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spoke. He was very uncomfortable. For some minutes he sat pretending to read a piece of paper he found on the table. Then—
“I forgot that bread, mother,” he said.
There was no answer from either woman.
“Well,” he said, “it's only twopence ha'penny. I can pay you for that.”
Being angry, he put three pennies on the table and slid them towards his mother. She turned away her head. Her mouth was shut tightly.
“Yes,” said Annie, “you don't know how badly my mother is!”
The girl sat staring glumly into the fire.
“Why is she badly?” asked Paul, in his overbearing way.
“Well!” said Annie. “She could scarcely get home.”
He looked closely at his mother. She looked ill.
“WHY could you scarcely get home?” he asked her, still sharply. She would not answer.
“I found her as white as a sheet sitting here,” said Annie, with a suggestion of tears in her voice.
“Well, WHY?” insisted Paul. His brows were knitting, his eyes dilating passionately.
“It was enough to upset anybody,” said Mrs. Morel, “hugging those parcels—meat, and green-groceries, and a pair of curtains—”
“Well, why DID you hug them; you needn't have done.”
“Then who would?”
“Let Annie fetch the meat.”
“Yes, and I WOULD fetch the meat, but how was I to know. You were off with Miriam, instead of being in when my mother came.”
“And what was the matter with you?” asked Paul of his mother.
“I suppose it's my heart,” she replied. Certainly she looked bluish round the mouth.
“And have you felt it before?”
“Yes—often enough.”
“Then why haven't you told me?—and why haven't you seen a doctor?”
Mrs. Morel shifted in her chair, angry with him for his hectoring.
“You'd never notice anything,” said Annie. “You're too eager to be off with Miriam.”
“Oh, am I—and any worse than you with Leonard?”
“I was in at a quarter to ten.”
There was silence in the room for a time.
“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly, “that she wouldn't have occupied you so entirely as to burn a whole ovenful of bread.”
“Beatrice was here as well as she.”
“Very likely. But we know why the bread is spoilt.”
“Why?” he flashed.
“Because you were engrossed with Miriam,” replied Mrs. Morel hotly.
“Oh, very well—then it was NOT!” he replied angrily.
He was distressed and wretched. Seizing a paper, he began to read. Annie, her blouse unfastened, her long ropes of hair twisted into a plait, went up to bed, bidding him a very curt good-night.
Paul sat pretending to read. He knew his mother wanted to upbraid him. He also wanted to know what had made her ill, for he was troubled. So, instead of running away to bed, as he would have liked to do, he sat and waited. There was a tense silence. The clock ticked loudly.
“You'd better go to bed before your father comes in,” said the mother harshly. “And if you're going to have anything to eat, you'd better get it.”
“I don't want anything.”
It was his mother's custom to bring him some trifle for supper on Friday night, the night of luxury for the colliers. He was too angry to go and find it in the pantry this night. This insulted her.
“If I WANTED you to go to Selby on Friday night, I can imagine the scene,” said Mrs. Morel. “But you're never too tired to go if SHE will come for you. Nay, you neither want to eat nor drink then.”
“I can't let her go alone.”
“Can't you? And why does she come?”
“Not because I ask her.”
“She doesn't come without you want her—”
“Well, what if I DO want her—” he replied.
“Why, nothing, if it was sensible or reasonable. But to go trapseing up there miles and miles in the mud, coming home at midnight, and got to go to Nottingham in the morning—”
“If I hadn't, you'd be just the same.”
“Yes, I should, because there's no sense in it. Is she so fascinating that you must follow her all that way?” Mrs. Morel was bitterly sarcastic. She sat still, with averted face, stroking with a rhythmic, jerked movement, the black sateen of her apron. It was a movement that hurt Paul to see.
“I do like her,” he said, “but—”
“LIKE her!” said Mrs. Morel, in the same biting tones. “It seems to me you like nothing and nobody else. There's neither Annie, nor me, nor anyone now for you.”
“What nonsense, mother—you know I don't love her—I—I tell you I DON'T love her—she doesn't even walk with my arm, because I don't want her to.”
“Then why do you fly to her so often?”
“I DO like to talk to her—I never said I didn't. But I DON'T love her.”
“Is there nobody else to talk to?”
“Not about the things we talk of. There's a lot of things that you're not interested in, that—”
“What things?”
Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant.
“Why—painting—and books. YOU don't care about Herbert Spencer.”
“No,” was the sad reply. “And YOU won't at my age.”
“Well, but I do now—and Miriam does—”
“And how do you know,” Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly, “that I shouldn't. Do you ever try me!”
“But you don't, mother, you know you don't care whether a picture's decorative or not; you don't care what MANNER it is in.”
“How do you know I don't care? Do you ever try me? Do you ever talk to me about these things, to try?”
“But it's not that that matters to you, mother, you know t's not.”
“What is it, then—what is it, then, that matters to me?” she flashed. He knitted his brows with pain.
“You're old, mother, and we're young.”
He only meant that the interests of HER age were not the interests of his. But he realised the moment he had spoken that he had said the wrong thing.
“Yes, I know it well—I am old. And therefore I may stand aside; I have nothing more to do with you. You only want me to wait on you—the rest is for Miriam.”
He could not bear it. Instinctively he realised that he was life to her. And, after all, she was the chief thing to him, the only supreme thing.
“You know it isn't, mother, you know it isn't!”
She was moved to pity by his cry.
“It looks a great deal like it,” she said, half putting aside her despair.
“No, mother—I really DON'T love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you.”