Women in Love

Thomas Crich died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed impossible to

everybody that the thread of life could be drawn out so thin, and yet

not break. The sick man lay unutterably weak and spent, kept alive by

morphia and by drinks, which he sipped slowly. He was only half

conscious--a thin strand of consciousness linking the darkness of death

with the light of day. Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral,

complete. Only he must have perfect stillness about him.

Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an effort to him

now. Every morning Gerald went into the room, hoping to find his father

passed away at last. Yet always he saw the same transparent face, the

same dread dark hair on the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate

dark eyes, which seemed to be decomposing into formless darkness,

having only a tiny grain of vision within them.

And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed

through Gerald's bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to

resound through his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its

clangour, and making him mad.

Every morning, the son stood there, erect and taut with life, gleaming

in his blondness. The gleaming blondness of his strange, imminent being

put the father into a fever of fretful irritation. He could not bear to

meet the uncanny, downward look of Gerald's blue eyes. But it was only

for a moment. Each on the brink of departure, the father and son looked

at each other, then parted.

For a long time Gerald preserved a perfect sang froid, he remained

quite collected. But at last, fear undermined him. He was afraid of

some horrible collapse in himself. He had to stay and see this thing

through. Some perverse will made him watch his father drawn over the

borders of life. And yet, now, every day, the great red-hot stroke of

horrified fear through the bowels of the son struck a further

inflammation. Gerald went about all day with a tendency to cringe, as

if there were the point of a sword of Damocles pricking the nape of his

neck.

There was no escape--he was bound up with his father, he had to see him

through. And the father's will never relaxed or yielded to death. It

would have to snap when death at last snapped it,--if it did not

persist after a physical death. In the same way, the will of the son

never yielded. He stood firm and immune, he was outside this death and

this dying.

It was a trial by ordeal. Could he stand and see his father slowly

dissolve and disappear in death, without once yielding his will,

without once relenting before the omnipotence of death. Like a Red

Indian undergoing torture, Gerald would experience the whole process of

slow death without wincing or flinching. He even triumphed in it. He

somehow WANTED this death, even forced it. It was as if he himself were

dealing the death, even when he most recoiled in horror. Still, he

would deal it, he would triumph through death.