Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

Therefore he was soon visiting and staying in houses of men who,
in Bestwood, would have looked down on the unapproachable bank manager,
and would merely have called indifferently on the Rector. So he began
to fancy himself as a great gun. He was, indeed, rather surprised
at the ease with which he became a gentleman.
His mother was glad, he seemed so pleased. And his lodging
in Walthamstow was so dreary. But now there seemed to come a kind
of fever into the young man's letters. He was unsettled by all
the change, he did not stand firm on his own feet, but seemed to spin
rather giddily on the quick current of the new life. His mother was
anxious for him. She could feel him losing himself. He had danced
and gone to the theatre, boated on the river, been out with friends;
and she knew he sat up afterwards in his cold bedroom grinding away
at Latin, because he intended to get on in his office, and in the
law as much as he could. He never sent his mother any money now.
It was all taken, the little he had, for his own life. And she
did not want any, except sometimes, when she was in a tight corner,
and when ten shillings would have saved her much worry. She still
dreamed of William, and of what he would do, with herself behind him.
Never for a minute would she admit to herself how heavy and anxious
her heart was because of him.
Also he talked a good deal now of a girl he had met at a dance,
a handsome brunette, quite young, and a lady, after whom the men
were running thick and fast.
"I wonder if you would run, my boy," his mother wrote
to him, "unless you saw all the other men chasing her too.
You feel safe enough and vain enough in a crowd. But take care,
and see how you feel when you find yourself alone, and in triumph."
William resented these things, and continued the chase. He had
taken the girl on the river. "If you saw her, mother, you would
know how I feel. Tall and elegant, with the clearest of clear,
transparent olive complexions, hair as black as jet, and such
grey eyes--bright, mocking, like lights on water at night.
It is all very well to be a bit satirical till you see her.
And she dresses as well as any woman in London. I tell you,
your son doesn't half put his head up when she goes walking down
Piccadilly with him."
Mrs. Morel wondered, in her heart, if her son did not go
walking down Piccadilly with an elegant figure and fine clothes,
rather than with a woman who was near to him. But she congratulated
him in her doubtful fashion. And, as she stood over the washing-tub,
the mother brooded over her son. She saw him saddled with an
elegant and expensive wife, earning little money, dragging along
and getting draggled in some small, ugly house in a suburb.
"But there," she told herself, "I am very likely a silly--meeting
trouble halfway." Nevertheless, the load of anxiety scarcely ever
left her heart, lest William should do the wrong thing by himself.
Presently, Paul was bidden call upon Thomas Jordan,
Manufacturer of Surgical Appliances, at 21, Spaniel Row, Nottingham.
Mrs. Morel was all joy.