SONS AND LOVERS
D. H. LAWRENCE
CONTENTS
PART I
1. The Early Married Life of the Morels
2. The Birth of Paul,
and Another Battle
3. The Casting Off of Morel --The Taking on of William
4. The Young Life of Paul
5. Paul Launches into Life
6. Death in the Family
PART II
7. Lad-and-Girl Love
8. Strife in Love
9. Defeat of Miriam
10. Clara
11. The Test on Miriam
12. Passion
13. Baxter Dawes
14. The Release
15. Derelict
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS
"THE BOTTOMS" succeeded to "Hell Row".
Hell Row was a block of thatched,
bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill Lane.
There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two fields away.
The brook ran under the alder trees,
scarcely soiled by these small mines,
whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin.
And all over the countryside were these same pits,
some of which had been worked in the time of Charles II,
the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth,
making queer mounds and little black places among the corn-fields and the meadows.
And the cottages of these coal-miners,
in blocks and pairs here and there,
together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers,
straying over the parish,
formed the village of Bestwood.
Then,
some sixty years ago,
a sudden change took place,
gin-pits were elbowed aside by the large mines of the financiers.
The coal and iron field of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was discovered.
Carston,
Waite and Co.
appeared.
Amid tremendous excitement,
Lord Palmerston formally opened the company's first mine at Spinney Park,
on the edge of Sherwood Forest.
About this time the notorious Hell Row,
which through growing old had acquired an evil reputation,
was burned down,
and much dirt was cleansed away.
Carston,
Waite & Co.
found they had struck on a good thing,
so,
down the valleys of the brooks from Selby and Nuttall,
new mines were sunk,
until soon there were six pits working.
From Nuttall,
high up on the sandstone among the woods,
the railway ran,
past the ruined priory of the Carthusians and past Robin Hood's Well,
down to Spinney Park,
then on to Minton,
a large mine among corn-fields;
from Minton across the farmlands of the valleyside to Bunker's Hill,
branching off there,
and running north to Beggarlee and Selby,
that looks over at Crich and the hills of Derbyshire: six mines like black studs on the countryside,
linked by a loop of fine chain,
the railway.
To accommodate the regiments of miners,
Carston,
Waite and Co.
built the Squares,
great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside of Bestwood,
and then,
in the brook valley,
on the site of Hell Row,
they erected the Bottoms.
The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners' dwellings,
two rows of three,
like the dots on a blank-six domino,
and twelve houses in a block.
This double row of dwellings sat at the foot of the rather sharp slope from Bestwood,
and looked out,
from the attic windows at least,
on the slow climb of the valley towards Selby.
The houses themselves were substantial and very decent.
One could walk all round,
seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block,
sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny top block;
seeing neat front windows,
little porches,
little privet hedges,
and dormer windows for the attics.
But that was outside;
that was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all the colliers' wives.
The dwelling-room,
the kitchen,
was at the back of the house,
facing inward between the blocks,
looking at a scrubby back garden,
and then at the ash-pits.
And between the rows,
between the long lines of ash-pits,
went the alley,
where the children played and the women gossiped and the men smoked.
So,
the actual conditions of living in the Bottoms,
that was so well built and that looked so nice,
were quite unsavoury because people must live in the kitchen,
and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.
Mrs. Morel was not anxious to move into the Bottoms,
which was already twelve years old and on the downward path,
when she descended to it from Bestwood.
But it was the best she could do.
Moreover,
she had an end house in one of the top blocks,
and thus had only one neighbour;
on the other side an extra strip of garden.
And,
having an end house,
she enjoyed a kind of aristocracy among the other women of the "between" houses,
because her rent was five shillings and sixpence instead of five shillings a week.
But this superiority in station was not much consolation to Mrs. Morel.
She was thirty-one years old,
and had been married eight years.
A rather small woman,
of delicate mould but resolute bearing,
she shrank a little from the first contact with the Bottoms women.
She came down in the July,
and in the September expected her third baby.
Her husband was a miner.
They had only been in their new home three weeks when the wakes,
or fair,
began.
Morel,
she knew,
was sure to make a holiday of it.
He went off early on the Monday morning,
the day of the fair.
The two children were highly excited.
William,
a boy of seven,
fled off immediately after breakfast,
to prowl round the wakes ground,
leaving Annie,
who was only five,
to whine all morning to go also.
Mrs. Morel did her work.
She scarcely knew her neighbours yet,
and knew no one with whom to trust the little girl.
So she promised to take her to the wakes after dinner.
William appeared at half-past twelve.
He was a very active lad,
fair-haired,
freckled,
with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian about him.
"Can I have my dinner,
mother?"
he cried,
rushing in with his cap on.
"'Cause it begins at half-past one,
the man says so."
"You can have your dinner as soon as it's done,"
replied the mother.
"Isn't it done?"
he cried,
his blue eyes staring at her in indignation.
"Then I'm goin' be-out it."
"You'll do nothing of the sort.
It will be done in five minutes.
It is only half-past twelve."
"They'll be beginnin',"
the boy half cried,
half shouted.
"You won't die if they do,"
said the mother.
"Besides,
it's only half-past twelve,
so you've a full hour."
The lad began hastily to lay the table,
and directly the three sat down.
They were eating batter-pudding and jam,
when the boy jumped off his chair and stood perfectly stiff.
Some distance away could be heard the first small braying of a merry-go-round,
and the tooting of a horn.
His face quivered as he looked at his mother.
"I told you!"
he said,
running to the dresser for his cap.
"Take your pudding in your hand --and it's only five past one,
so you were wrong --you haven't got your twopence,"
cried the mother in a breath.
The boy came back,
bitterly disappointed,
for his twopence,
then went off without a word.
"I want to go,
I want to go,"
said Annie,
beginning to cry.
"Well,
and you shall go,
whining,
wizzening little stick!"
said the mother.
And later in the afternoon she trudged up the hill under the tall hedge with her child.
The hay was gathered from the fields,
and cattle were turned on to the eddish.
It was warm,
peaceful.
Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes.
There were two sets of horses,
one going by steam,
one pulled round by a pony;
three organs were grinding,
and there came odd cracks of pistol-shots,
fearful screeching of the cocoanut man's rattle,
shouts of the Aunt Sally man,
screeches from the peep-show lady.
The mother perceived her son gazing enraptured outside the Lion Wallace booth,
at the pictures of this famous lion that had killed a negro and maimed for life two white men.
She left him alone,
and went to get Annie a spin of toffee.
Presently the lad stood in front of her,
wildly excited.
"You never said you was coming --isn't the' a lot of things?
--that lion's killed three men --I've spent my tuppence --an' look here."
He pulled from his pocket two egg-cups,
with pink moss-roses on them.
"I got these from that stall where y'ave ter get them marbles in them holes.
An' I got these two in two goes-'aepenny a go-they've got moss-roses on,
look here.
I wanted these."
She knew he wanted them for her.
"H'm!"
she said,
pleased.
"They ARE pretty!"
"Shall you carry
'em,
'cause I'm frightened o' breakin'
'em?"
He was tipful of excitement now she had come,
led her about the ground,
showed her everything.
Then,
at the peep-show,
she explained the pictures,
in a sort of story,
to which he listened as if spellbound.
He would not leave her.
All the time he stuck close to her,
bristling with a small boy's pride of her.
For no other woman looked such a lady as she did,
in her little black bonnet and her cloak.
She smiled when she saw women she knew.
When she was tired she said to her son:
"Well,
are you coming now,
or later?"
"Are you goin' a'ready?"
he cried,
his face full of reproach.
"Already?
It is past four,
I know."
"What are you goin' a'ready for?"
he lamented.
"You needn't come if you don't want,"
she said.
And she went slowly away with her little girl,
whilst her son stood watching her,
cut to the heart to let her go,
and yet unable to leave the wakes.
As she crossed the open ground in front of the Moon and Stars she heard men shouting,
and smelled the beer,
and hurried a little,
thinking her husband was probably in the bar.
At about half-past six her son came home,
tired now,
rather pale,
and somewhat wretched.
He was miserable,
though he did not know it,
because he had let her go alone.
Since she had gone,
he had not enjoyed his wakes.
"Has my dad been?"
he asked.
"No,"
said the mother.
"He's helping to wait at the Moon and Stars.
I seed him through that black tin stuff wi' holes in,
on the window,
wi' his sleeves rolled up."
"Ha!"
exclaimed the mother shortly.
"He's got no money.
An' he'll be satisfied if he gets his
'lowance,
whether they give him more or not."
When the light was fading,
and Mrs. Morel could see no more to sew,
she rose and went to the door.
Everywhere was the sound of excitement,
the restlessness of the holiday,
that at last infected her.
She went out into the side garden.
Women were coming home from the wakes,
the children hugging a white lamb with green legs,
or a wooden horse.
Occasionally a man lurched past,
almost as full as he could carry.
Sometimes a good husband came along with his family,
peacefully.
But usually the women and children were alone.
The stay-at-home mothers stood gossiping at the corners of the alley,
as the twilight sank,
folding their arms under their white aprons.
Mrs. Morel was alone,
but she was used to it.
Her son and her little girl slept upstairs;
so,
it seemed,
her home was there behind her,
fixed and stable.
But she felt wretched with the coming child.
The world seemed a dreary place,
where nothing else would happen for her --at least until William grew up.
But for herself,
nothing but this dreary endurance --till the children grew up.
And the children!
She could not afford to have this third.
She did not want it.
The father was serving beer in a public house,
swilling himself drunk.
She despised him,
and was tied to him.
This coming child was too much for her.
If it were not for William and Annie,
she was sick of it,
the struggle with poverty and ugliness and meanness.
She went into the front garden,
feeling too heavy to take herself out,
yet unable to stay indoors.
The heat suffocated her.
And looking ahead,
the prospect of her life made her feel as if she were buried alive.
The front garden was a small square with a privet hedge.
There she stood,
trying to soothe herself with the scent of flowers and the fading,
beautiful evening.
Opposite her small gate was the stile that led uphill,
under the tall hedge between the burning glow of the cut pastures.
The sky overhead throbbed and pulsed with light.
The glow sank quickly off the field;
the earth and the hedges smoked dusk.
As it grew dark,
a ruddy glare came out on the hilltop,
and out of the glare the diminished commotion of the fair.
Sometimes,
down the trough of darkness formed by the path under the hedges,
men came lurching home.
One young man lapsed into a run down the steep bit that ended the hill,
and went with a crash into the stile.
Mrs. Morel shuddered.
He picked himself up,
swearing viciously,
rather pathetically,
as if he thought the stile had wanted to hurt him.
She went indoors,
wondering if things were never going to alter.
She was beginning by now to realise that they would not.
She seemed so far away from her girlhood,
she wondered if it were the same person walking heavily up the back garden at the Bottoms as had run so lightly up the breakwater at Sheerness ten years before.
"What have I to do with it?"
she said to herself.
"What have I to do with all this?
Even the child I am going to have!
It doesn't seem as if I were taken into account."
Sometimes life takes hold of one,
carries the body along,
accomplishes one's history,
and yet is not real,
but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.
"I wait,"
Mrs. Morel said to herself --"I wait,
and what I wait for can never come."
Then she straightened the kitchen,
lit the lamp,
mended the fire,
looked out the washing for the next day,
and put it to soak.
After which she sat down to her sewing.
Through the long hours her needle flashed regularly through the stuff.
Occasionally she sighed,
moving to relieve herself.
And all the time she was thinking how to make the most of what she had,
for the children's sakes.
At half-past eleven her husband came.
His cheeks were very red and very shiny above his black moustache.
His head nodded slightly.
He was pleased with himself.
"Oh!
Oh!
waitin' for me,
lass?
I've bin
'elpin' Anthony,
an' what's think he's gen me?
Nowt b'r a lousy hae'f-crown,
an' that's ivry penny --"
"He thinks you've made the rest up in beer,"
she said shortly.
"An' I
'aven't --that I
'aven't.
You b'lieve me,
I've
'ad very little this day,
I have an' all."
His voice went tender.
"Here,
an' I browt thee a bit o' brandysnap,
an' a cocoanut for th' children."
He laid the gingerbread and the cocoanut,
a hairy object,
on the table.
"Nay,
tha niver said thankyer for nowt i' thy life,
did ter?"
As a compromise,
she picked up the cocoanut and shook it,
to see if it had any milk.
"It's a good
'un,
you may back yer life o' that.
I got it fra' Bill Hodgkisson.
'Bill,'
I says,
'tha non wants them three nuts,
does ter?
Arena ter for gi'ein' me one for my bit of a lad an' wench?'
'I ham,
Walter,
my lad,'
'e says;
'ta'e which on
'em ter's a mind.'
An' so I took one,
an' thanked
'im.
I didn't like ter shake it afore
'is eyes,
but
'e says,
'Tha'd better ma'e sure it's a good un,
Walt.'
An' so,
yer see,
I knowed it was.
He's a nice chap,
is Bill Hodgkisson,
e's a nice chap!"
"A man will part with anything so long as he's drunk,
and you're drunk along with him,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"Eh,
tha mucky little
'ussy,
who's drunk,
I sh'd like ter know?"
said Morel.
He was extraordinarily pleased with himself,
because of his day's helping to wait in the Moon and Stars.
He chattered on.
Mrs. Morel,
very tired,
and sick of his babble,
went to bed as quickly as possible,
while he raked the fire.
Mrs. Morel came of a good old burgher family,
famous independents who had fought with Colonel Hutchinson,
and who remained stout Congregationalists.
Her grandfather had gone bankrupt in the lace-market at a time when so many lace-manufacturers were ruined in Nottingham.
Her father,
George Coppard,
was an engineer --a large,
handsome,
haughty man,
proud of his fair skin and blue eyes,
but more proud still of his integrity.
Gertrude resembled her mother in her small build.
But her temper,
proud and unyielding,
she had from the Coppards.
George Coppard was bitterly galled by his own poverty.
He became foreman of the engineers in the dockyard at Sheerness.
Mrs. Morel --Gertrude --was the second daughter.
She favoured her mother,
loved her mother best of all;
but she had the Coppards' clear,
defiant blue eyes and their broad brow.
She remembered to have hated her father's overbearing manner towards her gentle,
humorous,
kindly-souled mother.
She remembered running over the breakwater at Sheerness and finding the boat.
She remembered to have been petted and flattered by all the men when she had gone to the dockyard,
for she was a delicate,
rather proud child.
She remembered the funny old mistress,
whose assistant she had become,
whom she had loved to help in the private school.
And she still had the Bible that John Field had given her.
She used to walk home from chapel with John Field when she was nineteen.
He was the son of a well-to-do tradesman,
had been to college in London,
and was to devote himself to business.
She could always recall in detail a September Sunday afternoon,
when they had sat under the vine at the back of her father's house.
The sun came through the chinks of the vine-leaves and made beautiful patterns,
like a lace scarf,
falling on her and on him.
Some of the leaves were clean yellow,
like yellow flat flowers.
"Now sit still,"
he had cried.
"Now your hair,
I don't know what it IS like!
It's as bright as copper and gold,
as red as burnt copper,
and it has gold threads where the sun shines on it.
Fancy their saying it's brown.
Your mother calls it mouse-colour."
She had met his brilliant eyes,
but her clear face scarcely showed the elation which rose within her.
"But you say you don't like business,"
she pursued.
"I don't.
I hate it!"
he cried hotly.
"And you would like to go into the ministry,"
she half implored.
"I should.
I should love it,
if I thought I could make a first-rate preacher."
"Then why don't you --why DON'T you?"
Her voice rang with defiance.
"If I were a man,
nothing would stop me."
She held her head erect.
He was rather timid before her.
"But my father's so stiff-necked.
He means to put me into the business,
and I know he'll do it."
"But if you're a MAN?"
she had cried.
"Being a man isn't everything,"
he replied,
frowning with puzzled helplessness.
Now,
as she moved about her work at the Bottoms,
with some experience of what being a man meant,
she knew that it was NOT everything.
At twenty,
owing to her health,
she had left Sheerness.
Her father had retired home to Nottingham.
John Field's father had been ruined;
the son had gone as a teacher in Norwood.
She did not hear of him until,
two years later,
she made determined inquiry.
He had married his landlady,
a woman of forty,
a widow with property.
And still Mrs. Morel preserved John Field's Bible.
She did not now believe him to be --Well,
she understood pretty well what he might or might not have been.
So she preserved his Bible,
and kept his memory intact in her heart,
for her own sake.
To her dying day,
for thirty-five years,
she did not speak of him.
When she was twenty-three years old,
she met,
at a Christmas party,
a young man from the Erewash Valley.
Morel was then twenty-seven years old.
He was well set-up,
erect,
and very smart.
He had wavy black hair that shone again,
and a vigorous black beard that had never been shaved.
His cheeks were ruddy,
and his red,
moist mouth was noticeable because he laughed so often and so heartily.
He had that rare thing,
a rich,
ringing laugh.
Gertrude Coppard had watched him,
fascinated.
He was so full of colour and animation,
his voice ran so easily into comic grotesque,
he was so ready and so pleasant with everybody.
Her own father had a rich fund of humour,
but it was satiric.
This man's was different: soft,
non-intellectual,
warm,
a kind of gambolling.
She herself was opposite.
She had a curious,
receptive mind which found much pleasure and amusement in listening to other folk.
She was clever in leading folk to talk.
She loved ideas,
and was considered very intellectual.
What she liked most of all was an argument on religion or philosophy or politics with some educated man.
This she did not often enjoy.
So she always had people tell her about themselves,
finding her pleasure so.
In her person she was rather small and delicate,
with a large brow,
and dropping bunches of brown silk curls.
Her blue eyes were very straight,
honest,
and searching.
She had the beautiful hands of the Coppards.
Her dress was always subdued.
She wore dark blue silk,
with a peculiar silver chain of silver scallops.
This,
and a heavy brooch of twisted gold,
was her only ornament.
She was still perfectly intact,
deeply religious,
and full of beautiful candour.
Walter Morel seemed melted away before her.
She was to the miner that thing of mystery and fascination,
a lady.
When she spoke to him,
it was with a southern pronunciation and a purity of English which thrilled him to hear.
She watched him.
He danced well,
as if it were natural and joyous in him to dance.
His grandfather was a French refugee who had married an English barmaid --if it had been a marriage.
Gertrude Coppard watched the young miner as he danced,
a certain subtle exultation like glamour in his movement,
and his face the flower of his body,
ruddy,
with tumbled black hair,
and laughing alike whatever partner he bowed above.
She thought him rather wonderful,
never having met anyone like him.
Her father was to her the type of all men.
And George Coppard,
proud in his bearing,
handsome,
and rather bitter;
who preferred theology in reading,
and who drew near in sympathy only to one man,
the Apostle Paul;
who was harsh in government,
and in familiarity ironic;
who ignored all sensuous pleasure: --he was very different from the miner.
Gertrude herself was rather contemptuous of dancing;
she had not the slightest inclination towards that accomplishment,
and had never learned even a Roger de Coverley.
She was puritan,
like her father,
high-minded,
and really stern.
Therefore the dusky,
golden softness of this man's sensuous flame of life,
that flowed off his flesh like the flame from a candle,
not baffled and gripped into incandescence by thought and spirit as her life was,
seemed to her something wonderful,
beyond her.
He came and bowed above her.
A warmth radiated through her as if she had drunk wine.
"Now do come and have this one wi' me,"
he said caressively.
"It's easy,
you know.
I'm pining to see you dance."
She had told him before she could not dance.
She glanced at his humility and smiled.
Her smile was very beautiful.
It moved the man so that he forgot everything.
"No,
I won't dance,"
she said softly.
Her words came clean and ringing.
Not knowing what he was doing --he often did the right thing by instinct --he sat beside her,
inclining reverentially.
"But you mustn't miss your dance,"
she reproved.
"Nay,
I don't want to dance that --it's not one as I care about."
"Yet you invited me to it."
He laughed very heartily at this.
"I never thought o' that.
Tha'rt not long in taking the curl out of me."
It was her turn to laugh quickly.
"You don't look as if you'd come much uncurled,"
she said.
"I'm like a pig's tail,
I curl because I canna help it,"
he laughed,
rather boisterously.
"And you are a miner!"
she exclaimed in surprise.
"Yes.
I went down when I was ten."
She looked at him in wondering dismay.
"When you were ten!
And wasn't it very hard?"
she asked.
"You soon get used to it.
You live like th' mice,
an' you pop out at night to see what's going on."
"It makes me feel blind,"
she frowned.
"Like a moudiwarp!"
he laughed.
"Yi,
an' there's some chaps as does go round like moudiwarps."
He thrust his face forward in the blind,
snout-like way of a mole,
seeming to sniff and peer for direction.
"They dun though!"
he protested naively.
"Tha niver seed such a way they get in.
But tha mun let me ta'e thee down some time,
an' tha can see for thysen."
She looked at him,
startled.
This was a new tract of life suddenly opened before her.
She realised the life of the miners,
hundreds of them toiling below earth and coming up at evening.
He seemed to her noble.
He risked his life daily,
and with gaiety.
She looked at him,
with a touch of appeal in her pure humility.
"Shouldn't ter like it?"
he asked tenderly.
"'Appen not,
it
'ud dirty thee."
She had never been "thee'd" and "thou'd" before.
The next Christmas they were married,
and for three months she was perfectly happy: for six months she was very happy.
He had signed the pledge,
and wore the blue ribbon of a tee-totaller: he was nothing if not showy.
They lived,
she thought,
in his own house.
It was small,
but convenient enough,
and quite nicely furnished,
with solid,
worthy stuff that suited her honest soul.
The women,
her neighbours,
were rather foreign to her,
and Morel's mother and sisters were apt to sneer at her ladylike ways.
But she could perfectly well live by herself,
so long as she had her husband close.
Sometimes,
when she herself wearied of love-talk,
she tried to open her heart seriously to him.
She saw him listen deferentially,
but without understanding.
This killed her efforts at a finer intimacy,
and she had flashes of fear.
Sometimes he was restless of an evening: it was not enough for him just to be near her,
she realised.
She was glad when he set himself to little jobs.
He was a remarkably handy man --could make or mend anything.
So she would say:
"I do like that coal-rake of your mother's --it is small and natty."
"Does ter,
my wench?
Well,
I made that,
so I can make thee one!"
"What!
why,
it's a steel one!"
"An' what if it is!
Tha s'lt ha'e one very similar,
if not exactly same."
She did not mind the mess,
nor the hammering and noise.
He was busy and happy.
But in the seventh month,
when she was brushing his Sunday coat,
she felt papers in the breast pocket,
and,
seized with a sudden curiosity,
took them out to read.
He very rarely wore the frock-coat he was married in: and it had not occurred to her before to feel curious concerning the papers.
They were the bills of the household furniture,
still unpaid.
"Look here,"
she said at night,
after he was washed and had had his dinner.
"I found these in the pocket of your wedding-coat.
Haven't you settled the bills yet?"
"No. I haven't had a chance."
"But you told me all was paid.
I had better go into Nottingham on Saturday and settle them.
I don't like sitting on another man's chairs and eating from an unpaid table."
He did not answer.
"I can have your bank-book,
can't I?"
"Tha can ha'e it,
for what good it'll be to thee."
"I thought --" she began.
He had told her he had a good bit of money left over.
But she realised it was no use asking questions.
She sat rigid with bitterness and indignation.
The next day she went down to see his mother.
"Didn't you buy the furniture for Walter?"
she asked.
"Yes,
I did,"
tartly retorted the elder woman.
"And how much did he give you to pay for it?"
The elder woman was stung with fine indignation.
"Eighty pound,
if you're so keen on knowin',"
she replied.
"Eighty pounds!
But there are forty-two pounds still owing!"
"I can't help that."
"But where has it all gone?"
"You'll find all the papers,
I think,
if you look --beside ten pound as he owed me,
an' six pound as the wedding cost down here."
"Six pounds!"
echoed Gertrude Morel.
It seemed to her monstrous that,
after her own father had paid so heavily for her wedding,
six pounds more should have been squandered in eating and drinking at Walter's parents' house,
at his expense.
"And how much has he sunk in his houses?"
she asked.
"His houses --which houses?"
Gertrude Morel went white to the lips.
He had told her the house he lived in,
and the next one,
was his own.
"I thought the house we live in --" she began.
"They're my houses,
those two,"
said the mother-in-law.
"And not clear either.
It's as much as I can do to keep the mortgage interest paid."
Gertrude sat white and silent.
She was her father now.
"Then we ought to be paying you rent,"
she said coldly.
"Walter is paying me rent,"
replied the mother.
"And what rent?"
asked Gertrude.
"Six and six a week,"
retorted the mother.
It was more than the house was worth.
Gertrude held her head erect,
looked straight before her.
"It is lucky to be you,"
said the elder woman,
bitingly,
"to have a husband as takes all the worry of the money,
and leaves you a free hand."
The young wife was silent.
She said very little to her husband,
but her manner had changed towards him.
Something in her proud,
honourable soul had crystallised out hard as rock.
When October came in,
she thought only of Christmas.
Two years ago,
at Christmas,
she had met him.
Last Christmas she had married him.
This Christmas she would bear him a child.
"You don't dance yourself,
do you,
missis?"
asked her nearest neighbour,
in October,
when there was great talk of opening a dancing-class over the Brick and Tile Inn at Bestwood.
"No --I never had the least inclination to,"
Mrs. Morel replied.
"Fancy!
An' how funny as you should ha' married your Mester.
You know he's quite a famous one for dancing."
"I didn't know he was famous,"
laughed Mrs. Morel.
"Yea,
he is though!
Why,
he ran that dancing-class in the Miners' Arms club-room for over five year."
"Did he?"
"Yes,
he did."
The other woman was defiant.
"An' it was thronged every Tuesday,
and Thursday,
an' Sat'day --an' there WAS carryin's-on,
accordin' to all accounts."
This kind of thing was gall and bitterness to Mrs. Morel,
and she had a fair share of it.
The women did not spare her,
at first;
for she was superior,
though she could not help it.
He began to be rather late in coming home.
"They're working very late now,
aren't they?"
she said to her washer-woman.
"No later than they allers do,
I don't think.
But they stop to have their pint at Ellen's,
an' they get talkin',
an' there you are!
Dinner stone cold --an' it serves
'em right."
"But Mr. Morel does not take any drink."
The woman dropped the clothes,
looked at Mrs. Morel,
then went on with her work,
saying nothing.
Gertrude Morel was very ill when the boy was born.
Morel was good to her,
as good as gold.
But she felt very lonely,
miles away from her own people.
She felt lonely with him now,
and his presence only made it more intense.
The boy was small and frail at first,
but he came on quickly.
He was a beautiful child,
with dark gold ringlets,
and dark-blue eyes which changed gradually to a clear grey.
His mother loved him passionately.
He came just when her own bitterness of disillusion was hardest to bear;
when her faith in life was shaken,
and her soul felt dreary and lonely.
She made much of the child,
and the father was jealous.
At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband.
She turned to the child;
she turned from the father.
He had begun to neglect her;
the novelty of his own home was gone.
He had no grit,
she said bitterly to herself.
What he felt just at the minute,
that was all to him.
He could not abide by anything.
There was nothing at the back of all his show.
There began a battle between the husband and wife --a fearful,
bloody battle that ended only with the death of one.
She fought to make him undertake his own responsibilities,
to make him fulfill his obligations.
But he was too different from her.
His nature was purely sensuous,
and she strove to make him moral,
religious.
She tried to force him to face things.
He could not endure it --it drove him out of his mind.
While the baby was still tiny,
the father's temper had become so irritable that it was not to be trusted.
The child had only to give a little trouble when the man began to bully.
A little more,
and the hard hands of the collier hit the baby.
Then Mrs. Morel loathed her husband,
loathed him for days;
and he went out and drank;
and she cared very little what he did.
Only,
on his return,
she scathed him with her satire.
The estrangement between them caused him,
knowingly or unknowingly,
grossly to offend her where he would not have done.
William was only one year old,
and his mother was proud of him,
he was so pretty.
She was not well off now,
but her sisters kept the boy in clothes.
Then,
with his little white hat curled with an ostrich feather,
and his white coat,
he was a joy to her,
the twining wisps of hair clustering round his head.
Mrs. Morel lay listening,
one Sunday morning,
to the chatter of the father and child downstairs.
Then she dozed off.
When she came downstairs,
a great fire glowed in the grate,
the room was hot,
the breakfast was roughly laid,
and seated in his armchair,
against the chimney-piece,
sat Morel,
rather timid;
and standing between his legs,
the child --cropped like a sheep,
with such an odd round poll --looking wondering at her;
and on a newspaper spread out upon the hearthrug,
a myriad of crescent-shaped curls,
like the petals of a marigold scattered in the reddening firelight.
Mrs. Morel stood still.
It was her first baby.
She went very white,
and was unable to speak.
"What dost think o'
'im?"
Morel laughed uneasily.
She gripped her two fists,
lifted them,
and came forward.
Morel shrank back.
"I could kill you,
I could!"
she said.
She choked with rage,
her two fists uplifted.
"Yer non want ter make a wench on
'im,"
Morel said,
in a frightened tone,
bending his head to shield his eyes from hers.
His attempt at laughter had vanished.
The mother looked down at the jagged,
close-clipped head of her child.
She put her hands on his hair,
and stroked and fondled his head.
"Oh --my boy!"
she faltered.
Her lip trembled,
her face broke,
and,
snatching up the child,
she buried her face in his shoulder and cried painfully.
She was one of those women who cannot cry;
whom it hurts as it hurts a man.
It was like ripping something out of her,
her sobbing.
Morel sat with his elbows on his knees,
his hands gripped together till the knuckles were white.
He gazed in the fire,
feeling almost stunned,
as if he could not breathe.
Presently she came to an end,
soothed the child and cleared away the breakfast-table.
She left the newspaper,
littered with curls,
spread upon the hearthrug.
At last her husband gathered it up and put it at the back of the fire.
She went about her work with closed mouth and very quiet.
Morel was subdued.
He crept about wretchedly,
and his meals were a misery that day.
She spoke to him civilly,
and never alluded to what he had done.
But he felt something final had happened.
Afterwards she said she had been silly,
that the boy's hair would have had to be cut,
sooner or later.
In the end,
she even brought herself to say to her husband it was just as well he had played barber when he did.
But she knew,
and Morel knew,
that that act had caused something momentous to take place in her soul.
She remembered the scene all her life,
as one in which she had suffered the most intensely.
This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her love for Morel.
Before,
while she had striven against him bitterly,
she had fretted after him,
as if he had gone astray from her.
Now she ceased to fret for his love: he was an outsider to her.
This made life much more bearable.
Nevertheless,
she still continued to strive with him.
She still had her high moral sense,
inherited from generations of Puritans.
It was now a religious instinct,
and she was almost a fanatic with him,
because she loved him,
or had loved him.
If he sinned,
she tortured him.
If he drank,
and lied,
was often a poltroon,
sometimes a knave,
she wielded the lash unmercifully.
The pity was,
she was too much his opposite.
She could not be content with the little he might be;
she would have him the much that he ought to be.
So,
in seeking to make him nobler than he could be,
she destroyed him.
She injured and hurt and scarred herself,
but she lost none of her worth.
She also had the children.
He drank rather heavily,
though not more than many miners,
and always beer,
so that whilst his health was affected,
it was never injured.
The week-end was his chief carouse.
He sat in the Miners' Arms until turning-out time every Friday,
every Saturday,
and every Sunday evening.
On Monday and Tuesday he had to get up and reluctantly leave towards ten o'clock.
Sometimes he stayed at home on Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
or was only out for an hour.
He practically never had to miss work owing to his drinking.
But although he was very steady at work,
his wages fell off.
He was blab-mouthed,
a tongue-wagger.
Authority was hateful to him,
therefore he could only abuse the pit-managers.
He would say,
in the Palmerston:
"Th' gaffer come down to our stall this morning,
an'
'e says,
'You know,
Walter,
this
'ere'll not do.
What about these props?'
An' I says to him,
'Why,
what art talkin' about?
What d'st mean about th' props?'
'It'll never do,
this
'ere,'
'e says.
'You'll be havin' th' roof in,
one o' these days.'
An' I says,
'Tha'd better stan' on a bit o' clunch,
then,
an' hold it up wi' thy
'ead.'
So
'e wor that mad,
'e cossed an'
'e swore,
an' t'other chaps they did laugh."
Morel was a good mimic.
He imitated the manager's fat,
squeaky voice,
with its attempt at good English.
"'I shan't have it,
Walter.
Who knows more about it,
me or you?'
So I says,
'I've niver fun out how much tha' knows,
Alfred.
It'll
'appen carry thee ter bed an' back."'
So Morel would go on to the amusement of his boon companions.
And some of this would be true.
The pit-manager was not an educated man.
He had been a boy along with Morel,
so that,
while the two disliked each other,
they more or less took each other for granted.
But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive the butty these public-house sayings.
Consequently,
although Morel was a good miner,
sometimes earning as much as five pounds a week when he married,
he came gradually to have worse and worse stalls,
where the coal was thin,
and hard to get,
and unprofitable.
Also,
in summer,
the pits are slack.
Often,
on bright sunny mornings,
the men are seen trooping home again at ten,
eleven,
or twelve o'clock.
No empty trucks stand at the pit-mouth.
The women on the hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug against the fence,
and count the wagons the engine is taking along the line up the valley.
And the children,
as they come from school at dinner-time,
looking down the fields and seeing the wheels on the headstocks standing,
say:
"Minton's knocked off.
My dad'll be at home."
And there is a sort of shadow over all,
women and children and men,
because money will be short at the end of the week.
Morel was supposed to give his wife thirty shillings a week,
to provide everything --rent,
food,
clothes,
clubs,
insurance,
doctors.
Occasionally,
if he were flush,
he gave her thirty-five.
But these occasions by no means balanced those when he gave her twenty-five.
In winter,
with a decent stall,
the miner might earn fifty or fifty-five shillings a week.
Then he was happy.
On Friday night,
Saturday,
and Sunday,
he spent royally,
getting rid of his sovereign or thereabouts.
And out of so much,
he scarcely spared the children an extra penny or bought them a pound of apples.
It all went in drink.
In the bad times,
matters were more worrying,
but he was not so often drunk,
so that Mrs. Morel used to say:
"I'm not sure I wouldn't rather be short,
for when he's flush,
there isn't a minute of peace."
If he earned forty shillings he kept ten;
from thirty-five he kept five;
from thirty-two he kept four;
from twenty-eight he kept three;
from twenty-four he kept two;
from twenty he kept one-and-six;
from eighteen he kept a shilling;
from sixteen he kept sixpence.
He never saved a penny,
and he gave his wife no opportunity of saving;
instead,
she had occasionally to pay his debts;
not public-house debts,
for those never were passed on to the women,
but debts when he had bought a canary,
or a fancy walking-stick.
At the wakes time Morel was working badly,
and Mrs. Morel was trying to save against her confinement.
So it galled her bitterly to think he should be out taking his pleasure and spending money,
whilst she remained at home,
harassed.
There were two days' holiday.
On the Tuesday morning Morel rose early.
He was in good spirits.
Quite early,
before six o'clock,
she heard him whistling away to himself downstairs.
He had a pleasant way of whistling,
lively and musical.
He nearly always whistled hymns.
He had been a choir-boy with a beautiful voice,
and had taken solos in Southwell cathedral.
His morning whistling alone betrayed it.
His wife lay listening to him tinkering away in the garden,
his whistling ringing out as he sawed and hammered away.
It always gave her a sense of warmth and peace to hear him thus as she lay in bed,
the children not yet awake,
in the bright early morning,
happy in his man's fashion.
At nine o'clock,
while the children with bare legs and feet were sitting playing on the sofa,
and the mother was washing up,
he came in from his carpentry,
his sleeves rolled up,
his waistcoat hanging open.
He was still a good-looking man,
with black,
wavy hair,
and a large black moustache.
His face was perhaps too much inflamed,
and there was about him a look almost of peevishness.
But now he was jolly.
He went straight to the sink where his wife was washing up.
"What,
are thee there!"
he said boisterously.
"Sluthe off an' let me wesh mysen."
"You may wait till I've finished,"
said his wife.
"Oh,
mun I?
An' what if I shonna?"
This good-humoured threat amused Mrs. Morel.
"Then you can go and wash yourself in the soft-water tub."
"Ha!
I can' an' a',
tha mucky little
'ussy."
With which he stood watching her a moment,
then went away to wait for her.
When he chose he could still make himself again a real gallant.
Usually he preferred to go out with a scarf round his neck.
Now,
however,
he made a toilet.
There seemed so much gusto in the way he puffed and swilled as he washed himself,
so much alacrity with which he hurried to the mirror in the kitchen,
and,
bending because it was too low for him,
scrupulously parted his wet black hair,
that it irritated Mrs. Morel.
He put on a turn-down collar,
a black bow,
and wore his Sunday tail-coat.
As such,
he looked spruce,
and what his clothes would not do,
his instinct for making the most of his good looks would.
At half-past nine Jerry Purdy came to call for his pal.
Jerry was Morel's bosom friend,
and Mrs. Morel disliked him.
He was a tall,
thin man,
with a rather foxy face,
the kind of face that seems to lack eyelashes.
He walked with a stiff,
brittle dignity,
as if his head were on a wooden spring.
His nature was cold and shrewd.
Generous where he intended to be generous,
he seemed to be very fond of Morel,
and more or less to take charge of him.
Mrs. Morel hated him.
She had known his wife,
who had died of consumption,
and who had,
at the end,
conceived such a violent dislike of her husband,
that if he came into her room it caused her haemorrhage.
None of which Jerry had seemed to mind.
And now his eldest daughter,
a girl of fifteen,
kept a poor house for him,
and looked after the two younger children.
"A mean,
wizzen-hearted stick!"
Mrs. Morel said of him.
"I've never known Jerry mean in MY life,"
protested Morel.
"A opener-handed and more freer chap you couldn't find anywhere,
accordin' to my knowledge."
"Open-handed to you,"
retorted Mrs. Morel.
"But his fist is shut tight enough to his children,
poor things."
"Poor things!
And what for are they poor things,
I should like to know."
But Mrs. Morel would not be appeased on Jerry's score.
The subject of argument was seen,
craning his thin neck over the scullery curtain.
He caught Mrs. Morel's eye.
"Mornin',
missis!
Mester in?"
"Yes --he is."
Jerry entered unasked,
and stood by the kitchen doorway.
He was not invited to sit down,
but stood there,
coolly asserting the rights of men and husbands.
"A nice day,"
he said to Mrs. Morel.
"Yes.
"Grand out this morning --grand for a walk."
"Do you mean YOU'RE going for a walk?"
she asked.
"Yes.
We mean walkin' to Nottingham,"
he replied.
"H'm!"
The two men greeted each other,
both glad: Jerry,
however,
full of assurance,
Morel rather subdued,
afraid to seem too jubilant in presence of his wife.
But he laced his boots quickly,
with spirit.
They were going for a ten-mile walk across the fields to Nottingham.
Climbing the hillside from the Bottoms,
they mounted gaily into the morning.
At the Moon and Stars they had their first drink,
then on to the Old Spot.
Then a long five miles of drought to carry them into Bulwell to a glorious pint of bitter.
But they stayed in a field with some haymakers whose gallon bottle was full,
so that,
when they came in sight of the city,
Morel was sleepy.
The town spread upwards before them,
smoking vaguely in the midday glare,
fridging the crest away to the south with spires and factory bulks and chimneys.
In the last field Morel lay down under an oak tree and slept soundly for over an hour.
When he rose to go forward he felt queer.
The two had dinner in the Meadows,
with Jerry's sister,
then repaired to the Punch Bowl,
where they mixed in the excitement of pigeon-racing.
Morel never in his life played cards,
considering them as having some occult,
malevolent power --"the devil's pictures,"
he called them!
But he was a master of skittles and of dominoes.
He took a challenge from a Newark man,
on skittles.
All the men in the old,
long bar took sides,
betting either one way or the other.
Morel took off his coat.
Jerry held the hat containing the money.
The men at the tables watched.
Some stood with their mugs in their hands.
Morel felt his big wooden ball carefully,
then launched it.
He played havoc among the nine-pins,
and won half a crown,
which restored him to solvency.
By seven o'clock the two were in good condition.
They caught the 7.30 train home.
In the afternoon the Bottoms was intolerable.
Every inhabitant remaining was out of doors.
The women,
in twos and threes,
bareheaded and in white aprons,
gossiped in the alley between the blocks.
Men,
having a rest between drinks,
sat on their heels and talked.
The place smelled stale;
the slate roofs glistered in the arid heat.
Mrs. Morel took the little girl down to the brook in the meadows,
which were not more than two hundred yards away.
The water ran quickly over stones and broken pots.
Mother and child leaned on the rail of the old sheep-bridge,
watching.
Up at the dipping-hole,
at the other end of the meadow,
Mrs. Morel could see the naked forms of boys flashing round the deep yellow water,
or an occasional bright figure dart glittering over the blackish stagnant meadow.
She knew William was at the dipping-hole,
and it was the dread of her life lest he should get drowned.
Annie played under the tall old hedge,
picking up alder cones,
that she called currants.
The child required much attention,
and the flies were teasing.
The children were put to bed at seven o'clock.
Then she worked awhile.
When Walter Morel and Jerry arrived at Bestwood they felt a load off their minds;
a railway journey no longer impended,
so they could put the finishing touches to a glorious day.
They entered the Nelson with the satisfaction of returned travellers.
The next day was a work-day,
and the thought of it put a damper on the men's spirits.
Most of them,
moreover,
had spent their money.
Some were already rolling dismally home,
to sleep in preparation for the morrow.
Mrs. Morel,
listening to their mournful singing,
went indoors.
Nine o'clock passed,
and ten,
and still "the pair" had not returned.
On a doorstep somewhere a man was singing loudly,
in a drawl:
"Lead,
kindly Light."
Mrs. Morel was always indignant with the drunken men that they must sing that hymn when they got maudlin.
"As if
'Genevieve' weren't good enough,"
she said.
The kitchen was full of the scent of boiled herbs and hops.
On the hob a large black saucepan steamed slowly.
Mrs. Morel took a panchion,
a great bowl of thick red earth,
streamed a heap of white sugar into the bottom,
and then,
straining herself to the weight,
was pouring in the liquor.
Just then Morel came in.
He had been very jolly in the Nelson,
but coming home had grown irritable.
He had not quite got over the feeling of irritability and pain,
after having slept on the ground when he was so hot;
and a bad conscience afflicted him as he neared the house.
He did not know he was angry.
But when the garden gate resisted his attempts to open it,
he kicked it and broke the latch.
He entered just as Mrs. Morel was pouring the infusion of herbs out of the saucepan.
Swaying slightly,
he lurched against the table.
The boiling liquor pitched.
Mrs. Morel started back.
"Good gracious,"
she cried,
"coming home in his drunkenness!"
"Comin' home in his what?"
he snarled,
his hat over his eye.
Suddenly her blood rose in a jet.
"Say you're NOT drunk!"
she flashed.
She had put down her saucepan,
and was stirring the sugar into the beer.
He dropped his two hands heavily on the table,
and thrust his face forwards at her.
"'Say you're not drunk,'" he repeated.
"Why,
nobody but a nasty little bitch like you
'ud
'ave such a thought."
He thrust his face forward at her.
"There's money to bezzle with,
if there's money for nothing else."
"I've not spent a two-shillin' bit this day,"
he said.
"You don't get as drunk as a lord on nothing,"
she replied.
"And,"
she cried,
flashing into sudden fury,
"if you've been sponging on your beloved Jerry,
why,
let him look after his children,
for they need it."
"It's a lie,
it's a lie.
Shut your face,
woman."
They were now at battle-pitch.
Each forgot everything save the hatred of the other and the battle between them.
She was fiery and furious as he.
They went on till he called her a liar.
"No,"
she cried,
starting up,
scarce able to breathe.
"Don't call me that --you,
the most despicable liar that ever walked in shoe-leather."
She forced the last words out of suffocated lungs.
"You're a liar!"
he yelled,
banging the table with his fist.
"You're a liar,
you're a liar."
She stiffened herself,
with clenched fists.
"The house is filthy with you,"
she cried.
"Then get out on it --it's mine.
Get out on it!"
he shouted.
"It's me as brings th' money whoam,
not thee.
It's my house,
not thine.
Then ger out on't --ger out on't!"
"And I would,"
she cried,
suddenly shaken into tears of impotence.
"Ah,
wouldn't I,
wouldn't I have gone long ago,
but for those children.
Ay,
haven't I repented not going years ago,
when I'd only the one" --suddenly drying into rage.
"Do you think it's for YOU I stop --do you think I'd stop one minute for YOU?"
"Go,
then,"
he shouted,
beside himself.
"Go!"
"No!"
She faced round.
"No,"
she cried loudly,
"you shan't have it ALL your own way;
you shan't do ALL you like.
I've got those children to see to.
My word,"
she laughed,
"I should look well to leave them to you."
"Go,"
he cried thickly,
lifting his fist.
He was afraid of her.
"Go!"
"I should be only too glad.
I should laugh,
laugh,
my lord,
if I could get away from you,"
she replied.
He came up to her,
his red face,
with its bloodshot eyes,
thrust forward,
and gripped her arms.
She cried in fear of him,
struggled to be free.
Coming slightly to himself,
panting,
he pushed her roughly to the outer door,
and thrust her forth,
slotting the bolt behind her with a bang.
Then he went back into the kitchen,
dropped into his armchair,
his head,
bursting full of blood,
sinking between his knees.
Thus he dipped gradually into a stupor,
from exhaustion and intoxication.
The moon was high and magnificent in the August night.
Mrs. Morel,
seared with passion,
shivered to find herself out there in a great white light,
that fell cold on her,
and gave a shock to her inflamed soul.
She stood for a few moments helplessly staring at the glistening great rhubarb leaves near the door.
Then she got the air into her breast.
She walked down the garden path,
trembling in every limb,
while the child boiled within her.
For a while she could not control her consciousness;
mechanically she went over the last scene,
then over it again,
certain phrases,
certain moments coming each time like a brand red-hot down on her soul;
and each time she enacted again the past hour,
each time the brand came down at the same points,
till the mark was burnt in,
and the pain burnt out,
and at last she came to herself.
She must have been half an hour in this delirious condition.
Then the presence of the night came again to her.
She glanced round in fear.
She had wandered to the side garden,
where she was walking up and down the path beside the currant bushes under the long wall.
The garden was a narrow strip,
bounded from the road,
that cut transversely between the blocks,
by a thick thorn hedge.
She hurried out of the side garden to the front,
where she could stand as if in an immense gulf of white light,
the moon streaming high in face of her,
the moonlight standing up from the hills in front,
and filling the valley where the Bottoms crouched,
almost blindingly.
There,
panting and half weeping in reaction from the stress,
she murmured to herself over and over again:
"The nuisance!
the nuisance!"
She became aware of something about her.
With an effort she roused herself to see what it was that penetrated her consciousness.
The tall white lilies were reeling in the moonlight,
and the air was charged with their perfume,
as with a presence.
Mrs. Morel gasped slightly in fear.
She touched the big,
pallid flowers on their petals,
then shivered.
They seemed to be stretching in the moonlight.
She put her hand into one white bin: the gold scarcely showed on her fingers by moonlight.
She bent down to look at the binful of yellow pollen;
but it only appeared dusky.
Then she drank a deep draught of the scent.
It almost made her dizzy.
Mrs. Morel leaned on the garden gate,
looking out,
and she lost herself awhile.
She did not know what she thought.
Except for a slight feeling of sickness,
and her consciousness in the child,
herself melted out like scent into the shiny,
pale air.
After a time the child,
too,
melted with her in the mixing-pot of moonlight,
and she rested with the hills and lilies and houses,
all swum together in a kind of swoon.
When she came to herself she was tired for sleep.
Languidly she looked about her;
the clumps of white phlox seemed like bushes spread with linen;
a moth ricochetted over them,
and right across the garden.
Following it with her eye roused her.
A few whiffs of the raw,
strong scent of phlox invigorated her.
She passed along the path,
hesitating at the white rose-bush.
It smelled sweet and simple.
She touched the white ruffles of the roses.
Their fresh scent and cool,
soft leaves reminded her of the morning-time and sunshine.
She was very fond of them.
But she was tired,
and wanted to sleep.
In the mysterious out-of-doors she felt forlorn.
There was no noise anywhere.
Evidently the children had not been wakened,
or had gone to sleep again.
A train,
three miles away,
roared across the valley.
The night was very large,
and very strange,
stretching its hoary distances infinitely.
And out of the silver-grey fog of darkness came sounds vague and hoarse: a corncrake not far off,
sound of a train like a sigh,
and distant shouts of men.
Her quietened heart beginning to beat quickly again,
she hurried down the side garden to the back of the house.
Softly she lifted the latch;
the door was still bolted,
and hard against her.
She rapped gently,
waited,
then rapped again.
She must not rouse the children,
nor the neighbours.
He must be asleep,
and he would not wake easily.
Her heart began to burn to be indoors.
She clung to the door-handle.
Now it was cold;
she would take a chill,
and in her present condition!
Putting her apron over her head and her arms,
she hurried again to the side garden,
to the window of the kitchen.
Leaning on the sill,
she could just see,
under the blind,
her husband's arms spread out on the table,
and his black head on the board.
He was sleeping with his face lying on the table.
Something in his attitude made her feel tired of things.
The lamp was burning smokily;
she could tell by the copper colour of the light.
She tapped at the window more and more noisily.
Almost it seemed as if the glass would break.
Still he did not wake up.
After vain efforts,
she began to shiver,
partly from contact with the stone,
and from exhaustion.
Fearful always for the unborn child,
she wondered what she could do for warmth.
She went down to the coal-house,
where there was an old hearthrug she had carried out for the rag-man the day before.
This she wrapped over her shoulders.
It was warm,
if grimy.
Then she walked up and down the garden path,
peeping every now and then under the blind,
knocking,
and telling herself that in the end the very strain of his position must wake him.
At last,
after about an hour,
she rapped long and low at the window.
Gradually the sound penetrated to him.
When,
in despair,
she had ceased to tap,
she saw him stir,
then lift his face blindly.
The labouring of his heart hurt him into consciousness.
She rapped imperatively at the window.
He started awake.
Instantly she saw his fists set and his eyes glare.
He had not a grain of physical fear.
If it had been twenty burglars,
he would have gone blindly for them.
He glared round,
bewildered,
but prepared to fight.
"Open the door,
Walter,"
she said coldly.
His hands relaxed.
It dawned on him what he had done.
His head dropped,
sullen and dogged.
She saw him hurry to the door,
heard the bolt chock.
He tried the latch.
It opened --and there stood the silver-grey night,
fearful to him,
after the tawny light of the lamp.
He hurried back.
When Mrs. Morel entered,
she saw him almost running through the door to the stairs.
He had ripped his collar off his neck in his haste to be gone ere she came in,
and there it lay with bursten button-holes.
It made her angry.
She warmed and soothed herself.
In her weariness forgetting everything,
she moved about at the little tasks that remained to be done,
set his breakfast,
rinsed his pit-bottle,
put his pit-clothes on the hearth to warm,
set his pit-boots beside them,
put him out a clean scarf and snap-bag and two apples,
raked the fire,
and went to bed.
He was already dead asleep.
His narrow black eyebrows were drawn up in a sort of peevish misery into his forehead while his cheeks' down-strokes,
and his sulky mouth,
seemed to be saying:
"I don't care who you are nor what you are,
I SHALL have my own way."
Mrs. Morel knew him too well to look at him.
As she unfastened her brooch at the mirror,
she smiled faintly to see her face all smeared with the yellow dust of lilies.
She brushed it off,
and at last lay down.
For some time her mind continued snapping and jetting sparks,
but she was asleep before her husband awoke from the first sleep of his drunkenness.
CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF PAUL,
AND ANOTHER BATTLE
AFTER such a scene as the last,
Walter Morel was for some days abashed and ashamed,
but he soon regained his old bullying indifference.
Yet there was a slight shrinking,
a diminishing in his assurance.
Physically even,
he shrank,
and his fine full presence waned.
He never grew in the least stout,
so that,
as he sank from his erect,
assertive bearing,
his physique seemed to contract along with his pride and moral strength.
But now he realised how hard it was for his wife to drag about at her work,
and,
his sympathy quickened by penitence,
hastened forward with his help.
He came straight home from the pit,
and stayed in at evening till Friday,
and then he could not remain at home.
But he was back again by ten o'clock,
almost quite sober.
He always made his own breakfast.
Being a man who rose early and had plenty of time he did not,
as some miners do,
drag his wife out of bed at six o'clock.
At five,
sometimes earlier,
he woke,
got straight out of bed,
and went downstairs.
When she could not sleep,
his wife lay waiting for this time,
as for a period of peace.
The only real rest seemed to be when he was out of the house.
He went downstairs in his shirt and then struggled into his pit-trousers,
which were left on the hearth to warm all night.
There was always a fire,
because Mrs. Morel raked.
And the first sound in the house was the bang,
bang of the poker against the raker,
as Morel smashed the remainder of the coal to make the kettle,
which was filled and left on the hob,
finally boil.
His cup and knife and fork,
all he wanted except just the food,
was laid ready on the table on a newspaper.
Then he got his breakfast,
made the tea,
packed the bottom of the doors with rugs to shut out the draught,
piled a big fire,
and sat down to an hour of joy.
He toasted his bacon on a fork and caught the drops of fat on his bread;
then he put the rasher on his thick slice of bread,
and cut off chunks with a clasp-knife,
poured his tea into his saucer,
and was happy.
With his family about,
meals were never so pleasant.
He loathed a fork: it is a modern introduction which has still scarcely reached common people.
What Morel preferred was a clasp-knife.
Then,
in solitude,
he ate and drank,
often sitting,
in cold weather,
on a little stool with his back to the warm chimney-piece,
his food on the fender,
his cup on the hearth.
And then he read the last night's newspaper --what of it he could --spelling it over laboriously.
He preferred to keep the blinds down and the candle lit even when it was daylight;
it was the habit of the mine.
At a quarter to six he rose,
cut two thick slices of bread and butter,
and put them in the white calico snap-bag.
He filled his tin bottle with tea.
Cold tea without milk or sugar was the drink he preferred for the pit.
Then he pulled off his shirt,
and put on his pit-singlet,
a vest of thick flannel cut low round the neck,
and with short sleeves like a chemise.
Then he went upstairs to his wife with a cup of tea because she was ill,
and because it occurred to him.
"I've brought thee a cup o' tea,
lass,"
he said.
"Well,
you needn't,
for you know I don't like it,"
she replied.
"Drink it up;
it'll pop thee off to sleep again."
She accepted the tea.
It pleased him to see her take it and sip it.
"I'll back my life there's no sugar in,"
she said.
"Yi --there's one big
'un,"
he replied,
injured.
"It's a wonder,"
she said,
sipping again.
She had a winsome face when her hair was loose.
He loved her to grumble at him in this manner.
He looked at her again,
and went,
without any sort of leave-taking.
He never took more than two slices of bread and butter to eat in the pit,
so an apple or an orange was a treat to him.
He always liked it when she put one out for him.
He tied a scarf round his neck,
put on his great,
heavy boots,
his coat,
with the big pocket,
that carried his snap-bag and his bottle of tea,
and went forth into the fresh morning air,
closing,
without locking,
the door behind him.
He loved the early morning,
and the walk across the fields.
So he appeared at the pit-top,
often with a stalk from the hedge between his teeth,
which he chewed all day to keep his mouth moist,
down the mine,
feeling quite as happy as when he was in the field.
Later,
when the time for the baby grew nearer,
he would bustle round in his slovenly fashion,
poking out the ashes,
rubbing the fireplace,
sweeping the house before he went to work.
Then,
feeling very self-righteous,
he went upstairs.
"Now I'm cleaned up for thee: tha's no
'casions ter stir a peg all day,
but sit and read thy books."
Which made her laugh,
in spite of her indignation.
"And the dinner cooks itself?"
she answered.
"Eh,
I know nowt about th' dinner."
"You'd know if there weren't any."
"Ay,
'appen so,"
he answered,
departing.
When she got downstairs,
she would find the house tidy,
but dirty.
She could not rest until she had thoroughly cleaned;
so she went down to the ash-pit with her dustpan.
Mrs. Kirk,
spying her,
would contrive to have to go to her own coal-place at that minute.
Then,
across the wooden fence,
she would call:
"So you keep wagging on,
then?"
"Ay,"
answered Mrs. Morel deprecatingly.
"There's nothing else for it."
"Have you seen Hose?"
called a very small woman from across the road.
It was Mrs. Anthony,
a black-haired,
strange little body,
who always wore a brown velvet dress,
tight fitting.
"I haven't,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"Eh,
I wish he'd come.
I've got a copperful of clothes,
an' I'm sure I heered his bell."
"Hark!
He's at the end."
The two women looked down the alley.
At the end of the Bottoms a man stood in a sort of old-fashioned trap,
bending over bundles of cream-coloured stuff;
while a cluster of women held up their arms to him,
some with bundles.
Mrs. Anthony herself had a heap of creamy,
undyed stockings hanging over her arm.
"I've done ten dozen this week,"
she said proudly to Mrs. Morel.
"T-t-t!"
went the other.
"I don't know how you can find time."
"Eh!"
said Mrs. Anthony.
"You can find time if you make time."
"I don't know how you do it,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"And how much shall you get for those many?"
"Tuppence-ha'penny a dozen,"
replied the other.
"Well,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"I'd starve before I'd sit down and seam twenty-four stockings for twopence ha'penny."
"Oh,
I don't know,"
said Mrs. Anthony.
"You can rip along with
'em."
Hose was coming along,
ringing his bell.
Women were waiting at the yard-ends with their seamed stockings hanging over their arms.
The man,
a common fellow,
made jokes with them,
tried to swindle them,
and bullied them.
Mrs. Morel went up her yard disdainfully.
It was an understood thing that if one woman wanted her neighbour,
she should put the poker in the fire and bang at the back of the fireplace,
which,
as the fires were back to back,
would make a great noise in the adjoining house.
One morning Mrs. Kirk,
mixing a pudding,
nearly started out of her skin as she heard the thud,
thud,
in her grate.
With her hands all floury,
she rushed to the fence.
"Did you knock,
Mrs. Morel?"
"If you wouldn't mind,
Mrs. Kirk."
Mrs. Kirk climbed on to her copper,
got over the wall on to Mrs. Morel's copper,
and ran in to her neighbour.
"Eh,
dear,
how are you feeling?"
she cried in concern.
"You might fetch Mrs. Bower,"
said Mrs. Morel.
Mrs. Kirk went into the yard,
lifted up her strong,
shrill voice,
and called:
"Ag-gie --Ag-gie!"
The sound was heard from one end of the Bottoms to the other.
At last Aggie came running up,
and was sent for Mrs. Bower,
whilst Mrs. Kirk left her pudding and stayed with her neighbour.
Mrs. Morel went to bed.
Mrs. Kirk had Annie and William for dinner.
Mrs. Bower,
fat and waddling,
bossed the house.
"Hash some cold meat up for the master's dinner,
and make him an apple-charlotte pudding,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"He may go without pudding this day,"
said Mrs. Bower.
Morel was not as a rule one of the first to appear at the bottom of the pit,
ready to come up.
Some men were there before four o'clock,
when the whistle blew loose-all;
but Morel,
whose stall,
a poor one,
was at this time about a mile and a half away from the bottom,
worked usually till the first mate stopped,
then he finished also.
This day,
however,
the miner was sick of the work.
At two o'clock he looked at his watch,
by the light of the green candle --he was in a safe working --and again at half-past two.
He was hewing at a piece of rock that was in the way for the next day's work.
As he sat on his heels,
or kneeled,
giving hard blows with his pick,
"Uszza --uszza!"
he went.
"Shall ter finish,
Sorry?"
cried Barker,
his fellow butty.
"Finish?
Niver while the world stands!"
growled Morel.
And he went on striking.
He was tired.
"It's a heart-breaking job,"
said Barker.
But Morel was too exasperated,
at the end of his tether,
to answer.
Still he struck and hacked with all his might.
"Tha might as well leave it,
Walter,"
said Barker.
"It'll do to-morrow,
without thee hackin' thy guts out."
"I'll lay no b -- -- finger on this to-morrow,
Isr'el!"
cried Morel.
"Oh,
well,
if tha wunna,
somebody else'll ha'e to,"
said Israel.
Then Morel continued to strike.
"Hey-up there --LOOSE-A'!"
cried the men,
leaving the next stall.
Morel continued to strike.
"Tha'll happen catch me up,"
said Barker,
departing.
When he had gone,
Morel,
left alone,
felt savage.
He had not finished his job.
He had overworked himself into a frenzy.
Rising,
wet with sweat,
he threw his tool down,
pulled on his coat,
blew out his candle,
took his lamp,
and went.
Down the main road the lights of the other men went swinging.
There was a hollow sound of many voices.
It was a long,
heavy tramp underground.
He sat at the bottom of the pit,
where the great drops of water fell plash.
Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up,
talking noisily.
Morel gave his answers short and disagreeable.
"It's rainin',
Sorry,"
said old Giles,
who had had the news from the top.
Morel found one comfort.
He had his old umbrella,
which he loved,
in the lamp cabin.
At last he took his stand on the chair,
and was at the top in a moment.
Then he handed in his lamp and got his umbrella,
which he had bought at an auction for one-and-six.
He stood on the edge of the pit-bank for a moment,
looking out over the fields;
grey rain was falling.
The trucks stood full of wet,
bright coal.
Water ran down the sides of the waggons,
over the white "C.W.
and Co.".
Colliers,
walking indifferent to the rain,
were streaming down the line and up the field,
a grey,
dismal host.
Morel put up his umbrella,
and took pleasure from the peppering of the drops thereon.
All along the road to Bestwood the miners tramped,
wet and grey and dirty,
but their red mouths talking with animation.
Morel also walked with a gang,
but he said nothing.
He frowned peevishly as he went.
Many men passed into the Prince of Wales or into Ellen's.
Morel,
feeling sufficiently disagreeable to resist temptation,
trudged along under the dripping trees that overhung the park wall,
and down the mud of Greenhill Lane.
Mrs. Morel lay in bed,
listening to the rain,
and the feet of the colliers from Minton,
their voices,
and the bang,
bang of the gates as they went through the stile up the field.
"There's some herb beer behind the pantry door,"
she said.
"Th' master'll want a drink,
if he doesn't stop."
But he was late,
so she concluded he had called for a drink,
since it was raining.
What did he care about the child or her?
She was very ill when her children were born.
"What is it?"
she asked,
feeling sick to death.
"A boy."
And she took consolation in that.
The thought of being the mother of men was warming to her heart.
She looked at the child.
It had blue eyes,
and a lot of fair hair,
and was bonny.
Her love came up hot,
in spite of everything.
She had it in bed with her.
Morel,
thinking nothing,
dragged his way up the garden path,
wearily and angrily.
He closed his umbrella,
and stood it in the sink;
then he sluthered his heavy boots into the kitchen.
Mrs. Bower appeared in the inner doorway.
"Well,"
she said,
"she's about as bad as she can be.
It's a boy childt."
The miner grunted,
put his empty snap-bag and his tin bottle on the dresser,
went back into the scullery and hung up his coat,
then came and dropped into his chair.
"Han yer got a drink?"
he asked.
The woman went into the pantry.
There was heard the pop of a cork.
She set the mug,
with a little,
disgusted rap,
on the table before Morel.
He drank,
gasped,
wiped his big moustache on the end of his scarf,
drank,
gasped,
and lay back in his chair.
The woman would not speak to him again.
She set his dinner before him,
and went upstairs.
"Was that the master?"
asked Mrs. Morel.
"I've gave him his dinner,"
replied Mrs. Bower.
After he had sat with his arms on the table --he resented the fact that Mrs. Bower put no cloth on for him,
and gave him a little plate,
instead of a full-sized dinner-plate --he began to eat.
The fact that his wife was ill,
that he had another boy,
was nothing to him at that moment.
He was too tired;
he wanted his dinner;
he wanted to sit with his arms lying on the board;
he did not like having Mrs. Bower about.
The fire was too small to please him.
After he had finished his meal,
he sat for twenty minutes;
then he stoked up a big fire.
Then,
in his stockinged feet,
he went reluctantly upstairs.
It was a struggle to face his wife at this moment,
and he was tired.
His face was black,
and smeared with sweat.
His singlet had dried again,
soaking the dirt in.
He had a dirty woollen scarf round his throat.
So he stood at the foot of the bed.
"Well,
how are ter,
then?"
he asked.
"I s'll be all right,"
she answered.
"H'm!"
He stood at a loss what to say next.
He was tired,
and this bother was rather a nuisance to him,
and he didn't quite know where he was.
"A lad,
tha says,"
he stammered.
She turned down the sheet and showed the child.
"Bless him!"
he murmured.
Which made her laugh,
because he blessed by rote --pretending paternal emotion,
which he did not feel just then.
"Go now,"
she said.
"I will,
my lass,"
he answered,
turning away.
Dismissed,
he wanted to kiss her,
but he dared not.
She half wanted him to kiss her,
but could not bring herself to give any sign.
She only breathed freely when he was gone out of the room again,
leaving behind him a faint smell of pit-dirt.
Mrs. Morel had a visit every day from the Congregational clergyman.
Mr. Heaton was young,
and very poor.
His wife had died at the birth of his first baby,
so he remained alone in the manse.
He was a Bachelor of Arts of Cambridge,
very shy,
and no preacher.
Mrs. Morel was fond of him,
and he depended on her.
For hours he talked to her,
when she was well.
He became the god-parent of the child.
Occasionally the minister stayed to tea with Mrs. Morel.
Then she laid the cloth early,
got out her best cups,
with a little green rim,
and hoped Morel would not come too soon;
indeed,
if he stayed for a pint,
she would not mind this day.
She had always two dinners to cook,
because she believed children should have their chief meal at midday,
whereas Morel needed his at five o'clock.
So Mr. Heaton would hold the baby,
whilst Mrs. Morel beat up a batter-pudding or peeled the potatoes,
and he,
watching her all the time,
would discuss his next sermon.
His ideas were quaint and fantastic.
She brought him judiciously to earth.
It was a discussion of the wedding at Cana.
"When He changed the water into wine at Cana,"
he said,
"that is a symbol that the ordinary life,
even the blood,
of the married husband and wife,
which had before been uninspired,
like water,
became filled with the Spirit,
and was as wine,
because,
when love enters,
the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes,
is filled with the Holy Ghost,
and almost his form is altered."
Mrs. Morel thought to herself:
"Yes,
poor fellow,
his young wife is dead;
that is why he makes his love into the Holy Ghost."
They were halfway down their first cup of tea when they heard the sluther of pit-boots.
"Good gracious!"
exclaimed Mrs. Morel,
in spite of herself.
The minister looked rather scared.
Morel entered.
He was feeling rather savage.
He nodded a "How d'yer do" to the clergyman,
who rose to shake hands with him.
"Nay,"
said Morel,
showing his hand,
"look thee at it!
Tha niver wants ter shake hands wi' a hand like that,
does ter?
There's too much pick-haft and shovel-dirt on it."
The minister flushed with confusion,
and sat down again.
Mrs. Morel rose,
carried out the steaming saucepan.
Morel took off his coat,
dragged his armchair to table,
and sat down heavily.
"Are you tired?"
asked the clergyman.
"Tired?
I ham that,"
replied Morel.
"YOU don't know what it is to be tired,
as I'M tired."
"No,"
replied the clergyman.
"Why,
look yer
'ere,"
said the miner,
showing the shoulders of his singlet.
"It's a bit dry now,
but it's wet as a clout with sweat even yet.
Feel it."
"Goodness!"
cried Mrs. Morel.
"Mr. Heaton doesn't want to feel your nasty singlet."
The clergyman put out his hand gingerly.
"No,
perhaps he doesn't,"
said Morel;
"but it's all come out of me,
whether or not.
An' iv'ry day alike my singlet's wringin' wet.
'Aven't you got a drink,
Missis,
for a man when he comes home barkled up from the pit?"
"You know you drank all the beer,"
said Mrs. Morel,
pouring out his tea.
"An' was there no more to be got?"
Turning to the clergyman --"A man gets that caked up wi' th' dust,
you know,
--that clogged up down a coal-mine,
he NEEDS a drink when he comes home."
"I am sure he does,"
said the clergyman.
"But it's ten to one if there's owt for him."
"There's water --and there's tea,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"Water!
It's not water as'll clear his throat."
He poured out a saucerful of tea,
blew it,
and sucked it up through his great black moustache,
sighing afterwards.
Then he poured out another saucerful,
and stood his cup on the table.
"My cloth!"
said Mrs. Morel,
putting it on a plate.
"A man as comes home as I do
's too tired to care about cloths,"
said Morel.
"Pity!"
exclaimed his wife,
sarcastically.
The room was full of the smell of meat and vegetables and pit-clothes.
He leaned over to the minister,
his great moustache thrust forward,
his mouth very red in his black face.
"Mr. Heaton,"
he said,
"a man as has been down the black hole all day,
dingin' away at a coal-face,
yi,
a sight harder than that wall --"
"Needn't make a moan of it,"
put in Mrs. Morel.
She hated her husband because,
whenever he had an audience,
he whined and played for sympathy.
William,
sitting nursing the baby,
hated him,
with a boy's hatred for false sentiment,
and for the stupid treatment of his mother.
Annie had never liked him;
she merely avoided him.
When the minister had gone,
Mrs. Morel looked at her cloth.
"A fine mess!"
she said.
"Dos't think I'm goin' to sit wi' my arms danglin',
cos tha's got a parson for tea wi' thee?"
he bawled.
They were both angry,
but she said nothing.
The baby began to cry,
and Mrs. Morel,
picking up a saucepan from the hearth,
accidentally knocked Annie on the head,
whereupon the girl began to whine,
and Morel to shout at her.
In the midst of this pandemonium,
William looked up at the big glazed text over the mantelpiece and read distinctly:
"God Bless Our Home!"
Whereupon Mrs. Morel,
trying to soothe the baby,
jumped up,
rushed at him,
boxed his ears,
saying:
"What are YOU putting in for?"
And then she sat down and laughed,
till tears ran over her cheeks,
while William kicked the stool he had been sitting on,
and Morel growled:
"I canna see what there is so much to laugh at."
One evening,
directly after the parson's visit,
feeling unable to bear herself after another display from her husband,
she took Annie and the baby and went out.
Morel had kicked William,
and the mother would never forgive him.
She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the meadow to the cricket-ground.
The meadows seemed one space of ripe,
evening light,
whispering with the distant mill-race.
She sat on a seat under the alders in the cricket-ground,
and fronted the evening.
Before her,
level and solid,
spread the big green cricket-field,
like the bed of a sea of light.
Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion.
Many rooks,
high up,
came cawing home across the softly-woven sky.
They stooped in a long curve down into the golden glow,
concentrating,
cawing,
wheeling,
like black flakes on a slow vortex,
over a tree clump that made a dark boss among the pasture.
A few gentlemen were practising,
and Mrs. Morel could hear the chock of the ball,
and the voices of men suddenly roused;
could see the white forms of men shifting silently over the green,
upon which already the under shadows were smouldering.
Away at the grange,
one side of the haystacks was lit up,
the other sides blue-grey.
A waggon of sheaves rocked small across the melting yellow light.
The sun was going down.
Every open evening,
the hills of Derbyshire were blazed over with red sunset.
Mrs. Morel watched the sun sink from the glistening sky,
leaving a soft flower-blue overhead,
while the western space went red,
as if all the fire had swum down there,
leaving the bell cast flawless blue.
The mountain-ash berries across the field stood fierily out from the dark leaves,
for a moment.
A few shocks of corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive;
she imagined them bowing;
perhaps her son would be a Joseph.
In the east,
a mirrored sunset floated pink opposite the west's scarlet.
The big haystacks on the hillside,
that butted into the glare,
went cold.
With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the small frets vanish,
and the beauty of things stands out,
and she had the peace and the strength to see herself.
Now and again,
a swallow cut close to her.
Now and again,
Annie came up with a handful of alder-currants.
The baby was restless on his mother's knee,
clambering with his hands at the light.
Mrs. Morel looked down at him.
She had dreaded this baby like a catastrophe,
because of her feeling for her husband.
And now she felt strangely towards the infant.
Her heart was heavy because of the child,
almost as if it were unhealthy,
or malformed.
Yet it seemed quite well.
But she noticed the peculiar knitting of the baby's brows,
and the peculiar heaviness of its eyes,
as if it were trying to understand something that was pain.
She felt,
when she looked at her child's dark,
brooding pupils,
as if a burden were on her heart.
"He looks as if he was thinking about something --quite sorrowful,"
said Mrs. Kirk.
Suddenly,
looking at him,
the heavy feeling at the mother's heart melted into passionate grief.
She bowed over him,
and a few tears shook swiftly out of her very heart.
The baby lifted his fingers.
"My lamb!"
she cried softly.
And at that moment she felt,
in some far inner place of her soul,
that she and her husband were guilty.
The baby was looking up at her.
It had blue eyes like her own,
but its look was heavy,
steady,
as if it had realised something that had stunned some point of its soul.
In her arms lay the delicate baby.
Its deep blue eyes,
always looking up at her unblinking,
seemed to draw her innermost thoughts out of her.
She no longer loved her husband;
she had not wanted this child to come,
and there it lay in her arms and pulled at her heart.
She felt as if the navel string that had connected its frail little body with hers had not been broken.
A wave of hot love went over her to the infant.
She held it close to her face and breast.
With all her force,
with all her soul she would make up to it for having brought it into the world unloved.
She would love it all the more now it was here;
carry it in her love.
Its clear,
knowing eyes gave her pain and fear.
Did it know all about her?
When it lay under her heart,
had it been listening then?
Was there a reproach in the look?
She felt the marrow melt in her bones,
with fear and pain.
Once more she was aware of the sun lying red on the rim of the hill opposite.
She suddenly held up the child in her hands.
"Look!"
she said.
"Look,
my pretty!"
She thrust the infant forward to the crimson,
throbbing sun,
almost with relief.
She saw him lift his little fist.
Then she put him to her bosom again,
ashamed almost of her impulse to give him back again whence he came.
"If he lives,"
she thought to herself,
"what will become of him --what will he be?"
Her heart was anxious.
"I will call him Paul,"
she said suddenly;
she knew not why.
After a while she went home.
A fine shadow was flung over the deep green meadow,
darkening all.
As she expected,
she found the house empty.
But Morel was home by ten o'clock,
and that day,
at least,
ended peacefully.
Walter Morel was,
at this time,
exceedingly irritable.
His work seemed to exhaust him.
When he came home he did not speak civilly to anybody.
If the fire were rather low he bullied about that;
he grumbled about his dinner;
if the children made a chatter he shouted at them in a way that made their mother's blood boil,
and made them hate him.
On the Friday,
he was not home by eleven o'clock.
The baby was unwell,
and was restless,
crying if he were put down.
Mrs. Morel,
tired to death,
and still weak,
was scarcely under control.
"I wish the nuisance would come,"
she said wearily to herself.
The child at last sank down to sleep in her arms.
She was too tired to carry him to the cradle.
"But I'll say nothing,
whatever time he comes,"
she said.
"It only works me up;
I won't say anything.
But I know if he does anything it'll make my blood boil,"
she added to herself.
She sighed,
hearing him coming,
as if it were something she could not bear.
He,
taking his revenge,
was nearly drunk.
She kept her head bent over the child as he entered,
not wishing to see him.
But it went through her like a flash of hot fire when,
in passing,
he lurched against the dresser,
setting the tins rattling,
and clutched at the white pot knobs for support.
He hung up his hat and coat,
then returned,
stood glowering from a distance at her,
as she sat bowed over the child.
"Is there nothing to eat in the house?"
he asked,
insolently,
as if to a servant.
In certain stages of his intoxication he affected the clipped,
mincing speech of the towns.
Mrs. Morel hated him most in this condition.
"You know what there is in the house,"
she said,
so coldly,
it sounded impersonal.
He stood and glared at her without moving a muscle.
"I asked a civil question,
and I expect a civil answer,"
he said affectedly.
"And you got it,"
she said,
still ignoring him.
He glowered again.
Then he came unsteadily forward.
He leaned on the table with one hand,
and with the other jerked at the table drawer to get a knife to cut bread.
The drawer stuck because he pulled sideways.
In a temper he dragged it,
so that it flew out bodily,
and spoons,
forks,
knives,
a hundred metallic things,
splashed with a clatter and a clang upon the brick floor.
The baby gave a little convulsed start.
"What are you doing,
clumsy,
drunken fool?"
the mother cried.
"Then tha should get the flamin' thing thysen.
Tha should get up,
like other women have to,
an' wait on a man."
"Wait on you --wait on you?"
she cried.
"Yes,
I see myself."
"Yis,
an' I'll learn thee tha's got to.
Wait on ME,
yes tha sh'lt wait on me --"
"Never,
milord.
I'd wait on a dog at the door first."
"What --what?"
He was trying to fit in the drawer.
At her last speech he turned round.
His face was crimson,
his eyes bloodshot.
He stared at her one silent second in threat.
"P-h!"
she went quickly,
in contempt.
He jerked at the drawer in his excitement.
It fell,
cut sharply on his shin,
and on the reflex he flung it at her.
One of the corners caught her brow as the shallow drawer crashed into the fireplace.
She swayed,
almost fell stunned from her chair.
To her very soul she was sick;
she clasped the child tightly to her bosom.
A few moments elapsed;
then,
with an effort,
she brought herself to.
The baby was crying plaintively.
Her left brow was bleeding rather profusely.
As she glanced down at the child,
her brain reeling,
some drops of blood soaked into its white shawl;
but the baby was at least not hurt.
She balanced her head to keep equilibrium,
so that the blood ran into her eye.
Walter Morel remained as he had stood,
leaning on the table with one hand,
looking blank.
When he was sufficiently sure of his balance,
he went across to her,
swayed,
caught hold of the back of her rocking-chair,
almost tipping her out;
then leaning forward over her,
and swaying as he spoke,
he said,
in a tone of wondering concern:
"Did it catch thee?"
He swayed again,
as if he would pitch on to the child.
With the catastrophe he had lost all balance.
"Go away,"
she said,
struggling to keep her presence of mind.
He hiccoughed.
"Let's --let's look at it,"
he said,
hiccoughing again.
"Go away!"
she cried.
"Lemme --lemme look at it,
lass."
She smelled him of drink,
felt the unequal pull of his swaying grasp on the back of her rocking-chair.
"Go away,"
she said,
and weakly she pushed him off.
He stood,
uncertain in balance,
gazing upon her.
Summoning all her strength she rose,
the baby on one arm.
By a cruel effort of will,
moving as if in sleep,
she went across to the scullery,
where she bathed her eye for a minute in cold water;
but she was too dizzy.
Afraid lest she should swoon,
she returned to her rocking-chair,
trembling in every fibre.
By instinct,
she kept the baby clasped.
Morel,
bothered,
had succeeded in pushing the drawer back into its cavity,
and was on his knees,
groping,
with numb paws,
for the scattered spoons.
Her brow was still bleeding.
Presently Morel got up and came craning his neck towards her.
"What has it done to thee,
lass?"
he asked,
in a very wretched,
humble tone.
"You can see what it's done,"
she answered.
He stood,
bending forward,
supported on his hands,
which grasped his legs just above the knee.
He peered to look at the wound.
She drew away from the thrust of his face with its great moustache,
averting her own face as much as possible.
As he looked at her,
who was cold and impassive as stone,
with mouth shut tight,
he sickened with feebleness and hopelessness of spirit.
He was turning drearily away,
when he saw a drop of blood fall from the averted wound into the baby's fragile,
glistening hair.
Fascinated,
he watched the heavy dark drop hang in the glistening cloud,
and pull down the gossamer.
Another drop fell.
It would soak through to the baby's scalp.
He watched,
fascinated,
feeling it soak in;
then,
finally,
his manhood broke.
"What of this child?"
was all his wife said to him.
But her low,
intense tones brought his head lower.
She softened:
"Get me some wadding out of the middle drawer,"
she said.
He stumbled away very obediently,
presently returning with a pad,
which she singed before the fire,
then put on her forehead,
as she sat with the baby on her lap.
"Now that clean pit-scarf."
Again he rummaged and fumbled in the drawer,
returning presently with a red,
narrow scarf.
She took it,
and with trembling fingers proceeded to bind it round her head.
"Let me tie it for thee,"
he said humbly.
"I can do it myself,"
she replied.
When it was done she went upstairs,
telling him to rake the fire and lock the door.
In the morning Mrs. Morel said:
"I knocked against the latch of the coal-place,
when I was getting a raker in the dark,
because the candle blew out."
Her two small children looked up at her with wide,
dismayed eyes.
They said nothing,
but their parted lips seemed to express the unconscious tragedy they felt.
Walter Morel lay in bed next day until nearly dinner-time.
He did not think of the previous evening's work.
He scarcely thought of anything,
but he would not think of that.
He lay and suffered like a sulking dog.
He had hurt himself most;
and he was the more damaged because he would never say a word to her,
or express his sorrow.
He tried to wriggle out of it.
"It was her own fault,"
he said to himself.
Nothing,
however,
could prevent his inner consciousness inflicting on him the punishment which ate into his spirit like rust,
and which he could only alleviate by drinking.
He felt as if he had not the initiative to get up,
or to say a word,
or to move,
but could only lie like a log.
Moreover,
he had himself violent pains in the head.
It was Saturday.
Towards noon he rose,
cut himself food in the pantry,
ate it with his head dropped,
then pulled on his boots,
and went out,
to return at three o'clock slightly tipsy and relieved;
then once more straight to bed.
He rose again at six in the evening,
had tea and went straight out.
Sunday was the same: bed till noon,
the Palmerston Arms till 2.30,
dinner,
and bed;
scarcely a word spoken.
When Mrs. Morel went upstairs,
towards four o'clock,
to put on her Sunday dress,
he was fast asleep.
She would have felt sorry for him,
if he had once said,
"Wife,
I'm sorry."
But no;
he insisted to himself it was her fault.
And so he broke himself.
So she merely left him alone.
There was this deadlock of passion between them,
and she was stronger.
The family began tea.
Sunday was the only day when all sat down to meals together.
"Isn't my father going to get up?"
asked William.
"Let him lie,"
the mother replied.
There was a feeling of misery over all the house.
The children breathed the air that was poisoned,
and they felt dreary.
They were rather disconsolate,
did not know what to do,
what to play at.
Immediately Morel woke he got straight out of bed.
That was characteristic of him all his life.
He was all for activity.
The prostrated inactivity of two mornings was stifling him.
It was near six o'clock when he got down.
This time he entered without hesitation,
his wincing sensitiveness having hardened again.
He did not care any longer what the family thought or felt.
The tea-things were on the table.
William was reading aloud from "The Child's Own",
Annie listening and asking eternally "why?"
Both children hushed into silence as they heard the approaching thud of their father's stockinged feet,
and shrank as he entered.
Yet he was usually indulgent to them.
Morel made the meal alone,
brutally.
He ate and drank more noisily than he had need.
No one spoke to him.
The family life withdrew,
shrank away,
and became hushed as he entered.
But he cared no longer about his alienation.
Immediately he had finished tea he rose with alacrity to go out.
It was this alacrity,
this haste to be gone,
which so sickened Mrs. Morel.
As she heard him sousing heartily in cold water,
heard the eager scratch of the steel comb on the side of the bowl,
as he wetted his hair,
she closed her eyes in disgust.
As he bent over,
lacing his boots,
there was a certain vulgar gusto in his movement that divided him from the reserved,
watchful rest of the family.
He always ran away from the battle with himself.
Even in his own heart's privacy,
he excused himself,
saying,
"If she hadn't said so-and-so,
it would never have happened.
She asked for what she's got."
The children waited in restraint during his preparations.
When he had gone,
they sighed with relief.
He closed the door behind him,
and was glad.
It was a rainy evening.
The Palmerston would be the cosier.
He hastened forward in anticipation.
All the slate roofs of the Bottoms shone black with wet.
The roads,
always dark with coal-dust,
were full of blackish mud.
He hastened along.
The Palmerston windows were steamed over.
The passage was paddled with wet feet.
But the air was warm,
if foul,
and full of the sound of voices and the smell of beer and smoke.
"What shollt ha'e,
Walter?"
cried a voice,
as soon as Morel appeared in the doorway.
"Oh,
Jim,
my lad,
wheriver has thee sprung frae?"
The men made a seat for him,
and took him in warmly.
He was glad.
In a minute or two they had thawed all responsibility out of him,
all shame,
all trouble,
and he was clear as a bell for a jolly night.
On the Wednesday following,
Morel was penniless.
He dreaded his wife.
Having hurt her,
he hated her.
He did not know what to do with himself that evening,
having not even twopence with which to go to the Palmerston,
and being already rather deeply in debt.
So,
while his wife was down the garden with the child,
he hunted in the top drawer of the dresser where she kept her purse,
found it,
and looked inside.
It contained a half-crown,
two halfpennies,
and a sixpence.
So he took the sixpence,
put the purse carefully back,
and went out.
The next day,
when she wanted to pay the greengrocer,
she looked in the purse for her sixpence,
and her heart sank to her shoes.
Then she sat down and thought:
"WAS there a sixpence?
I hadn't spent it,
had I?
And I hadn't left it anywhere else?"
She was much put about.
She hunted round everywhere for it.
And,
as she sought,
the conviction came into her heart that her husband had taken it.
What she had in her purse was all the money she possessed.
But that he should sneak it from her thus was unbearable.
He had done so twice before.
The first time she had not accused him,
and at the week-end he had put the shilling again into her purse.
So that was how she had known he had taken it.
The second time he had not paid back.
This time she felt it was too much.
When he had had his dinner --he came home early that day --she said to him coldly:
"Did you take sixpence out of my purse last night?"
"Me!"
he said,
looking up in an offended way.
"No,
I didna!
I niver clapped eyes on your purse."
But she could detect the lie.
"Why,
you know you did,"
she said quietly.
"I tell you I didna,"
he shouted.
"Yer at me again,
are yer?
I've had about enough on't."
"So you filch sixpence out of my purse while I'm taking the clothes in."
"I'll may yer pay for this,"
he said,
pushing back his chair in desperation.
He bustled and got washed,
then went determinedly upstairs.
Presently he came down dressed,
and with a big bundle in a blue-checked,
enormous handkerchief.
"And now,"
he said,
"you'll see me again when you do."
"It'll be before I want to,"
she replied;
and at that he marched out of the house with his bundle.
She sat trembling slightly,
but her heart brimming with contempt.
What would she do if he went to some other pit,
obtained work,
and got in with another woman?
But she knew him too well --he couldn't.
She was dead sure of him.
Nevertheless her heart was gnawed inside her.
"Where's my dad?"
said William,
coming in from school.
"He says he's run away,"
replied the mother.
"Where to?"
"Eh,
I don't know.
He's taken a bundle in the blue handkerchief,
and says he's not coming back."
"What shall we do?"
cried the boy.
"Eh,
never trouble,
he won't go far."
"But if he doesn't come back,"
wailed Annie.
And she and William retired to the sofa and wept.
Mrs. Morel sat and laughed.
"You pair of gabeys!"
she exclaimed.
"You'll see him before the night's out."
But the children were not to be consoled.
Twilight came on.
Mrs. Morel grew anxious from very weariness.
One part of her said it would be a relief to see the last of him;
another part fretted because of keeping the children;
and inside her,
as yet,
she could not quite let him go.
At the bottom,
she knew very well he could NOT go.
When she went down to the coal-place at the end of the garden,
however,
she felt something behind the door.
So she looked.
And there in the dark lay the big blue bundle.
She sat on a piece of coal and laughed.
Every time she saw it,
so fat and yet so ignominious,
slunk into its corner in the dark,
with its ends flopping like dejected ears from the knots,
she laughed again.
She was relieved.
Mrs. Morel sat waiting.
He had not any money,
she knew,
so if he stopped he was running up a bill.
She was very tired of him --tired to death.
He had not even the courage to carry his bundle beyond the yard-end.
As she meditated,
at about nine o'clock,
he opened the door and came in,
slinking,
and yet sulky.
She said not a word.
He took off his coat,
and slunk to his armchair,
where he began to take off his boots.
"You'd better fetch your bundle before you take your boots off,"
she said quietly.
"You may thank your stars I've come back to-night,"
he said,
looking up from under his dropped head,
sulkily,
trying to be impressive.
"Why,
where should you have gone?
You daren't even get your parcel through the yard-end,"
she said.
He looked such a fool she was not even angry with him.
He continued to take his boots off and prepare for bed.
"I don't know what's in your blue handkerchief,"
she said.
"But if you leave it the children shall fetch it in the morning."
Whereupon he got up and went out of the house,
returning presently and crossing the kitchen with averted face,
hurrying upstairs.
As Mrs. Morel saw him slink quickly through the inner doorway,
holding his bundle,
she laughed to herself: but her heart was bitter,
because she had loved him.
CHAPTER III
THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL --THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM
DURING the next week Morel's temper was almost unbearable.
Like all miners,
he was a great lover of medicines,
which,
strangely enough,
he would often pay for himself.
"You mun get me a drop o' laxy vitral,"
he said.
"It's a winder as we canna ha'e a sup i' th'
'ouse."
So Mrs. Morel bought him elixir of vitriol,
his favourite first medicine.
And he made himself a jug of wormwood tea.
He had hanging in the attic great bunches of dried herbs: wormwood,
rue,
horehound,
elder flowers,
parsley-purt,
marshmallow,
hyssop,
dandelion,
and centaury.
Usually there was a jug of one or other decoction standing on the hob,
from which he drank largely.
"Grand!"
he said,
smacking his lips after wormwood.
"Grand!"
And he exhorted the children to try.
"It's better than any of your tea or your cocoa stews,"
he vowed.
But they were not to be tempted.
This time,
however,
neither pills nor vitriol nor all his herbs would shift the "nasty peens in his head".
He was sickening for an attack of an inflammation of the brain.
He had never been well since his sleeping on the ground when he went with Jerry to Nottingham.
Since then he had drunk and stormed.
Now he fell seriously ill,
and Mrs. Morel had him to nurse.
He was one of the worst patients imaginable.
But,
in spite of all,
and putting aside the fact that he was breadwinner,
she never quite wanted him to die.
Still there was one part of her wanted him for herself.
The neighbours were very good to her: occasionally some had the children in to meals,
occasionally some would do the downstairs work for her,
one would mind the baby for a day.
But it was a great drag,
nevertheless.
It was not every day the neighbours helped.
Then she had nursing of baby and husband,
cleaning and cooking,
everything to do.
She was quite worn out,
but she did what was wanted of her.
And the money was just sufficient.
She had seventeen shillings a week from clubs,
and every Friday Barker and the other butty put by a portion of the stall's profits for Morel's wife.
And the neighbours made broths,
and gave eggs,
and such invalids' trifles.
If they had not helped her so generously in those times,
Mrs. Morel would never have pulled through,
without incurring debts that would have dragged her down.
The weeks passed.
Morel,
almost against hope,
grew better.
He had a fine constitution,
so that,
once on the mend,
he went straight forward to recovery.
Soon he was pottering about downstairs.
During his illness his wife had spoilt him a little.
Now he wanted her to continue.
He often put his band to his head,
pulled down the corners of his mouth,
and shammed pains he did not feel.
But there was no deceiving her.
At first she merely smiled to herself.
Then she scolded him sharply.
"Goodness,
man,
don't be so lachrymose."
That wounded him slightly,
but still he continued to feign sickness.
"I wouldn't be such a mardy baby,"
said the wife shortly.
Then he was indignant,
and cursed under his breath,
like a boy.
He was forced to resume a normal tone,
and to cease to whine.
Nevertheless,
there was a state of peace in the house for some time.
Mrs. Morel was more tolerant of him,
and he,
depending on her almost like a child,
was rather happy.
Neither knew that she was more tolerant because she loved him less.
Up till this time,
in spite of all,
he had been her husband and her man.
She had felt that,
more or less,
what he did to himself he did to her.
Her living depended on him.
There were many,
many stages in the ebbing of her love for him,
but it was always ebbing.
Now,
with the birth of this third baby,
her self no longer set towards him,
helplessly,
but was like a tide that scarcely rose,
standing off from him.
After this she scarcely desired him.
And,
standing more aloof from him,
not feeling him so much part of herself,
but merely part of her circumstances,
she did not mind so much what he did,
could leave him alone.
There was the halt,
the wistfulness about the ensuing year,
which is like autumn in a man's life.
His wife was casting him off,
half regretfully,
but relentlessly;
casting him off and turning now for love and life to the children.
Henceforward he was more or less a husk.
And he himself acquiesced,
as so many men do,
yielding their place to their children.
During his recuperation,
when it was really over between them,
both made an effort to come back somewhat to the old relationship of the first months of their marriage.
He sat at home and,
when the children were in bed,
and she was sewing --she did all her sewing by hand,
made all shirts and children's clothing --he would read to her from the newspaper,
slowly pronouncing and delivering the words like a man pitching quoits.
Often she hurried him on,
giving him a phrase in anticipation.
And then he took her words humbly.
The silences between them were peculiar.
There would be the swift,
slight "cluck" of her needle,
the sharp "pop" of his lips as he let out the smoke,
the warmth,
the sizzle on the bars as he spat in the fire.
Then her thoughts turned to William.
Already he was getting a big boy.
Already he was top of the class,
and the master said he was the smartest lad in the school.
She saw him a man,
young,
full of vigour,
making the world glow again for her.
And Morel sitting there,
quite alone,
and having nothing to think about,
would be feeling vaguely uncomfortable.
His soul would reach out in its blind way to her and find her gone.
He felt a sort of emptiness,
almost like a vacuum in his soul.
He was unsettled and restless.
Soon he could not live in that atmosphere,
and he affected his wife.
Both felt an oppression on their breathing when they were left together for some time.
Then he went to bed and she settled down to enjoy herself alone,
working,
thinking,
living.
Meanwhile another infant was coming,
fruit of this little peace and tenderness between the separating parents.
Paul was seventeen months old when the new baby was born.
He was then a plump,
pale child,
quiet,
with heavy blue eyes,
and still the peculiar slight knitting of the brows.
The last child was also a boy,
fair and bonny.
Mrs. Morel was sorry when she knew she was with child,
both for economic reasons and because she did not love her husband;
but not for the sake of the infant.
They called the baby Arthur.
He was very pretty,
with a mop of gold curls,
and he loved his father from the first.
Mrs. Morel was glad this child loved the father.
Hearing the miner's footsteps,
the baby would put up his arms and crow.
And if Morel were in a good temper,
he called back immediately,
in his hearty,
mellow voice:
"What then,
my beauty?
I sh'll come to thee in a minute."
And as soon as he had taken off his pit-coat,
Mrs. Morel would put an apron round the child,
and give him to his father.
"What a sight the lad looks!"
she would exclaim sometimes,
taking back the baby,
that was smutted on the face from his father's kisses and play.
Then Morel laughed joyfully.
"He's a little collier,
bless his bit o' mutton!"
he exclaimed.
And these were the happy moments of her life now,
when the children included the father in her heart.
Meanwhile William grew bigger and stronger and more active,
while Paul,
always rather delicate and quiet,
got slimmer,
and trotted after his mother like her shadow.
He was usually active and interested,
but sometimes he would have fits of depression.
Then the mother would find the boy of three or four crying on the sofa.
"What's the matter?"
she asked,
and got no answer.
"What's the matter?"
she insisted,
getting cross.
"I don't know,"
sobbed the child.
So she tried to reason him out of it,
or to amuse him,
but without effect.
It made her feel beside herself.
Then the father,
always impatient,
would jump from his chair and shout:
"If he doesn't stop,
I'll smack him till he does."
"You'll do nothing of the sort,"
said the mother coldly.
And then she carried the child into the yard,
plumped him into his little chair,
and said:
"Now cry there,
Misery!"
And then a butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye,
or at last he cried himself to sleep.
These fits were not often,
but they caused a shadow in Mrs. Morel's heart,
and her treatment of Paul was different from that of the other children.
Suddenly one morning as she was looking down the alley of the Bottoms for the barm-man,
she heard a voice calling her.
It was the thin little Mrs. Anthony in brown velvet.
"Here,
Mrs. Morel,
I want to tell you about your Willie."
"Oh,
do you?"
replied Mrs. Morel.
"Why,
what's the matter?"
"A lad as gets
'old of another an' rips his clothes off'n
'is back,"
Mrs. Anthony said,
"wants showing something."
"Your Alfred's as old as my William,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"'Appen
'e is,
but that doesn't give him a right to get hold of the boy's collar,
an' fair rip it clean off his back."
"Well,"
said Mrs. Morel,
"I don't thrash my children,
and even if I did,
I should want to hear their side of the tale."
"They'd happen be a bit better if they did get a good hiding,"
retorted Mrs. Anthony.
"When it comes ter rippin' a lad's clean collar off'n
'is back a-purpose --"
"I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"Make me a liar!"
shouted Mrs. Anthony.
Mrs. Morel moved away and closed her gate.
Her hand trembled as she held her mug of barm.
"But I s'll let your mester know,"
Mrs. Anthony cried after her.
At dinner-time,
when William had finished his meal and wanted to be off again --he was then eleven years old --his mother said to him:
"What did you tear Alfred Anthony's collar for?"
"When did I tear his collar?"
"I don't know when,
but his mother says you did."
"Why --it was yesterday --an' it was torn a'ready."
"But you tore it more."
"Well,
I'd got a cobbler as
'ad licked seventeen --an' Alfy Ant'ny
'e says:
'Adam an' Eve an' pinch-me,
Went down to a river to bade.
Adam an' Eve got drownded,
Who do yer think got saved?'
An' so I says:
'Oh,
Pinch-YOU,'
an' so I pinched
'im,
an'
'e was mad,
an' so he snatched my cobbler an' run off with it.
An' so I run after
'im,
an' when I was gettin' hold of
'im,
'e dodged,
an' it ripped
'is collar.
But I got my cobbler --"
He pulled from his pocket a black old horse-chestnut hanging on a string.
This old cobbler had "cobbled" --hit and smashed --seventeen other cobblers on similar strings.
So the boy was proud of his veteran.
"Well,"
said Mrs. Morel,
"you know you've got no right to rip his collar."
"Well,
our mother!"
he answered.
"I never meant tr'a done it --an' it was on'y an old indirrubber collar as was torn a'ready."
"Next time,"
said his mother,
"YOU be more careful.
I shouldn't like it if you came home with your collar torn off."
"I don't care,
our mother;
I never did it a-purpose."
The boy was rather miserable at being reprimanded.
"No --well,
you be more careful."
William fled away,
glad to be exonerated.
And Mrs. Morel,
who hated any bother with the neighbours,
thought she would explain to Mrs. Anthony,
and the business would be over.
But that evening Morel came in from the pit looking very sour.
He stood in the kitchen and glared round,
but did not speak for some minutes.
Then:
"Wheer's that Willy?"
he asked.
"What do you want HIM for?"
asked Mrs. Morel,
who had guessed.
"I'll let
'im know when I get him,"
said Morel,
banging his pit-bottle on to the dresser.
"I suppose Mrs. Anthony's got hold of you and been yarning to you about Alfy's collar,"
said Mrs. Morel,
rather sneering.
"Niver mind who's got hold of me,"
said Morel.
"When I get hold of
'IM I'll make his bones rattle."
"It's a poor tale,"
said Mrs. Morel,
"that you're so ready to side with any snipey vixen who likes to come telling tales against your own children."
"I'll learn
'im!"
said Morel.
"It none matters to me whose lad
'e is;
'e's none goin' rippin' an' tearin' about just as he's a mind."
"'Ripping and tearing about!'" repeated Mrs. Morel.
"He was running after that Alfy,
who'd taken his cobbler,
and he accidentally got hold of his collar,
because the other dodged --as an Anthony would."
"I know!"
shouted Morel threateningly.
"You would,
before you're told,"
replied his wife bitingly.
"Niver you mind,"
stormed Morel.
"I know my business."
"That's more than doubtful,"
said Mrs. Morel,
"supposing some loud-mouthed creature had been getting you to thrash your own children."
"I know,"
repeated Morel.
And he said no more,
but sat and nursed his bad temper.
Suddenly William ran in,
saying:
"Can I have my tea,
mother?"
"Tha can ha'e more than that!"
shouted Morel.
"Hold your noise,
man,"
said Mrs. Morel;
"and don't look so ridiculous."
"He'll look ridiculous before I've done wi' him!"
shouted Morel,
rising from his chair and glaring at his son.
William,
who was a tall lad for his years,
but very sensitive,
had gone pale,
and was looking in a sort of horror at his father.
"Go out!"
Mrs. Morel commanded her son.
William had not the wit to move.
Suddenly Morel clenched his fist,
and crouched.
"I'll GI'E him
'go out'!"
he shouted like an insane thing.
"What!"
cried Mrs. Morel,
panting with rage.
"You shall not touch him for HER telling,
you shall not!"
"Shonna I?"
shouted Morel.
"Shonna I?"
And,
glaring at the boy,
he ran forward.
Mrs. Morel sprang in between them,
with her fist lifted.
"Don't you DARE!"
she cried.
"What!"
he shouted,
baffled for the moment.
"What!"
She spun round to her son.
"GO out of the house!"
she commanded him in fury.
The boy,
as if hypnotised by her,
turned suddenly and was gone.
Morel rushed to the door,
but was too late.
He returned,
pale under his pit-dirt with fury.
But now his wife was fully roused.
"Only dare!"
she said in a loud,
ringing voice.
"Only dare,
milord,
to lay a finger on that child!
You'll regret it for ever."
He was afraid of her.
In a towering rage,
he sat down.
When the children were old enough to be left,
Mrs. Morel joined the Women's Guild.
It was a little club of women attached to the Co-operative Wholesale Society,
which met on Monday night in the long room over the grocery shop of the Bestwood "Co-op".
The women were supposed to discuss the benefits to be derived from co-operation,
and other social questions.
Sometimes Mrs. Morel read a paper.
It seemed queer to the children to see their mother,
who was always busy about the house,
sitting writing in her rapid fashion,
thinking,
referring to books,
and writing again.
They felt for her on such occasions the deepest respect.
But they loved the Guild.
It was the only thing to which they did not grudge their mother --and that partly because she enjoyed it,
partly because of the treats they derived from it.
The Guild was called by some hostile husbands,
who found their wives getting too independent,
the "clat-fart" shop --that is,
the gossip-shop.
It is true,
from off the basis of the Guild,
the women could look at their homes,
at the conditions of their own lives,
and find fault.
So the colliers found their women had a new standard of their own,
rather disconcerting.
And also,
Mrs. Morel always had a lot of news on Monday nights,
so that the children liked William to be in when their mother came home,
because she told him things.
Then,
when the lad was thirteen,
she got him a job in the "Co-op."
office.
He was a very clever boy,
frank,
with rather rough features and real viking blue eyes.
"What dost want ter ma'e a stool-harsed Jack on
'im for?"
said Morel.
"All he'll do is to wear his britches behind out an' earn nowt.
What's
'e startin' wi'?"
"It doesn't matter what he's starting with,"
said Mrs. Morel.
"It wouldna!
Put
'im i' th' pit we me,
an'
'ell earn a easy ten shillin' a wik from th' start.
But six shillin' wearin' his truck-end out on a stool's better than ten shillin' i' th' pit wi'me,
I know."
"He is NOT going in the pit,"
said Mrs. Morel,
"and there's an end of it."
"It wor good enough for me,
but it's non good enough for
'im."
"If your mother put you in the pit at twelve,
it's no reason why I should do the same with my lad."
"Twelve!
It wor a sight afore that!"
"Whenever it was,"
said Mrs. Morel.
She was very proud of her son.
He went to the night school,
and learned shorthand,
so that by the time he was sixteen he was the best shorthand clerk and book-keeper on the place,
except one.
Then he taught in the night schools.
But he was so fiery that only his good-nature and his size protected him.
All the things that men do --the decent things --William did.
He could run like the wind.
When he was twelve he won a first prize in a race;
an inkstand of glass,
shaped like an anvil.
It stood proudly on the dresser,
and gave Mrs. Morel a keen pleasure.
The boy only ran for her.
He flew home with his anvil,
breathless,
with a "Look,
mother!"
That was the first real tribute to herself.
She took it like a queen.
"How pretty!"
she exclaimed.
Then he began to get ambitious.
He gave all his money to his mother.
When he earned fourteen shillings a week,
she gave him back two for himself,
and,
as he never drank,
he felt himself rich.
He went about with the bourgeois of Bestwood.
The townlet contained nothing higher than the clergyman.
Then came the bank manager,
then the doctors,
then the tradespeople,
and after that the hosts of colliers.
Willam began to consort with the sons of the chemist,
the schoolmaster,
and the tradesmen.
He played billiards in the Mechanics' Hall.
Also he danced --this in spite of his mother.
All the life that Bestwood offered he enjoyed,
from the sixpenny-hops down Church Street,
to sports and billiards.
Paul was treated to dazzling descriptions of all kinds of flower-like ladies,
most of whom lived like cut blooms in William's heart for a brief fortnight.
Occasionally some flame would come in pursuit of her errant swain.
Mrs. Morel would find a strange girl at the door,
and immediately she sniffed the air.
"Is Mr. Morel in?"
the damsel would ask appealingly.
"My husband is at home,"
Mrs. Morel replied.
"I --I mean YOUNG Mr. Morel,"
repeated the maiden painfully.
"Which one?
There are several."
Whereupon much blushing and stammering from the fair one.
"I --I met Mr. Morel --at Ripley,"
she explained.
"Oh --at a dance!"
"Yes."
"I don't approve of the girls my son meets at dances.
And he is NOT at home."
Then he came home angry with his mother for having turned the girl away so rudely.
He was a careless,
yet eager-looking fellow,
who walked with long strides,
sometimes frowning,
often with his cap pushed jollily to the back of his head.
Now he came in frowning.
He threw his cap on to the sofa,
and took his strong jaw in his hand,
and glared down at his mother.
She was small,
with her hair taken straight back from her forehead.
She had a quiet air of authority,
and yet of rare warmth.
Knowing her son was angry,
she trembled inwardly.
"Did a lady call for me yesterday,
mother?"
he asked.
"I don't know about a lady.
There was a girl came."
"And why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I forgot,
simply."
He fumed a little.
"A good-looking girl --seemed a lady?"
"I didn't look at her."
"Big brown eyes?"
"I did NOT look.
And tell your girls,
my son,
that when they're running after you,
they're not to come and ask your mother for you.
Tell them that --brazen baggages you meet at dancing-classes."
"I'm sure she was a nice girl."
"And I'm sure she wasn't."
There ended the altercation.
Over the dancing there was a great strife between the mother and the son.
The grievance reached its height when William said he was going to Hucknall Torkard --considered a low town --to a fancy-dress ball.
He was to be a Highlander.
There was a dress he could hire,
which one of his friends had had,
and which fitted him perfectly.
The Highland suit came home.
Mrs. Morel received it coldly and would not unpack it.
"My suit come?"
cried William.
"There's a parcel in the front room."
He rushed in and cut the string.
"How do you fancy your son in this!"
he said,
enraptured,
showing her the suit.
"You know I don't want to fancy you in it."
On the evening of the dance,
when he had come home to dress,
Mrs. Morel put on her coat and bonnet.
"Aren't you going to stop and see me,
mother?"
he asked.
"No;
I don't want to see you,"
she replied.
She was rather pale,
and her face was closed and hard.
She was afraid of her son's going the same way as his father.
He hesitated a moment,
and his heart stood still with anxiety.
Then he caught sight of the Highland bonnet with its ribbons.
He picked it up gleefully,
forgetting her.
She went out.
When he was nineteen he suddenly left the Co-op.
office and got a situation in Nottingham.
In his new place he had thirty shillings a week instead of eighteen.
This was indeed a rise.
His mother and his father were brimmed up with pride.
Everybody praised William.
It seemed he was going to get on rapidly.
Mrs. Morel hoped,
with his aid,
to help her younger sons.
Annie was now studying to be a teacher.
Paul,
also very clever,
was getting on well,
having lessons in French and German from his godfather,
the clergyman who was still a friend to Mrs. Morel.
Arthur,
a spoilt and very good-looking boy,
was at the Board school,
but there was talk of his trying to get a scholarship for the High School in Nottingham.
William remained a year at his new post in Nottingham.
He was studying hard,
and growing serious.
Something seemed to be fretting him.
Still he went out to the dances and the river parties.
He did not drink.
The children were all rabid teetotallers.
He came home very late at night,
and sat yet longer studying.
His mother implored him to take more care,
to do one thing or another.
"Dance,
if you want to dance,
my son;
but don't think you can work in the office,
and then amuse yourself,
and THEN study on top of all.
You can't;
the human frame won't stand it.
Do one thing or the other --amuse yourself or learn Latin;
but don't try to do both."
Then he got a place in London,
at a hundred and twenty a year.
This seemed a fabulous sum.
His mother doubted almost whether to rejoice or to grieve.
"They want me in Lime Street on Monday week,
mother,"
he cried,
his eyes blazing as he read the letter.
Mrs. Morel felt everything go silent inside her.
He read the letter:
"'And will you reply by Thursday whether you accept.
Yours faithfully --' They want me,
mother,
at a hundred and twenty a year,
and don't even ask to see me.
Didn't I tell you I could do it!
Think of me in London!
And I can give you twenty pounds a year,
mater.
We s'll all be rolling in money."
"We shall,
my son,"
she answered sadly.
It never occurred to him that she might be more hurt at his going away than glad of his success.
Indeed,
as the days drew near for his departure,
her heart began to close and grow dreary with despair.
She loved him so much!
More than that,
she hoped in him so much.
Almost she lived by him.
She liked to do things for him: she liked to put a cup for his tea and to iron his collars,
of which he was so proud.
It was a joy to her to have him proud of his collars.
There was no laundry.
So she used to rub away at them with her little convex iron,
to polish them,
till they shone from the sheer pressure of her arm.
Now she would not do it for him.
Now he was going away.
She felt almost as if he were going as well out of her heart.
He did not seem to leave her inhabited with himself.
That was the grief and the pain to her.
He took nearly all himself away.
A few days before his departure --he was just twenty --he burned his love-letters.
They had hung on a file at the top of the kitchen cupboard.
From some of them he had read extracts to his mother.
Some of them she had taken the trouble to read herself.
But most were too trivial.
Now,
on the Saturday morning he said:
"Come on,
Postle,
let's go through my letters,
and you can have the birds and flowers."
Mrs. Morel had done her Saturday's work on the Friday,
because he was having a last day's holiday.
She was making him a rice cake,
which he loved,
to take with him.
He was scarcely conscious that she was so miserable.
He took the first letter off the file.
It was mauve-tinted,
and had purple and green thistles.
William sniffed the page.
"Nice scent!
Smell."
And he thrust the sheet under Paul's nose.
"Um!"
said Paul,
breathing in.
"What d'you call it?
Smell,
mother."
His mother ducked her small,
fine nose down to the paper.
"I don't want to smell their rubbish,"
she said,
sniffing.
"This girl's father,"
said William,
"is as rich as Croesus.
He owns property without end.
She calls me Lafayette,
because I know French.
'You will see,
I've forgiven you' --I like HER forgiving me.
'I told mother about you this morning,
and she will have much pleasure if you come to tea on Sunday,
but she will have to get father's consent also.
I sincerely hope he will agree.
I will let you know how it transpires.
If,
however,
you --'"
"'Let you know how it' what?"
interrupted Mrs. Morel.
"'Transpires' --oh yes!"
"'Transpires!'" repeated Mrs. Morel mockingly.
"I thought she was so well educated!"
William felt slightly uncomfortable,
and abandoned this maiden,
giving Paul the corner with the thistles.
He continued to read extracts from his letters,
some of which amused his mother,
some of which saddened her and made her anxious for him.
"My lad,"
she said,
"they're very wise.
They know they've only got to flatter your vanity,
and you press up to them like a dog that has its head scratched."
"Well,
they can't go on scratching for ever,"
he replied.
"And when they've done,
I trot away."
"But one day you'll find a string round your neck that you can't pull off,"
she answered.
"Not me!
I'm equal to any of
'em,
mater,
they needn't flatter themselves."
"You flatter YOURSELF,"
she said quietly.
Soon there was a heap of twisted black pages,
all that remained of the file of scented letters,
except that Paul had thirty or forty pretty tickets from the corners of the notepaper --swallows and forget-me-nots and ivy sprays.
And William went to London,
to start a new life.