“Well,” she answered, “it’s not really dangerous, but the nurse says it’s a dreadful smash. You see, a great piece of rock fell on his leg—here—and it’s a compound fracture. There are pieces of bone sticking through—”
“Ugh—how horrid!” exclaimed the children.
“And,” she continued, “of course he says he’s going to die—it wouldn’t be him if he didn’t. ‘I’m done for, my lass!’ he said, looking at me. ‘Don’t be so silly,’ I said to him. ‘You’re not going to die of a broken leg, however badly it’s smashed.’ ‘I s’ll niver come out of ‘ere but in a wooden box,’ he groaned. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you want them to carry you into the garden in a wooden box, when you’re better, I’ve no doubt they will.’ ‘If we think it’s good for him,’ said the Sister. She’s an awfully nice Sister, but rather strict.”
Mrs. Morel took off her bonnet. The children waited in silence. “Of course, he is bad,” she continued, “and he will be. It’s a great shock, and he’s lost a lot of blood; and, of course, it is a very dangerous smash. It’s not at all sure that it will mend so easily. And then there’s the fever and the mortification—if it took bad ways he’d quickly be gone. But there, he’s a clean-blooded man, with wonderful healing flesh, and so I see no reason why it should take bad ways. Of course there’s a wound—”
She was pale now with emotion and anxiety. The three children realised that it was very bad for their father, and the house was silent, anxious.
“But he always gets better,” said Paul after a while.
“That’s what I tell him,” said the mother.
Everybody moved about in silence.
“And he really looked nearly done for,” she said. “But the Sister says that is the pain.”
Annie took away her mother’s coat and bonnet.
“And he looked at me when I came away! I said: ‘I s’ll have to go now, Walter, because of the train—and the children.’ And he looked at me. It seems hard.”
Paul took up his brush again and went on painting. Arthur went outside for some coal. Annie sat looking dismal. And Mrs. Morel, in her little rocking-chair that her husband had made for her when the first baby was coming, remained motionless, brooding. She was grieved, and bitterly sorry for the man who was hurt so much. But still, in her heart of hearts, where the love should have burned, there was a blank. Now, when all her woman’s pity was roused to its full extent, when she would have slaved herself to death to nurse him and to save him, when she would have taken the pain herself, if she could, somewhere far away inside her, she felt indifferent to him and to his suffering. It hurt her most of all, this failure to love him, even when he roused her strong emotions. She brooded awhile.
“And there,” she said suddenly, “when I’d got half-way to Keston, I found I’d come out in my working boots—and look at them.” They were an old pair of Paul’s, brown and rubbed through at the toes. “I didn’t know what to do with myself, for shame,” she added.
In the morning, when Annie and Arthur were at school, Mrs. Morel talked again to her son, who was helping her with her housework.
“I found Barker at the hospital. He did look bad, poor little fellow! ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘what sort of a journey did you have with him?’ ‘Dunna ax me missis!’ he said. ‘Ay,’ I said, ‘I know what he’d be.’ ‘But it wor bad for him, Mrs. Morel, it wor that!’ he said. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘At ivry jolt I thought my ‘eart would ha’ flown clean out o’ my mouth,’ he said. ‘An’ the scream ‘e gives sometimes! Missis, not for a fortune would I go through wi’ it again.’ ‘I can quite understand it,’ I said. ‘It’s a nasty job, though,’ he said, ‘an’ one as’ll be a long while afore it’s right again.’ ‘I’m afraid it will,’ I said. I like Mr. Barker—I do like him. There’s something so manly about him.”
Paul resumed his task silently.
“And of course,” Mrs. Morel continued, “for a man like your father, the hospital is hard. He can’t understand rules and regulations. And he won’t let anybody else touch him, not if he can help it. When he smashed the muscles of his thigh, and it had to be dressed four times a day, would he let anybody but me or his mother do it? He wouldn’t. So, of course, he’ll suffer in there with the nurses. And I didn’t like leaving him. I’m sure, when I kissed him an’ came away, it seemed a shame.”
So she talked to her son, almost as if she were thinking aloud to him, and he took it in as best he could, by sharing her trouble to lighten it. And in the end she shared almost everything with him without knowing.
Morel had a very bad time. For a week he was in a critical condition. Then he began to mend. And then, knowing he was going to get better, the whole family sighed with relief, and proceeded to live happily.
They were not badly off whilst Morel was in the hospital. There were fourteen shillings a week from the pit, ten shillings from the sick club, and five shillings from the Disability Fund; and then every week the butties had something for Mrs. Morel—five or seven shillings—so that she was quite well to do. And whilst Morel was progressing favourably in the hospital, the family was extraordinarily happy and peaceful. On Saturdays and Wednesdays Mrs. Morel went to Nottingham to see her husband. Then she always brought back some little thing: a small tube of paints for Paul, or some thick paper; a couple of postcards for Annie, that the whole family rejoiced over for days before the girl was allowed to send them away; or a fret-saw for Arthur, or a bit of pretty wood. She described her adventures into the big shops with joy. Soon the folk in the picture-shop knew her, and knew about Paul. The girl in the book-shop took a keen interest in her. Mrs. Morel was full of information when she got home from Nottingham. The three sat round till bedtime, listening, putting in, arguing. Then Paul often raked the fire.
“I’m the man in the house now,” he used to say to his mother with joy. They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such callousness—that their father was soon coming back.
Paul was now fourteen, and was looking for work. He was a rather small and rather finely-made boy, with dark brown hair and light blue eyes. His face had already lost its youthful chubbiness, and was becoming somewhat like William’s—rough-featured, almost rugged—and it was extraordinarily mobile. Usually he looked as if he saw things, was full of life, and warm; then his smile, like his mother’s, came suddenly and was very lovable; and then, when there was any clog in his soul’s quick running, his face went stupid and ugly. He was the sort of boy that becomes a clown and a lout as soon as he is not understood, or feels himself held cheap; and, again, is adorable at the first touch of warmth.
He suffered very much from the first contact with anything. When he was seven, the starting school had been a nightmare and a torture to him. But afterwards he liked it. And now that he felt he had to go out into life, he went through agonies of shrinking self-consciousness. He was quite a clever painter for a boy of his years, and he knew some French and German and mathematics that Mr. Heaton had taught him. But nothing he had was of any commercial value. He was not strong enough for heavy manual work, his mother said. He did not care for making things with his hands, preferred racing about, or making excursions into the country, or reading, or painting.
“What do you want to be?” his mother asked.
“Anything.”
“That is no answer,” said Mrs. Morel.
But it was quite truthfully the only answer he could give. His ambition, as far as this world’s gear went, was quietly to earn his thirty or thirty-five shillings a week somewhere near home, and then, when his father died, have a cottage with his mother, paint and go out as he liked, and live happy ever after.