Sometimes, this last month, I've felt
I couldn't breathe. It was though, are you, all the chimneys were
going to tumble in. When you're out on a field you know where you
are, don't you? So I've thought it would be nice to have a little
farm somewhere in the South, Devonshire or Glebeshire . . . And then
I'd marry of course, a girl who'd like that kind of life and
wouldn't find it dull. There'd be plenty of work--a healthy life for
children right away from these towns . . . That's my sort of idea,
father, but of course one doesn't know . . ."
Martin trailed off into inconsequent words. It was as though his
father were waiting for him to commit himself and would then
suddenly leap upon him with "There! Now, you've betrayed yourself.
I've caught you--" and he had simply nothing to betray, nothing to
conceal.
But anything was better than these pauses during which the threats
and anticipations piled up and up, making a monstrous figure out of
exactly nothing at all.
It was not enough to tell himself that between every father and son
there were restraints and hesitations, a division cleft by the
remembrance of the time when one had commanded and the other obeyed.
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