"And did you get on all right?"
"Yes: they only say my writing's bad. But Mr. Pappleworth--he's my man--said to Mr. Jordan I should be all right. I'm Spiral, mother; you must come and see. It's ever so nice."
Soon he liked Jordan's. Mr. Pappleworth, who had a certain"saloon bar" flavour about him, was always natural, and treatedhim as if he had been a comrade. Sometimes the "Spiral boss"was irritable, and chewed more lozenges than ever. Even then,however, he was not offensive, but one of those people who hurtthemselves by their own irritability more than they hurt other people.
"Haven't you done that YET?" he would cry. "Go on, be a monthof Sundays."
Again, and Paul could understand him least then, he was jocularand in high spirits.
"I'm going to bring my little Yorkshire terrier bitch tomorrow,"he said jubilantly to Paul.
"What's a Yorkshire terrier?"
"DON'T know what a Yorkshire terrier is? DON'T KNOW A YORKSHIRE---"Mr. Pappleworth was aghast.
"Is it a little silky one--colours of iron and rusty silver?"
"THAT'S it, my lad. She's a gem. She's had five pounds'worth of pups already, and she's worth over seven pounds herself;and she doesn't weigh twenty ounces."
The next day the bitch came. She was a shivering, miserable morsel. Paul did not care for her; she seemed so like a wet rag that wouldnever dry. Then a man called for her, and began to make coarse jokes. But Mr. Pappleworth nodded his head in the direction of the boy,and the talk went on sotto voce.
Mr. Jordan only made one more excursion to watch Paul,and then the only fault he found was seeing the boy lay his penon the counter.
"Put your pen in your ear, if you're going to be a clerk. Pen in your ear!" And one day he said to the lad: "Why don't youhold your shoulders straighter? Come down here," when he took himinto the glass office and fitted him with special braces for keepingthe shoulders square.
But Paul liked the girls best. The men seemed common andrather dull. He liked them all, but they were uninteresting. Polly,the little brisk overseer downstairs, finding Paul eating in the cellar,asked him if she could cook him anything on her little stove. Next day his mother gave him a dish that could be heated up. He took it into the pleasant, clean room to Polly. And very soon itgrew to be an established custom that he should have dinner with her. When he came in at eight in the morning he took his basket to her,and when he came down at one o'clock she had his dinner ready.
He was not very tall, and pale, with thick chestnut hair,irregular features, and a wide, full mouth. She was like a small bird. He often called her a "robinet". Though naturally rather quiet,he would sit and chatter with her for hours telling her about his home. The girls all liked to hear him talk. They often gathered in a littlecircle while he sat on a bench, and held forth to them, laughing. Some of them regarded him as a curious little creature, so serious,yet so bright and jolly, and always so delicate in his way with them. They all liked him, and he adored them. Polly he felt he belonged to. Then Connie, with her mane of red hair, her face of apple-blossom,her murmuring voice, such a lady in her shabby black frock,appealed to his romantic side.
"When you sit winding," he said, "it looks as if you werespinning at a spinning-wheel--it looks ever so nice. You remindme of Elaine in the 'Idylls of the King'. I'd draw you if I could."
And she glanced at him blushing shyly. And later on he hada sketch he prized very much: Connie sitting on the stool beforethe wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her rusty black frock,her red mouth shut and serious, running the scarlet thread offthe hank on to the reel.
With Louie, handsome and brazen, who always seemed to thrusther hip at him, he usually joked.
Emma was rather plain, rather old, and condescending. But to condescend to him made her happy, and he did not mind.
"How do you put needles in?" he asked.
"Go away and don't bother."
"But I ought to know how to put needles in."
She ground at her machine all the while steadily.
"There are many things you ought to know," she replied.
"Tell me, then, how to stick needles in the machine."
"Oh, the boy, what a nuisance he is! Why, THIS is how youdo it."
He watched her attentively. Suddenly a whistle piped. Then Polly appeared, and said in a clear voice:
"Mr. Pappleworth wants to know how much longer you're goingto be down here playing with the girls, Paul."
Paul flew upstairs, calling "Good-bye!" and Emma drew herself up.
"It wasn't ME who wanted him to play with the machine,"she said.
As a rule, when all the girls came back at two o'clock, heran upstairs to Fanny, the hunchback, in the finishing-off room. Mr. Pappleworth did not appear till twenty to three, and he oftenfound his boy sitting beside Fanny, talking, or drawing, or singingwith the girls.
Often, after a minute's hesitation, Fanny would begin to sing. She had a fine contralto voice. Everybody joined in the chorus,and it went well. Paul was not at all embarrassed, after a while,sitting in the room with the half a dozen work-girls.
At the end of the song Fanny would say:
"I know you've been laughing at me."
"Don't be so soft, Fanny!" cried one of the girls.
Once there was mention of Connie's red hair.
"Fanny's is better, to my fancy," said Emma.
"You needn't try to make a fool of me," said Fanny, flushing deeply.
"No, but she has, Paul; she's got beautiful hair."
"It's a treat of a colour," said he. "That coldish colourlike earth, and yet shiny. It's like bog-water."
"Goodness me!" exclaimed one girl, laughing.
"How I do but get criticised," said Fanny.
"But you should see it down, Paul," cried Emma earnestly. "It's simply beautiful. Put it down for him, Fanny, if he wantssomething to paint."
Fanny would not, and yet she wanted to.
"Then I'll take it down myself," said the lad.
"Well, you can if you like," said Fanny.
And he carefully took the pins out of the knot, and the rushof hair, of uniform dark brown, slid over the humped back.
"What a lovely lot!" he exclaimed.
The girls watched. There was silence. The youth shookthe hair loose from the coil.
"It's splendid!" he said, smelling its perfume. "I'll betit's worth pounds."
"I'll leave it you when I die, Paul," said Fanny, half joking.
"You look just like anybody else, sitting drying their hair,"said one of the girls to the long-legged hunchback.
Poor Fanny was morbidly sensitive, always imagining insults. Polly was curt and businesslike. The two departments were for everat war, and Paul was always finding Fanny in tears. Then he wasmade the recipient of all her woes, and he had to plead her casewith Polly.
So the time went along happily enough. The factory had ahomely feel. No one was rushed or driven. Paul always enjoyedit when the work got faster, towards post-time, and all the menunited in labour. He liked to watch his fellow-clerks at work. The man was the work and the work was the man, one thing, for thetime being. It was different with the girls. The real womannever seemed to be there at the task, but as if left out, waiting.
From the train going home at night he used to watch the lightsof the town, sprinkled thick on the hills, fusing together in a blazein the valleys. He felt rich in life and happy. Drawing farther off,there was a patch of lights at Bulwell like myriad petals shakento the ground from the shed stars; and beyond was the red glareof the furnaces, playing like hot breath on the clouds.
He had to walk two and more miles from Keston home,up two long hills, down two short hills. He was often tired,and he counted the lamps climbing the hill above him, how many moreto pass. And from the hilltop, on pitch-dark nights, he lookedround on the villages five or six miles away, that shone like swarmsof glittering living things, almost a heaven against his feet. Marlpool and Heanor scattered the far-off darkness with brilliance. And occasionally the black valley space between was traced,violated by a great train rushing south to London or north to Scotland. The trains roared by like projectiles level on the darkness,fuming and burning, making the valley clang with their passage. They were gone, and the lights of the towns and villages glitteredin silence.
And then he came to the corner at home, which faced theother side of the night. The ash-tree seemed a friend now. His mother rose with gladness as he entered. He put his eightshillings proudly on the table.
"It'll help, mother?" he asked wistfully.
"There's precious little left," she answered, "after yourticket and dinners and such are taken off."
Then he told her the budget of the day. His life-story,like an Arabian Nights, was told night after night to his mother. It was almost as if it were her own life.
CHAPTER VI
DEATH IN THE FAMILY （I）
ARTHUR MOREL was growing up. He was a quick, careless, impulsive boy,a good deal like his father. He hated study, made a great moan if hehad to work, and escaped as soon as possible to his sport again.
In appearance he remained the flower of the family,being well made, graceful, and full of life. His dark brown hairand fresh colouring, and his exquisite dark blue eyes shaded withlong lashes, together with his generous manner and fiery temper,made him a favourite. But as he grew older his temper became uncertain. He flew into rages over nothing, seemed unbearably raw and irritable.
His mother, whom he loved, wearied of him sometimes. He thought only of himself. When he wanted amusement, all thatstood in his way he hated, even if it were she. When he was in trouble he moaned to her ceaselessly.
"Goodness, boy!" she said, when he groaned about a master who,he said, hated him, "if you don't like it, alter it, and if youcan't alter it, put up with it."
And his father, whom he had loved and who had worshipped him,he came to detest. As he grew older Morel fell into a slow ruin. His body, which had been beautiful in movement and in being,shrank, did not seem to ripen with the years, but to get meanand rather despicable. There came over him a look of meannessand of paltriness. And when the mean-looking elderly man bullied orordered the boy about, Arthur was furious. Moreover, Morel's mannersgot worse and worse, his habits somewhat disgusting. When thechildren were growing up and in the crucial stage of adolescence,the father was like some ugly irritant to their souls. His mannersin the house were the same as he used among the colliers down pit.
"Dirty nuisance!" Arthur would cry, jumping up and goingstraight out of the house when his father disgusted him. And Morel persisted the more because his children hated it. He seemed to take a kind of satisfaction in disgusting them,and driving them nearly mad, while they were so irritably sensitiveat the age of fourteen or fifteen. So that Arthur, who was growingup when his father was degenerate and elderly, hated him worstof all.
Then, sometimes, the father would seem to feel the contemptuoushatred of his children.
"There's not a man tries harder for his family!" he would shout. "He does his best for them, and then gets treated like a dog. But I'm not going to stand it, I tell you!"
But for the threat and the fact that he did not try so hardas be imagined, they would have felt sorry. As it was, the battlenow went on nearly all between father and children, he persistingin his dirty and disgusting ways, just to assert his independence. They loathed him.
Arthur was so inflamed and irritable at last, that when hewon a scholarship for the Grammar School in Nottingham, his motherdecided to let him live in town, with one of her sisters, and onlycome home at week-ends.
Annie was still a junior teacher in the Board-school, earningabout four shillings a week. But soon she would have fifteen shillings,since she had passed her examination, and there would be financialpeace in the house.
Mrs. Morel clung now to Paul. He was quiet and not brilliant. But still he stuck to his painting, and still he stuck to his mother. Everything he did was for her. She waited for his coming homein the evening, and then she unburdened herself of all shehad pondered, or of all that had occurred to her during the day. He sat and listened with his earnestness. The two shared lives.
William was engaged now to his brunette, and had bought heran engagement ring that cost eight guineas. The children gaspedat such a fabulous price.
"Eight guineas!" said Morel. "More fool him! If he'd gen mesome on't, it 'ud ha' looked better on 'im."
"Given YOU some of it!" cried Mrs. Morel. "Why give YOUsome of it!"
She remembered HE had bought no engagement ring at all,and she preferred William, who was not mean, if he were foolish. But now the young man talked only of the dances to which he wentwith his betrothed, and the different resplendent clothes she wore;or he told his mother with glee how they went to the theatre likegreat swells.
He wanted to bring the girl home. Mrs. Morel said sheshould come at the Christmas. This time William arrived witha lady, but with no presents. Mrs. Morel had prepared supper. Hearing footsteps, she rose and went to the door. William entered.
"Hello, mother!" He kissed her hastily, then stood asideto present a tall, handsome girl, who was wearing a costume of fineblack-and-white check, and furs.
"Here's Gyp!"
Miss Western held out her hand and showed her teeth in a small smile.
"Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Morel!" she exclaimed.
"I am afraid you will be hungry," said Mrs. Morel.
"Oh no, we had dinner in the train. Have you got my gloves, Chubby?"
William Morel, big and raw-boned, looked at her quickly.
"How should I?" he said.
"Then I've lost them. Don't be cross with me."
A frown went over his face, but he said nothing. She glancedround the kitchen. It was small and curious to her, with itsglittering kissing-bunch, its evergreens behind the pictures,its wooden chairs and little deal table. At that moment Morelcame in.
