“Look, dad!” he said.
“That's right, my beauty,” replied Morel, who was peculiarly lavish of endearments to his second son. Paul popped the fuse into the powder-tin, ready for the morning, when Morel would take it to the pit, and use it to fire a shot that would blast the coal down.
Meantime Arthur, still fond of his father, would lean on the arm of Morel's chair and say:
“Tell us about down pit, daddy.”
This Morel loved to do.
“Well, there's one little 'oss—we call 'im Taffy,” he would begin. “An' he's a fawce 'un!”
Morel had a warm way of telling a story. He made one feel Taffy's cunning.
“He's a brown 'un,” he would answer, “an' not very high. Well, he comes i' th' stall wi' a rattle, an' then yo' 'ear 'im sneeze.
“'Ello, Taff,' you say, 'what art sneezin' for? Bin ta'ein' some snuff?'
“An' 'e sneezes again. Then he slives up an' shoves 'is 'ead on yer, that cadin'.
“'What's want, Taff?' yo' say.”
“And what does he?” Arthur always asked.
“He wants a bit o' bacca, my duckie.”
This story of Taffy would go on interminably, and everybody loved it.
Or sometimes it was a new tale.
“An' what dost think, my darlin'? When I went to put my coat on at snap-time, what should go runnin' up my arm but a mouse.
“'Hey up, theer!' I shouts.
“An' I wor just in time ter get 'im by th' tail.”
“And did you kill it?”
“I did, for they're a nuisance. The place is fair snied wi' 'em.”
“An' what do they live on?”
“The corn as the 'osses drops—an' they'll get in your pocket an' eat your snap, if you'll let 'em—no matter where yo' hing your coat—the slivin', nibblin' little nuisances, for they are.”
These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel had some job to do. And then he always went to bed very early, often before the children. There was nothing remaining for him to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and had skimmed the headlines of the newspaper.
And the children felt secure when their father was in bed. They lay and talked softly a while. Then they started as the lights went suddenly sprawling over the ceiling from the lamps that swung in the hands of the colliers tramping by outside, going to take the nine o'clock shift. They listened to the voices of the men, imagined them dipping down into the dark valley. Sometimes they went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing tinier and tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness. Then it was a joy to rush back to bed and cuddle closely in the warmth.
Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis. The others were all quite strong; so this was another reason for his mother's difference in feeling for him. One day he came home at dinner-time feeling ill. But it was not a family to make any fuss.
“What's the matter with YOU?” his mother asked sharply.
“Nothing,” he replied.
But he ate no dinner.
“If you eat no dinner, you're not going to school,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
“That's why.”
So after dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the children loved. Then he fell into a kind of doze. That afternoon Mrs. Morel was ironing. She listened to the small, restless noise the boy made in his throat as she worked. Again rose in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards him. She had never expected him to live. And yet he had a great vitality in his young body. Perhaps it would have been a little relief to her if he had died. She always felt a mixture of anguish in her love for him.
He, in his semi-conscious sleep, was vaguely aware of the clatter of the iron on the iron-stand, of the faint thud, thud on the ironing-board. Once roused, he opened his eyes to see his mother standing on the hearthrug with the hot iron near her cheek, listening, as it were, to the heat. Her still face, with the mouth closed tight from suffering and disillusion and self-denial, and her nose the smallest bit on one side, and her blue eyes so young, quick, and warm, made his heart contract with love. When she was quiet, so, she looked brave and rich with life, but as if she had been done out of her rights. It hurt the boy keenly, this feeling about her that she had never had her life's fulfilment: and his own incapability to make up to her hurt him with a sense of impotence, yet made him patiently dogged inside. It was his childish aim.
She spat on the iron, and a little ball of spit bounded, raced off the dark, glossy surface. Then, kneeling, she rubbed the iron on the sack lining of the hearthrug vigorously. She was warm in the ruddy firelight. Paul loved the way she crouched and put her head on one side. Her movements were light and quick. It was always a pleasure to watch her. Nothing she ever did, no movement she ever made, could have been found fault with by her children. The room was warm and full of the scent of hot linen. Later on the clergyman came and talked softly with her.
Paul was laid up with an attack of bronchitis. He did not mind much. What happened happened, and it was no good kicking against the pricks. He loved the evenings, after eight o'clock, when the light was put out, and he could watch the fire-flames spring over the darkness of the walls and ceiling; could watch huge shadows waving and tossing, till the room seemed full of men who battled silently.
On retiring to bed, the father would come into the sickroom. He was always very gentle if anyone were ill. But he disturbed the atmosphere for the boy.
“Are ter asleep, my darlin'?” Morel asked softly.
“No; is my mother comin'?”
“She's just finishin' foldin' the clothes. Do you want anything?” Morel rarely “thee'd” his son.
“I don't want nothing. But how long will she be?”
“Not long, my duckie.”
The father waited undecidedly on the hearthrug for a moment or two. He felt his son did not want him. Then he went to the top of the stairs and said to his wife:
“This childt's axin' for thee; how long art goin' to be?”
“Until I've finished, good gracious! Tell him to go to sleep.”
“She says you're to go to sleep,” the father repeated gently to Paul.
“Well, I want HER to come,” insisted the boy.
“He says he can't go off till you come,” Morel called downstairs.
“Eh, dear! I shan't be long. And do stop shouting downstairs. There's the other children—”
Then Morel came again and crouched before the bedroom fire. He loved a fire dearly.
“She says she won't be long,” he said.
He loitered about indefinitely. The boy began to get feverish with irritation. His father's presence seemed to aggravate all his sick impatience. At last Morel, after having stood looking at his son awhile, said softly:
“Good-night, my darling.”
“Good-night,” Paul replied, turning round in relief to be alone.
Paul loved to sleep with his mother. Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing. Paul lay against her and slept, and got better; whilst she, always a bad sleeper,