain and at the sea.

"When are you going back?" she asked.

"Well, the rooms are taken until to-morrow, so he wants me to stop. He's
going back to-night."

"And then you're thinking of going to Sheffield?"

"Yes."

"Are you fit to start work?"

"I'm going to start."

"You've really got a place?"

"Yes--begin on Monday."

"You don't look fit."

"Why don't I?"

She looked again out of the window instead of answering.

"And have you got lodgings in Sheffield?"

"Yes."

Again she looked away out of the window. The panes were blurred with
streaming rain.

"And can you manage all right?" she asked.

"I s'd think so. I s'll have to!"

They were silent when Morel returned.

"I shall go by the four-twenty," he said as he entered.

Nobody answered.

"I wish you'd take your boots off," he said to Clara.

"There's a pair of slippers of mine."

"Thank you," she said. "They aren't wet."

He put the slippers near her feet. She left them there.

Morel sat down. Both the men seemed helpless, and each of them had a
rather hunted look. But Dawes now carried himself quietly, seemed to
yield himself, while Paul seemed to screw himself up. Clara thought she
had never seen him look so small and mean. He was as if trying to
get himself into the smallest possible compass. And as he went about
arranging, and as he sat talking, there seemed something false about him
and out of tune. Watching him unknown, she said to herself there was
no stability about him. He was fine in his way, passionate, and able to
give her drinks of pure life when he was in one mood. And now he looked
paltry and insignificant. There was nothing stable about him. Her
husband had more manly dignity. At any rate HE did not waft about with
any wind. There was something evanescent about Morel, she thought,
something shifting and false. He would never make sure ground for any
woman to stand on. She despised him rather for his shrinking together,
getting smaller. Her husband at least was manly, and when he was beaten
gave in. But this other would never own to being beaten. He would shift
round and round, prowl, get smaller. She despised him. And yet she
watched him rather than Dawes, and it seemed as if their three fates lay
in his hands. She hated him for it.

She seemed to understand better now about men, and what they could or
would do. She was less afraid of them, more sure of herself. That
they were not the small egoists she had imagined them made her more
comfortable. She had learned a good deal--almost as much as she wanted
to learn. Her cup had been full. It was still as full as she could
carry. On the whole, she would not be sorry when he was gone.

They had dinner, and sat eating nuts and drinking by the fire. Not
a serious word had been spoken. Yet Clara realised that Morel was
withdrawing from the circle, leaving her the option to stay with her
husband. It angered her. He was a mean fellow, after all, to take what
he wanted and then give her back. She did not remember that she herself
had had what she wanted, and really, at the bottom of her heart, wished
to be given back.

Paul felt crumpled up and lonely. His mother had really supported his
life. He had loved her; they two had, in fact, faced the world together.
Now she was gone, and for ever behind him was the gap in life, the tear
in the veil, through which his life seemed to drift slowly, as if he
were drawn towards death. He wanted someone of their own free initiative
to help him. The lesser things he began to let go from him, for fear of
this big thing, the lapse towards death, following in the wake of his
beloved. Clara could not stand for him to hold on to. She wanted him,
but not to understand him. He felt she wanted the man on top, not the
real him that was in trouble. That would be too much trouble to her; he
dared not give it her. She could not cope with him. It made him ashamed.
So, secretly ashamed because he was in such a mess, because his own hold
on life was so unsure, because nobody held him, feeling unsubstantial,
shadowy, as if he did not count for much in this concrete world, he drew
himself together smaller and smaller. He did not want to die; he would
not give in. But he was not afraid of death. If nobody would help, he
would go on alone.

Dawes had been driven to the extremity of life, until he was afraid. He
could go to the brink of death, he could lie on the edge and look in.
Then, cowed, afraid, he had to crawl back, and like a beggar take what
offered. There was a certain nobility in it. As Clara saw, he owned
himself beaten, and he wanted to be taken back whether or not. That she
could do for him. It was three o'clock.

"I am going by the four-twenty," said Paul again to Clara. "Are you
coming then or later?"

"I don't know," she said.

"I'm meeting my father in Nottingham at seven-fifteen," he said.

"Then," she answered, "I'll come later."

Dawes jerked suddenly, as if he had been held on a strain. He looked out
over the sea, but he saw nothing.

"There are one or two books in the corner," said Morel. "I've done with
'em."

At about four o'clock he went.

"I shall see you both later," he said, as he shook hands.

"I suppose so," said Dawes. "An' perhaps--one day--I s'll be able to pay
you back the money as--"

"I shall come for it, you'll see," laughed Paul. "I s'll be on the rocks
before I'm very much older."

"Ay--well--" said Dawes.

"Good-bye," he said to Clara.

"Good-bye," she said, giving him her hand. Then she glanced at him for
the last time, dumb and humble.

He was gone. Dawes and his wife sat down again.

"It's a nasty day for travelling," said the man.

"Yes," she answered.

They talked in a desultory fashion until it grew dark. The landlady
brought in the tea. Dawes drew up his chair to the table without being
invited, like a husband. Then he sat humbly waiting for his cup. She
served him as she would, like a wife, not consulting his wish.

After tea, as it drew near to six o'clock, he went to the window. All
was dark outside. The sea was roaring.

"It's raining yet," he said.

"Is it?" she answered.

"You won't go to-night, shall you?" he said, hesitating.

She did not answer. He waited.

"I shouldn't go in this rain," he said.

"Do you WANT me to stay?" she asked.

His hand as he held the dark curtain trembled.

"Yes," he said.

He remained with his back to her. She rose and went slowly to him. He
let go the curtain, turned, hesitating, towards her. She stood with
her hands behind her back, looking up at him in a heavy, inscrutable
fashion.

"Do you want me, Baxter?" she asked.

His voice was hoarse as he answered:

"Do you want to come back to me?"

She made a moaning noise, lifted her arms, and put them round his
neck, drawing him to her. He hid his face on her shoulder, holding her
clasped.

"Take me back!" she whispered, ecstatic. "Take me back, take me back!"
And she put her fingers through his fine, thin dark hair, as if she were
only semi-conscious. He tightened his grasp on her.

"Do you want me again?" he murmured, broken.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dr. Ansell tells Paul that Baxter Dawes is in the fever hospital in Sheffield, and Paul decides to visit him. Paul tells Dawes that he can recommend him a convalescent home in Seathorpe. He tells Clara that he has been to visit Dawes in the hospital, and she becomes upset and realizes that she has treated her husband badly. She goes to see him to try to make amends, but at first they do not get on well. Paul also visits Dawes a few times, and the two men begin to develop a sort of friendship. Paul does not spend much time with Clara now, because he is occupied with his mother's illness. Mrs. Morel gets gradually worse, and Paul spends much time caring for her. When Clara reminds him that it is her birthday, he takes her to the seashore, but spends most of the time talking about his mother and how he wishes that she would die. The next time he sees Dawes, Paul mentions that he has been with Clara, and this is the first mention the two men make of Clara. He tells Dawes that he will go abroad after his mother dies. Time passes, and Mrs. Morel stays the same. Miriam writes to Paul and he visits her. She kisses him, believing he will be comforted, but he does not want that kind of comfort from her and finally manages to get away. Paul and Annie share the nursing of their mother. They begin to feel as if they can no longer go on, and Paul decides to give her an overdose of morphia to put an end to all their suffering. He crushes all the pills they have into his mother' milk, and she drinks it obediently, believing it to be a new sleeping draught. She lasts through the night and finally dies the next morning. Dawes is now in a convalescent home, and Paul goes to see him again and suggests that he has plenty of life left in him and that he should try to get Clara back so that he can regain something of his former life. The next day, he and Clara bring Dawes to his lodging and Paul leaves them together.


prompt:
Chapter: DERELICT

CLARA went with her husband to Sheffield, and Paul scarcely saw her
again. Walter Morel seemed to have let all the trouble go over him, and
there he was, crawling about on the mud of it, just the same. There was
scarcely any bond between father and son, save that each felt he must
not let the other go in any actual want. As there was no one to keep on
the home, and as they could neither of them bear the emptiness of the
house, Paul took lodgings in Nottingham, and Morel went to live with a
friendly family in Bestwood.

Everything seemed to have gone smash for the young man. He could not
paint. The picture he finished on the day of his mother's death--one
that satisfied him--was the last thing he did. At work there was no
Clara. When he came home he could not take up his brushes again. There
was nothing left.

So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking,
knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to
barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in
his eyes, as if he were hunting something.

Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why
people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight.
There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead
of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and
he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not
understand.

He was most himself when he was alone, or working hard and mechanically
at the factory. In the latter case there was pure forgetfulness, when he
lapsed from consciousness. But it had to come to an end. It hurt him so,
that things had lost their reality. The first snowdrops came. He saw the
tiny drop-pearls among the grey. They would have given him the liveliest
emotion at one time. Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean
anything. In a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and
just the space would be, where they had been. Tall, brilliant tram-cars
ran along the street at night. It seemed almost a wonder they should
trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. "Why trouble to go tilting
down to Trent Bridges?" he asked of the big trams. It seemed they just
as well might NOT be as be.

The realest thing was the thick darkness at night. That seemed to him
whole and comprehensible and restful. He could leave himself to it.
Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew along down the
pavement. He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists, a flame of agony
going over him. And he saw again the sick-room, his mother, her eyes.
Unconsciously he had been with her, in her company. The swift hop of
the paper reminded him she was gone. But he had been with her. He wanted
everything to stand still, so that he could be with her again.

The days passed, the weeks. But everything seemed to have fused, gone
into a conglomerated mass. He could not tell one day from another, one
week from another, hardly one place from another. Nothing was distinct
or distinguishable. Often he lost himself for an hour at a time, could
not remember what he had done.

One evening he came home late to his lodging. The fire was burning low;
everybody was in bed. He threw on some more coal, glanced at the table,
and decided he wanted no supper. Then he sat down in the arm-chair. It
was perfectly still. He did not know anything, yet he saw the dim
smoke wavering up the chimney. Presently two mice came out, cautiously,
nibbling the fallen crumbs. He watched them as it were from a long
way off. The church clock struck two. Far away he could hear the sharp
clinking of the trucks on the railway. No, it was not they that were far
away. They were there in their places. But where was he himself?

The time passed. The two mice, careering wildly, scampered cheekily over
his slippers. He had not moved a muscle. He did not want to move. He
was not thinking of anything. It was easier so. There was no wrench of
knowing anything. Then, from time to time, some other consciousness,
working mechanically, flashed into sharp phrases.

"What am I doing?"

And out of the semi-intoxicated trance came the answer:

"Destroying myself."

Then a dull, live feeling, gone in an instant, told him that it was
wrong. After a while, suddenly came the question:

"Why wrong?"

Again there was no answer, but a stroke of hot stubbornness inside his
chest resisted his own annihilation.

There was a sound of a heavy cart clanking down the road. Suddenly
the electric light went out; there was a bruising thud in the
penny-in-the-slot meter. He did not stir, but sat gazing in front of
him. Only the mice had scuttled, and the fire glowed red in the dark
room.

Then, quite mechanically and more distinctly, the conversation began
again inside him.

"She's dead. What was it all for--her struggle?"

That was his despair wanting to go after her.

"You're alive."

"She's not."

"She is--in you."

Suddenly he felt tired with the burden of it.

"You've got to keep alive for her sake," said his will in him.

Something felt sulky, as if it would not rouse.

"You've got to carry forward her living, and what she had done, go on
with it."

But he did not want to. He wanted to give up.

"But you can go on with your painting," said the will in him. "Or else
you can beget children. They both carry on her effort."

"Painting is not living."

"Then live."

"Marry whom?" came the sulky question.

"As best you can."

"Miriam?"

But he did not trust that.

He rose suddenly, went straight to bed. When he got inside his bedroom
and closed the door, he stood with clenched fist.

"Mater, my dear--" he began, with the whole force of his soul. Then he
stopped. He would not say it. He would not admit that he wanted to die,
to have done. He would not own that life had beaten him, or that death
had beaten him. Going straight to bed, he slept at once, abandoning
himself to the sleep.

So the weeks went on. Always alone, his soul oscillated, first on the
side of death, then on the side of life, doggedly. The real agony
was that he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to say, and WAS
nothing himself. Sometimes he ran down the streets as if he were mad:
sometimes he was mad; things weren't there, things were there. It made
him pant. Sometimes he stood before the bar of the public-house where he
called for a drink. Everything suddenly stood back away from him. He
saw the face of the barmaid, the gobbling drinkers, his own glass on the
slopped, mahogany board, in the distance. There was something between
him and them. He could not get into touch. He did not want them; he did
not want his drink. Turning abruptly, he went out. On the threshold he
stood and looked at the lighted street. But he was not of it or in it.
Something separated him. Everything went on there below those lamps,
shut 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 forward 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--perhaps--?

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 lower 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 feeling
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 nearly touch her.
She did not know he was there. He saw the brown, humble nape of her neck
under its black curls. He would leave himself to her. She was better and
bigger than he. He would depend on her.

She went wandering, in her blind way, through the little throngs of
people outside the church. She always looked so lost and out of place
among people. He went forward and put his hand on her arm. She started
violently. Her great brown eyes dilated in fear, then went questioning
at the sight of him. He shrank slightly from her.

"I didn't know--" she faltered.

"Nor I," he said.

He looked away. His sudden, flaring hope sank again.

"What are you doing in town?" he asked.

"I'm staying at Cousin Anne's."

"Ha! For long?"

"No; only till to-morrow."

"Must you go straight home?"

She looked at him, then hid her face under her hat-brim.

"No," she said--"no; it's not necessary."

He turned away, and she went with him. They threaded through the throng
of church people. The organ was still sounding in St. Mary's. Dark
figures came through the lighted doors; people were coming down the
steps. The large coloured windows glowed up in the night. The church was
like a great lantern suspended. They went down Hollow Stone, and he took
the car for the Bridges.

"You will just have supper with me," he said: "then I'll bring you
back."

"Very well," she replied, low and husky.

They scarcely spoke while they were on the car. The Trent ran dark and
full under the bridge. Away towards Colwick all was black night. He
lived down Holme Road, on the naked edge of the town, facing across the
river meadows towards Sneinton Hermitage and the steep scrap of Colwick
Wood. The floods were out. The silent water and the darkness spread away
on their left. Almost afraid, they hurried along by the houses.

Supper was laid. He swung the curtain over the window. There was a bowl
of freesias and scarlet anemones on the table. She bent to them. Still
touching them with her finger-tips, she looked up at him, saying:

"Aren't they beautiful?"

"Yes," he said. "What will you drink--coffee?"

"I should like it," she said.

"Then excuse me a moment."

He went out to the kitchen.

Miriam took off her things and looked round. It was a bare, severe
room. Her photo, Clara's, Annie's, were on the wall. She looked on
the drawing-board to see what he was doing. There were only a few
meaningless lines. She looked to see what books he was reading.
Evidently just an ordinary novel. The letters in the rack she saw
were from Annie, Arthur, and from some man or other she did not know.
Everything he had touched, everything that was in the least personal to
him, she examined with lingering absorption. He had been gone from her
for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was
now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her
feel rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless.

She was curiously examining a sketch-book when he returned with the
coffee.

"There's nothing new in it," he said, "and nothing very interesting."

He put down the tray, and went to look over her shoulder. She turned the
pages slowly, intent on examining everything.

"H'm!" he said, as she paused at a sketch. "I'd forgotten that. It's not
bad, is it?"

"No," she said. "I don't quite understand it."

He took the book from her and went through it. Again he made a curious
sound of surprise and pleasure.

"There's some not bad stuff in there," he said.

"Not at all bad," she answered gravely.

He felt again her interest in his work. Or was it for himself? Why was
she always most interested in him as he appeared in his work?

They sat down to supper.

"By the way," he said, "didn't I hear something about your earning your
own living?"

"Yes," she replied, bowing her dark head over her cup. "And what of it?"

"I'm merely going to the farming college at Broughton for three months,
and I shall probably be kept on as a teacher there."

"I say--that sounds all right for you! You always wanted to be
independent."

"Yes.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I only knew last week."

"But I heard a month ago," he said.

"Yes; but nothing was settled then."

"I should have thought," he said, "you'd have told me you were trying."

She ate her food in the deliberate, constrained way, almost as if she
recoiled a little from doing anything so publicly, that he knew so well.

"I suppose you're glad," he said.

"Very glad."

"Yes--it will be something."

He was rather disappointed.

"I think it will be a great deal," she said, almost haughtily,
resentfully.

He laughed shortly.

"Why do you think it won't?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't think it won't be a great deal. Only you'll find earning
your own living isn't everything."

"No," she said, swallowing with difficulty; "I don't suppose it is."

"I suppose work CAN be nearly everything to a man," he said, "though it
isn't to me. But a woman only works with a part of herself. The real and
vital part is covered up."

"But a man can give ALL himself to work?" she asked.

"Yes, practically."

"And a woman only the unimportant part of herself?"

"That's it."

She looked up at him, and her eyes dilated with anger.

"Then," she said, "if it's true, it's a great shame."

"It is. But I don't know everything," he answered.

After supper they drew up to the fire. He swung her a chair facing him,
and they sat down. She was wearing a dress of dark claret colour, that
suited her dark complexion and her large features. Still, the curls
were fine and free, but her face was much older, the brown throat much
thinner. She seemed old to him, older than Clara. Her bloom of youth had
quickly gone. A sort of stiffness, almost of woodenness, had come upon
her. She meditated a little while, then looked at him.

"And how are things with you?" she asked.

"About all right," he answered.

She looked at him, waiting.

"Nay," she said, very low.

Her brown, nervous hands were clasped over her knee. They had still the
lack of confidence or repose, the almost hysterical look. He winced as
he saw them. Then he laughed mirthlessly. She put her fingers between
her lips. His slim, black, tortured body lay quite still in the chair.
She suddenly took her finger from her mouth and looked at him.

"And you have broken off with Clara?"

"Yes."

His body lay like an abandoned thing, strewn in the chair.

"You know," she said, "I think we ought to be married."

He opened his eyes for the first time since many months, and attended to
her with respect.

"Why?" he said.

"See," she said, "how you waste yourself! You might be ill, you might
die, and I never know--be no more then than if I had never known you."

"And if we married?" he asked.

"At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and being a prey to
other women--like--like Clara."

"A prey?" he repeated, smiling.

She bowed her head in silence. He lay feeling his despair come up again.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly, "that marriage would be much good."

"I only think of you," she replied.

"I know you do. But--you love me so much, you want to put me in your
pocket. And I should die there smothered."

She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips, while the
bitterness surged up in her heart.

"And what will you do otherwise?" she asked.

"I don't know--go on, I suppose. Perhaps I shall soon go abroad."

The despairing doggedness in his tone made her go on her knees on the
rug before the fire, very near to him. There she crouched as if she were
crushed by something, and could not raise her head. His hands lay quite
inert on the arms of his chair. She was aware of them. She felt that
now he lay at her mercy. If she could rise, take him, put her arms round
him, and say, "You are mine," then he would leave himself to her.
But dare she? She could easily sacrifice herself. But dare she assert
herself? She was aware of his dark-clothed, slender body, that seemed
one stroke of life, sprawled in the chair close to her. But no; she
dared not put her arms round it, take it up, and say, "It is mine, this
body. Leave it to me." And she wanted to. It called to all her woman's
instinct. But she crouched, and dared not. She was afraid he would
not let her. She was afraid it was too much. It lay there, his body,
abandoned. She knew she ought to take it up and claim it, and claim
every right to it. But--could she do it? Her impotence before him,
before the strong demand of some unknown thing in him, was her
extremity. Her hands fluttered; she half-lifted her head. Her eyes,
shuddering, appealing, gone, almost distracted, pleaded to him suddenly.
His heart caught with pity. He took her hands, drew her to him, and
comforted her.

"Will you have me, to marry me?" he said very low.

Oh, why did not he take her? Her very soul belonged to him. Why would he
not take what was his? She had borne so long the cruelty of belonging to
him and not being claimed by him. Now he was straining her again. It
was too much for her. She drew back her head, held his face between her
hands, and looked him in the eyes. No, he was hard. He wanted something
else. She pleaded to him with all her love not to make it her choice.
She could not cope with it, with him, she knew not with what. But it
strained her till she felt she would break.

"Do you want it?" she asked, very gravely.

"Not much," he replied, with pain.

She turned her face aside; then, raising herself with dignity, she took
his head to her bosom, and rocked him softly. She was not to have him,
then! So she could comfort him. She put her fingers through his hair.
For her, the anguished sweetness of self-sacrifice. For him, the hate
and misery of another failure. He could not bear it--that breast which
was warm and which cradled him without taking the burden of him. So much
he wanted to rest on her that the feint of rest only tortured him. He
drew away.

"And without marriage we can do nothing?" he asked.

His mouth was lifted from his teeth with pain. She put her little finger
between her lips.

"No," she said, low and like the toll of a bell. "No, I think not."

It was the end then between them. She could not take him and relieve him
of the responsibility of himself. She could only sacrifice herself to
him--sacrifice herself every day, gladly. And that he did not want. He
wanted her to hold him and say, with joy and authority: "Stop all this
restlessness and beating against death. You are mine for a mate." She
had not the strength. Or was it a mate she wanted? or did she want a
Christ in him?

He felt, in leaving her, he was defrauding her of life. But he knew
that, in staying, stilling the inner, desperate man, he was denying his
own life. And he did not hope to give life to her by denying his own.

She sat very quiet. He lit a cigarette. The smoke went up from it,
wavering. He was thinking of his mother, and had forgotten Miriam. She
suddenly looked at him. Her bitterness came surging up. Her sacrifice,
then, was useless. He lay there aloof, careless about her. Suddenly
she saw again his lack of religion, his restless instability. He would
destroy himself like a perverse child. Well, then, he would!

"I think I must go," she said softly.

By her tone he knew she was despising him. He rose quietly.

"I'll come along with you," he answered.

She stood before the mirror pinning on her hat. How bitter, how
unutterably bitter, it made her that he rejected her sacrifice! Life
ahead looked dead, as if the glow were gone out. She bowed her face over
the flowers--the freesias so sweet and spring-like, the scarlet anemones
flaunting over the table. It was like him to have those flowers.

He moved about the room with a certain sureness of touch, swift and
relentless and quiet. She knew she could not cope with him. He would
escape like a weasel out of her hands. Yet without him her life would
trail on lifeless. Brooding, she touched the flowers.

"Have them!" he said; and he took them out of the jar, dripping as they
were, and went quickly into the kitchen. She waited for him, took the
flowers, and they went out together, he talking, she feeling dead.

She was going from him now. In her misery she leaned against him as they
sat on the car. He was unresponsive. Where would he go? What would
be the end of him? She could not bear it, the vacant feeling where he
should be. He was so foolish, so wasteful, never at peace with himself.
And now where would he go? And what did he care that he wasted her? He
had no religion; it was all for the moment's attraction that he cared,
nothing else, nothing deeper. Well, she would wait and see how it turned
out with him. When he had had enough he would give in and come to her.

He shook hands and left her at the door of her cousin's house. When he
turned away he felt the last hold for him had gone. The town, as he sat
upon the car, stretched away over the bay of railway, a level fume of
lights. Beyond the town the country, little smouldering spots for
more towns--the sea--the night--on and on! And he had no place in it!
Whatever spot he stood on, there he stood alone. From his breast,
from his mouth, sprang the endless space, and it was there behind him,
everywhere. The people hurrying along the streets offered no obstruction
to the void in which he found himself. They were small shadows whose
footsteps and voices could be heard, but in each of them the same night,
the same silence. He got off the car. In the country all was dead
still. Little stars shone high up; little stars spread far away in the
flood-waters, a firmament below. Everywhere the vastness and terror of
the immense night which is roused and stirred for a brief while by
the day, but which returns, and will remain at last eternal, holding
everything in its silence and its living gloom. There was no Time, only
Space. Who could say his mother had lived and did not live? She had been
in one place, and was in another; that was all. And his soul could not
leave her, wherever she was. Now she was gone abroad into the night, and
he was with her still. They were together. But yet there was his body,
his chest, that leaned against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar.
They seemed something. Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh,
less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it.
On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny
a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be
extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond
stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round
for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness
that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and
himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing.

"Mother!" he whispered--"mother!"

She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And
she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him
alongside with her.

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the
city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He
would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked
towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.

THE END

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Clara goes back to Sheffield with her husband, and Paul is left alone with his father. There is no point in keeping their house any longer, so they each take lodgings nearby. Paul is lost without his mother. He can no longer paint, and he puts all of his energy into his work at the factory. He has debates within himself, telling himself that he must stay alive for his mother's sake. However, he wants to give up. One Sunday evening, however, he sees Miriam at the Unitarian Church. He asks her to have supper with him quickly and she agrees. She tells him that she has been going to a farming college and will probably be kept on as a teacher there. She says that she thinks they should be married, and he says he's not sure that would be much good. He says he does not want it very much, and so she gives up. That is the end between them. She leaves him, realizing that "his soul could not leave her, wherever she was." Paul, alone, yearns for his mother and considers following her into death. However, he decides to leave off thinking about suicide, and instead walks toward the town.


prompt:
Chapter: I. The Period

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way--
in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of
its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for
evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the
throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with
a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer
than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes,
that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period,
as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth
blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had
heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were
made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane
ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its
messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally
deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the
earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People,
from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange
to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any
communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane
brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her
sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down
hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her
Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane
achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue
torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not
kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks
which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty
yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and
Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death,
already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into
boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in
it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses
of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were
sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with
rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which
the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of
the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work
unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about
with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion
that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to
justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and
highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;
families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing
their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman
in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and
challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of
"the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the
mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and
then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the
failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace;
that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand
and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the
illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London
gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law
fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball;
thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at
Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search
for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the
musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences
much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy
and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing
up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on
Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the
hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of
Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer,
and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of
sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close
upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded,
those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the
fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights
with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred
and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small
creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the
roads that lay before them.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Period The year is 1775 and the settings are London and Paris, two lands ruled by monarchs. England is on the brink of the American Revolution. The French Revolution seems inevitable, with trees waiting to be converted to guillotines and the spirit of rebellion silently infecting the countryside. Similar disturbances are common across England, with highway robberies on the increase and thievery reaching all the way into high society. Executions are common for both minor and major offenses