I don't see how I CAN help you.'
He looked down at her critically.
'I don't want you to HELP,' he said, slightly irritated, 'because there's nothing to be DONE.
I only want sympathy, do you see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically.
That eases the strain.
And there IS nobody to talk to sympathetically.
That's the curious thing.
There IS nobody.
There's Rupert Birkin.
But then he ISN'T sympathetic, he wants to DICTATE.
And that is no use whatsoever.'
She was caught in a strange snare.
She looked down at her hands.
Then there was the sound of the door softly opening.
Gerald started.
He was chagrined.
It was his starting that really startled Gudrun.
Then he went forward, with quick, graceful, intentional courtesy.
'Oh, mother!' he said. 'How nice of you to come down.
How are you?'
The elderly woman, loosely and bulkily wrapped in a purple gown, came forward silently, slightly hulked, as usual.
Her son was at her side.
He pushed her up a chair, saying
'You know Miss Brangwen, don't you?'
The mother glanced at Gudrun indifferently.
'Yes,' she said.
Then she turned her wonderful, forget-me-not blue eyes up to her son, as she slowly sat down in the chair he had brought her.
'I came to ask you about your father,' she said, in her rapid, scarcely-audible voice. 'I didn't know you had company.'
'No?
Didn't Winifred tell you?
Miss Brangwen stayed to dinner, to make us a little more lively—'
Mrs Crich turned slowly round to Gudrun, and looked at her, but with unseeing eyes.
'I'm afraid it would be no treat to her.' Then she turned again to her son. 'Winifred tells me the doctor had something to say about your father.
What is it?'
'Only that the pulse is very weak—misses altogether a good many times—so that he might not last the night out,' Gerald replied.
Mrs Crich sat perfectly impassive, as if she had not heard.
Her bulk seemed hunched in the chair, her fair hair hung slack over her ears.
But her skin was clear and fine, her hands, as she sat with them forgotten and folded, were quite beautiful, full of potential energy.
A great mass of energy seemed decaying up in that silent, hulking form.
She looked up at her son, as he stood, keen and soldierly, near to her.
Her eyes were most wonderfully blue, bluer than forget-me-nots.
She seemed to have a certain confidence in Gerald, and to feel a certain motherly mistrust of him.
'How are YOU?' she muttered, in her strangely quiet voice, as if nobody should hear but him. 'You're not getting into a state, are you?
You're not letting it make you hysterical?'
The curious challenge in the last words startled Gudrun.
'I don't think so, mother,' he answered, rather coldly cheery. 'Somebody's got to see it through, you know.'
'Have they?
Have they?' answered his mother rapidly. 'Why should YOU take it on yourself?
What have you got to do, seeing it through.
It will see itself through.