“No.” There was silence for a time. Lois was frightened. Had something happened also to her brother? This fear was closer and more irksome.
“Selby’s was cleaned out, gutted. We had a near shave of it — ”
“You have no loss, Dadda?”
“Nothing to mention.” After another silence, her father said:
“I’d rather be myself than William Selby. Of course it may merely be bad luck — you don’t know. But whatever it was, I wouldn’t like to add one to the list of fires just now. Selby was at the ‘George’ when it broke out — I don’t know where the lad was — !”
“Father,” broke in Lois, “why do you talk like that? Why do you talk as if Will had done it?” She ended suddenly. Her father looked at her pale, mute face.
“I don’t talk as if Will had done it,” he said. “I don’t even think it.”
Feeling she was going to cry, Lois rose and left the room. Her father sighed, and leaning his elbows on his knees, whistled faintly into the fire. He was not thinking about her.
Lois went down to the kitchen and asked Lucy, the parlour-maid, to go out with her. She somehow shrank from going alone, lest people should stare at her overmuch: and she felt an overpowering impulse to go to the scene of the tragedy, to judge for herself.
The churches were chiming half-past eight when the young lady and the maid set off down the street. Nearer the fair, swarthy, thin-legged men were pushing barrels of water towards the market-place, and the gipsy women, with hard brows, and dressed in tight velvet bodices, hurried along the pavement with jugs of milk, and great brass water ewers and loaves and breakfast parcels. People were just getting up, and in the poorer streets was a continual splash of tea-leaves, flung out on to the cobble-stones. A teapot came crashing down from an upper story just behind Lois, and she, starting round and looking up, thought that the trembling, drink-bleared man at the upper window, who was stupidly staring after his pot, had had designs on her life; and she went on her way shuddering at the grim tragedy of life.
In the dull October morning the ruined factory was black and ghastly. The window-frames were all jagged, and the walls stood gaunt. Inside was a tangle of twisted débris, the iron, in parts red with bright rust, looking still hot; the charred wood was black and satiny; from dishevelled heaps, sodden with water, a faint smoke rose dimly. Lois stood and looked. If he had done that! He might even be dead there, burned to ash and lost for ever. It was almost soothing to feel so. He would be safe in the eternity which now she must hope in.
At her side the pretty, sympathetic maid chatted plaintively. Suddenly, from one of her lapses into silence, she exclaimed:
“Why if there isn’t Mr Jack!”
Lois turned suddenly and saw her brother and her lover approaching her. Both looked soiled, untidy and wan. Will had a black eye, some ten hours old, well coloured. Lois turned very pale as they approached. They were looking gloomily at the factory, and for a moment did not notice the girls.
“I’ll be jiggered if there ain’t our Lois!” exclaimed Jack, the reprobate, swearing under his breath.
“Oh, God!” exclaimed the other in disgust.
“Jack, where have you been?” said Lois sharply, in keen pain, not looking at her lover. Her sharp tone of suffering drove her lover to defend himself with an affectation of comic recklessness.
“In quod,” replied her brother, smiling sickly.
“Jack!” cried his sister very sharply.
“Fact.”
Will Selby shuffled on his feet and smiled, trying to turn away his face so that she should not see his black eye. She glanced at him. He felt her boundless anger and contempt, and with great courage he looked straight at her, smiling ironically. Unfortunately his smile would not go over his swollen eye, which remained grave and lurid.
“Do I look pretty?” he inquired with a hateful twist of his lip.
“Very!” she replied.
“I thought I did,” he replied. And he turned to look at his father’s ruined works, and he felt miserable and stubborn. The girl standing there so clean and out of it all! Oh, God, he felt sick. He turned to go home.
The three went together, Lois silent in anger and resentment. Her brother was tired and overstrung, but not suppressed. He chattered on blindly.
“It was a lark we had! We met Bob Osborne and Freddy Mansell coming down Poultry. There was girl with some geese. She looked a tanger sitting there, all like statues, her and the geese. It was Will who began it. He offered her three-pence and asked her to begin the show. She called him a — she called him something, and then somebody poked an old gander to stir him up, and somebody squirted him in the eye. He upped and squawked and started off with his neck out. Laugh! We nearly killed ourselves, keeping back those old birds with squirts and teasers. Oh, Lum! Those old geese, oh, scrimmy, they didn’t know where to turn, they fairly went off their dots, coming at us right an’ left, and such a row — it was fun, you never knew! Then the girl she got up and knocked somebody over the jaw, and we were right in for it. Well, in the end, Billy here got hold of her round the waist — ”
“Oh, dry it up!” exclaimed Will bitterly.
Jack looked at him, laughed mirthlessly, and continued: “An’ we said we’d buy her birds. So we got hold of one goose apiece — an’ they took some holding, I can tell you — and off we set round the fair, Billy leading with the girl. The bloomin’ geese squawked an’ pecked. Laugh — I thought I should a’ died. Well, then we wanted the girl to have her birds back — and then she fired up. She got some other chaps on her side, and there was a proper old row. The girl went tooth and nail for Will there — she was dead set against him. She gave him a black eye, by gum, and we went at it, I can tell you. It was a free fight, a beauty, an’ we got run in. I don’t know what became of the girl.”
Lois surveyed the two men. There was no glimmer of a smile on her face, though the maid behind her was sniggering. Will was very bitter. He glanced at his sweetheart and at the ruined factory.
“How’s dad taken it?” he asked, in a biting, almost humble tone.
“I don’t know,” she replied coldly. “Father’s in an awful way. I believe everybody thinks you set the place on fire.”
Lois drew herself up. She had delivered her blow. She drew herself up in cold condemnation and for a moment enjoyed her complete revenge. He was despicable, abject in his dishevelled, disfigured, unwashed condition.
“Aye, well, they made a mistake for once,” he replied, with a curl of the lip.
Curiously enough, they walked side by side as if they belonged to each other. She was his conscience-keeper. She was far from forgiving him, but she was still farther from letting him go. And he walked at her side like a boy who had to be punished before he can be exonerated. He submitted. But there was a genuine bitter contempt in the curl of his lip.
THE CHRISTENING
The mistress of the British School stepped down from her school gate, and instead of turning to the left as usual, she turned to the right. Two women who were hastening home to scramble their husbands’ dinners together — it was five minutes to four — stopped to look at her. They stood gazing after her for a moment; then they glanced at each other with a woman’s little grimace.
To be sure, the retreating figure was ridiculous: small and thin, with a black straw hat, and a rusty cashmere dress hanging full all round the skirt. For so small and frail and rusty a creature to sail with slow, deliberate stride was also absurd. Hilda Rowbotham was less than thirty, so it was not years that set the measure of her pace; she had heart disease. Keeping her face, that was small with sickness, but not uncomely, firmly lifted and fronting ahead, the young woman sailed on past the market-place, like a black swan of mournful, disreputable plumage.
She turned into Berryman’s, the baker’s. The shop displayed bread and cakes, sacks of flour and oatmeal, flitches of bacon, hams, lard and sausages. The combination of scents was not unpleasing. Hilda Rowbotham stood for some minutes nervousl
y tapping and pushing a large knife that lay on the counter, and looking at the tall, glittering brass scales. At last a morose man with sandy whiskers came down the step from the house-place.
“What is it?” he asked, not apologizing for his delay.
“Will you give me six-pennyworth of assorted cakes and pastries — and put in some macaroons, please?” she asked, in remarkably rapid and nervous speech. Her lips fluttered like two leaves in a wind, and her words crowded and rushed like a flock of sheep at a gate.
“We’ve got no macaroons,” said the man churlishly.
He had evidently caught that word. He stood waiting.
“Then I can’t have any, Mr Berryman. Now I do feel disappointed. I like those macaroons, you know, and it’s not often I treat myself. One gets so tired of trying to spoil oneself, don’t you think? It’s less profitable even than trying to spoil somebody else.” She laughed a quick little nervous laugh, putting her hand to her face.
“Then what’ll you have?” asked the man, without the ghost of an answering smile. He evidently had not followed, so he looked more glum than ever.
“Oh, anything you’ve got,” replied the schoolmistress, flushing slightly. The man moved slowly about, dropping the cakes from various dishes one by one into a paper bag.
“How’s that sister o’ yours getting on?” he asked, as if he were talking to the flour scoop.
“Whom do you mean?” snapped the schoolmistress.
“The youngest,” answered the stooping, pale-faced man, with a note of sarcasm.
“Emma! Oh, she’s very well, thank you!” The schoolmistress was very red, but she spoke with sharp, ironical defiance. The man grunted. Then he handed her the bag and watched her out of the shop without bidding her “Good afternoon”.
She had the whole length of the main street to traverse, a half-mile of slow-stepping torture, with shame flushing over her neck. But she carried her white bag with an appearance of steadfast unconcern. When she turned into the field she seemed to droop a little. The wide valley opened out from her, with the far woods withdrawing into twilight, and away in the centre the great pit streaming its white smoke and chuffing as the men were being turned up. A full, rose-coloured moon, like a flamingo flying low under the far, dusky east, drew out of the mist. It was beautiful, and it made her irritable sadness soften, diffuse.
Across the field, and she was at home. It was a new, substantial cottage, built with unstinted hand, such a house as an old miner could build himself out of his savings. In the rather small kitchen a woman of dark, saturnine complexion sat nursing a baby in a long white gown; a young woman of heavy, brutal cast stood at the table, cutting bread and butter. She had a downcast, humble mien that sat unnaturally on her, and was strangely irritating. She did not look round when her sister entered. Hilda put down the bag of cakes and left the room, not having spoken to Emma, nor to the baby, not to Mrs Carlin, who had come in to help for the afternoon.
Almost immediately the father entered from the yard with a dustpan full of coals. He was a large man, but he was going to pieces. As he passed through, he gripped the door with his free hand to steady himself, but turning, he lurched and swayed. He began putting the coals on the fire, piece by piece. One lump fell from his hand and smashed on the white hearth. Emma Rowbotham looked round, and began in a rough, loud voice of anger: “Look at you!” Then she consciously moderated her tones. “I’ll sweep it up in a minute — don’t you bother; you’ll only be going head first into the fire.”
Her father bent down nevertheless to clear up the mess he had made, saying, articulating his words loosely and slavering in his speech:
“The lousy bit of a thing, it slipped between my fingers like a fish.”
As he spoke he went tilting towards the fire. The dark-browed woman cried out: he put his hand on the hot stove to save himself: Emma swung round and dragged him off.
“Didn’t I tell you!” she cried roughly. “Now, have you burnt yourself?”
She held tight hold of the big man, and pushed him into his chair.
“What’s the matter?” cried a sharp voice from the other room. The speaker appeared, a hard well-favoured woman of twenty-eight. “Emma, don’t speak like that to father.” Then, in a tone not so cold, but just as sharp: “Now, father, what have you been doing?”
Emma withdrew to her table sullenly.
“It’s nöwt,” said the old man, vainly protesting. “It’s nöwt, at a’. Get on wi’ what you’re doin’.”
“I’m afraid ‘e’s burnt ‘is ‘and,” said the black-browed woman, speaking of him with a kind of hard pity, as if he were a cumbersome child. Bertha took the old man’s hand and looked at it, making a quick tut-tutting noise of impatience.
“Emma, get that zinc ointment — and some white rag,” she commanded sharply. The younger sister put down her loaf with the knife in it, and went. To a sensitive observer, this obedience was more intolerable than the most hateful discord. The dark woman bent over the baby and made silent, gentle movements of motherliness to it. The little one smiled and moved on her lap. It continued to move and twist.
“I believe this child’s hungry,” she said. “How long is it since he had anything?”
“Just afore dinner,” said Emma dully.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Bertha. “You needn’t starve the child now you’ve got it. Once every two hours it ought to be fed, as I’ve told you; and now it’s three. Take him, poor little mite — I’ll cut the bread.” She bent and looked at the bonny baby. She could not help herself: she smiled, and pressed its cheek with her finger, and nodded to it, making little noises. Then she turned and took the loaf from her sister. The woman rose and gave the child to its mother. Emma bent over the little sucking mite. She hated it when she looked at it, and saw it as a symbol, but when she felt it, her love was like fire in her blood.
“I should think ‘e canna be comin’,” said the father uneasily, looking up at the clock.
“Nonsense, father — the clock’s fast! It’s but half-past four! Don’t fidget!” Bertha continued to cut the bread and butter.
“Open a tin of pears,” she said to the woman, in a much milder tone. Then she went into the next room. As soon as she was gone, the old man said again: “I should ha’e thought he’d ‘a’ been ‘ere by now, if he means comin’.”
Emma, engrossed, did not answer. The father had ceased to consider her, since she had become humbled.
“‘E’ll come — ’e’ll come!” assured the stranger.
A few minutes later Bertha hurried into the kitchen, taking off her apron. The dog barked furiously. She opened the door, commanded the dog to silence, and said: “He will be quiet now, Mr Kendal.”
“Thank you,” said a sonorous voice, and there was the sound of a bicycle being propped against a wall. A clergyman entered, a big-boned, thin, ugly man of nervous manner. He went straight to the father.
“Ah — how are you?” he asked musically, peering down on the great frame of the miner, ruined by locomotor ataxy.
His voice was full of gentleness, but he seemed as if he could not see distinctly, could not get things clear.
“Have you hurt you hand?” he said comfortingly, seeing the white rag.
“It wor nöwt but a pestered bit o’ coal as dropped, an’ I put my hand on th’ hub. I thought tha worna commin’.”
The familiar ‘tha’, and the reproach, were unconscious retaliation on the old man’s part. The minister smiled, half wistfully, half indulgently. He was full of vague tenderness. Then he turned to the young mother, who flushed sullenly because her dishonoured breast was uncovered.
“How are you?” he asked, very softly and gently, as if she were ill and he were mindful of her.
“I’m all right,” she replied, awkwardly taking his hand without rising, hiding her face and the anger that rose in her.
“Yes — yes” — he peered down at the baby, which sucked with distended mouth upon the firm breast. “Yes, yes.” He seemed
lost in a dim musing.
Coming to, he shook hands unseeingly with the woman.
Presently they all went into the next room, the minister hesitating to help his crippled old deacon.
“I can go by myself, thank yer,” testily replied the father.
Soon all were seated. Everybody was separated in feeling and isolated at table. High tea was spread in the middle kitchen, a large, ugly room kept for special occasions.
Hilda appeared last, and the clumsy, raw-boned clergyman rose to meet her. He was afraid of this family, the well-to-do old collier, and the brutal, self-willed children. But Hilda was queen among them. She was the clever one, and had been to college. She felt responsible for the keeping up of a high standard of conduct in all the members of the family. There was a difference between the Rowbothams and the common collier folk. Woodbine Cottage was a superior house to most — and was built in pride by the old man. She, Hilda, was a college-trained schoolmistress; she meant to keep up the prestige of her house in spite of blows.
She had put on a dress of green voile for this special occasion. But she was very thin; her neck protruded painfully. The clergyman, however, greeted her almost with reverence, and, with some assumption of dignity, she sat down before the tray. At the far end of the table sat the broken, massive frame of her father. Next to him was the youngest daughter, nursing the restless baby. The minister sat between Hilda and Bertha, hulking his bony frame uncomfortably.
There was a great spread on the table, of tinned fruits and tinned salmon, ham and cakes. Miss Rowbotham kept a keen eye on everything: she felt the importance of the occasion. The young mother who had given rise to all this solemnity ate in sulky discomfort, snatching sullen little smiles at her child, smiles which came, in spite of her, when she felt its little limbs stirring vigorously on her lap. Bertha, sharp and abrupt, was chiefly concerned with the baby. She scorned her sister, and treated her like dirt. But the infant was a streak of light to her. Miss Rowbotham concerned herself with the function and the conversation. Her hands fluttered; she talked in little volleys exceedingly nervous. Towards the end of the meal, there came a pause. The old man wiped his mouth with his red handkerchief, then, his blue eyes going fixed and staring, he began to speak, in a loose, slobbering fashion, charging his words at the clergyman.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 579