Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

"I shall be with you just the same."
"We'll see, my boy, we'll see."
"But you don't want me to marry?"
"I shouldn't like to think of you going through your life
without anybody to care for you and do--no."
"And you think I ought to marry?"
"Sooner or later every man ought."
"But you'd rather it were later."
"It would be hard--and very hard. It's as they say:
"'A son's my son till he takes him a wife,
But my daughter's my daughter the whole of her life.'"
"And you think I'd let a wife take me from you?"
"Well, you wouldn't ask her to marry your mother as well as you,"
Mrs. Morel smiled.
"She could do what she liked; she wouldn't have to interfere."
"She wouldn't--till she'd got you--and then you'd see."
"I never will see. I'll never marry while I've got you--I won't."
"But I shouldn't like to leave you with nobody, my boy,"
she cried.
"You're not going to leave me. What are you? Fifty-three! I'll
give you till seventy-five. There you are, I'm fat and forty-four.
Then I'll marry a staid body. See!"
His mother sat and laughed.
"Go to bed," she said--"go to bed."
"And we'll have a pretty house, you and me, and a servant,
and it'll be just all right. I s'll perhaps be rich with my painting."
"Will you go to bed!"
"And then you s'll have a pony-carriage. See yourself--a little
Queen Victoria trotting round."
"I tell you to go to bed," she laughed.
He kissed her and went. His plans for the future were always
the same.
Mrs. Morel sat brooding--about her daughter, about Paul,
about Arthur. She fretted at losing Annie. The family was very
closely bound. And she felt she MUST live now, to be with her
children. Life was so rich for her. Paul wanted her, and so did Arthur.
Arthur never knew how deeply he loved her. He was a creature
of the moment. Never yet had he been forced to realise himself.
The army had disciplined his body, but not his soul. He was in
perfect health and very handsome. His dark, vigorous hair sat close
to his smallish head. There was something childish about his nose,
something almost girlish about his dark blue eyes. But he had the fun