“A fine mess of a marriage it would be,” replied his mother. “I should consider it again, my boy.”
“Oh, well, I’ve gone too far to break off now,” he said, “and so I shall get married as soon as I can.”
“Very well, my boy. If you will, you will, and there’s no stopping you; but I tell you, I can’t sleep when I think about it.”
“Oh, she’ll be all right, mother. We shall manage.”
“And she lets you buy her underclothing?” asked the mother.
“Well,” he began apologetically, “she didn’t ask me; but one morning — and it WAS cold — I found her on the station shivering, not able to keep still; so I asked her if she was well wrapped up. She said: ‘I think so.’ So I said: ‘Have you got warm underthings on?’ And she said: ‘No, they were cotton.’ I asked her why on earth she hadn’t got something thicker on in weather like that, and she said because she HAD nothing. And there she is — a bronchial subject! I HAD to take her and get some warm things. Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind the money if we had any. And, you know, she OUGHT to keep enough to pay for her season-ticket; but no, she comes to me about that, and I have to find the money.”
“It’s a poor lookout,” said Mrs. Morel bitterly.
He was pale, and his rugged face, that used to be so perfectly careless and laughing, was stamped with conflict and despair.
“But I can’t give her up now; it’s gone too far,” he said. “And, besides, for SOME things I couldn’t do without her.”
“My boy, remember you’re taking your life in your hands,” said Mrs. Morel. “NOTHING is as bad as a marriage that’s a hopeless failure. Mine was bad enough, God knows, and ought to teach you something; but it might have been worse by a long chalk.”
He leaned with his back against the side of the chimney-piece, his hands in his pockets. He was a big, raw-boned man, who looked as if he would go to the world’s end if he wanted to. But she saw the despair on his face.
“I couldn’t give her up now,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “remember there are worse wrongs than breaking off an engagement.”
“I can’t give her up NOW,” he said.
The clock ticked on; mother and son remained in silence, a conflict between them; but he would say no more. At last she said:
“Well, go to bed, my son. You’ll feel better in the morning, and perhaps you’ll know better.”
He kissed her, and went. She raked the fire. Her heart was heavy now as it had never been. Before, with her husband, things had seemed to be breaking down in her, but they did not destroy her power to live. Now her soul felt lamed in itself. It was her hope that was struck.
And so often William manifested the same hatred towards his betrothed. On the last evening at home he was railing against her.
“Well,” he said, “if you don’t believe me, what she’s like, would you believe she has been confirmed three times?”
“Nonsense!” laughed Mrs. Morel.
“Nonsense or not, she HAS! That’s what confirmation means for her — a bit of a theatrical show where she can cut a figure.”
“I haven’t, Mrs. Morel!” cried the girl — ”I haven’t! it is not true!”
“What!” he cried, flashing round on her. “Once in Bromley, once in Beckenham, and once somewhere else.”
“Nowhere else!” she said, in tears — ”nowhere else!”
“It WAS! And if it wasn’t why were you confirmed TWICE?”
“Once I was only fourteen, Mrs. Morel,” she pleaded, tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel; “I can quite understand it, child. Take no notice of him. You ought to be ashamed, William, saying such things.”
“But it’s true. She’s religious — she had blue velvet Prayer-Books — and she’s not as much religion, or anything else, in her than that table-leg. Gets confirmed three times for show, to show herself off, and that’s how she is in EVERYTHING — EVERYTHING!”
The girl sat on the sofa, crying. She was not strong.
“As for LOVE!” he cried, “you might as well ask a fly to love you! It’ll love settling on you — ”
“Now, say no more,” commanded Mrs. Morel. “If you want to say these things, you must find another place than this. I am ashamed of you, William! Why don’t you be more manly. To do nothing but find fault with a girl, and then pretend you’re engaged to her!”
Mrs. Morel subsided in wrath and indignation.
William was silent, and later he repented, kissed and comforted the girl. Yet it was true, what he had said. He hated her.
When they were going away, Mrs. Morel accompanied them as far as Nottingham. It was a long way to Keston station.
“You know, mother,” he said to her, “Gyp’s shallow. Nothing goes deep with her.”
“William, I WISH you wouldn’t say these things,” said Mrs. Morel, very uncomfortable for the girl who walked beside her.
“But it doesn’t, mother. She’s very much in love with me now, but if I died she’d have forgotten me in three months.”
Mrs. Morel was afraid. Her heart beat furiously, hearing the quiet bitterness of her son’s last speech.
“How do you know?” she replied. “You DON’T know, and therefore you’ve no right to say such a thing.”
“He’s always saying these things!” cried the girl.
“In three months after I was buried you’d have somebody else, and I should be forgotten,” he said. “And that’s your love!”
Mrs. Morel saw them into the train in Nottingham, then she returned home.
“There’s one comfort,” she said to Paul — ”he’ll never have any money to marry on, that I AM sure of. And so she’ll save him that way.”
So she took cheer. Matters were not yet very desperate. She firmly believed William would never marry his Gipsy. She waited, and she kept Paul near to her.
All summer long William’s letters had a feverish tone; he seemed unnatural and intense. Sometimes he was exaggeratedly jolly, usually he was flat and bitter in his letter.
“Ah,” his mother said, “I’m afraid he’s ruining himself against that creature, who isn’t worthy of his love — no, no more than a rag doll.”
He wanted to come home. The midsummer holiday was gone; it was a long while to Christmas. He wrote in wild excitement, saying he could come for Saturday and Sunday at Goose Fair, the first week in October.
“You are not well, my boy,” said his mother, when she saw him. She was almost in tears at having him to herself again.
“No, I’ve not been well,” he said. “I’ve seemed to have a dragging cold all the last month, but it’s going, I think.”
It was sunny October weather. He seemed wild with joy, like a schoolboy escaped; then again he was silent and reserved. He was more gaunt than ever, and there was a haggard look in his eyes.
“You are doing too much,” said his mother to him.
He was doing extra work, trying to make some money to marry on, he said. He only talked to his mother once on the Saturday night; then he was sad and tender about his beloved.
“And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she’d be broken-hearted for two months, and then she’d start to forget me. You’d see, she’d never come home here to look at my grave, not even once.”
“Why, William,” said his mother, “you’re not going to die, so why talk about it?”
“But whether or not — ” he replied.
“And she can’t help it. She is like that, and if you choose her — well, you can’t grumble,” said his mother.
On the Sunday morning, as he was putting his collar on:
“Look,” he said to his mother, holding up his chin, “what a rash my collar’s made under my chin!”
Just at the junction of chin and throat was a big red inflammation.
“It ought not to do that,” said his mother. “Here, put a bit of this soothing ointment on. You should wear different collars.”
He went away
on Sunday midnight, seeming better and more solid for his two days at home.
On Tuesday morning came a telegram from London that he was ill. Mrs. Morel got off her knees from washing the floor, read the telegram, called a neighbour, went to her landlady and borrowed a sovereign, put on her things, and set off. She hurried to Keston, caught an express for London in Nottingham. She had to wait in Nottingham nearly an hour. A small figure in her black bonnet, she was anxiously asking the porters if they knew how to get to Elmers End. The journey was three hours. She sat in her corner in a kind of stupor, never moving. At King’s Cross still no one could tell her how to get to Elmers End. Carrying her string bag, that contained her nightdress, a comb and brush, she went from person to person. At last they sent her underground to Cannon Street.
It was six o’clock when she arrived at William’s lodging. The blinds were not down.
“How is he?” she asked.
“No better,” said the landlady.
She followed the woman upstairs. William lay on the bed, with bloodshot eyes, his face rather discoloured. The clothes were tossed about, there was no fire in the room, a glass of milk stood on the stand at his bedside. No one had been with him.
“Why, my son!” said the mother bravely.
He did not answer. He looked at her, but did not see her. Then he began to say, in a dull voice, as if repeating a letter from dictation: “Owing to a leakage in the hold of this vessel, the sugar had set, and become converted into rock. It needed hacking — ”
He was quite unconscious. It had been his business to examine some such cargo of sugar in the Port of London.
“How long has he been like this?” the mother asked the landlady.
“He got home at six o’clock on Monday morning, and he seemed to sleep all day; then in the night we heard him talking, and this morning he asked for you. So I wired, and we fetched the doctor.”
“Will you have a fire made?”
Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still.
The doctor came. It was pneumonia, and, he said, a peculiar erysipelas, which had started under the chin where the collar chafed, and was spreading over the face. He hoped it would not get to the brain.
Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse. She prayed for William, prayed that he would recognise her. But the young man’s face grew more discoloured. In the night she struggled with him. He raved, and raved, and would not come to consciousness. At two o’clock, in a dreadful paroxysm, he died.
Mrs. Morel sat perfectly still for an hour in the lodging bedroom; then she roused the household.
At six o’clock, with the aid of the charwoman, she laid him out; then she went round the dreary London village to the registrar and the doctor.
At nine o’clock to the cottage on Scargill Street came another wire:
“William died last night. Let father come, bring money.”
Annie, Paul, and Arthur were at home; Mr. Morel was gone to work. The three children said not a word. Annie began to whimper with fear; Paul set off for his father.
It was a beautiful day. At Brinsley pit the white steam melted slowly in the sunshine of a soft blue sky; the wheels of the headstocks twinkled high up; the screen, shuffling its coal into the trucks, made a busy noise.
“I want my father; he’s got to go to London,” said the boy to the first man he met on the bank.
“Tha wants Walter Morel? Go in theer an’ tell Joe Ward.”
Paul went into the little top office.
“I want my father; he’s got to go to London.”
“Thy feyther? Is he down? What’s his name?”
“Mr. Morel.”
“What, Walter? Is owt amiss?”
“He’s got to go to London.”
The man went to the telephone and rang up the bottom office.
“Walter Morel’s wanted, number 42, Hard. Summat’s amiss; there’s his lad here.”
Then he turned round to Paul.
“He’ll be up in a few minutes,” he said.
Paul wandered out to the pit-top. He watched the chair come up, with its wagon of coal. The great iron cage sank back on its rest, a full carfle was hauled off, an empty tram run on to the chair, a bell ting’ed somewhere, the chair heaved, then dropped like a stone.
Paul did not realise William was dead; it was impossible, with such a bustle going on. The puller-off swung the small truck on to the turn-table, another man ran with it along the bank down the curving lines.
“And William is dead, and my mother’s in London, and what will she be doing?” the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum.
He watched chair after chair come up, and still no father. At last, standing beside a wagon, a man’s form! the chair sank on its rests, Morel stepped off. He was slightly lame from an accident.
“Is it thee, Paul? Is ‘e worse?”
“You’ve got to go to London.”
The two walked off the pit-bank, where men were watching curiously. As they came out and went along the railway, with the sunny autumn field on one side and a wall of trucks on the other, Morel said in a frightened voice:
“‘E’s niver gone, child?”
“Yes.”
“When wor’t?”
“Last night. We had a telegram from my mother.”
Morel walked on a few strides, then leaned up against a truck-side, his hand over his eyes. He was not crying. Paul stood looking round, waiting. On the weighing machine a truck trundled slowly. Paul saw everything, except his father leaning against the truck as if he were tired.
Morel had only once before been to London. He set off, scared and peaked, to help his wife. That was on Tuesday. The children were left alone in the house. Paul went to work, Arthur went to school, and Annie had in a friend to be with her.
On Saturday night, as Paul was turning the corner, coming home from Keston, he saw his mother and father, who had come to Sethley Bridge Station. They were walking in silence in the dark, tired, straggling apart. The boy waited.
“Mother!” he said, in the darkness.
Mrs. Morel’s small figure seemed not to observe. He spoke again.
“Paul!” she said, uninterestedly.
She let him kiss her, but she seemed unaware of him.
In the house she was the same — small, white, and mute. She noticed nothing, she said nothing, only:
“The coffin will be here to-night, Walter. You’d better see about some help.” Then, turning to the children: “We’re bringing him home.”
Then she relapsed into the same mute looking into space, her hands folded on her lap. Paul, looking at her, felt he could not breathe. The house was dead silent.
“I went to work, mother,” he said plaintively.
“Did you?” she answered, dully.
After half an hour Morel, troubled and bewildered, came in again.
“Wheer s’ll we ha’e him when he DOEScome?” he asked his wife.
“In the front-room.”
“Then I’d better shift th’ table?”
“Yes.”
“An’ ha’e him across th’ chairs?”
“You know there — Yes, I suppose so.”
Morel and Paul went, with a candle, into the parlour. There was no gas there. The father unscrewed the top of the big mahogany oval table, and cleared the middle of the room; then he arranged six chairs opposite each other, so that the coffin could stand on their beds.
“You niver seed such a length as he is!” said the miner, and watching anxiously as he worked.
Paul went to the bay window and looked out. The ash-tree stood monstrous and black in front of the wide darkness. It was a faintly luminous night. Paul went back to his mother.
At ten o’clock Morel called:
“He’s here!”
Everyone started. There was a noise of unbarring and unlocking the front door, which opened straight from the night into the room.
“Bring another candle,” called Morel.
Annie and Arthur went. Paul fo
llowed with his mother. He stood with his arm round her waist in the inner doorway. Down the middle of the cleared room waited six chairs, face to face. In the window, against the lace curtains, Arthur held up one candle, and by the open door, against the night, Annie stood leaning forward, her brass candlestick glittering.
There was the noise of wheels. Outside in the darkness of the street below Paul could see horses and a black vehicle, one lamp, and a few pale faces; then some men, miners, all in their shirt-sleeves, seemed to struggle in the obscurity. Presently two men appeared, bowed beneath a great weight. It was Morel and his neighbour.
“Steady!” called Morel, out of breath.
He and his fellow mounted the steep garden step, heaved into the candlelight with their gleaming coffin-end. Limbs of other men were seen struggling behind. Morel and Burns, in front, staggered; the great dark weight swayed.
“Steady, steady!” cried Morel, as if in pain.
All the six bearers were up in the small garden, holding the great coffin aloft. There were three more steps to the door. The yellow lamp of the carriage shone alone down the black road.
“Now then!” said Morel.
The coffin swayed, the men began to mount the three steps with their load. Annie’s candle flickered, and she whimpered as the first men appeared, and the limbs and bowed heads of six men struggled to climb into the room, bearing the coffin that rode like sorrow on their living flesh.
“Oh, my son — my son!” Mrs. Morel sang softly, and each time the coffin swung to the unequal climbing of the men: “Oh, my son — my son — my son!”
“Mother!” Paul whimpered, his hand round her waist.
She did not hear.
“Oh, my son — my son!” she repeated.
Paul saw drops of sweat fall from his father’s brow. Six men were in the room — six coatless men, with yielding, struggling limbs, filling the room and knocking against the furniture. The coffin veered, and was gently lowered on to the chairs. The sweat fell from Morel’s face on its boards.
“My word, he’s a weight!” said a man, and the five miners sighed, bowed, and, trembling with the struggle, descended the steps again, closing the door behind them.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 78