At this time Paul took his mother to Lincoln. She was bright and enthusiastic as ever, but as he sat opposite her in the railway carriage, she seemed to look frail. He had a momentary sensation as if she were slipping away from him. Then he wanted to get hold of her, to fasten her, almost to chain her. He felt he must keep hold of her with his hand.
They drew near to the city. Both were at the window looking for the cathedral.
“There she is, mother!” he cried.
They saw the great cathedral lying couchant above the plain.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “So she is!”
He looked at his mother. Her blue eyes were watching the cathedral quietly. She seemed again to be beyond him. Something in the eternal repose of the uplifted cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her, something of the fatality. What was, was. With all his young will he could not alter it. He saw her face, the skin still fresh and pink and downy, but crow’s-feet near her eyes, her eyelids steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with disillusion; and there was on her the same eternal look, as if she knew fate at last. He beat against it with all the strength of his soul.
“Look, mother, how big she is above the town! Think, there are streets and streets below her! She looks bigger than the city altogether.”
“So she does!” exclaimed his mother, breaking bright into life again. But he had seen her sitting, looking steady out of the window at the cathedral, her face and eyes fixed, reflecting the relentlessness of life. And the crow’s-feet near her eyes, and her mouth shut so hard, made him feel he would go mad.
They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant.
“Don’t imagine I like it,” she said, as she ate her cutlet. “I don’t like it, I really don’t! Just think of your money wasted!”
“You never mind my money,” he said. “You forget I’m a fellow taking his girl for an outing.”
And he bought her some blue violets.
“Stop it at once, sir!” she commanded. “How can I do it?”
“You’ve got nothing to do. Stand still!”
And in the middle of High Street he stuck the flowers in her coat.
“An old thing like me!” she said, sniffing.
