Sons and Lovers

The children lay and breathed the darkness. And then, at last, they heard their father throw down his boots and tramp upstairs in his stockinged feet. Still they listened. Then at last, if the wind allowed, they heard the water of the tap drumming into the kettle, which their mother was filling for morning, and they could go to sleep in peace.

So they were happy in the morning—happy, very happy playing, dancing at night round the lonely lamp-post in the midst of the darkness. But they had one tight place of anxiety in their hearts, one darkness in their eyes, which showed all their lives.

Paul hated his father. As a boy he had a fervent private religion.

“Make him stop drinking,” he prayed every night. “Lord, let my father die,” he prayed very often. “Let him not be killed at pit,” he prayed when, after tea, the father did not come home from work.

That was another time when the family suffered intensely. The children came from school and had their teas. On the hob the big black saucepan was simmering, the stew-jar was in the oven, ready for Morel’s dinner. He was expected at five o’clock. But for months he would stop and drink every night on his way from work.

In the winter nights, when it was cold, and grew dark early, Mrs. Morel would put a brass candlestick on the table, light a tallow candle to save the gas. The children finished their bread and butter, or dripping, and were ready to go out to play. But if Morel had not come they faltered. The sense of his sitting in all his pit-dirt, drinking, after a long day’s work, not coming home and eating and washing, but sitting, getting drunk, on an empty stomach, made Mrs. Morel unable to bear herself. From her the feeling was transmitted to the other children. She never suffered alone any more: the children suffered with her.

Paul went out to play with the rest. Down in the great trough of twilight, tiny clusters of lights burned where the pits were. A few last colliers straggled up the dim field-path. The lamplighter came along. No more colliers came. Darkness shut down over the valley; work was gone. It was night.

Then Paul ran anxiously into the kitchen. The one candle still burned on the table, the big fire glowed red. Mrs. Morel sat alone. On the hob the saucepan steamed; the dinner-plate lay waiting on the table. All the room was full of the sense of waiting, waiting for the man who was sitting in his pit-dirt, dinnerless, some mile away from home, across the darkness, drinking himself drunk. Paul stood in the doorway.

“Has dad come?” he asked.

“You can see he hasn’t,” said Mrs. Morel, cross with the futility of the question.

Then the boy dawdled about near his mother. They shared the same anxiety. Presently Mrs. Morel went out and strained the potatoes.

“They’re ruined and black,” she said; “but what do I care?”

Not many words were spoken. Paul almost hated his mother for suffering because his father did not come home from work.

“What do you bother yourself for?” he said. “If he wants to stop and get drunk, why don’t you let him?”

“Let him!” flashed Mrs. Morel. “You may well say ‘let him.’”

She knew that the man who stops on the way home from work is on a quick way to ruining himself and his home. The children were yet young, and depended on the breadwinner. William gave her the sense of relief, providing her at last with someone to turn to if Morel failed. But the tense atmosphere of the room on these waiting evenings was the same.

The minutes ticked away. At six o’clock still the cloth lay on the table, still the dinner stood waiting, still the same sense of anxiety and expectation in the room. The boy could not stand it any longer. He could not go out and play. So he ran in to Mrs. Inger, next door but one, for her to talk to him. She had no children. Her husband was good to her, but was in a shop, and came home late. So, when she saw the lad at the door, she called:

“Come in, Paul.”

The two sat talking for some time, when suddenly the boy rose, saying:

“Well, I’ll be going and seeing if my mother wants an errand doing.”

He pretended to be perfectly cheerful, and did not tell his friend what ailed him. Then he ran indoors.

Morel at these times came in churlish and hateful.

“This is a nice time to come home,” said Mrs. Morel.

“Wha’s it matter to yo’ what time I come whoam?” he shouted.

And everybody in the house was still, because he was dangerous. He ate his food in the most brutal manner possible, and, when he had done, pushed all the pots in a heap away from him, to lay his arms on the table. Then he went to sleep.

Paul hated his father so. The collier’s small, mean head, with its black hair slightly soiled with grey, lay on the bare arms, and the face, dirty and inflamed, with a fleshy nose and thin, paltry brows, was turned sideways, asleep with beer and weariness and nasty temper. If anyone entered suddenly, or a noise were made, the man looked up and shouted:

“I’ll lay my fist about thy y’ead, I’m tellin’ thee, if tha doesna stop that clatter! Dost hear?”

And the two last words, shouted in a bullying fashion, usually at Annie, made the family writhe with hate of the man.

He was shut out from all family affairs. No one told him anything. The children, alone with their mother, told her all about the day’s happenings, everything. Nothing had really taken place in them until it was told to their mother. But as soon as the father came in, everything stopped. He was like the scotch in the smooth, happy machinery of the home. And he was always aware of this fall of silence on his entry, the shutting off of life, the unwelcome. But now it was gone too far to alter.

He would dearly have liked the children to talk to him, but they could not. Sometimes Mrs. Morel would say:

“You ought to tell your father.”

Paul won a prize in a competition in a child’s paper. Everybody was highly jubilant.

“Now you’d better tell your father when he comes in,” said Mrs. Morel. “You know how he carries on and says he’s never told anything.”

“All right,” said Paul. But he would almost rather have forfeited the prize than have to tell his father.

“I’ve won a prize in a competition, dad,” he said.

Morel turned round to him.

“Have you, my boy? What sort of a competition?”

“Oh, nothing—about famous women.”

“And how much is the prize, then, as you’ve got?”

“It’s a book.”

“Oh, indeed!”

“About birds.”

“Hm—hm!”

And that was all. Conversation was impossible between the father and any other member of the family. He was an outsider. He had denied the God in him.

The only times when he entered again into the life of his own people was when he worked, and was happy at work. Sometimes, in the evening, he cobbled the boots or mended the kettle or his pit-bottle. Then he always wanted several attendants, and the children enjoyed it. They united with him in the work, in the actual doing of something, when he was his real self again.

He was a good workman, dexterous, and one who, when he was in a good humour, always sang. He had whole periods, months, almost years, of friction and nasty temper. Then sometimes he was jolly again. It was nice to see him run with a piece of red-hot iron into the scullery, crying:

“Out of my road—out of my road!”

Then he hammered the soft, red-glowing stuff on his iron goose, and made the shape he wanted. Or he sat absorbed for a moment, soldering. Then the children watched with joy as the metal sank suddenly molten, and was shoved about against the nose of the soldering-iron, while the room was full of a scent of burnt resin and hot tin, and Morel was silent and intent for a minute. He always sang when he mended boots because of the jolly sound of hammering. And he was rather happy when he sat putting great patches on his moleskin pit trousers, which he would often do, considering them too dirty, and the stuff too hard, for his wife to mend.

But the best time for the young children was when he made fuses. Morel fetched a sheaf of long, sound wheat-straws from the attic. These he cleaned with his hand, till each one gleamed like a stalk of gold, after which he cut the straws into lengths of about six inches, leaving, if he could, a notch at the bottom of each piece. He always had a beautifully sharp knife that could cut a straw clean without hurting it. Then he set in the middle of the table a heap of gunpowder, a little pile of black grains upon the white-scrubbed board. He made and trimmed the straws while Paul and Annie filled and plugged them. Paul loved to see the black grains trickle down a crack in his palm into the mouth of the straw, peppering jollily downwards till the straw was full. Then he bunged up the mouth with a bit of soap—which he got on his thumb-nail from a pat in a saucer—and the straw was finished.

“Look, dad!” he said.

“That’s right, my beauty,” replied Morel, who was peculiarly lavish of endearments to his second son. Paul popped the fuse into the powder-tin, ready for the morning, when Morel would take it to the pit, and use it to fire a shot that would blast the coal down.

Meantime Arthur, still fond of his father, would lean on the arm of Morel’s chair, and say:

“Tell us about down pit, daddy.”

This Morel loved to do.

“Well, there’s one little ‘oss—we call ‘im Taffy,” he would begin. “An’ he’s a fawce un!”

Morel had a warm way of telling a story. He made one feel Taffy’s cunning.

“He’s a brown un,” he would answer, “an’ not very high. Well he comes i’ th’ stall wi’ a rattle, an’ then yo’ ‘ear ‘im sneeze.

“‘ello, Taff,’ you say, ‘what art sneezin’ for? Bin ta’ein’ some snuff?’

“An’ ‘e sneezes again. Then he slives up an’ shoves ‘is ‘ead on yer, that cadin’.

“‘What’s want, Taff?’ yo’ say.”

“And what does he?” Arthur always asked.

“He wants a bit o’ bacca, my duckey.”

This story of Taffy would go on interminably, and everybody loved it.

Or sometimes it was a new tale.

“An’ what dost think, my darlin’? When I went to put my coat on at snap-time, what should go runnin’ up my arm but a mouse.

“‘Hey up, theer!’” I shouts.

“An’ I wor just in time ter get ‘im by th’ tail.”

“And did you kill it?”

“I did, for they’re a nuisance. The place is fair snied wi’ ‘em.”

“An’ what do they live on?”

“The corn as the ‘osses drops—an’ they’ll get in your pocket an’ eat your snap, if you’ll let ‘em—no matter where yo’ hing your coat—the slivin’, nibblin’ little nuisances, for they are.”

These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel had some job to do. And then he always went to bed very early, often before the children. There was nothing remaining for him to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and had skimmed the headlines of the newspaper.

And the children felt secure when their father was in bed. They lay and talked softly awhile. Then they started as the lights went suddenly sprawling over the ceiling from the lamps that swung in the hands of the colliers tramping by outside, going to take the nine o’clock shift. They listened to the voices of the men, imagined them dipping down into the dark valley. Sometimes they went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing tinier and tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness. Then it was a joy to rush back to bed and cuddle closely in the warmth.

Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis. The others were all quite strong; so this was another reason for his mother’s difference in feeling for him. One day he came home at dinnertime feeling ill. But it was not a family to make any fuss.

“What’s the matter with you?” his mother asked sharply.

“Nothing,” he replied.

But he ate no dinner.

“If you eat no dinner, you’re not going to school,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“That’s why.”

So after dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the children loved. Then he fell into a kind of doze. That afternoon Mrs. Morel was ironing. She listened to the small, restless noise the boy made in his throat, as she worked. Again rose in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards him. She had never expected him to live. And yet he had a great vitality in his young body. Perhaps it would have been a little relief to her if he had died. She always felt a mixture of anguish in her love for him.

He, in his semi-conscious sleep, was vaguely aware of the clatter of the iron on the iron-stand, of the faint thud, thud on the ironing-board. Once roused, he opened his eyes to see his mother standing on the hearthrug with the hot iron near her cheek, listening, as it were, to the heat. Her still face, with the mouth closed tight from suffering and disillusion and self-denial, and her nose the smallest bit on one side, and her blue eyes so young, quick, and warm, made his heart contract with love. When she was quiet, so, she looked brave and rich with life, but as if she had been done out of her rights. It hurt the boy keenly, this feeling about her that she had never had her life’s fulfilment: and his own incapability to make up to her hurt him with a sense of impotence, yet made him patiently dogged inside. It was his childish aim.

She spat on the iron, and a little ball of spit bounded, raced off the dark, glossy surface. Then, kneeling, she rubbed the iron on the sack lining of the hearthrug vigorously. She was warm in the ruddy firelight. Paul loved the way she crouched and put her head on one side. Her movements were light and quick. It was always a pleasure to watch her. Nothing she ever did, no movements she ever made, could have been found fault with by her children. The room was warm and full of the scent of hot linen. Later on the clergyman came and talked softly with her.

Paul was laid up with an attack of bronchitis. He did not mind much. What happened happened, and it was no good kicking against the pricks. He loved the evenings, after eight o’clock, when the light was put out, and he could watch the fire-flames spring over the darkness of the walls and ceiling; could watch huge shadows waving and tossing, till the room seemed full of men who battled silently.

On retiring to bed, the father would come into the sick-room. He was always very gentle if anyone were ill. But he disturbed the atmosphere for the boy.

“Are ter asleep, my darlin’?” Morel asked softly.

“No; is my mother comin’?”

“She’s just finishin’ foldin’ the clothes. Do you want anything?” Morel rarely “thee’d” his son.

“I don’t want nothing. But how long will she be?”

“Not long, my duckie.”

The father waited undecidedly on the hearthrug for a moment or two. He felt his son did not want him. Then he went to the top of the stairs and said to his wife:

“This childt’s axin’ for thee; how long art goin’ to be?”

“Until I’ve finished, good gracious! Tell him to go to sleep.”

“She says you’re to go to sleep,” the father repeated gently to Paul.

“Well, I want her to come,” insisted the boy.

“He says he can’t go off till you come,” Morel called downstairs.

“Eh, dear! I shan’t be long. And do stop shouting downstairs. There’s the other children—”

Then Morel came again, and crouched before the bedroom fire. He loved a fire dearly.

“She says she won’t be long,” he said.

He loitered about indefinitely. The boy began to get feverish with irritation. His father’s presence seemed to aggravate all his sick impatience. At last Morel, after having stood looking at his son awhile, said softly:

“Good-night, my darling.”

“Good-night,” Paul replied, turning round in relief to be alone.

Paul loved to sleep with his mother. Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing. Paul lay against her and slept, and got better; whilst she, always a bad sleeper, fell later on into a profound sleep that seemed to give her faith.

In convalescence he would sit up in bed, see the fluffy horses feeding at the troughs in the field, scattering their hay on the trodden yellow snow; watch the miners troop home—small, black figures trailing slowly in gangs across the white field. Then the night came up in dark blue vapour from the snow.

In convalescence everything was wonderful. The snowflakes, suddenly arriving on the window-pane, clung there a moment like swallows, then were gone, and a drop of water was crawling down the glass. The snowflakes whirled round the corner of the house, like pigeons dashing by. Away across the valley the little black train crawled doubtfully over the great whiteness.

While they were so poor, the children were delighted if they could do anything to help economically. Annie and Paul and Arthur went out early in the morning, in summer, looking for mushrooms, hunting through the wet grass, from which the larks were rising, for the white-skinned, wonderful naked bodies crouched secretly in the green. And if they got half a pound they felt exceedingly happy: there was the joy of finding something, the joy of accepting something straight from the hand of Nature, and the joy of contributing to the family exchequer.

But the most important harvest, after gleaning for frumenty, was the blackberries. Mrs. Morel must buy fruit for puddings on the Saturdays; also she liked blackberries. So Paul and Arthur scoured the coppices and woods and old quarries, so long as a blackberry was to be found, every week-end going on their search. In that region of mining villages blackberries became a comparative rarity. But Paul hunted far and wide. He loved being out in the country, among the bushes. But he also could not bear to go home to his mother empty. That, he felt, would disappoint her, and he would have died rather.

“Good gracious!” she would exclaim as the lads came in, late, and tired to death, and hungry, “wherever have you been?”

“Well,” replied Paul, “there wasn’t any, so we went over Misk Hills. And look here, our mother!”

She peeped into the basket.

“Now, those are fine ones!” she exclaimed.

“And there’s over two pounds—isn’t there over two pounds?”

She tried the basket.

“Yes,” she answered doubtfully.

Then Paul fished out a little spray. He always brought her one spray, the best he could find.

“Pretty!” she said, in a curious tone, of a woman accepting a love-token.

The boy walked all day, went miles and miles, rather than own himself beaten and come home to her empty-handed. She never realised this, whilst he was young. She was a woman who waited for her children to grow up. And William occupied her chiefly.

But when William went to Nottingham, and was not so much at home, the mother made a companion of Paul. The latter was unconsciously jealous of his brother, and William was jealous of him. At the same time, they were good friends.

Mrs. Morel’s intimacy with her second son was more subtle and fine, perhaps not so passionate as with her eldest. It was the rule that Paul should fetch the money on Friday afternoons. The colliers of the five pits were paid on Fridays, but not individually. All the earnings of each stall were put down to the chief butty, as contractor, and he divided the wages again, either in the public-house or in his own home. So that the children could fetch the money, school closed early on Friday afternoons. Each of the Morel children—William then Annie, then 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 well-kept 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 payroom 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.