time and steadily watching, its ears raised to listen. Sometimes even her anger
quailed and shrank, and the mother suspended her sewing, tracing the foot
steps that thudded along the sleepers7 outside; she would lift her head sharply
to bid the children 'hush,' but she recovered herself in time, and the footsteps
went past the gate, and the children were not flung out of their play-world.
But at last Annie sighed, and gave in. She glanced at her wagon of slippers,
and loathed the game. She turned plaintively to her mother.
'Mother!'?but she was inarticulate.
7. Railroad ties.
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225 0 / D. H. LAWRENCE
John crept out like a frog from under the sofa. His mother glanced up.
'Yes,' she said, 'just look at those shirt-sleeves!'
The boy held them out to survey them, saying nothing. Then somebody called in a hoarse voice away down the line, and suspense bristled in the room, till two people had gone by outside, talking.
'It is time for bed,' said the mother.
'My father hasn't come,' wailed Annie plaintively. But her mother was primed with courage.
'Never mind. They'll bring him when he does come?like a log.' She meant there would be no scene. 'And he may sleep on the floor till he wakes himself. I know he'll not go to work to-morrow after this!'
The children had their hands and faces wiped with a flannel. They were very quiet. When they had put on their night-dresses, they said their prayers, the boy mumbling. The mother looked down at them, at the brown silken bush of intertwining curls in the nape of the girl's neck, at the little black head of the lad, and her heart burst with anger at their father, who caused all three such distress. The children hid their faces in her skirts for comfort.
When Mrs Bates came down, the room was strangely empty, with a tension of expectancy. She took up her sewing and stitched for some time without raising her head. Meantime her anger was tinged with fear.
II
The clock struck eight and she rose suddenly, dropping her sewing on her chair. She went to the stair-foot door, opened it, listening. Then she went out, locking the door behind her.
Something scuffled in the yard, and she started, though she knew it was only the rats with which the place was over-run. The night was very dark. In the great bay of railway lines, bulked with trucks, there was no trace of light, only away back she could see a few yellow lamps at the pit-top, and the red smear of the burning pit-bank on the night. She hurried along the edge of the track, then, crossing the converging lines, came to the stile by the white gates, whence she emerged on the road. Then the fear which had led her shrank. People were walking up to New Brinsley; she saw the lights in the houses; twenty yards farther on were the broad windows of the 'Prince of Wales,' very warm and bright, and the loud voices of men could be heard distinctly. What a fool she had been to imagine that anything had happened to him! He was merely drinking over there at the 'Prince of Wales.' She faltered. She had never yet been to fetch him, and she never would go. So she continued her walk towards the long straggling line of houses, standing back on the highway. She entered a passage between the dwellings.
'Mr Rigley??Yes! Did you want him? No, he's not in at this minute.'
The raw-boned woman leaned forward from her dark scullery8 and peered at the other, upon whom fell a dim light through the blind of the kitchen window.
'Is it Mrs Bates?' she asked in a tone tinged with respect.
'Yes. I wondered if your Master was at home. Mine hasn't come yet.'
' 'Asn't 'e! Oh, Jack's been 'ome an' 'ad 'is dinner an' gone out. 'E's just gone for 'alf an hour afore bed-time. Did you call at the 'Prince of Wales'?'
8. Back kitchen.
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ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS / 2251
'No '
'No, you didn't like ! It's not very nice.' The other woman was indulgent. There was an awkward pause. 'Jack never said nothink about?about your Master,' she said.
'No!?I expect he's stuck in there!'
Elizabeth Bates said this bitterly, and with recklessness. She knew that the woman across the yard was standing at her door listening, but she did not care. As she turned:
'Stop a minute! I'll just go an' ask Jack if 'e knows anythink,' said Mrs Bigley.
'Oh no?I wouldn't like to put !'
'Yes, I will, if you'll just step inside an' see as th' childer doesn't come downstairs and set theirselves afire.' Elizabeth Bates, murmuring a remonstrance, stepped inside. The other woman apologised for the state of the room.
The kitchen needed apology. There were little frocks and trousers and childish undergarments on the squab9 and on the floor, and a litter of playthings everywhere. On the black American cloth' of the table were pieces of
