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Sons
and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence
Chapter
I: The Early Married Life of the Morels
واسه دیدن chapter 1 داستان روی ادامه مطلب کلیک کنید.
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. The 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-l'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. . لطفا نظر یادتون نره