Sons and Lovers
men was warming to her heart. She looked at the child. It had blue
eyes, and a lot of fair hair, and was bonny. Her love came up hot, in
spite of everything. She had it in bed with her.
Morel, thinking nothing, dragged his way up the garden path, wearily
and angrily. He closed his umbrella, and stood it in the sink; then he
sluthered his heavy boots into the kitchen. Mrs. Bower appeared in the
inner doorway.
“Well,” she said, “she’s about as bad as she can be. It’s a boy
childt.”
The miner grunted, put his empty snap-bag and his tin bottle on the
dresser, went back into the scullery and hung up his coat, then came
and dropped into his chair.
“Han yer got a drink?” he asked.
The woman went into the pantry. There was heard the pop of a cork. She
set the mug, with a little, disgusted rap, on the table before Morel.
He drank, gasped, wiped his big moustache on the end of his scarf,
drank, gasped, and lay back in his chair. The woman would not speak to
him again. She set his dinner before him, and went upstairs.
“Was that the master?” asked Mrs. Morel.
“I’ve gave him his dinner,” replied Mrs. Bower.
After he had sat with his arms on the table—he resented the fact that
Mrs. Bower put no cloth on for him, and gave him a little plate,
instead of a full-sized dinner-plate—he began to eat. The fact that his
wife was ill, that he had another boy, was nothing to him at that
moment. He was too tired; he wanted his dinner; he wanted to sit with
his arms lying on the board; he did not like having Mrs. Bower about.
The fire was too small to please him.
After he had finished his meal, he sat for twenty minutes; then he
stoked up a big fire. Then, in his stockinged feet, he went reluctantly
upstairs. It was a struggle to face his wife at this moment, and he was
tired. His face was black, and smeared with sweat. His singlet had
dried again, soaking the dirt in. He had a dirty woollen scarf round
his throat. So he stood at the foot of the bed.
“Well, how are ter, then?” he asked.
“I s’ll be all right,” she answered.
“H’m!”
He stood at a loss what to say next. He was tired, and this bother was
rather a nuisance to him, and he didn’t quite know where he was.
“A lad, tha says,” he stammered.
She turned down the sheet and showed the child.
“Bless him!” he murmured. Which made her laugh, because he blessed by
rote—pretending paternal emotion, which he did not feel just then.
“Go now,” she said.
“I will, my lass,” he answered, turning away.
Dismissed, he wanted to kiss her, but he dared not. She half wanted him
to kiss her, but could not bring herself to give any sign. She only
breathed freely when he was gone out of the room again, leaving behind
him a faint smell of pit-dirt.
Mrs. Morel had a visit every day from the Congregational clergyman. Mr.
Heaton was young, and very poor. His wife had died at the birth of his
first baby, so he remained alone in the manse. He was a Bachelor of
Arts of Cambridge, very shy, and no preacher. Mrs. Morel was fond of
him, and he depended on her. For hours he talked to her, when she was
well. He became the god-parent of the child.
Occasionally the minister stayed to tea with Mrs. Morel. Then she laid
the cloth early, got out her best cups, with a little green rim, and
hoped Morel would not come too soon; indeed, if he stayed for a pint,
she would not mind this day. She had always two dinners to cook,
because she believed children should have their chief meal at midday,
whereas Morel needed his at five o’clock. So Mr. Heaton would hold the
baby, whilst Mrs. Morel beat up a batter-pudding or peeled the
potatoes, and he, watching her all the time, would discuss his next
sermon. His ideas were quaint and fantastic. She brought him
judiciously to earth. It was a discussion of the wedding at Cana.
“When He changed the water into wine at Cana,” he said, “that is a
symbol that the ordinary life, even the blood, of the married husband
and wife, which had before been uninspired, like water, became filled
with the Spirit, and was as wine, because, when love enters, the whole
spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost,
and almost his form is altered.”
Mrs. Morel thought to herself:
“Yes, poor fellow, his young wife is dead; that is why he makes his
love into the Holy Ghost.”
They were halfway down their first cup of tea when they heard the
sluther of pit-boots.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel, in spite of herself.
The minister looked rather scared. Morel entered. He was feeling rather
savage. He nodded a “How d’yer do” to the clergyman, who rose to shake
hands with him.
“Nay,” said Morel, showing his hand, “look thee at it! Tha niver wants
ter shake hands wi’ a hand like that, does ter? There’s too much
pick-haft and shovel-dirt on it.”
The minister flushed with confusion, and sat down again. Mrs. Morel
rose, carried out the steaming saucepan. Morel took off his coat,
dragged his armchair to table, and sat down heavily.
“Are you tired?” asked the clergyman.
“Tired? I ham that,” replied Morel. “_You_ don’t know what it is to be
tired, as _I’m_ tired.”
“No,” replied the clergyman.
“Why, look yer ’ere,” said the miner, showing the shoulders of his
singlet. “It’s a bit dry now, but it’s wet as a clout with sweat even
yet. Feel it.”
“Goodness!” cried Mrs. Morel. “Mr. Heaton doesn’t want to feel your
nasty singlet.”
The clergyman put out his hand gingerly.
“No, perhaps he doesn’t,” said Morel; “but it’s all come out of _me_,
whether or not. An’ iv’ry day alike my singlet’s wringin’ wet. ’Aven’t
you got a drink, Missis, for a man when he comes home barkled up from
the pit?”
“You know you drank all the beer,” said Mrs. Morel, pouring out his
tea.
“An’ was there no more to be got?” Turning to the clergyman—“A man gets
that caked up wi’ th’ dust, you know,—that clogged up down a coal-mine,
he _needs_ a drink when he comes home.”
“I am sure he does,” said the clergyman.
“But it’s ten to one if there’s owt for him.”
“There’s water—and there’s tea,” said Mrs. Morel.
“Water! It’s not water as’ll clear his throat.”
He poured out a saucerful of tea, blew it, and sucked it up through his
great black moustache, sighing afterwards. Then he poured out another
saucerful, and stood his cup on the table.
“My cloth!” said Mrs. Morel, putting it on a plate.
“A man as comes home as I do ’s too tired to care about cloths,” said
Morel.
“Pity!” exclaimed his wife, sarcastically.
The room was full of the smell of meat and vegetables and pit-clothes.
He leaned over to the minister, his great moustache thrust forward, his
mouth very red in his black face.
“Mr. Heaton,” he said, “a man as has been down the black hole all day,
dingin’ away at a coal-face, yi, a sight harder than that wall—”
“Needn’t make a moan of it,” put in Mrs. Morel.
She hated her husband because, whenever he had an audience, he whined
and played for sympathy. William, sitting nursing the baby, hated him,
with a boy’s hatred for false sentiment, and for the stupid treatment
of his mother. Annie had never liked him; she merely avoided him.
When the minister had gone, Mrs. Morel looked at her cloth.
“A fine mess!” she said.
“Dos’t think I’m goin’ to sit wi’ my arms danglin’, cos tha’s got a
parson for tea wi’ thee?” he bawled.
They were both angry, but she said nothing. The baby began to cry, and
Mrs. Morel, picking up a saucepan from the hearth, accidentally knocked
Annie on the head, whereupon the girl began to whine, and Morel to
shout at her. In the midst of this pandemonium, William looked up at
the big glazed text over the mantelpiece and read distinctly:
“God Bless Our Home!”
Whereupon Mrs. Morel, trying to soothe the baby, jumped up, rushed at
him, boxed his ears, saying:
“What are _you_ putting in for?”
And then she sat down and laughed, till tears ran over her cheeks,
while William kicked the stool he had been sitting on, and Morel
growled:
“I canna see what there is so much to laugh at.”
One evening, directly after the parson’s visit, feeling unable to bear
herself after another display from her husband, she took Annie and the
baby and went out. Morel had kicked William, and the mother would never
forgive him.
She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the meadow to the
cricket-ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe, evening light,
whispering with the distant mill-race. She sat on a seat under the
alders in the cricket-ground, and fronted the evening. Before her,
level and solid, spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a
sea of light. Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion.
Many rooks, high up, came cawing home across the softly-woven sky. They
stooped in a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating,
cawing, wheeling, like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump
that made a dark boss among the pasture.
A few gentlemen were practising, and Mrs. Morel could hear the chock of
the ball, and the voices of men suddenly roused; could see the white
forms of men shifting silently over the green, upon which already the
under shadows were smouldering. Away at the grange, one side of the
haystacks was lit up, the other sides blue-grey. A waggon of sheaves
rocked small across the melting yellow light.
The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of Derbyshire
were blazed over with red sunset. Mrs. Morel watched the sun sink from
the glistening sky, leaving a soft flower-blue overhead, while the
western space went red, as if all the fire had swum down there, leaving
the bell cast flawless blue. The mountain-ash berries across the field
stood fierily out from the dark leaves, for a moment. A few shocks of
corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive; she imagined them
bowing; perhaps her son would be a Joseph. In the east, a mirrored
sunset floated pink opposite the west’s scarlet. The big haystacks on
the hillside, that butted into the glare, went cold.
With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the small frets
vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she had the peace and
the strength to see herself. Now and again, a swallow cut close to her.
Now and again, Annie came up with a handful of alder-currants. The baby
was restless on his mother’s knee, clambering with his hands at the
light.
Mrs. Morel looked down at him. She had dreaded this baby like a
catastrophe, because of her feeling for her husband. And now she felt
strangely towards the infant. Her heart was heavy because of the child,
almost as if it were unhealthy, or malformed. Yet it seemed quite well.
But she noticed the peculiar knitting of the baby’s brows, and the
peculiar heaviness of its eyes, as if it were trying to understand
something that was pain. She felt, when she looked at her child’s dark,
brooding pupils, as if a burden were on her heart.
“He looks as if he was thinking about something—quite sorrowful,” said
Mrs. Kirk.
Suddenly, looking at him, the heavy feeling at the mother’s heart
melted into passionate grief. She bowed over him, and a few tears shook
swiftly out of her very heart. The baby lifted his fingers.
“My lamb!” she cried softly.
And at that moment she felt, in some far inner place of her soul, that
she and her husband were guilty.
The baby was looking up at her. It had blue eyes like her own, but its
look was heavy, steady, as if it had realised something that had
stunned some point of its soul.
In her arms lay the delicate baby. Its deep blue eyes, always looking
up at her unblinking, seemed to draw her innermost thoughts out of her.
She no longer loved her husband; she had not wanted this child to come,
and there it lay in her arms and pulled at her heart. She felt as if