Sons and Lovers
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.
“Here!” piped Paul, small and inadequate.
“Morel—Walter Morel!” the cashier repeated, his finger and thumb on the
invoice, ready to pass on.
Paul was suffering convulsions of self-consciousness, and could not or
would not shout. The backs of the men obliterated him. Then Mr.
Winterbottom came to the rescue.
“He’s here. Where is he? Morel’s lad?”
The fat, red, bald little man peered round with keen eyes. He pointed
at the fireplace. The colliers looked round, moved aside, and disclosed
the boy.
“Here he is!” said Mr. Winterbottom.
Paul went to the counter.
“Seventeen pounds eleven and fivepence. Why don’t you shout up when
you’re called?” said Mr. Braithwaite. He banged on to the invoice a
five-pound bag of silver, then in a delicate and pretty movement,
picked up a little ten-pound column of gold, and plumped it beside the
silver. The gold slid in a bright stream over the paper. The cashier
finished counting off the money; the boy dragged the whole down the
counter to Mr. Winterbottom, to whom the stoppages for rent and tools
must be paid. Here he suffered again.
“Sixteen an’ six,” said Mr. Winterbottom.
The lad was too much upset to count. He pushed forward some loose
silver and half a sovereign.
“How much do you think you’ve given me?” asked Mr. Winterbottom.
The boy looked at him, but said nothing. He had not the faintest
notion.
“Haven’t you got a tongue in your head?”
Paul bit his lip, and pushed forward some more silver.
“Don’t they teach you to count at the Board-school?” he asked.
“Nowt but algibbra an’ French,” said a collier.
“An’ cheek an’ impidence,” said another.
Paul was keeping someone waiting. With trembling fingers he got his
money into the bag and slid out. He suffered the tortures of the damned
on these occasions.
His relief, when he got outside, and was walking along the Mansfield
Road, was infinite. On the park wall the mosses were green. There were
some gold and some white fowls pecking under the apple trees of an
orchard. The colliers were walking home in a stream. The boy went near
the wall, self-consciously. He knew many of the men, but could not
recognise them in their dirt. And this was a new torture to him.
When he got down to the New Inn, at Bretty, his father was not yet
come. Mrs. Wharmby, the landlady, knew him. His grandmother, Morel’s
mother, had been Mrs. Wharmby’s friend.
“Your father’s not come yet,” said the landlady, in the peculiar
half-scornful, half-patronising voice of a woman who talks chiefly to
grown men. “Sit you down.”
Paul sat down on the edge of the bench in the bar. Some colliers were
“reckoning”—sharing out their money—in a corner; others came in. They
all glanced at the boy without speaking. At last Morel came; brisk, and
with something of an air, even in his blackness.
“Hello!” he said rather tenderly to his son. “Have you bested me? Shall
you have a drink of something?”
Paul and all the children were bred up fierce anti-alcoholists, and he
would have suffered more in drinking a lemonade before all the men than
in having a tooth drawn.
The landlady looked at him _de haut en bas_, rather pitying, and at the
same time, resenting his clear, fierce morality. Paul went home,
glowering. He entered the house silently. Friday was baking day, and
there was usually a hot bun. His mother put it before him.
Suddenly he turned on her in a fury, his eyes flashing:
“I’m _not_ going to the office any more,” he said.
“Why, what’s the matter?” his mother asked in surprise. His sudden
rages rather amused her.
“I’m _not_ going any more,” he declared.
“Oh, very well, tell your father so.”
He chewed his bun as if he hated it.
“I’m not—I’m not going to fetch the money.”
“Then one of Carlin’s children can go; they’d be glad enough of the
sixpence,” said Mrs. Morel.
This sixpence was Paul’s only income. It mostly went in buying birthday
presents; but it _was_ an income, and he treasured it. But—
“They can have it, then!” he said. “I don’t want it.”
“Oh, very well,” said his mother. “But you needn’t bully _me_ about
it.”
“They’re hateful, and common, and hateful, they are, and I’m not going
any more. Mr. Braithwaite drops his ‘h’s’, an’ Mr. Winterbottom says
‘You was’.”
“And is that why you won’t go any more?” smiled Mrs. Morel.
The boy was silent for some time. His face was pale, his eyes dark and
furious. His mother moved about at her work, taking no notice of him.
“They always stan’ in front of me, so’s I can’t get out,” he said.
“Well, my lad, you’ve only to _ask_ them,” she replied.
“An’ then Alfred Winterbottom says, ‘What do they teach you at the
Board-school?’”
“They never taught _him_ much,” said Mrs. Morel, “that is a
fact—neither manners nor wit—and his cunning he was born with.”
So, in her own way, she soothed him. His ridiculous hypersensitiveness
made her heart ache. And sometimes the fury in his eyes roused her,
made her sleeping soul lift up its head a moment, surprised.
“What was the cheque?” she asked.
“Seventeen pounds eleven and fivepence, and sixteen and six stoppages,”
replied the boy. “It’s a good week; and only five shillings stoppages
for my father.”
So she was able to calculate how much her husband had earned, and could
call him to account if he gave her short money. Morel always kept to
himself the secret of the week’s amount.
Friday was the baking night and market night. It was the rule that Paul
should stay at home and bake. He loved to stop in and draw or read; he
was very fond of drawing. Annie always “gallivanted” on Friday nights;
Arthur was enjoying himself as usual. So the boy remained alone.
Mrs. Morel loved her marketing. In the tiny market-place on the top of
the hill, where four roads, from Nottingham and Derby, Ilkeston and
Mansfield, meet, many stalls were erected. Brakes ran in from
surrounding villages. The market-place was full of women, the streets
packed with men. It was amazing to see so many men everywhere in the
streets. Mrs. Morel usually quarrelled with her lace woman, sympathised
with her fruit man—who was a gabey, but his wife was a bad un—laughed
with the fish man—who was a scamp but so droll—put the linoleum man in
his place, was cold with the odd-wares man, and only went to the
crockery man when she was driven—or drawn by the cornflowers on a
little dish; then she was coldly polite.
“I wondered how much that little dish was,” she said.
“Sevenpence to you.”
“Thank you.”
She put the dish down and walked away; but she could not leave the
market-place without it. Again she went by where the pots lay coldly on
the floor, and she glanced at the dish furtively, pretending not to.
She was a little woman, in a bonnet and a black costume. Her bonnet was
in its third year; it was a great grievance to Annie.
“Mother!” the girl implored, “don’t wear that nubbly little bonnet.”
“Then what else shall I wear,” replied the mother tartly. “And I’m sure
it’s right enough.”
It had started with a tip; then had had flowers; now was reduced to
black lace and a bit of jet.
“It looks rather come down,” said Paul. “Couldn’t you give it a
pick-me-up?”
“I’ll jowl your head for impudence,” said Mrs. Morel, and she tied the
strings of the black bonnet valiantly under her chin.
She glanced at the dish again. Both she and her enemy, the pot man, had
an uncomfortable feeling, as if there were something between them.
Suddenly he shouted:
“Do you want it for fivepence?”
She started. Her heart hardened; but then she stooped and took up her
dish.
“I’ll have it,” she said.
“Yer’ll do me the favour, like?” he said. “Yer’d better spit in it,
like yer do when y’ave something give yer.”
Mrs. Morel paid him the fivepence in a cold manner.
“I don’t see you give it me,” she said. “You wouldn’t let me have it
for fivepence if you didn’t want to.”
“In this flamin’, scrattlin’ place you may count yerself lucky if you
can give your things away,” he growled.
“Yes; there are bad times, and good,” said Mrs. Morel.
But she had forgiven the pot man. They were friends. She dare now
finger his pots. So she was happy.
Paul was waiting for her. He loved her home-coming. She was always her
best so—triumphant, tired, laden with parcels, feeling rich in spirit.
He heard her quick, light step in the entry and looked up from his
drawing.
“Oh!” she sighed, smiling at him from the doorway.