By midday his mother was dead. The word met him at the pit-mouth. As he had
known, inwardly, it was not a shock to him, and yet he trembled. He went home
quite calmly, feeling only heavy in his breathing.
Miss Louisa was still at the house. She had seen to everything possible. Very
succinctly, she informed him of what he needed to know. But there was one point
of anxiety for her.
“You did half expect it—it’s not come as a blow to
you?” she asked, looking up at him. Her eyes were dark and calm and
searching. She too felt lost. He was so dark and inchoate.
“I suppose—yes,” he said stupidly. He looked aside, unable to
endure her eyes on him.
“I could not bear to think you might not have guessed,” she said.
He did not answer.
He felt it a great strain to have her near him at this time. He wanted to be
alone. As soon as the relatives began to arrive, Louisa departed and came no
more. While everything was arranging, and a crowd was in the house, whilst he
had business to settle, he went well enough, with only those uncontrollable
paroxysms of grief. For the rest, he was superficial. By himself, he endured
the fierce, almost insane bursts of grief which passed again and left him calm,
almost clear, just wondering. He had not known before that everything could
break down, that he himself could break down, and all be a great chaos, very
vast and wonderful. It seemed as if life in him had burst its bounds, and he
was lost in a great, bewildering flood, immense and unpeopled. He himself was
broken and spilled out amid it all. He could only breathe panting in silence.
Then the anguish came on again.
When all the people had gone from the Quarry Cottage, leaving the young man
alone with an elderly housekeeper, then the long trial began. The snow had
thawed and frozen, a fresh fall had whitened the grey, this then began to thaw.
The world was a place of loose grey slosh. Alfred had nothing to do in the
evenings. He was a man whose life had been filled up with small activities.
Without knowing it, he had been centralized, polarized in his mother. It was
she who had kept him. Even now, when the old housekeeper had left him, he might
still have gone on in his old way. But the force and balance of his life was
lacking. He sat pretending to read, all the time holding his fists clenched,
and holding himself in, enduring he did not know what. He walked the black and
sodden miles of field-paths, till he was tired out: but all this was only
running away from whence he must return. At work he was all right. If it had
been summer he might have escaped by working in the garden till bedtime. But
now, there was no escape, no relief, no help. He, perhaps, was made for action
rather than for understanding; for doing than for being. He was shocked out of
his activities, like a swimmer who forgets to swim.
For a week, he had the force to endure this suffocation and struggle, then he
began to get exhausted, and knew it must come out. The instinct of
self-preservation became strongest. But there was the question: Where was he to
go? The public-house really meant nothing to him, it was no good going there.
He began to think of emigration. In another country he would be all right. He
wrote to the emigration offices.
On the Sunday after the funeral, when all the Durant people had attended
church, Alfred had seen Miss Louisa, impassive and reserved, sitting with Miss
Mary, who was proud and very distant, and with the other Lindleys, who were
people removed. Alfred saw them as people remote. He did not think about it.
They had nothing to do with his life. After service Louisa had come to him and
shaken hands.
“My sister would like you to come to supper one evening, if you would be
so good.”
He looked at Miss Mary, who bowed. Out of kindness, Mary had proposed this to
Louisa, disapproving of herself even as she did so. But she did not examine
herself closely.
“Yes,” said Durant awkwardly, “I’ll come if you want
me.” But he vaguely felt that it was misplaced.
“You’ll come tomorrow evening, then, about half-past six.”
He went. Miss Louisa was very kind to him. There could be no music, because of
the babies. He sat with his fists clenched on his thighs, very quiet and
unmoved, lapsing, among all those people, into a kind of muse or daze. There
was nothing between him and them. They knew it as well as he. But he remained
very steady in himself, and the evening passed slowly. Mrs Lindley called him
“young man”.
“Will you sit here, young man?”
He sat there. One name was as good as another. What had they to do with him?
Mr Lindley kept a special tone for him, kind, indulgent, but patronizing.
Durant took it all without criticism or offence, just submitting. But he did
not want to eat—that troubled him, to have to eat in their presence. He
knew he was out of place. But it was his duty to stay yet awhile. He answered
precisely, in monosyllables.
When he left he winced with confusion. He was glad it was finished. He got away
as quickly as possible. And he wanted still more intensely to go right away, to
Canada.
Miss Louisa suffered in her soul, indignant with all of them, with him too, but
quite unable to say why she was indignant.
