'Well,' she said, 'I would hardly go as far as that. There they are,
whether they exist or no. It doesn't rest with me to decide on their
existence. I only know that I can't be expected to take count of them
all. You can't expect me to know them, just because they happen to be
there. As far as I go they might as well not be there.'
'Exactly,' he replied.
'Mightn't they?' she asked again.
'Just as well,' he repeated. And there was a little pause.
'Except that they ARE there, and that's a nuisance,' she said. 'There
are my sons-in-law,' she went on, in a sort of monologue. 'Now Laura's
got married, there's another. And I really don't know John from James
yet. They come up to me and call me mother. I know what they will
say--"how are you, mother?" I ought to say, "I am not your mother, in
any sense." But what is the use? There they are. I have had children of
my own. I suppose I know them from another woman's children.'
'One would suppose so,' he said.
She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps that she was
talking to him. And she lost her thread.
She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess what she was
looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.
'Are my children all there?' she asked him abruptly.
He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.
'I scarcely know them, except Gerald,' he replied.
'Gerald!' she exclaimed. 'He's the most wanting of them all. You'd
never think it, to look at him now, would you?'
'No,' said Birkin.
The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for
some time.
'Ay,' she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded
profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And
Mrs Crich moved away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces.
'I should like him to have a friend,' she said. 'He has never had a
friend.'
Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and watching
heavily. He could not understand them. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' he
said to himself, almost flippantly.
Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was Cain's cry. And
Gerald was Cain, if anybody. Not that he was Cain, either, although he
had slain his brother. There was such a thing as pure accident, and the
consequences did not attach to one, even though one had killed one's
brother in such wise. Gerald as a boy had accidentally killed his
brother. What then? Why seek to draw a brand and a curse across the
life that had caused the accident? A man can live by accident, and die
by accident. Or can he not? Is every man's life subject to pure
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