Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

your language."
Her face seemed to shine again with joy and peace during
the service. And all the time he was wanting to rage and smash
things and cry.
Afterwards, when they were leaning over the wall, looking at
the town below, he blurted suddenly:
"Why can't a man have a YOUNG mother? What is she old for?"
"Well," his mother laughed, "she can scarcely help it."
"And why wasn't I the oldest son? Look--they say the young
ones have the advantage--but look, THEY had the young mother.
You should have had me for your eldest son."
"I didn't arrange it," she remonstrated. "Come to consider,
you're as much to blame as me."
He turned on her, white, his eyes furious.
"What are you old for!" he said, mad with his impotence.
"WHY can't you walk? WHY can't you come with me to places?"
"At one time," she replied, "I could have run up that hill
a good deal better than you."
"What's the good of that to ME?" he cried, hitting his fist
on the wall. Then he became plaintive. "It's too bad of you
to be ill. Little, it is--"
"Ill!" she cried. "I'm a bit old, and you'll have to put up
with it, that's all."
They were quiet. But it was as much as they could bear. They got
jolly again over tea. As they sat by Brayford, watching the boats,
he told her about Clara. His mother asked him innumerable questions.
"Then who does she live with?"
"With her mother, on Bluebell Hill."
"And have they enough to keep them?"
"I don't think so. I think they do lace work."
"And wherein lies her charm, my boy?"
"I don't know that she's charming, mother. But she's nice.
And she seems straight, you know--not a bit deep, not a bit."
"But she's a good deal older than you."
"She's thirty, I'm going on twenty-three."
"You haven't told me what you like her for."
"Because I don't know--a sort of defiant way she's got--a sort