Sons and Lovers
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 hæmorrhage.
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