Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read online

  Soon there was a heap of twisted black pages, all that remained of the file of scented letters, except that Paul had thirty or forty pretty tickets from the corners of the notepaper—swallows and forget-me-nots and ivy sprays. And William went to London, to start a new life.

  4

  The Young Life of Paul

  PAUL WOULD be built like his mother, slightly and rather small. His fair hair went reddish, and then dark brown; his eyes were grey. He was a pale, quiet child, with eyes that seemed to listen, and with a full, dropping underlip.

  As a rule he seemed old for his years. He was so conscious of what other people felt, particularly his mother. When she fretted he understood, and could have no peace. His soul seemed always attentive to her.

  As he grew older he became stronger. William was too far removed from him to accept him as a companion. So the smaller boy belonged at first almost entirely to Annie. She was a tomboy and a “flybie-skybie,” bb as her mother called her. But she was intensely fond of her second brother. So Paul was towed round at the heels of Annie, sharing her game. She raced wildly at lerkybc with the other young wild-cats of the Bottoms. And always Paul flew beside her, living her share of the game, having as yet no part of his own. He was quiet and not noticeable. But his sister adored him. He always seemed to care for things if she wanted him to.

  She had a big doll of which she was fearfully proud, though not so fond. So she laid the doll on the sofa, and covered it with an antimacassar, to sleep. Then she forgot it. Meantime Paul must practise jumping off the sofa arm. So he jumped crash into the face of the hidden doll. Annie rushed up, uttered a loud wail, and sat down to weep a dirge. Paul remained quite still.

  “You couldn’t tell it was there, mother; you couldn’t tell it was there,” he repeated over and over. So long as Annie wept for the doll he sat helpless with misery. Her grief wore itself out. She forgave her brother—he was so much upset. But a day or two afterwards she was shocked.

  “Let’s make a sacrifice of Arabella,” he said. “Let’s burn her.” She was horrified, yet rather fascinated. She wanted to see what the boy would do. He made an altar of bricks, pulled some of the shavings out of Arabella’s body, put the waxen fragments into the hollow face, poured on a little paraffin, and set the whole thing alight. He watched with wicked satisfaction the drops of wax melt off the broken forehead of Arabella, and drop like sweat into the flame. So long as the stupid big doll burned he rejoiced in silence. At the end he poked among the embers with a stick, fished out the arms and legs, all blackened, and smashed them under stones.

  “That’s the sacrifice of Missis Arabella,” he said. “An’ I’m glad there’s nothing left of her.”

  Which disturbed Annie inwardly, although she could say nothing. He seemed to hate the doll so intensely, because he had broken it.

  All the children, but particularly Paul, were peculiarly against their father, along with their mother. Morel continued to bully and to drink. He had periods, months at a time, when he made the whole life of the family a misery. Paul never forgot coming home from the Band of Hope one Monday evening and finding his mother with her eye swollen and discoloured, his father standing on the hearth-rug, feet astride, his head down, and William, just home from work, glaring at his father.1 There was a silence as the young children entered, but none of the elders looked round.

  William was white to the lips, and his fists were clenched. He waited until the children were silent, watching with children’s rage and hate; then he said:

  “You coward, you daren’t do it when I was in.”

  But Morel’s blood was up. He swung round on his son. William was bigger, but Morel was hard-muscled, and mad with fury.

  “Dossn’t I?” he shouted. “Dossn’t I? Ha’e much more o’ thy chelp,bd my young jockey,be an’ I’ll rattle my fist about thee. Ay, an’ I sholl that, dost see?”

  Morel crouched at the knees and showed his fist in an ugly, almost beast-like fashion. William was white with rage.

  “Will yer?” he said, quiet and intense. “It ’ud be the last time, though.”

  Morel danced a little nearer, crouching, drawing back his fist to strike. William put his fists ready. A light came into his blue eyes, almost like a laugh. He watched his father. Another word, and the men would have begun to fight. Paul hoped they would. The three children sat pale on the sofa.

  “Stop it, both of you,” cried Mrs. Morel in a hard voice. “We’ve had enough for one night. And you,” she said, turning on to her husband, “look at your children!”

  Morel glanced at the sofa.

  “Look at the children, you nasty little bitch!” he sneered. “Why, what have I done to the children, I should like to know? But they’re like yourself; you’ve put ‘em up to your own tricks and nasty ways—you’ve learned ’em in it you ’ave.”

  She refused to answer him. No one spoke. After a while he threw his boots under the table and went to bed.

  “Why didn’t you let me have a go at him?” said William, when his father was upstairs. “I could easily have beaten him.”

  “A nice thing—your own father,” she replied.

  “‘Father!’ ” repeated William. “Call him my father!”

  “Well, he is—and so—”

  “But why don’t you let me settle him? I could do, easily.”

  “The idea!” she cried. “It hasn’t come to that yet.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s come to worse. Look at yourself. Why didn’t you let me give it him?”

  “Because I couldn’t bear it, so never think of it,” she cried quickly.

  And the children went to bed, miserably.

  When William was growing up, the family moved from the Bottoms to a house on the brow of the hill, commanding a view of the valley, which spread out like a convex cockle-shell, or a clamp-shell, before it. In front of the house was a huge old ash-tree. The west wind, sweeping from Derbyshire, caught the houses with full force, and the tree shrieked again. Morel liked it.

  “It’s music,” he said. “It sends me to sleep.”

  But Paul and Arthur and Annie hated it. To Paul it became almost a demoniacal noise. The winter of their first year in the new house their father was very bad. The children played in the street, on the brim of the wide, dark valley, until eight o’clock. Then they went to bed. Their mother sat sewing below. Having such a great space in front of the house gave the children a feeling of night, of vastness, and of terror. This terror came in from the shrieking of the tree and the anguish of the home discord. Often Paul would wake up, after he had been asleep a long time, aware of thuds downstairs. Instantly he was wide awake. Then he heard the booming shouts of his father, come home nearly drunk, then the sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, bang of his father’s fist on the table, and the nasty snarling shout as the man’s voice got higher. And then the whole was drowned in a piercing medley of shrieks and cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree. The children lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear what their father was doing. He might hit their mother again. There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through the tree fiercer and fiercer. All the cords of the great harp hummed, whistled, and shrieked. And then came the horror of the sudden silence, silence everywhere, outside and downstairs. What was it? Was it a silence of blood? What had he done?

  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 l
ives.

  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 done. 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 my 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 scotchbf 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, almostyears, 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,bg 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 i
nto 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 fawcebh’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 slivesbi up an’ shoves ‘is ’ead on yer, that cadin’.bj “‘What’s want, Taff?’ yo’ say.”

  “And what does he?” Arthur always asked.

  “He wants a bit o’ bacca,bk my duckie.”

  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 sniedbl 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.”