I
The small locomotive engine, Number
4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston — with seven full waggons. It
appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it
startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw
afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to
Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched the
footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past, one by one,
with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly trapped between the
jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they curved away towards the coppice
where the withered oak leaves dropped noiselessly, while the birds, pulling at
the scarlet hips beside the track, made off into the dusk that had already
crept into the spinney. In the open, the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved
to the rough grass. The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy
strip that led to the whimsey, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned
their run among the alders, to roost in the tarred fowl-house. The pit-bank
loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores licking its ashy sides, in the
afternoon’s stagnant light. Just beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the
clumsy black head-stocks of Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning
fast up against the sky, and the winding-engine rapped out its little spasms.
The miners were being turned up.
The engine whistled as it came into
the wide bay of railway lines beside the colliery, where rows of trucks stood
in harbour.
Miners, single, trailing and in
groups, passed like shadows diverging home. At the edge of the ribbed level of
sidings squat a low cottage, three steps down from the cinder track. A large
bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof. Round the
bricked yard grew a few wintry primroses. Beyond, the long garden sloped down
to a bush-covered brook course. There were some twiggy apple trees,
winter-crack trees, and ragged cabbages. Beside the path hung dishevelled pink
chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. A woman came stooping out of
the felt-covered fowl-house, half-way down the garden. She closed and padlocked
the door, then drew herself erect, having brushed some bits from her white apron.
She was a till woman of imperious
mien, handsome, with definite black eyebrows. Her smooth black hair was parted
exactly. For a few moments she stood steadily watching the miners as they
passed along the railway: then she turned towards the brook course. Her face
was calm and set, her mouth was closed with disillusionment. After a moment she
called:
“John!” There was no answer. She
waited, and then said distinctly:
“Where are you?”
“Here!” replied a child’s sulky
voice from among the bushes. The woman looked piercingly through the dusk.
“Are you at that brook?” she asked
sternly.
For answer the child showed himself
before the raspberry-canes that rose like whips. He was a small, sturdy boy of
five. He stood quite still, defiantly.
“Oh!” said the mother, conciliated.
“I thought you were down at that wet brook — and you remember what I told you
—”
The boy did not move or answer.
“Come, come on in,” she said more
gently, “it’s getting dark. There’s your grandfather’s engine coming down the
line!”
The lad advanced slowly, with
resentful, taciturn movement. He was dressed in trousers and waistcoat of cloth
that was too thick and hard for the size of the garments. They were evidently
cut down from a man’s clothes.
As they went slowly towards the
house he tore at the ragged wisps of chrysanthemums and dropped the petals in
handfuls along the path.
“Don’t do that — it does look
nasty,” said his mother. He refrained, and she, suddenly pitiful, broke off a
twig with three or four wan flowers and held them against her face. When mother
and son reached the yard her hand hesitated, and instead of laying the flower
aside, she pushed it in her apron-band. The mother and son stood at the foot of
the three steps looking across the bay of lines at the passing home of the
miners. The trundle of the small train was imminent. Suddenly the engine loomed
past the house and came to a stop opposite the gate.
The engine-driver, a short man with
round grey beard, leaned out of the cab high above the woman.
“Have you got a cup of tea?” he said
in a cheery, hearty fashion.
It was her father. She went in,
saying she would mash. Directly, she returned.
“I didn’t come to see you on
Sunday,” began the little grey-bearded man.
“I didn’t expect you,” said his
daughter.
The engine-driver winced; then,
reassuming his cheery, airy manner, he said:
“Oh, have you heard then? Well, and
what do you think —?”
“I think it is soon enough,” she
replied.
At her brief censure the little man
made an impatient gesture, and said coaxingly, yet with dangerous coldness:
“Well, what’s a man to do? It’s no
sort of life for a man of my years, to sit at my own hearth like a stranger.
And if I’m going to marry again it may as well be soon as late — what does it
matter to anybody?”
The woman did not reply, but turned
and went into the house. The man in the engine-cab stood assertive, till she
returned with a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter on a plate. She went
up the steps and stood near the footplate of the hissing engine.
“You needn’t ‘a’ brought me bread
an’ butter,” said her father. “But a cup of tea”— he sipped appreciatively
—“it’s very nice.” He sipped for a moment or two, then: “I hear as Walter’s got
another bout on,” he said.
“When hasn’t he?” said the woman
bitterly.
“I heered tell of him in the ‘Lord
Nelson’ braggin’ as he was going to spend that b —— afore he went: half a
sovereign that was.”
“When?” asked the woman.
“A’ Sat’day night — I know that’s
true.”
“Very likely,” she laughed bitterly.
“He gives me twenty-three shillings.”
“Aye, it’s a nice thing, when a man
can do nothing with his money but make a beast of himself!” said the
grey-whiskered man. The woman turned her head away. Her father swallowed the
last of his tea and handed her the cup.
“Aye,” he sighed, wiping his mouth.
“It’s a settler, it is —”
He put his hand on the lever. The
little engine strained and groaned, and the train rumbled towards the crossing.
The woman again looked across the metals. Darkness was settling over the spaces
of the railway and trucks: the miners, in grey sombre groups, were still
passing home. The winding-engine pulsed hurriedly, with brief pauses. Elizabeth
Bates looked at the dreary flow of men, then she went indoors. Her husband did
not come.
The kitchen was small and full of
firelight; red coals piled glowing up the chimney mouth. All the life of the
room seemed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red
fire. The cloth was laid for tea; cups glinted in the shadows. At the back,
where the lowest stairs protruded into the room, the boy sat struggling with a
knife and a piece of whitewood. He was almost hidden in the shadow. It was
half-past four. They had but to await the father’s coming to begin tea. As the
mother watched her son’s sullen little struggle with the wood, she saw herself
in his silence and pertinacity; she saw the father in her child’s indifference
to all but himself. She seemed to be occupied by her husband. He had probably
gone past his home, slunk past his own door, to drink before he came in, while
his dinner spoiled and wasted in waiting. She glanced at the clock, then took
the potatoes to strain them in the yard. The garden and fields beyond the brook
were closed in uncertain darkness. When she rose with the saucepan, leaving the
drain steaming into the night behind her, she saw the yellow lamps were lit
along the high road that went up the hill away beyond the space of the railway
lines and the field.
Then again she watched the men
trooping home, fewer now and fewer.
Indoors the fire was sinking and the
room was dark red. The woman put her saucepan on the hob, and set a batter
pudding near the mouth of the oven. Then she stood unmoving. Directly,
gratefully, came quick young steps to the door. Someone hung on the latch a
moment, then a little girl entered and began pulling off her outdoor things,
dragging a mass of curls, just ripening from gold to brown, over her eyes with
her hat.
Her mother chid her for coming late
from school, and said she would have to keep her at home the dark winter days.
“Why, mother, it’s hardly a bit dark
yet. The lamp’s not lighted, and my father’s not home.”
“No, he isn’t. But it’s a quarter to
five! Did you see anything of him?”
The child became serious. She looked
at her mother with large, wistful blue eyes.
“No, mother, I’ve never seen him.
Why? Has he come up an’ gone past, to Old Brinsley? He hasn’t, mother, ‘cos I
never saw him.”
“He’d watch that,” said the mother
bitterly, “he’d take care as you didn’t see him. But you may depend upon it,
he’s seated in the ‘Prince o’ Wales’. He wouldn’t be this late.”
The girl looked at her mother
piteously.
“Let’s have our teas, mother, should
we?” said she.
The mother called John to table. She
opened the door once more and looked out across the darkness of the lines. All
was deserted: she could not hear the winding-engines.
“Perhaps,” she said to herself,
“he’s stopped to get some ripping done.”
They sat down to tea. John, at the
end of the table near the door, was almost lost in the darkness. Their faces
were hidden from each other. The girl crouched against the fender slowly moving
a thick piece of bread before the fire. The lad, his face a dusky mark on the
shadow, sat watching her who was transfigured in the red glow.
“I do think it’s beautiful to look
in the fire,” said the child.
“Do you?” said her mother. “Why?”
“It’s so red, and full of little
caves — and it feels so nice, and you can fair smell it.”
“It’ll want mending directly,”
replied her mother, “and then if your father comes he’ll carry on and say there
never is a fire when a man comes home sweating from the pit. — A public-house
is always warm enough.”
There was silence till the boy said
complainingly: “Make haste, our Annie.”
“Well, I am doing! I can’t make the
fire do it no faster, can I?”
“She keeps wafflin’ it about so’s to
make ‘er slow,” grumbled the boy.
“Don’t have such an evil
imagination, child,” replied the mother.
Soon the room was busy in the
darkness with the crisp sound of crunching. The mother ate very little. She
drank her tea determinedly, and sat thinking. When she rose her anger was
evident in the stern unbending of her head. She looked at the pudding in the
fender, and broke out:
“It is a scandalous thing as a man
can’t even come home to his dinner! If it’s crozzled up to a cinder I don’t see
why I should care. Past his very door he goes to get to a public-house, and
here I sit with his dinner waiting for him —”
She went out. As she dropped piece
after piece of coal on the red fire, the shadows fell on the walls, till the room
was almost in total darkness.
“I canna see,” grumbled the
invisible John. In spite of herself, the mother laughed.
“You know the way to your mouth,”
she said. She set the dustpan outside the door. When she came again like a
shadow on the hearth, the lad repeated, complaining sulkily:
“I canna see.”
“Good gracious!” cried the mother
irritably, “you’re as bad as your father if it’s a bit dusk!”
Nevertheless she took a paper spill
from a sheaf on the mantelpiece and proceeded to light the lamp that hung from
the ceiling in the middle of the room. As she reached up, her figure displayed
itself just rounding with maternity.
“Oh, mother —!” exclaimed the girl.
“What?” said the woman, suspended in
the act of putting the lamp glass over the flame. The copper reflector shone
handsomely on her, as she stood with uplifted arm, turning to face her
daughter.
“You’ve got a flower in your apron!”
said the child, in a little rapture at this unusual event.
“Goodness me!” exclaimed the woman,
relieved. “One would think the house was afire.” She replaced the glass and
waited a moment before turning up the wick. A pale shadow was seen floating
vaguely on the floor.
“Let me smell!” said the child,
still rapturously, coming forward and putting her face to her mother’s waist.
“Go along, silly!” said the mother,
turning up the lamp. The light revealed their suspense so that the woman felt
it almost unbearable. Annie was still bending at her waist. Irritably, the
mother took the flowers out from her apron-band.
“Oh, mother — don’t take them out!”
Annie cried, catching her hand and trying to replace the sprig.
“Such nonsense!” said the mother,
turning away. The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
“Don’t they smell beautiful!”
Her mother gave a short laugh.
“No,” she said, “not to me. It was
chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and
the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he’d got brown chrysanthemums
in his button-hole.”
She looked at the children. Their
eyes and their parted lips were wondering. The mother sat rocking in silence
for some time. Then she looked at the clock.
“Twenty minutes to six!” In a tone of
fine bitter carelessness she continued: “Eh, he’ll not come now till they bring
him. There he’ll stick! But he needn’t come rolling in here in his pit-dirt,
for I won’t wash him. He can lie on the floor — Eh, what a
fool I’ve been, what a fool! And this is what I came here for, to this dirty
hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door. Twice last week — he’s
begun now-”
She silenced herself, and rose to
clear the table.
While for an hour or more the
children played, subduedly intent, fertile of imagination, united in fear of
the mother’s wrath, and in dread of their father’s home-coming, Mrs Bates sat
in her rocking-chair making a ‘singlet’ of thick cream-coloured flannel, which
gave a dull wounded sound as she tore off the grey edge. She worked at her
sewing with energy, listening to the children, and her anger wearied itself,
lay down to rest, opening its eyes from time to time and steadily watching, its
ears raised to listen. Sometimes even her anger quailed and shrank, and the
mother suspended her sewing, tracing the footsteps that thudded along the
sleepers outside; she would lift her head sharply to bid the children ‘hush’,
but she recovered herself in time, and the footsteps went past the gate, and
the children were not flung out of their playing world.
But at last Annie sighed, and gave
in. She glanced at her waggon of slippers, and loathed the game. She turned
plaintively to her mother.
“Mother!”— but she was inarticulate.
John crept out like a frog from
under the sofa. His mother glanced up.
“Yes,” she said, “just look at those
shirt-sleeves!”
The boy held them out to survey
them, saying nothing. Then somebody called in a hoarse voice away down the
line, and suspense bristled in the room, till two people had gone by outside,
talking.
“It is time for bed,” said the
mother.
“My father hasn’t come,” wailed
Annie plaintively. But her mother was primed with courage.
“Never mind. They’ll bring him when
he does come — like a log.” She meant there would be no scene. “And he may
sleep on the floor till he wakes himself. I know he’ll not go to work tomorrow
after this!”
The children had their hands and
faces wiped with a flannel. They were very quiet. When they had put on their
nightdresses, they said their prayers, the boy mumbling. The mother looked down
at them, at the brown silken bush of intertwining curls in the nape of the
girl’s neck, at the little black head of the lad, and her heart burst with
anger at their father who caused all three such distress. The children hid
their faces in her skirts for comfort.
When Mrs Bates came down, the room
was strangely empty, with a tension of expectancy. She took up her sewing and
stitched for some time without raising her head. Meantime her anger was tinged
with fear.
II
The clock struck eight and she rose
suddenly, dropping her sewing on her chair. She went to the stairfoot door,
opened it, listening. Then she went out, locking the door behind her.
Something scuffled in the yard, and
she started, though she knew it was only the rats with which the place was
overrun. The night was very dark. In the great bay of railway lines, bulked
with trucks, there was no trace of light, only away back she could see a few
yellow lamps at the pit-top, and the red smear of the burning pit-bank on the
night. She hurried along the edge of the track, then, crossing the converging
lines, came to the stile by the white gates, whence she emerged on the road.
Then the fear which had led her shrank. People were walking up to New Brinsley;
she saw the lights in the houses; twenty yards further on were the broad
windows of the ‘Prince of Wales’, very warm and bright, and the loud voices of
men could be heard distinctly. What a fool she had been to imagine that
anything had happened to him! He was merely drinking over there at the ‘Prince
of Wales’. She faltered. She had never yet been to fetch him, and she never
would go. So she continued her walk towards the long straggling line of houses,
standing blank on the highway. She entered a passage between the dwellings.
“Mr Rigley? — Yes! Did you want him?
No, he’s not in at this minute.”
The raw-boned woman leaned forward
from her dark scullery and peered at the other, upon whom fell a dim light
through the blind of the kitchen window.
“Is it Mrs Bates?” she asked in a
tone tinged with respect.
“Yes. I wondered if your Master was
at home. Mine hasn’t come yet.”
“‘Asn’t ‘e! Oh, Jack’s been ‘ome an
‘ad ‘is dinner an’ gone out. E’s just gone for ‘alf an hour afore bedtime. Did
you call at the ‘Prince of Wales’?”
“No —”
“No, you didn’t like —! It’s not
very nice.” The other woman was indulgent. There was an awkward pause. “Jack
never said nothink about — about your Mester,” she said.
“No! — I expect he’s stuck in
there!”
Elizabeth Bates said this bitterly,
and with recklessness. She knew that the woman across the yard was standing at
her door listening, but she did not care. As she turned:
“Stop a minute! I’ll just go an’ ask
Jack if e’ knows anythink,” said Mrs Rigley.
“Oh, no — I wouldn’t like to put —!”
“Yes, I will, if you’ll just step
inside an’ see as th’ childer doesn’t come downstairs and set theirselves
afire.”
Elizabeth Bates, murmuring a
remonstrance, stepped inside. The other woman apologized for the state of the
room.
The kitchen needed apology. There were
little frocks and trousers and childish undergarments on the squab and on the
floor, and a litter of playthings everywhere. On the black American cloth of
the table were pieces of bread and cake, crusts, slops, and a teapot with cold
tea.
“Eh, ours is just as bad,” said
Elizabeth Bates, looking at the woman, not at the house. Mrs Rigley put a shawl
over her head and hurried out, saying:
“I shanna be a minute.”
The other sat, noting with faint
disapproval the general untidiness of the room. Then she fell to counting the
shoes of various sizes scattered over the floor. There were twelve. She sighed
and said to herself, “No wonder!”— glancing at the litter. There came the
scratching of two pairs of feet on the yard, and the Rigleys entered. Elizabeth
Bates rose. Rigley was a big man, with very large bones. His head looked
particularly bony. Across his temple was a blue scar, caused by a wound got in
the pit, a wound in which the coal-dust remained blue like tattooing.
“Asna ‘e come whoam yit?” asked the
man, without any form of greeting, but with deference and sympathy. “I couldna
say wheer he is —‘e’s non ower theer!”— he jerked his head to signify the
‘Prince of Wales’.
“‘E’s ‘appen gone up to th’ ‘Yew’,”
said Mrs Rigley.
There was another pause. Rigley had
evidently something to get off his mind:
“Ah left ’im finishin’ a stint,” he
began. “Loose-all ‘ad bin gone about ten minutes when we com’n away, an’ I
shouted, ‘Are ter comin’, Walt?’ an’ ‘e said, ‘Go on, Ah shanna be but a’ef a
minnit,’ so we com’n ter th’ bottom, me an’ Bowers, thinkin’ as ‘e wor just
behint, an’ ‘ud come up i’ th’ next bantle —”
He stood perplexed, as if answering
a charge of deserting his mate. Elizabeth Bates, now again certain of disaster,
hastened to reassure him:
“I expect ‘e’s gone up to th’ ‘Yew
Tree’, as you say. It’s not the first time. I’ve fretted myself into a fever
before now. He’ll come home when they carry him.”
“Ay, isn’t it too bad!” deplored the
other woman.
“I’ll just step up to Dick’s an’ see
if ‘e IS theer,” offered the man, afraid of appearing alarmed, afraid of taking
liberties.
“Oh, I wouldn’t think of bothering
you that far,” said Elizabeth Bates, with emphasis, but he knew she was glad of
his offer.
As they stumbled up the entry,
Elizabeth Bates heard Rigley’s wife run across the yard and open her
neighbour’s door. At this, suddenly all the blood in her body seemed to switch
away from her heart.
“Mind!” warned Rigley. “Ah’ve said
many a time as Ah’d fill up them ruts in this entry, sumb’dy ‘ll be breakin’
their legs yit.”
She recovered herself and walked
quickly along with the miner.
“I don’t like leaving the children
in bed, and nobody in the house,” she said.
“No, you dunna!” he replied
courteously. They were soon at the gate of the cottage.
“Well, I shanna be many minnits.
Dunna you be frettin’ now, ‘e’ll be all right,” said the butty.
“Thank you very much, Mr Rigley,”
she replied.
“You’re welcome!” he stammered,
moving away. “I shanna be many minnits.”
The house was quiet. Elizabeth Bates
took off her hat and shawl, and rolled back the rug. When she had finished, she
sat down. It was a few minutes past nine. She was startled by the rapid chuff
of the winding-engine at the pit, and the sharp whirr of the brakes on the rope
as it descended. Again she felt the painful sweep of her blood, and she put her
hand to her side, saying aloud, “Good gracious! — it’s only the nine o’clock
deputy going down,” rebuking herself.
She sat still, listening. Half an
hour of this, and she was wearied out.
“What am I working myself up like
this for?” she said pitiably to herself, “I s’ll only be doing myself some
damage.”
She took out her sewing again.
At a quarter to ten there were
footsteps. One person! She watched for the door to open. It was an elderly
woman, in a black bonnet and a black woollen shawl — his mother. She was about
sixty years old, pale, with blue eyes, and her face all wrinkled and
lamentable. She shut the door and turned to her daughter-inlaw peevishly.
“Eh, Lizzie, whatever shall we do,
whatever shall we do!” she cried.
Elizabeth drew back a little,
sharply.
“What is it, mother?” she said.
The elder woman seated herself on
the sofa.
“I don’t know, child, I can’t tell
you!”— she shook her head slowly. Elizabeth sat watching her, anxious and
vexed.
“I don’t know,” replied the
grandmother, sighing very deeply. “There’s no end to my troubles, there isn’t.
The things I’ve gone through, I’m sure it’s enough —!” She wept without wiping
her eyes, the tears running.
“But, mother,” interrupted
Elizabeth, “what do you mean? What is it?”
The grandmother slowly wiped her
eyes. The fountains of her tears were stopped by Elizabeth’s directness. She
wiped her eyes slowly.
“Poor child! Eh, you poor thing!”
she moaned. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, I don’t — and you as you are
— it’s a thing, it is indeed!”
Elizabeth waited.
“Is he dead?” she asked, and at the
words her heart swung violently, though she felt a slight flush of shame at the
ultimate extravagance of the question. Her words sufficiently frightened the
old lady, almost brought her to herself.
“Don’t say so, Elizabeth! We’ll hope
it’s not as bad as that; no, may the Lord spare us that, Elizabeth. Jack Rigley
came just as I was sittin’ down to a glass afore going to bed, an’ ‘e said,
‘‘Appen you’ll go down th’ line, Mrs Bates. Walt’s had an accident. ‘Appen
you’ll go an’ sit wi’ ‘er till we can get him home.’ I hadn’t time to ask him a
word afore he was gone. An’ I put my bonnet on an’ come straight down, Lizzie.
I thought to myself, ‘Eh, that poor blessed child, if anybody should come an’
tell her of a sudden, there’s no knowin’ what’ll ‘appen to ‘er.’ You mustn’t
let it upset you, Lizzie — or you know what to expect. How long is it, six
months — or is it five, Lizzie? Ay!”— the old woman shook her head —“time slips
on, it slips on! Ay!”
Elizabeth’s thoughts were busy elsewhere.
If he was killed — would she be able to manage on the little pension and what
she could earn? — she counted up rapidly. If he was hurt — they wouldn’t take
him to the hospital — how tiresome he would be to nurse! — but perhaps she’d be
able to get him away from the drink and his hateful ways. She would — while he
was ill. The tears offered to come to her eyes at the picture. But what
sentimental luxury was this she was beginning? — She turned to consider the
children. At any rate she was absolutely necessary for them. They were her
business.
“Ay!” repeated the old woman, “it
seems but a week or two since he brought me his first wages. Ay — he was a good
lad, Elizabeth, he was, in his way. I don’t know why he got to be such a
trouble, I don’t. He was a happy lad at home, only full of spirits. But there’s
no mistake he’s been a handful of trouble, he has! I hope the Lord’ll spare him
to mend his ways. I hope so, I hope so. You’ve had a sight o’ trouble with him,
Elizabeth, you have indeed. But he was a jolly enough lad wi’ me, he was, I can
assure you. I don’t know how it is . . .”
The old woman continued to muse
aloud, a monotonous irritating sound, while Elizabeth thought concentratedly,
startled once, when she heard the winding-engine chuff quickly, and the brakes
skirr with a shriek. Then she heard the engine more slowly, and the brakes made
no sound. The old woman did not notice. Elizabeth waited in suspense. The
mother-inlaw talked, with lapses into silence.
“But he wasn’t your son, Lizzie, an’
it makes a difference. Whatever he was, I remember him when he was little, an’
I learned to understand him and to make allowances. You’ve got to make
allowances for them —”
It was half-past ten, and the old
woman was saying: “But it’s trouble from beginning to end; you’re never too old
for trouble, never too old for that —” when the gate banged back, and there
were heavy feet on the steps.
“I’ll go, Lizzie, let me go,” cried
the old woman, rising. But Elizabeth was at the door. It was a man in
pit-clothes.
“They’re bringin’ ’im, Missis,” he
said. Elizabeth’s heart halted a moment. Then it surged on again, almost
suffocating her.
“Is he — is it bad?” she asked.
The man turned away, looking at the
darkness:
“The doctor says ‘e’d been dead
hours. ‘E saw ’im i’ th’ lamp-cabin.”
The old woman, who stood just behind
Elizabeth, dropped into a chair, and folded her hands, crying: “Oh, my boy, my
boy!”
“Hush!” said Elizabeth, with a sharp
twitch of a frown. “Be still, mother, don’t waken th’ children: I wouldn’t have
them down for anything!”
The old woman moaned softly, rocking
herself. The man was drawing away. Elizabeth took a step forward.
“How was it?” she asked.
“Well, I couldn’t say for sure,” the
man replied, very ill at ease. “‘E wor finishin’ a stint an’ th’ butties ‘ad
gone, an’ a lot o’ stuff come down atop ‘n ’im.”
“And crushed him?” cried the widow,
with a shudder.
“No,” said the man, “it fell at th’
back of ’im. ‘E wor under th’ face, an’ it niver touched ’im. It shut ’im in.
It seems ‘e wor smothered.”
Elizabeth shrank back. She heard the
old woman behind her cry:
“What? — what did ‘e say it was?”
The man replied, more loudly: “‘E
wor smothered!”
Then the old woman wailed aloud, and
this relieved Elizabeth.
“Oh, mother,” she said, putting her
hand on the old woman, “don’t waken th’ children, don’t waken th’ children.”
She wept a little, unknowing, while
the old mother rocked herself and moaned. Elizabeth remembered that they were
bringing him home, and she must be ready. “They’ll lay him in the parlour,” she
said to herself, standing a moment pale and perplexed.
Then she lighted a candle and went
into the tiny room. The air was cold and damp, but she could not make a fire,
there was no fireplace. She set down the candle and looked round. The
candle-light glittered on the lustre-glasses, on the two vases that held some
of the pink chrysanthemums, and on the dark mahogany. There was a cold, deathly
smell of chrysanthemums in the room. Elizabeth stood looking at the flowers.
She turned away, and calculated whether there would be room to lay him on the
floor, between the couch and the chiffonier. She pushed the chairs aside. There
would be room to lay him down and to step round him. Then she fetched the old
red tablecloth, and another old cloth, spreading them down to save her bit of
carpet. She shivered on leaving the parlour; so, from the dresser-drawer she
took a clean shirt and put it at the fire to air. All the time her mother-inlaw
was rocking herself in the chair and moaning.
“You’ll have to move from there, mother,”
said Elizabeth. “They’ll be bringing him in. Come in the rocker.”
The old mother rose mechanically,
and seated herself by the fire, continuing to lament. Elizabeth went into the
pantry for another candle, and there, in the little penthouse under the naked
tiles, she heard them coming. She stood still in the pantry doorway, listening.
She heard them pass the end of the house, and come awkwardly down the three
steps, a jumble of shuffling footsteps and muttering voices. The old woman was
silent. The men were in the yard.
Then Elizabeth heard Matthews, the
manager of the pit, say: “You go in first, Jim. Mind!”
The door came open, and the two
women saw a collier backing into the room, holding one end of a stretcher, on
which they could see the nailed pit-boots of the dead man. The two carriers
halted, the man at the head stooping to the lintel of the door.
“Wheer will you have him?” asked the
manager, a short, white-bearded man.
Elizabeth roused herself and came
from the pantry carrying the unlighted candle.
“In the parlour,” she said.
“In there, Jim!” pointed the
manager, and the carriers backed round into the tiny room. The coat with which
they had covered the body fell off as they awkwardly turned through the two
doorways, and the women saw their man, naked to the waist, lying stripped for
work. The old woman began to moan in a low voice of horror.
“Lay th’ stretcher at th’ side,”
snapped the manager, “an’ put ’im on th’ cloths. Mind now, mind! Look you now
—!”
One of the men had knocked off a
vase of chrysanthemums. He stared awkwardly, then they set down the stretcher.
Elizabeth did not look at her husband. As soon as she could get in the room,
she went and picked up the broken vase and the flowers.
“Wait a minute!” she said.
The three men waited in silence
while she mopped up the water with a duster.
“Eh, what a job, what a job, to be
sure!” the manager was saying, rubbing his brow with trouble and perplexity.
“Never knew such a thing in my life, never! He’d no business to ha’ been left.
I never knew such a thing in my life! Fell over him clean as a whistle, an’
shut him in. Not four foot of space, there wasn’t — yet it scarce bruised him.”
He looked down at the dead man,
lying prone, half naked, all grimed with coal-dust.
“’‘Sphyxiated,’ the doctor said. It
IS the most terrible job I’ve ever known. Seems as if it was done o’ purpose.
Clean over him, an’ shut ’im in, like a mouse-trap”— he made a sharp,
descending gesture with his hand.
The colliers standing by jerked
aside their heads in hopeless comment.
The horror of the thing bristled
upon them all.
Then they heard the girl’s voice
upstairs calling shrilly: “Mother, mother — who is it? Mother, who is it?”
Elizabeth hurried to the foot of the
stairs and opened the door:
“Go to sleep!” she commanded
sharply. “What are you shouting about? Go to sleep at once — there’s nothing —”
Then she began to mount the stairs.
They could hear her on the boards, and on the plaster floor of the little
bedroom. They could hear her distinctly:
“What’s the matter now? — what’s the
matter with you, silly thing?”— her voice was much agitated, with an unreal
gentleness.
“I thought it was some men come,”
said the plaintive voice of the child. “Has he come?”
“Yes, they’ve brought him. There’s
nothing to make a fuss about. Go to sleep now, like a good child.”
They could hear her voice in the
bedroom, they waited whilst she covered the children under the bedclothes.
“Is he drunk?” asked the girl,
timidly, faintly.
“No! No — he’s not! He — he’s
asleep.”
“Is he asleep downstairs?”
“Yes — and don’t make a noise.”
There was silence for a moment, then
the men heard the frightened child again:
“What’s that noise?”
“It’s nothing, I tell you, what are
you bothering for?”
The noise was the grandmother
moaning. She was oblivious of everything, sitting on her chair rocking and
moaning. The manager put his hand on her arm and bade her “Sh — sh!!”
The old woman opened her eyes and
looked at him. She was shocked by this interruption, and seemed to wonder.
“What time is it?”— the plaintive
thin voice of the child, sinking back unhappily into sleep, asked this last
question.
“Ten o’clock,” answered the mother
more softly. Then she must have bent down and kissed the children.
Matthews beckoned to the men to come
away. They put on their caps and took up the stretcher. Stepping over the body,
they tiptoed out of the house. None of them spoke till they were far from the
wakeful children.
When Elizabeth came down she found
her mother alone on the parlour floor, leaning over the dead man, the tears
dropping on him.
“We must lay him out,” the wife
said. She put on the kettle, then returning knelt at the feet, and began to
unfasten the knotted leather laces. The room was clammy and dim with only one
candle, so that she had to bend her face almost to the floor. At last she got
off the heavy boots and put them away.
“You must help me now,” she
whispered to the old woman. Together they stripped the man.
When they arose, saw him lying in
the naïve dignity of death, the women stood arrested in fear and respect. For a
few moments they remained still, looking down, the old mother whimpering.
Elizabeth felt countermanded. She saw him, how utterly inviolable he lay in
himself. She had nothing to do with him. She could not accept it. Stooping, she
laid her hand on him, in claim. He was still warm, for the mine was hot where
he had died. His mother had his face between her hands, and was murmuring
incoherently. The old tears fell in succession as drops from wet leaves; the
mother was not weeping, merely her tears flowed. Elizabeth embraced the body of
her husband, with cheek and lips. She seemed to be listening, inquiring, trying
to get some connection. But she could not. She was driven away. He was
impregnable.
She rose, went into the kitchen,
where she poured warm water into a bowl, brought soap and flannel and a soft
towel.
“I must wash him,” she said.
Then the old mother rose stiffly,
and watched Elizabeth as she carefully washed his face, carefully brushing the
big blond moustache from his mouth with the flannel. She was afraid with a
bottomless fear, so she ministered to him. The old woman, jealous, said:
“Let me wipe him!”— and she kneeled
on the other side drying slowly as Elizabeth washed, her big black bonnet
sometimes brushing the dark head of her daughter. They worked thus in silence
for a long time. They never forgot it was death, and the touch of the man’s
dead body gave them strange emotions, different in each of the women; a great
dread possessed them both, the mother felt the lie was given to her womb, she
was denied; the wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul, the child
within her was a weight apart from her.
At last it was finished. He was a
man of handsome body, and his face showed no traces of drink. He was blonde,
full-fleshed, with fine limbs. But he was dead.
“Bless him,” whispered his mother,
looking always at his face, and speaking out of sheer terror. “Dear lad — bless
him!” She spoke in a faint, sibilant ecstasy of fear and mother love.
Elizabeth sank down again to the
floor, and put her face against his neck, and trembled and shuddered. But she
had to draw away again. He was dead, and her living flesh had no place against
his. A great dread and weariness held her: she was so unavailing. Her life was
gone like this.
“White as milk he is, clear as a
twelve-month baby, bless him, the darling!” the old mother murmured to herself.
“Not a mark on him, clear and clean and white, beautiful as ever a child was
made,” she murmured with pride. Elizabeth kept her face hidden.
“He went peaceful, Lizzie — peaceful
as sleep. Isn’t he beautiful, the lamb? Ay — he must ha’ made his peace,
Lizzie. ‘Appen he made it all right, Lizzie, shut in there. He’d have time. He
wouldn’t look like this if he hadn’t made his peace. The lamb, the dear lamb.
Eh, but he had a hearty laugh. I loved to hear it. He had the heartiest laugh,
Lizzie, as a lad —”
Elizabeth looked up. The man’s mouth
was fallen back, slightly open under the cover of the moustache. The eyes, half
shut, did not show glazed in the obscurity. Life with its smoky burning gone
from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her. And she knew what a
stranger he was to her. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate
stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. Was this what it all meant
— utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned
her face away. The fact was too deadly. There had been nothing between them,
and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness repeatedly. Each
time he had taken her, they had been two isolated beings, far apart as now. He
was no more responsible than she. The child was like ice in her womb. For as
she looked at the dead man, her mind, cold and detached, said clearly: “Who am
I? What have I been doing? I have been fighting a husband who did not exist. HE
existed all the time. What wrong have I done? What was that I have been living
with? There lies the reality, this man.”— And her soul died in her for fear:
she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the
dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met nor whom they
fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing. For she had been wrong.
She had said he was something he was not; she had felt familiar with him.
Whereas he was apart all the while, living as she never lived, feeling as she
never felt.
In fear and shame she looked at his
naked body, that she had known falsely. And he was the father of her children.
Her soul was torn from her body and stood apart. She looked at his naked body
and was ashamed, as if she had denied it. After all, it was itself. It seemed
awful to her. She looked at his face, and she turned her own face to the wall.
For his look was other than hers, his way was not her way. She had denied him
what he was — she saw it now. She had refused him as himself. — And this had
been her life, and his life. — She was grateful to death, which restored the
truth. And she knew she was not dead.
And all the while her heart was
bursting with grief and pity for him. What had he suffered? What stretch of
horror for this helpless man! She was rigid with agony. She had not been able
to help him. He had been cruelly injured, this naked man, this other being, and
she could make no reparation. There were the children — but the children
belonged to life. This dead man had nothing to do with them. He and she were
only channels through which life had flowed to issue in the children. She was a
mother — but how awful she knew it now to have been a wife. And he, dead now,
how awful he must have felt it to be a husband. She felt that in the next world
he would be a stranger to her. If they met there, in the beyond, they would
only be ashamed of what had been before. The children had come, for some
mysterious reason, out of both of them. But the children did not unite them. Now
he was dead, she knew how eternally he was apart from her, how eternally he had
nothing more to do with her. She saw this episode of her life closed. They had
denied each other in life. Now he had withdrawn. An anguish came over her. It
was finished then: it had become hopeless between them long before he died. Yet
he had been her husband. But how little! —
“Have you got his shirt, ‘Lizabeth?”
Elizabeth turned without answering,
though she strove to weep and behave as her mother-inlaw expected. But she could
not, she was silenced. She went into the kitchen and returned with the garment.
“It is aired,” she said, grasping
the cotton shirt here and there to try. She was almost ashamed to handle him;
what right had she or anyone to lay hands on him; but her touch was humble on
his body. It was hard work to clothe him. He was so heavy and inert. A terrible
dread gripped her all the while: that he could be so heavy and utterly inert,
unresponsive, apart. The horror of the distance between them was almost too
much for her — it was so infinite a gap she must look across.
At last it was finished. They
covered him with a sheet and left him lying, with his face bound. And she
fastened the door of the little parlour, lest the children should see what was
lying there. Then, with peace sunk heavy on her heart, she went about making
tidy the kitchen. She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate
master. But from death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.