A Sick Collier by DH Lawrence

Part 5

He was completely out of his mind. She struggled with him to prevent his going to the stairs. When she escaped from him, he was shouting and raving, she beckoned to her neighbour, a girl of twenty-four, who was cleaning the window across the road.

Ethel Mellor was the daughter of a well-to-do check-weighman. She ran across in fear to Mrs Horsepool. Hearing the man raving, people were running out in the street and listening. Ethel hurried upstairs. Everything was clean and pretty in the young home.
Willy was staggering round the room, after the slowly retreating Lucy, shouting:
"Kill her! Kill her!"
"Mr Horsepool!" cried Ethel, leaning against the bed, white as the sheets, and trembling. "Whatever are you saying?"
"I tell yer it’s ‘er fault as th’ peen comes on — I tell yer it is! Kill ‘er — kill ‘er!"
"Kill Mrs Horsepool!" cried the trembling girl. "Why, you’re ever so fond of her, you know you are."
"The peen — I ha’e such a lot o’ peen — I want to kill ‘er."
He was subsiding. When he sat down his wife collapsed in a chair, weeping noiselessly. The tears ran down Ethel’s face. He sat staring out of the window; then the old, hurt look came on his face.
"What ‘ave I been sayin’?" he asked, looking piteously at his wife.
"Why!" said Ethel, "you’ve been carrying on something awful, saying, ‘Kill her, kill her!’"
"Have I, Lucy?" he faltered.
"You didn’t know what you was saying," said his young wife gently but coldly.
His face puckered up. He bit his lip, then broke into tears, sobbing uncontrollably, with his face to the window.
There was no sound in the room but of three people crying bitterly, breath caught in sobs. Suddenly Lucy put away her tears and went over to him.
"You didn’t know what you was sayin’, Willy, I know you didn’t. I knew you didn’t, all the time. It doesn’t matter, Willy. Only don’t do it again."
In a little while, when they were calmer, she went downstairs with Ethel.
"See if anybody is looking in the street," she said.
Ethel went into the parlour and peeped through the curtains.
"Aye!" she said. "You may back your life Lena an’ Mrs Severn’ll be out gorping, and that clat-fartin’ Mrs Allsop."
"Oh, I hope they haven’t heard anything! If it gets about as he’s out of his mind, they’ll stop his compensation, I know they will."
"They’d never stop his compensation for THAT," protested Ethel.
"Well, they HAVE been stopping some — "
"It’ll not get about. I s’ll tell nobody."
"Oh, but if it does, whatever shall we do? . . ."

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