He felt as if his life were being destroyed, piece by piece, within him.

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 mother’s 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.