Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (14 page)

Meantime Arthur, still fond of his father, would lean on the arm of Morel’s chair and say:

“Tell us about down pit, daddy.”

This Morel loved to do.

“Well, there’s one little ‘oss—we call ’im Taffy,” he would begin. “An’ he’s a fawce
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’un!”

Morel had a warm way of telling a story. He made one feel Taffy’s cunning.

“He’s a brown ‘un,” he would answer, “an’ not very high. Well, he comes i’ th’ stall wi’ a rattle, an’ then yo’ ’ear ’im sneeze.

“‘Ello Taff,’ you say, ‘what art sneezin’ for? Bin ta’ein’ some snuff?’

“An”e sneezes again. Then he slives
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up an’ shoves ‘is ’ead on yer, that cadin’.
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“‘What’s want, Taff?’ yo’ say.”

“And what does he?” Arthur always asked.

“He wants a bit o’ bacca,
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my duckie.”

This story of Taffy would go on interminably, and everybody loved it.

Or sometimes it was a new tale.

“An’ what dost think, my darlin’? When I went to put my coat on at snap-time, what should go runnin’ up my arm but a mouse.

“‘Hey up, theer!’ I shouts.

“An’ I wor just in time ter get ’im by th’ tail.”

“And did you kill it?”

“I did, for they’re a nuisance. The place is fair snied
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wi”em.”

“An’ what do they live on?”

“The corn as the ‘osses drops—an’ they’ll get in your pocket an’ eat your snap, if you’ll let ’em—no matter where yo’ hing your coat—the slivin’, nibblin’ little nuisances, for they are.”

These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel had some job to do. And then he always went to bed very early, often before the children. There was nothing remaining for him to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and had skimmed the headlines of the newspaper.

And the children felt secure when their father was in bed. They lay and talked softly a while. Then they started as the lights went suddenly sprawling over the ceiling from the lamps that swung in the hands of the colliers tramping by outside, going to take the nine o’clock shift. They listened to the voices of the men, imagined them dipping down into the dark valley. Sometimes they went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing tinier and tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness. Then it was a joy to rush back to bed and cuddle closely in the warmth.

Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis. The others were all quite strong; so this was another reason for his mother’s difference in feeling for him. One day he came home at dinner-time feeling ill. But it was not a family to make any fuss.

“What’s the matter with
you
?” his mother asked sharply.

“Nothing,” he replied.

But he ate no dinner.

“If you eat no dinner, you’re not going to school,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“That’s why.”

So after dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the children loved. Then he fell into a kind of doze. That afternoon Mrs. Morel was ironing. She listened to the small, restless noise the boy made in his throat as she worked. Again rose in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards him. She had never expected him to live. And yet he had a great vitality in his young body. Perhaps it would have been a little relief to her if he had died. She always felt a mixture of anguish in her love for him.

He, in his semi-conscious sleep, was vaguely aware of the clatter of the iron on the iron-stand, of the faint thud, thud on the ironing-board. Once roused, he opened his eyes to see his mother standing on the hearth-rug with the hot iron near her cheek, listening, as it were, to the heat. Her still face, with the mouth closed tight from suffering and disillusion and self-denial, and her nose the smallest bit on one side, and her blue eyes so young, quick, and warm, made his heart contract with love. When she was quiet, so, she looked brave and rich with life, but as if she had been done out of her rights. It hurt the boy keenly, this feeling about her that she had never had her life’s fulfilment: and his own incapability to make up to her hurt him with a sense of impotence, yet made him patiently dogged inside. It was his childish aim.

She spat on the iron, and a little ball of spit bounded, raced off the dark, glossy surface. Then, kneeling, she rubbed the iron on the sack lining of the hearth-rug vigorously. She was warm in the ruddy firelight. Paul loved the way she crouched and put her head on one side. Her movements were light and quick. It was always a pleasure to watch her. Nothing she ever did, no movement she ever made, could have been found fault with by her children. The room was warm and full of the scent of hot linen. Later on the clergyman came and talked softly with her.

Paul was laid up with an attack of bronchitis. He did not mind much. What happened happened, and it was no good kicking against the pricks.
²
He loved the evenings, after eight o’clock, when the light was put out, and he could watch the fire-flames spring over the darkness of the walls and ceiling; could watch huge shadows waving and tossing, till the room seemed full of men who battled silently.

On retiring to bed, the father would come into the sick-room. He was always very gentle if anyone were ill. But he disturbed the atmosphere for the boy.

“Are ter asleep, my darlin’?” Morel asked softly.

“No; is my mother comin’?”

“She’s just finishin’ foldin’ the clothes. Do you want anything?” Morel rarely “thee’d” his son.

“I don’t want nothing. But how long will she be?”

“Not long, my duckie.”

The father waited undecidedly on the hearth-rug for a moment or two. He felt his son did not want him. Then he went to the top of the stairs and said to his wife:

“This childt’s axin’ for thee; how long art goin’ to be?”

“Until I’ve finished, good gracious! Tell him to go to sleep.”

“She says you’re to go to sleep,” the father repeated gently to Paul.

“Well, I want her to come,” insisted the boy.

“He says he can’t go off till you come,” Morel called downstairs.

“Eh, dear! I shan’t be long. And do stop shouting downstairs. There’s the other children—”

Then Morel came again and crouched before the bed-room fire. He loved a fire dearly.

“She says she won’t be long,” he said.

He loitered about indefinitely. The boy began to get feverish with irritation. His father’s presence seemed to aggravate all his sick impatience. At last Morel, after having stood looking at his son awhile, said softly:

“Good-night, my darling.”

“Good-night,” Paul replied, turning round in relief to be alone.

Paul loved to sleep with his mother. Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep,
³
so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing. Paul lay against her and slept, and got better; whilst she, always a bad sleeper, fell later on into a profound sleep that seemed to give her faith.

In convalescence he would sit up in bed, see the fluffy horses feeding at the troughs in the field, scattering their hay on the trodden yellow snow; watch the miners troop home—small, black figures trailing slowly in gangs across the white field. Then the night came up in dark blue vapour from the snow.

In convalescence everything was wonderful. The snowflakes, suddenly arriving on the window-pane, clung there a moment like swallows, then were gone, and a drop of water was crawling down the glass. The snowflakes whirled round the corner of the house, like pigeons dashing by. Away across the valley the little black train crawled doubtfully over the great whiteness.

While they were so poor, the children were delighted if they could do anything to help economically. Annie and Paul and Arthur went out early in the morning, in summer, looking for mushrooms, hunting through the wet grass, from which the larks were rising, for the white-skinned, wonderful naked bodies crouched secretly in the green. And if they got half a pound they felt exceedingly happy: there was the joy of finding something, the joy of accepting something straight from the hand of Nature, and the joy of contributing to the family exchequer.

But the most important harvest, after gleaning for frumenty,
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was the blackberries. Mrs. Morel must buy fruit for puddings on the Saturdays; also she liked blackberries. So Paul and Arthur scoured the coppices,
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and woods and old quarries, so long as a blackberry was to be found, every week-end going on their search. In that region of mining villages blackberries became a comparative rarity. But Paul hunted far and wide. He loved being out in the country, among the bushes. But he also could not bear to go home to his mother empty. That, he felt, would disappoint her, and he would have died rather.

“Good gracious!” she would exclaim as the lads came in, late, and tired to death, and hungry, “wherever have you been?”

“Well,” replied Paul, “there wasn’t any, so we went over Misk Hills. And look here, our mother!”

She peeped into the basket.

“Now, those are fine ones!” she exclaimed.

“And there’s over two pounds—isn’t there over two pounds?”

She tried the basket.

“Yes,” she answered doubtfully.

Then Paul fished out a little spray. He always brought her one spray, the best he could find.

“Pretty!” she said, in a curious tone, of a woman accepting a love-token.

The boy walked all day, went miles and miles, rather than own himself beaten and come home to her empty-handed. She never realised this, whilst he was young. She was a woman who waited for her children to grow up. And William occupied her chiefly.

But when William went to Nottingham, and was not so much at home, the mother made a companion of Paul. The latter was unconsciously jealous of his brother, and William was jealous of him. At the same time, they were good friends.

Mrs. Morel’s intimacy with her second son was more subtle and fine, perhaps not so passionate as with her eldest. It was the rule that Paul should fetch the money on Friday afternoons. The colliers of the five pits were paid on Fridays, but not individually. All the earningsof each stall were put down to the chief butty, as contractor, and he divided the wages again, either in the public-house or in his own home. So that the children could fetch the money, school closed early on Friday afternoons. Each of the Morel children—William, then Annie, then Paul—had fetched the money on Friday afternoons, until they went themselves to work. Paul used to set off at half-past three, with a little calico bag in his pocket. Down all the paths, women, girls, children, and men were seen trooping to the offices.

These offices were quite handsome: a new, red-brick building, almost like a mansion, standing in its own grounds at the end of Greenhill Lane. The waiting-room was the hall, a long, bare room paved with blue brick, and having a seat all round, against the wall. Here sat the colliers in their pit-dirt. They had come up early. The women and children usually loitered about on the red gravel paths. Paul always examined the grass border, and the big grass bank, because in it grew tiny pansies and tiny forget-me-nots. There was a sound of many voices. The women had on their Sunday hats. The girls chattered loudly. Little dogs ran here and there. The green shrubs were silent all around.

Then from inside came the cry “Spinney Park—Spinney Park.” All the folk for Spinney Park trooped inside. When it was time for Bretty to be paid, Paul went in among the crowd. The pay-room was quite small. A counter went across, dividing it into half. Behind the counter stood two men—Mr. Braithwaite and his clerk, Mr. Winterbottom. Mr. Braithwaite was large, somewhat of the stern patriarch in appearance, having a rather thin white beard. He was usually muffled in an enormous silk neckerchief, and right up to the hot summer a huge fire burned in the open grate. No window was open. Sometimes in winter the air scorched the throats of the people, coming in from the freshness. Mr. Winterbottom was rather small and fat, and very bald. He made remarks that were not witty, whilst his chief launched forth patriarchal admonitions against the colliers.

The room was crowded with miners in their pit-dirt, men who had been home and changed, and women, and one or two children, and usually a dog. Paul was quite small, so it was often his fate to be jammed behind the legs of the men, near the fire which scorched him. He knew the order of the names—they went according to stall number.

“Holliday,” came the ringing voice of Mr. Braithwaite. Then Mrs. Holliday stepped silently forward, was paid, drew aside.

“Bower—John Bower.”

A boy stepped to the counter. Mr. Braithwaite, large and irascible, glowered at him over his spectacles.

“John Bower!” he repeated.

“It’s me,” said the boy.

“Why, you used to ’ave a different nose than that,” said glossy Mr. Winterbottom, peering over the counter. The people tittered, thinking of John Bower senior.

“How is it your father’s not come!” said Mr. Braithwaite, in a large and magisterial voice.

“He’s badly,” piped the boy.

“You should tell him to keep off the drink,” pronounced the great cashier.

“An’ niver mind if he puts his foot through yer,” said a mocking voice from behind.

All the men laughed. The large and important cashier looked down at his next sheet.

“Fred Pilkington!” he called, quite indifferent.

Mr. Braithwaite was an important shareholder in the firm.

Paul knew his turn was next but one, and his heart began to beat. He was pushed against the chimney-piece. His calves were burning. But he did not hope to get through the wall of men.

“Walter Morel!” came the ringing voice.