Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

he hurried to get away from it.
Morel gradually came to himself. He knew where he was and
what had happened, but he did not want to move. He lay still,
with tiny bits of snow tickling his face. It was pleasant
to lie quite, quite still. The time passed. It was the bits
of snow that kept rousing him when he did not want to be roused.
At last his will clicked into action.
"I mustn't lie here," he said; "it's silly."
But still he did not move.
"I said I was going to get up," he repeated. "Why don't I?"
And still it was some time before he had sufficiently pulled
himself together to stir; then gradually he got up. Pain made him
sick and dazed, but his brain was clear. Reeling, he groped for
his coats and got them on, buttoning his overcoat up to his ears.
It was some time before he found his cap. He did not know whether his
face was still bleeding. Walking blindly, every step making him sick
with pain, he went back to the pond and washed his face and hands.
The icy water hurt, but helped to bring him back to himself.
He crawled back up the hill to the tram. He wanted to get to his
mother--he must get to his mother--that was his blind intention.
He covered his face as much as he could, and struggled sickly along.
Continually the ground seemed to fall away from him as he walked,
and he felt himself dropping with a sickening feeling into space; so,
like a nightmare, he got through with the journey home.
Everybody was in bed. He looked at himself. His face was
discoloured and smeared with blood, almost like a dead man's face.
He washed it, and went to bed. The night went by in delirium.
In the morning he found his mother looking at him. Her blue eyes--they
were all he wanted to see. She was there; he was in her hands.
"It's not much, mother," he said. "It was Baxter Dawes."
"Tell me where it hurts you," she said quietly.
"I don't know--my shoulder. Say it was a bicycle accident, mother."
He could not move his arm. Presently Minnie, the little servant,
came upstairs with some tea.
"Your mother's nearly frightened me out of my wits--fainted away,"
she said.