Women in Love

She had let go the outer world, but within herself she was unbroken and

unimpaired. She only sat in her room like a moping, dishevelled hawk,

motionless, mindless. Her children, for whom she had been so fierce in

her youth, now meant scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that,

she was quite by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some existence

for her. But of late years, since he had become head of the business,

he too was forgotten. Whereas the father, now he was dying, turned for

compassion to Gerald. There had always been opposition between the two

of them. Gerald had feared and despised his father, and to a great

extent had avoided him all through boyhood and young manhood. And the

father had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, which,

never wanting to give way to, he had refused to acknowledge. He had

ignored Gerald as much as possible, leaving him alone.

Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed responsibility in the

firm, and had proved such a wonderful director, the father, tired and

weary of all outside concerns, had put all his trust of these things in

his son, implicitly, leaving everything to him, and assuming a rather

touching dependence on the young enemy. This immediately roused a

poignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed by

contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction against

Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it assumed supremacy in the

inner life, and he could not confute it. So he was partly subject to

that which his father stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Now

he could not save himself. A certain pity and grief and tenderness for

his father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more sullen hostility.

The father won shelter from Gerald through compassion. But for love he

had Winifred. She was his youngest child, she was the only one of his

children whom he had ever closely loved. And her he loved with all the

great, overweening, sheltering love of a dying man. He wanted to

shelter her infinitely, infinitely, to wrap her in warmth and love and

shelter, perfectly. If he could save her she should never know one

pain, one grief, one hurt. He had been so right all his life, so

constant in his kindness and his goodness. And this was his last

passionate righteousness, his love for the child Winifred. Some things

troubled him yet. The world had passed away from him, as his strength

ebbed. There were no more poor and injured and humble to protect and

succour. These were all lost to him. There were no more sons and

daughters to trouble him, and to weigh on him as an unnatural

responsibility. These too had faded out of reality All these things had

fallen out of his hands, and left him free.