did not mind so much what he did, could leave him alone.
There was the halt, the wistfulness about the ensuing year, which is like autumn in a man’s life. His wife was casting him off, half regretfully, but relentlessly; casting him off and turning now for love and life to the children. Henceforward he was more or less a husk. And he half acquiesced, as so many men do, yielding their place to their children.
During his recuperation, when it was really over between them, both made an effort to come back somewhat to the old relationship of the first months of their marriage. He sat at home and, when the children were in bed, and she was sewing—she did all her sewing by hand, made all shirts and children’s clothing—he would read to her from the newspaper, slowly pronouncing and delivering the words like a man pitching quoits. Often she hurried him on, giving him a phrase in anticipation. And then he took her words humbly.
The silences between them were peculiar. There would be the swift, slight “cluck” of her needle, the sharp “pop” of his lips as he let out the smoke, the warmth, the sizzle on the bars as he spat in the fire. Then her thoughts turned to William. Already he was getting a big boy. Already he was top of the class, and the master said he was the smartest lad in the school. She saw him a man, young, full of vigour, making the world glow again for her.
And Morel sitting there, quite alone, and having nothing to think about, would be feeling vaguely uncomfortable. His soul would reach out in its blind way to her and find her gone. He felt a sort of emptiness, almost like a vacuum in his soul. He was unsettled and restless. Soon he could not live in that atmosphere, and he affected his wife. Both felt an oppression on their breathing when they were left together for some time. Then he went to bed and she settled down to enjoy herself alone, working, thinking, living.
Meanwhile another infant was coming, fruit of this little peace and tenderness between the separating parents. Paul was seventeen months old when the new baby was born. He was then a plump, pale child, quiet, with heavy blue eyes, and still the peculiar slight knitting of the brows. The last child was also a boy, fair and bonny. Mrs. Morel was sorry when she knew she was with child, both for economic reasons and because she did not love her husband; but not for the sake of the infant.
They called the baby Arthur. He was very pretty, with a mop of gold curls, and he loved his father from the first. Mrs. Morel was glad this child loved the father. Hearing the miner’s footsteps, the baby would put up his arms and crow. And if Morel were in a good temper, he called back immediately, in his hearty, mellow voice:
“What then, my beauty? I sh’ll come to thee in a minute.”
And as soon as he had taken off his pit-coat, Mrs. Morel would put an apron round the child, and give him to his father.
“What a sight the lad looks!” she would exclaim some- times, taking back the baby, that was smutted on the face from his father’s kisses and play. Then Morel laughed joy- fully. “He’s a little collier, bless his bit o’ mutton!” he ex- claimed.
And these were the happy moments of her life now, when the children included the father in her heart.
Meanwhile William grew bigger and stronger and more active, while Paul, always rather delicate and quiet, got slimmer, and trotted after his mother like her shadow. He was usually active and interested, but sometimes he would have fits of depression. Then the mother would find the boy of three or four crying on the sofa.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, and got no answer.
“What’s the matter?” she insisted, getting cross.
“I don’t know,” sobbed the child.
So she tried to reason him out of it, or to amuse him, but without effect. It made her feel beside herself. Then the father, always impatient, would jump from his chair and shout:
“If he doesn’t stop, I’ll smack him till he does.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said the mother coldly. And then she carried the child into the yard, plumped him into his little chair, and said: “Now cry there, Misery!”
And then a butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye, or at last he cried himself to sleep. These fits were not often, but they caused a shadow in Mrs. Morel’s heart, and her treatment of Paul was different from that of the other children.
Suddenly one morning as she was looking down the alley of the Bottoms for the barm-man, she heard a voice calling her. It was the thin little Mrs. Anthony in brown velvet.
“Here, Mrs. Morel, I want to tell you about your Willie.”
“Oh, do you?” replied Mrs. Morel. “Why, what’s the matter?”
“A lad as gets ’old of another an’ rips his clothes off’n ’is back,” Mrs. Anthony said, “wants showing something.”
“Your Alfred’s as old as my William,” said Mrs. Morel.
“ ’Appen ’e is, but that doesn’t give him a right to get hold of the boy’s collar, an’ fair rip it clean off his back.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Morel, “I don’t thrash my children, and even if I did, I should want to hear their side of the tale.”
“They’d happen be a bit better if they did get a good hiding,” retorted Mrs. Anthony. “When it comes ter rippin’ a lad’s clean collar off’n ’is back a purpose——”
“I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose,” said Mrs. Morel.
“Make me a liar!” shouted Mrs. Anthony.
Mrs. Morel moved away and closed her gate. Her hand trembled as she held her mug of barm.
“But I s’ll let your mester know,” Mrs. Anthony cried after her.
At dinner-time, when William had finished his meal and wanted to be off again—he was then eleven years old—his mother said to him:
“What did you tear Alfred Anthony’s collar for?”
“When did I tear his collar?”
“I don’t know when, but his mother says you did.”
“Why—it was yesterday—an’ it was torn a’ready.”
“But you tore it more.”
“Well, I’d got a cobbler as ’ad licked seventeen—an’ Alfy Ant’ny ’e says:
‘Adam an’ Eve an’ pinch-me,
Went down to a river to bade.
Adam an’ Eve got drownded,
Who do yer think got saved?’
An’ so I says, ‘Oh, Pinch-you,’ an’ so I pinched ’im, an’ ’e was mad, an’ so he snatched my cobbler an’ run off with it. An’ so I run after ’im, an’ when I was gettin’ hold of him, ’e dodged, an’ it ripped ’is collar. But I got my cobbler——”
He pulled from his pocket a black old horse-chestnut
