He was quite unconscious. It had been his business to examinesome such cargo of sugar in the Port of London.
"How long has he been like this?" the mother asked the landlady.
"He got home at six o'clock on Monday morning, and he seemedto sleep all day; then in the night we heard him talking, and thismorning he asked for you. So I wired, and we fetched the doctor."
"Will you have a fire made?"
Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still.
The doctor came. It was pneumonia, and, he said, a peculiarerysipelas, which had started under the chin where the collar chafed,and was spreading over the face. He hoped it would not get to the brain.
Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse. She prayed for William,prayed that he would recognise her. But the young man's face grewmore discoloured. In the night she struggled with him. He raved,and raved, and would not come to consciousness. At two o'clock,in a dreadful paroxysm, he died.
Mrs. Morel sat perfectly still for an hour in the lodging bedroom;then she roused the household.
At six o'clock, with the aid of the charwoman, she laid him out;then she went round the dreary London village to the registrarand the doctor.
At nine o'clock to the cottage on Scargill Street cameanother wire:
"William died last night. Let father come, bring money."
Annie, Paul, and Arthur were at home; Mr. Morel was goneto work. The three children said not a word. Annie began to whimperwith fear; Paul set off for his father.
It was a beautiful day. At Brinsley pit the white steam meltedslowly in the sunshine of a soft blue sky; the wheels of the headstockstwinkled high up; the screen, shuffling its coal into the trucks,made a busy noise.
"I want my father; he's got to go to London," said the boyto the first man he met on the bank.
"Tha wants Walter Morel? Go in theer an' tell Joe Ward."
Paul went into the little top office.
"I want my father; he's got to go to London."
"Thy feyther? Is he down? What's his name?"
"Mr. Morel."
"What, Walter? Is owt amiss?"
"He's got to go to London."
The man went to the telephone and rang up the bottom office.
"Walter Morel's wanted, number 42, Hard. Summat's amiss;there's his lad here."
Then he turned round to Paul.
"He'll be up in a few minutes," he said.
Paul wandered out to the pit-top. He watched the chair come up,with its wagon of coal. The great iron cage sank back on its rest,a full carfle was hauled off, an empty tram run on to the chair,a bell ting'ed somewhere, the chair heaved, then dropped likea stone.
Paul did not realise William was dead; it was impossible,with such a bustle going on. The puller-off swung the small truckon to the turn-table, another man ran with it along the bank downthe curving lines.
"And William is dead, and my mother's in London, and what willshe be doing?" the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum.
He watched chair after chair come up, and still no father. At last, standing beside a wagon, a man's form! the chair sank onits rests, Morel stepped off. He was slightly lame from an accident.
"Is it thee, Paul? Is 'e worse?"
"You've got to go to London."
The two walked off the pit-bank, where men were watching curiously. As they came out and went along the railway, with thesunny autumn field on one side and a wall of trucks on the other, Morel said in a frightened voice:
"'E's niver gone, child?"
"Yes."
"When wor't?"
"Last night. We had a telegram from my mother."
Morel walked on a few strides, then leaned up againsta truck-side, his hand over his eyes. He was not crying. Paul stood looking round, waiting. On the weighingmachine a truck trundled slowly. Paul saw everything,except his father leaning against the truck as if he were tired.
Morel had only once before been to London. He set off,scared and peaked, to help his wife. That was on Tuesday. The children were left alone in the house. Paul went to work,Arthur went to school, and Annie had in a friend to be with her.
On Saturday night, as Paul was turning the corner, coming homefrom Keston, he saw his mother and father, who had come to SethleyBridge Station. They were walking in silence in the dark, tired,straggling apart. The boy waited.
"Mother!" he said, in the darkness.
Mrs. Morel's small figure seemed not to observe. He spoke again.
"Paul!" she said, uninterestedly.
She let him kiss her, but she seemed unaware of him.
In the house she was the same--small, white, and mute. She noticed nothing, she said nothing, only:
"The coffin will be here to-night, Walter. You'd better seeabout some help." Then, turning to the children: "We're bringinghim home."
Then she relapsed into the same mute looking into space,her hands folded on her lap. Paul, looking at her, felt he couldnot breathe. The house was dead silent.
"I went to work, mother," he said plaintively.
"Did you?" she answered, dully.
After half an hour Morel, troubled and bewildered, came in again.
"Wheer s'll we ha'e him when he DOEScome?" he asked his wife.
"In the front-room."
"Then I'd better shift th' table?"
"Yes."
"An' ha'e him across th' chairs?"
"You know there---Yes, I suppose so."
Morel and Paul went, with a candle, into the parlour. There was no gas there. The father unscrewed the top of the bigmahogany oval table, and cleared the middle of the room; then hearranged six chairs opposite each other, so that the coffin couldstand on their beds.
"You niver seed such a length as he is!" said the miner,and watching anxiously as he worked.
Paul went to the bay window and looked out. The ash-treestood monstrous and black in front of the wide darkness. It was a faintly luminous night. Paul went back to his mother.
At ten o'clock Morel called:
"He's here!"
Everyone started. There was a noise of unbarring and unlockingthe front door, which opened straight from the night into the room.
"Bring another candle," called Morel.
Annie and Arthur went. Paul followed with his mother. He stood with his arm round her waist in the inner doorway. Down the middle of the cleared room waited six chairs, face to face. In the window, against the lace curtains, Arthur held up one candle,and by the open door, against the night, Annie stood leaning forward,her brass candlestick glittering.
There was the noise of wheels. Outside in the darkness of thestreet below Paul could see horses and a black vehicle, one lamp,and a few pale faces; then some men, miners, all in their shirt-sleeves,seemed to struggle in the obscurity. Presently two men appeared,bowed beneath a great weight. It was Morel and his neighbour.
"Steady!" called Morel, out of breath.
He and his fellow mounted the steep garden step, heaved intothe candlelight with their gleaming coffin-end. Limbs of other menwere seen struggling behind. Morel and Burns, in front, staggered;the great dark weight swayed.
"Steady, steady!" cried Morel, as if in pain.
All the six bearers were up in the small garden, holding thegreat coffin aloft. There were three more steps to the door.The yellow lamp of the carriage shone alonedown the black road.
"Now then!" said Morel.
The coffin swayed, the men began to mount the three stepswith their load. Annie's candle flickered, and she whimperedas the first men appeared, and the limbs and bowed heads of sixmen struggled to climb into the room, bearing the coffin that rodelike sorrow on their living flesh.
"Oh, my son--my son!" Mrs. Morel sang softly, and each timethe coffin swung to the unequal climbing of the men: "Oh, my son--myson--my son!"
"Mother!" Paul whimpered, his hand round her waist.
She did not hear.
"Oh, my son--my son!" she repeated.
Paul saw drops of sweat fall from his father's brow. Six men were in the room--six coatless men, with yielding,struggling limbs, filling the room and knocking against the furniture. The coffin veered, and was gently lowered on to the chairs. The sweat fell from Morel's face on its boards.
"My word, he's a weight!" said a man, and the five miners sighed,bowed, and, trembling with the struggle, descended the steps again,closing the door behind them.
The family was alone in the parlour with the great polished box. William, when laid out, was six feet four inches long. Like a monumentlay the bright brown, ponderous coffin. Paul thought it would neverbe got out of the room again. His mother was stroking the polished wood.
They buried him on the Monday in the little cemetery on thehillside that looks over the fields at the big church and the houses. It was sunny, and the white chrysanthemums frilled themselvesin the warmth.
Mrs. Morel could not be persuaded, after this, to talk andtake her old bright interest in life. She remained shut off. All the way home in the train she had said to herself : "If only itcould have been me! "
When Paul came home at night he found his mother sitting,her day's work done, with hands folded in her lap upon hercoarse apron. She always used to have changed her dress and puton a black apron, before. Now Annie set his supper, and his mothersat looking blankly in front of her, her mouth shut tight. Then he beat his brains for news to tell her.
"Mother, Miss Jordan was down to-day, and she said my sketchof a colliery at work was beautiful."
But Mrs. Morel took no notice. Night after night he forcedhimself to tell her things, although she did not listen. It drovehim almost insane to have her thus. At last:
"What's a-matter, mother?" he asked.
She did not hear.
"What's a-matter?" he persisted. "Mother, what's a-matter?"
"You know what's the matter," she said irritably, turning away.
The lad--he was sixteen years old--went to bed drearily. He was cut off and wretched through October, November and December. His mother tried, but she could not rouse herself. She could onlybrood on her dead son; he had been let to die so cruelly.
At last, on December 23, with his five shillings Christmas-boxin his pocket, Paul wandered blindly home. His mother looked at him,and her heart stood still.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"I'm badly, mother!" he replied. "Mr. Jordan gave me fiveshillings for a Christmas-box!"
He handed it to her with trembling hands. She put it on the table.
"You aren't glad!" he reproached her; but he trembled violently.
"Where hurts you?" she said, unbuttoning his overcoat.
It was the old question.
"I feel badly, mother."
She undressed him and put him to bed. He had pneumonia dangerously,the doctor said.
"Might he never have had it if I'd kept him at home, not lethim go to Nottingham?" was one of the first things she asked.
"He might not have been so bad," said the doctor.
Mrs. Morel stood condemned on her own ground.
"I should have watched the living, not the dead," she told herself.
Paul was very ill. His mother lay in bed at nights with him;they could not afford a nurse. He grew worse, and the crisis approached. One night he tossed into consciousness in the ghastly, sickly feelingof dissolution, when all the cells in the body seem in intenseirritability to be breaking down, and consciousness makes a lastflare of struggle, like madness.
"I s'll die, mother!" be cried, heaving for breath on the pillow.
She lifted him up, crying in a small voice:
"Oh, my son--my son!"
That brought him to. He realised her. His whole will roseup and arrested him. He put his head on her breast, and took easeof her for love.
"For some things," said his aunt, "it was a good thing Paulwas ill that Christmas. I believe it saved his mother."
Paul was in bed for seven weeks. He got up white and fragile. His father had bought him a pot of scarlet and gold tulips. They used to flame in the window in the March sunshine as he saton the sofa chattering to his mother. The two knitted together inperfect intimacy. Mrs. Morel's life now rooted itself in Paul.
William had been a prophet. Mrs. Morel had a little presentand a letter from Lily at Christmas. Mrs. Morel's sister hada letter at the New Year.
"I was at a ball last night. Some delightful people were there,and I enjoyed myself thoroughly," said the letter. "I had everydance--did not sit out one."
Mrs. Morel never heard any more of her.
Morel and his wife were gentle with each other for some timeafter the death of their son. He would go into a kind of daze,staring wide-eyed and blank across the room. Then he got up suddenlyand hurried out to the Three Spots, returning in his normal state. But never in his life would he go for a walk up Shepstone,past the office where his son had worked, and he always avoidedthe cemetery.
CHAPTER VII
LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE （I）
PAUL had been many times up to Willey Farm during the autumn. He was friends with the two youngest boys. Edgar the eldest, would notcondescend at first. And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scottheroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girlin her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy,who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero,who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant,and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider hersimply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath;so she held aloof.
Her great companion was her mother. They were both brown-eyed,and inclined to be mystical, such women as treasure religioninside them, breathe it in their nostrils, and see the whole of lifein a mist thereof. So to Miriam, Christ and God made one great figure,which she loved tremblingly and passionately when a tremendous sunsetburned out the western sky, and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian deBois Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings, rustled the sunny leavesin the morning, or sat in her bedroom aloft, alone, when it snowed. That was life to her. For the rest, she drudged in the house,which work she would not have minded had not her clean red floor beenmucked up immediately by the trampling farm-boots of her brothers. She madly wanted her little brother of four to let her swathehim and stifle him in her love; she went to church reverently,with bowed head, and quivered in anguish from the vulgarity of theother choir-girls and from the common-sounding voice of the curate;she fought with her brothers, whom she considered brutal louts;and she held not her father in too high esteem because he did notcarry any mystical ideals cherished in his heart, but only wantedto have as easy a time as he could, and his meals when he was readyfor them.
