Occasionally the minister stayed to tea with Mrs. Morel. Then she laid the cloth early, got out her best cups, with a little green rim, and hoped Morel would not come too soon; indeed, if he stayed for a pint, she would not mind this day. She had always two dinners to cook, because she believed children should have their chief meal at midday, whereas Morel needed his at five o’clock. So Mr. Heaton would hold the baby, whilst Mrs. Morel beat up a batter-pudding or peeled the potatoes, and he, watching her all the time, would discuss his next sermon. His ideas were quaint and fantastic. She brought him judiciously to earth. It was a discussion of the wedding at Cana.
“When He changed the water into wine at Cana,” he said, “that is a symbol that the ordinary life, even the blood, of the married husband and wife, which had before been uninspired, like water, became filled with the Spirit, and was as wine, because, when love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered.”
Mrs. Morel thought to herself:
“Yes, poor fellow, his young wife is dead; that is why he makes his love into the Holy Ghost.”
They were halfway down their first cup of tea when they heard the sluther of pit-boots.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Morel, in spite of herself.
The minister looked rather scared. Morel entered. He was feeling rather savage. He nodded a “How d’yer do” to the clergyman, who rose to shake hands with him.
“Nay,” said Morel, showing his hand, “look thee at it! Tha niver wants ter shake hands wi’ a hand like that, does ter? There’s too much pick-haft and shovel-dirt on it.”
The minister flushed with confusion, and sat down again. Mrs. Morel rose, carried out the steaming saucepan. Morel took off his coat, dragged his armchair to table, and sat down heavily.
“Are you tired?” asked the clergyman.
“Tired? I ham that,” replied Morel. “you don’t know what it is to be tired, as I’m tired.”
“No,” replied the clergyman.
“Why, look yer ’ere,” said the miner, showing the shoulders of his singlet. “It’s a bit dry now, but it’s wet as a clout with sweat even yet. Feel it.”
“Goodness!” cried Mrs. Morel. “Mr. Heaton doesn’t want to feel your nasty singlet.”
The clergyman put out his hand gingerly.
“No, perhaps he doesn’t,” said Morel; “but it’s all come out of me, whether or not. An’ iv’ry day alike my singlet’s wringin’ wet. ’Aven’t you got a drink, Missis, for a man when he comes home barkled up from the pit?”
“You know you drank all the beer,” said Mrs. Morel, pouring out his tea.
“An’ was there no more to be got?” Turning to the clergyman—“A man gets that caked up wi’ th’ dust, you know—that clogged up down a coal-mine, he needs a drink when he comes home.”
“I am sure he does,” said the clergyman.
“But it’s ten to one if there’s owt for him.”
“There’s water—and there’s tea,” said Mrs. Morel.
“Water! It’s not water as’ll clear his throat.”
He poured out a saucerful of tea, blew it, and sucked it up through his great black moustache, sighing afterwards. Then he poured out another saucerful, and stood his cup on the table.
“My cloth!” said Mrs. Morel, putting it on a plate.
“A man as comes home as I do ’s too tired to care about cloths,” said Morel.
“Pity!” exclaimed his wife, sarcastically.
The room was full of the smell of meat and vegetables and pit-clothes.
He leaned over to the minister, his great moustache thrust forward, his mouth very red in his black face.
“Mr. Heaton,” he said, “a man as has been down the black hole all day, dingin’ away at a coalface, yi, a sight harder than that wall—”
“Needn’t make a moan of it,” put in Mrs. Morel.
She hated her husband because, whenever he had an audience, he whined and played for sympathy. William, sitting nursing the baby, hated him, with a boy’s hatred for false sentiment, and for the stupid treatment of his mother. Annie had never liked him; she merely avoided him.
When the minister had gone, Mrs. Morel looked at her cloth.
“A fine mess!” she said.
“Dos’t think I’m goin’ to sit wi’ my arms danglin’, cos tha’s got a parson for tea wi’ thee?” he bawled.
They were both angry, but she said nothing. The baby began to cry, and Mrs. Morel, picking up a saucepan from the hearth, accidentally knocked Annie on the head, whereupon the girl began to whine, and Morel to shout at her. In the midst of this pandemonium, William looked up at the big glazed text over the mantelpiece and read distinctly:
“God Bless Our Home!”
Whereupon Mrs. Morel, trying to soothe the baby, jumped up, rushed at him, boxed his ears, saying:
“What are you putting in for?”
And then she sat down and laughed, till tears ran over her cheeks, while William kicked the stool he had been sitting on, and Morel growled:
“I canna see what there is so much to laugh at.”
One evening, directly after the parson’s visit, feeling unable to bear herself after another display from her husband, she took Annie and the baby and went out. Morel had kicked William, and the mother would never forgive him.
She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the meadow to the cricket-ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe, evening light, whispering with the distant millrace. She sat on a seat under the alders in the cricket-ground, and fronted the evening. Before her, level and solid, spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of light. Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion. Many rooks, high up, came cawing home across the softly-woven
