Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (16 page)

They sounded so perfectly absorbed in the game as their voices came out of the night, that they had the feel of wild creatures singing. It stirred the mother; and she understood when they came in at eight o’clock, ruddy, with brilliant eyes, and quick, passionate speech.

They all loved the Scargill Street house for its openness, for the great scallop of the world it had in view. On summer evenings the women would stand against the field fence, gossiping, facing the west, watching the sunsets flare quickly out, till the Derbyshire hills ridged across the crimson far away, like the black crest of a newt.

In this summer season the pits never turned full time, particularly the soft coal. Mrs. Dakin, who lived next door to Mrs. Morel, going to the field fence to shake her hearth-rug, would spy men coming slowly up the hill. She saw at once they were colliers. Then she waited, a tall, thin, shrew-faced woman, standing on the hill brow, almost like a menace to the poor colliers who were toiling up. It was only eleven o’clock. From the far-off wooded hills the haze that hangs like fine black crape at the back of a summer morning had not yet dissipated. The first man came to the stile. “Chock-chock!” went the gate under his thrust.

“What, han’ yer knocked off?” cried Mrs. Dakin.

“We han, missis.”

“It’s a pity as they letn yer goo,” she said sarcastically.

“It is that,” replied the man.

“Nay, you know you’re flig
^bz
to come up again,” she said.

And the man went on. Mrs. Dakin, going up her yard, spied Mrs. Morel taking the ashes to the ash-pit.

“I reckon Minton’s knocked off, missis,” she cried.

“Isn’t it sickenin!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel in wrath.

“Ha! But I’n just seed Jont Hutchby.”

“They might as well have saved their shoe-leather,” said Mrs. Morel. And both women went indoors disgusted.

The colliers, their faces scarcely blackened, were trooping home again. Morel hated to go back. He loved the sunny morning. But he had gone to pit to work, and to be sent home again spoilt his temper.

“Good gracious, at this time!” exclaimed his wife, as he entered.

“Can I help it, woman?” he shouted.

“And I’ve not done half enough dinner.”

“Then I’ll eat my bit o’ snap as I took with me,” he bawled pathetically. He felt ignominious and sore.

And the children, coming home from school, would wonder to see their father eating with his dinner the two thick slices of rather dry and dirty bread-and-butter that had been to pit and back.

“What’s my dad eating his snap for now?” asked Arthur.

“I should ha’e it holled
^ca
at me if I didna,” snorted Morel.

“What a story!” exclaimed his wife.

“An’ is it goin’ to be wasted?” said Morel. “I’m not such a extravagant mortal as you lot, with your waste. If I drop a bit of bread at pit, in all the dust an’ dirt, I pick it up an’ eat it.”

“The mice would eat it,” said Paul. “It wouldn’t be wasted.”

“Good bread-an’-butter’s not for mice, either,” said Morel. “Dirty or not dirty, I’d eat it rather than it should be wasted.”

“You might leave it for the mice and pay for it out of your next pint,” said Mrs. Morel.

“Oh, might I?” he exclaimed.

They were very poor that autumn. William had just gone away to London, and his mother missed his money. He sent ten shillings once or twice, but he had many things to pay for at first. His letters came regularly once a week. He wrote a good deal to his mother, telling her all his life, how he made friends, and was exchanging lessons with a Frenchman, how he enjoyed London. His mother felt again he was remaining to her just as when he was at home. She wrote to him every week her direct, rather witty letters. All day long, as she cleaned the house, she thought of him. He was in London: he would do well. Almost, he was like her knight who wore her favour in the battle.

He was coming at Christmas for five days. There had never been such preparations. Paul and Arthur scoured the land for holly and evergreens. Annie made the pretty paper hoops in the old-fashioned way. And there was unheard-of extravagance in the larder.
^cb
Mrs. Morel made a big and magnificent cake. Then, feeling queenly, she showed Paul how to blanch almonds. He skinned the long nuts reverently, counting them all, to see not one was lost. It was said that eggs whisked better in a cold place. So the boy stood in the scullery, where the temperature was nearly at freezing-point, and whisked and whisked, and flew in excitement to his mother as the white of egg grew stiffer and more snowy.

“Just look, mother! Isn’t it lovely?”

And he balanced a bit on his nose, then blew it in the air.

“Now, don’t waste it,” said the mother.

Everybody was mad with excitement. William was coming on Christmas Eve. Mrs. Morel surveyed her pantry. There was a big plum cake, and a rice cake, jam tarts, lemon tarts, and mince-pies-two enormous dishes. She was finishing cooking—Spanish tarts and cheesecakes. Everywhere was decorated. The kissing bunch of berried holly hung with bright and glittering things, spun slowly over Mrs. Morel’s head as she trimmed her little tarts in the kitchen. A great fire roared. There was a scent of cooked pastry. He was due at seven o’clock, but he would be late. The three children had gone to meet him. She was alone. But at a quarter to seven Morel came in again. Neither wife nor husband spoke. He sat in his arm-chair, quite awkward with excitement, and she quietly went on with her baking. Only by the careful way in which she did things could it be told how much moved she was. The clock ticked on.

“What time dost say he’s coming?” Morel asked for the fifth time.

“The train gets in at half-past six,” she replied emphatically.

“Then he’ll be here at ten past seven.”

“Eh, bless you, it’ll be hours late on the Midland,” she said indifferently. But she hoped, by expecting him late, to bring him early. Morel went down the entry to look for him. Then he came back.

“Goodness, man!” she said. “You’re like an ill-sitting hen.”

“Hadna you better be gettin’ him summat t’ eat ready?” asked the father.

“There’s plenty of time,” she answered.

“There’s not so much as
I
can see on,” he answered, turning crossly in his chair. She began to clear her table. The kettle was singing. They waited and waited.

Meantime the three children were on the platform at Sethley Bridge, on the Midland main line, two miles from home. They waited one hour. A train came—he was not there. Down the line the red and green lights shone. It was very dark and very cold.

“Ask him if the London train’s come,” said Paul to Annie, when they saw a man in a tip cap.

“I’m not,” said Annie. “You be quiet—he might send us off.” But Paul was dying for the man to know they were expecting someone by the London train: it sounded so grand. Yet he was much too much scared of broaching any man, let alone one in a peaked cap, to dare to ask. The three children could scarcely go into the waiting-room for fear of being sent away, and for fear something should happen whilst they were off the platform. Still they waited in the dark and cold.

“It’s an hour an’ a half late,” said Arthur pathetically.

“Well,” said Annie, “it’s Christmas Eve.”

They all grew silent. He wasn’t coming. They looked down the darkness of the railway. There was London! It seemed the uttermost of distance. They thought anything might happen if one came from London. They were all too troubled to talk. Cold, and unhappy, and silent, they huddled together on the platform.

At last, after more than two hours, they saw the lights of an engine peering around, away down the darkness. A porter ran out. The children drew back with beating hearts. A great train, bound for Manchester, drew up. Two doors opened, and from one of them, William. They flew to him. He handed parcels to them cheerily, and immediately began to explain that this great train had stopped for
his
sake at such a small station as Sethley Bridge: it was not booked to stop.

Meanwhile the parents were getting anxious. The table was set, the chop was cooked, everything was ready. Mrs. Morel put on her black apron. She was wearing her best dress. Then she sat, pretending to read. The minutes were a torture to her.

“H‘m!” said Morel. “It’s an hour an’ a ha’ef.”

“And those children waiting!” she said.

“Th’ train canna ha’ come in yet,” he said.

“I tell you, on Christmas Eve they’re
hours
wrong.”

They were both a bit cross with each other, so gnawed with anxiety. The ash tree moaned outside in a cold, raw wind. And all that space of night from London home! Mrs. Morel suffered. The slight click of the works inside the clock irritated her. It was getting so late; it was getting unbearable.

At last there was a sound of voices, and a footstep in the entry.

“Ha’s here!” cried Morel, jumping up.

Then he stood back. The mother ran a few steps towards the door and waited. There was a rush and a patter of feet, the door burst open. William was there. He dropped his Gladstone bag and took his mother in his arms.

“Mater!” he said.

“My boy!” she cried.

And for two seconds, no longer, she clasped him and kissed him. Then she withdrew and said, trying to be quite normal:

“But how late you are!”

“Aren’t I!” he cried, turning to his father. “Well, dad!”

The two men shook hands.

“Well, my lad!”

Morel’s eyes were wet.

“We thought tha’d niver be commin’,” he said.

“Oh, I’d come!” exclaimed William.

Then the son turned round to his mother.

“But you look well,” she said proudly, laughing.

“Well!” he exclaimed. “I should think so—coming home!”

He was a fine fellow, big, straight, and fearless-looking. He looked round at the evergreens and the kissing bunch, and the little tarts that lay in their tins on the hearth.

“By jove! mother, it’s not different!” he said, as if in relief.

Everybody was still for a second. Then he suddenly sprang forward, picked a tart from the hearth, and pushed it whole into his mouth.

“Well, did iver you see such a parish oven!” the father exclaimed.

He had brought them endless presents. Every penny he had he had spent on them. There was a sense of luxury overflowing in the house. For his mother there was an umbrella with gold on the pale handle. She kept it to her dying day, and would have lost anything rather than that. Everybody had something gorgeous, and besides, there were pounds of unknown sweets: Turkish delight, crystallised pineapple, and such-like things which, the children thought, only the splendour of London could provide. And Paul boasted of these sweets among his friends.

“Real pineapple, cut off in slices, and then turned into crystal—fair grand!”

Everybody was mad with happiness in the family. Home was home, and they loved it with a passion of love, whatever the suffering had been. There were parties, there were rejoicings. People came in to see William, to see what difference London had made to him. And they all found him “such a gentleman, and
such
a fine fellow, my word”!

When he went away again the children retired to various places to weep alone. Morel went to bed in misery, and Mrs. Morel felt as if she were numbed by some drug, as if her feelings were paralysed. She loved him passionately.

He was in the office of a lawyer connected with a large shipping firm, and at the midsummer his chief offered him a trip in the Mediterranean on one of the boats, for quite a small cost. Mrs. Morel wrote: “Go, go, my boy. You may never have a chance again, and I should love to think of you cruising there in the Mediterranean almost better than to have you at home.” But William came home for his fortnight’s holiday. Not even the Mediterranean, which pulled at all his young man’s desire to travel, and at his poor man’s wonder at the glamorous south, could take him away when he might come home. That compensated his mother for much.

MOREL WAS rather a heedless man, careless of danger. So he had endless accidents. Now, when Mrs. Morel heard the rattle of an empty coal-cart cease at her entry-end, she ran into the parlour to look, expecting almost to see her husband seated in the wagon, his face grey under his dirt, his body limp and sick with some hurt or other. If it were he, she would run out to help.

About a year after William went to London, and just after Paul had left school, before he got work, Mrs. Morel was upstairs and her son was painting in the kitchen—he was very clever with his brush—when there came a knock at the door. Crossly he put down his brush to go. At the same moment his mother opened a window upstairs and looked down.

A pit-lad in his dirt stood on the threshold.

“Is this Walter Morel’s?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel. “What is it?”

But she had guessed already.

“Your mester’s got hurt,” he said.

“Eh, dear me!” she exclaimed. “It’s a wonder if he hadn’t, lad. And what’s he done this time?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it’s ‘is leg somewhere. They ta’ein’ ‘im ter th”ospital.”

“Good gracious me!” she exclaimed. “Eh, dear, what a one he is! There’s not five minutes of peace, I’ll be hanged if there is! His thumb’s nearly better, and now—Did you see him?”

“I seed him at th’ bottom. An’ I seed‘em bring’im up in a tub, an’

‘e wor in a dead faint. But he shouted like anythink when Doctor Fraser examined him i’ th’ lamp cabin—an’ cossed an’ swore, an’ said as ’e wor goin’ to be ta‘en whoam—’e worn’t goin’ ter th“ospital.”

The boy faltered to an end.

“He
would
want to come home, so that I can have all the bother. Thank you, my lad. Eh, dear, if I’m not sick—sick and surfeited, I am!”