Women in Love

He very rarely saw his wife. She kept her room. Only occasionally she

came forth, with her head stretched forward, and in her low, possessed

voice, she asked him how he was. And he answered her, in the habit of

more than thirty years: 'Well, I don't think I'm any the worse, dear.'

But he was frightened of her, underneath this safeguard of habit,

frightened almost to the verge of death.

But all his life, he had been so constant to his lights, he had never

broken down. He would die even now without breaking down, without

knowing what his feelings were, towards her. All his life, he had said:

'Poor Christiana, she has such a strong temper.' With unbroken will, he

had stood by this position with regard to her, he had substituted pity

for all his hostility, pity had been his shield and his safeguard, and

his infallible weapon. And still, in his consciousness, he was sorry

for her, her nature was so violent and so impatient.

But now his pity, with his life, was wearing thin, and the dread almost

amounting to horror, was rising into being. But before the armour of

his pity really broke, he would die, as an insect when its shell is

cracked. This was his final resource. Others would live on, and know

the living death, the ensuing process of hopeless chaos. He would not.

He denied death its victory.

He had been so constant to his lights, so constant to charity, and to

his love for his neighbour. Perhaps he had loved his neighbour even

better than himself--which is going one further than the commandment.

Always, this flame had burned in his heart, sustaining him through

everything, the welfare of the people. He was a large employer of

labour, he was a great mine-owner. And he had never lost this from his

heart, that in Christ he was one with his workmen. Nay, he had felt

inferior to them, as if they through poverty and labour were nearer to

God than he. He had always the unacknowledged belief, that it was his

workmen, the miners, who held in their hands the means of salvation. To

move nearer to God, he must move towards his miners, his life must

gravitate towards theirs. They were, unconsciously, his idol, his God

made manifest. In them he worshipped the highest, the great,

sympathetic, mindless Godhead of humanity.

And all the while, his wife had opposed him like one of the great

demons of hell. Strange, like a bird of prey, with the fascinating

beauty and abstraction of a hawk, she had beat against the bars of his

philanthropy, and like a hawk in a cage, she had sunk into silence. By

force of circumstance, because all the world combined to make the cage

unbreakable, he had been too strong for her, he had kept her prisoner.

And because she was his prisoner, his passion for her had always

remained keen as death. He had always loved her, loved her with

intensity. Within the cage, she was denied nothing, she was given all

licence.