Women in Love

Winifred was her father's constant visitor. Every morning, after

breakfast, she went into his room when he was washed and propped up in

bed, to spend half an hour with him.

'Are you better, Daddie?' she asked him invariably.

And invariably he answered: 'Yes, I think I'm a little better, pet.' She held his hand in both her own, lovingly and protectively. And this

was very dear to him.

She ran in again as a rule at lunch time, to tell him the course of

events, and every evening, when the curtains were drawn, and his room

was cosy, she spent a long time with him. Gudrun was gone home,

Winifred was alone in the house: she liked best to be with her father.

They talked and prattled at random, he always as if he were well, just

the same as when he was going about. So that Winifred, with a child's

subtle instinct for avoiding the painful things, behaved as if nothing

serious was the matter. Instinctively, she withheld her attention, and

was happy. Yet in her remoter soul, she knew as well as the adults

knew: perhaps better.

Her father was quite well in his make-belief with her. But when she

went away, he relapsed under the misery of his dissolution. But still

there were these bright moments, though as his strength waned, his

faculty for attention grew weaker, and the nurse had to send Winifred

away, to save him from exhaustion.

He never admitted that he was going to die. He knew it was so, he knew

it was the end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the

fact, mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by

death. For him, there was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great

need to cry out and to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry

aloud to Gerald, so that his son should be horrified out of his

composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of this, and he recoiled, to

avoid any such thing. This uncleanness of death repelled him too much.

One should die quickly, like the Romans, one should be master of one's

fate in dying as in living. He was convulsed in the clasp of this death

of his father's, as in the coils of the great serpent of Laocoon. The

great serpent had got the father, and the son was dragged into the

embrace of horrifying death along with him. He resisted always. And in

some strange way, he was a tower of strength to his father.

The last time the dying man asked to see Gudrun he was grey with near

death. Yet he must see someone, he must, in the intervals of

consciousness, catch into connection with the living world, lest he

should have to accept his own situation. Fortunately he was most of his

time dazed and half gone. And he spent many hours dimly thinking of the

past, as it were, dimly re-living his old experiences. But there were

times even to the end when he was capable of realising what was

happening to him in the present, the death that was on him. And these

were the times when he called in outside help, no matter whose. For to

realise this death that he was dying was a death beyond death, never to

be borne. It was an admission never to be made.