Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV

DERELICT

CLARA went with her husband to Sheffield, and Paul scarcely saw
her again. Walter Morel seemed to have let all the trouble go over him,
and there he was, crawling about on the mud of it, just the same.
There was scarcely any bond between father and son, save that each
felt he must not let the other go in any actual want. As there
was no one to keep on the home, and as they could neither of them
bear the emptiness of the house, Paul took lodgings in Nottingham,
and Morel went to live with a friendly family in Bestwood.

Everything seemed to have gone smash for the young man.
He could not paint. The picture he finished on the day of his
mother's death--one that satisfied him--was the last thing he did.
At work there was no Clara. When he came home he could not take up
his brushes again. There was nothing left.

So he was always in the town at one place or another,
drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him.
He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark,
strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something.

Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed
no reason why people should go along the street, and houses
pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these
things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty.
His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered.
But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand.

He was most himself when he was alone, or working hard and
mechanically at the factory. In the latter case there was pure
forgetfulness, when he lapsed from consciousness. But it had to come
to an end. It hurt him so, that things had lost their reality.
The first snowdrops came. He saw the tiny drop-pearls among the
grey. They would have given him the liveliest emotion at one time.
Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean anything. In
a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and just the
space would be, where they had been. Tall, brilliant tram-cars
ran along the street at night. It seemed almost a wonder they
should trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. "Why trouble
to go tilting down to Trent Bridges?" he asked of the big trams.
It seemed they just as well might NOT be as be.

The realest thing was the thick darkness at night. That seemed
to him whole and comprehensible and restful. He could leave himself
to it. Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew
along down the pavement. He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists,
a flame of agony going over him. And he saw again the sick-room,
his mother, her eyes. Unconsciously he had been with her,
in her company. The swift hop of the