SUN
BY
D. H. LAWRENCE
E. ARCHER
68, RED LION STREET, LONDON, W.C.1.
September, 1926.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
SUN
I
"Take her away, into the sun," the doctors said.
She herself was sceptical of the sun, but she permitted herself to becarried away, with her child, and a nurse, and her mother, over the sea.
The ship sailed at midnight. And for two hours her husband stayed withher, while the child was put to bed, and the passengers came on board.It was a black night, the Hudson swayed with heavy blackness, shakenover with spilled dribbles of light. She leaned on the rail, and lookingdown thought: This is the sea; it is deeper than one imagines, andfuller of memories. At that moment the sea seemed to heave like theserpent of chaos that has lived for ever.
"These partings are no good, you know," her husband was saying, at herside. "They're no good. I don't like them."
His tone was full of apprehension, misgiving, and there was a certainnote of clinging to the last straw of hope.
"No, neither do I," she responded in a flat voice.
She remembered how bitterly they had wanted to get away from oneanother, he and she. The emotion of parting gave a slight tug at heremotions, but only caused the iron that had gone into her soul to goredeeper.
So, they looked at their sleeping son, and the father's eyes were wet.But it is not the wetting of the eyes which counts, it is the deep ironrhythm of habit, the year-long, life-long habits; the deep-set stroke ofpower.
And in their two lives, the stroke of power was hostile, his and hers.Like two engines running at variance, they shattered one another.
"All ashore! All ashore!"
"Maurice, you must go!"
And she thought to herself: For him it is All ashore! For me it isOut to sea!
Well, he waved his hanky on the midnight dreariness of the pier, as theboat inched away; one among a crowd. One among a crowd! C'est ça!
The ferry-boats, like great dishes piled with rows of lights, were stillslanting across the Hudson. That black mouth must be the LackawannaStation.
The ship ebbed on, the Hudson seemed interminable. But at last they wereround the bend, and there was the poor harvest of lights, at theBattery. Liberty flung up her torch in a tantrum. There was the wash ofthe sea.
And though the Atlantic was grey as lava, she did come at last into thesun. Even she had a house above the bluest of seas, with a vast garden,or vineyard, all vines and olives dropping steeply, terrace afterterrace, to the strip of coast-plain; and the garden full of secretplaces, deep groves of lemon far down in the cleft of earth, and hidden,pure green reservoirs of water; then a spring issuing out of a littlecavern, where the old Sicules had drunk before the Greeks came; and agrey goat bleating, stabled in an ancient tomb, with all the nichesempty. There was the scent of mimosa, and beyond, the snow of thevolcano.
She saw it all, and in a measure it was soothing. But it was allexternal. She didn't really care about it. She was herself, just the