Gertrude sat white and silent. She was her father now.
“Then we ought to be paying you rent,” she said coldly.
“Walter is paying me rent,” replied the mother.
“And what rent?” asked Gertrude.
“Six and six a week,” retorted the mother.
It was more than the house was worth. Gertrude held her head erect, looked straight before her.
“It is lucky to be you,” said the elder woman, bitingly, “to have a husband as takes all the worry of the money, and leaves you a free hand.”
The young wife was silent.
She said very little to her husband, but her manner had changed towards him. Something in her proud, honourable soul had crystallised out hard as rock.
When October came in, she thought only of Christmas. Two years ago, at Christmas, she had met him. Last Christmas she had married him. This Christmas she would bear him a child.
“You don’t dance yourself, do you, missis?” asked her nearest neighbour, in October, when there was great talk of opening a dancing-class over the Brick and Tile Inn at Bestwood.
“No—I never had the least inclination to,” Mrs. Morel replied.
“Fancy! An’ how funny as you should ha’ married your Mester. You know he’s quite a famous one for dancing.”
“I didn’t know he was famous,” laughed Mrs. Morel.
“Yea, he is though! Why, he ran that dancing-class in the Miners’ Arms clubroom for over five year.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, he did.” The other woman was defiant. “An’ it was thronged every Tuesday, and Thursday, an’ Sat’day—an’ there was carryin’s-on, accordin’ to all accounts.”
This kind of thing was gall and bitterness to Mrs. Morel, and she had a fair share of it. The women did not spare her, at first; for she was superior, though she could not help it.
He began to be rather late in coming home.
“They’re working very late now, aren’t they?” she said to her washerwoman.
“No later than they allers do, I don’t think. But they stop to have their pint at Ellen’s, an’ they get talkin’, an’ there you are! Dinner stone cold—an’ it serves ’em right.”
“But Mr. Morel does not take any drink.”
The woman dropped the clothes, looked at Mrs. Morel, then went on with her work, saying nothing.
Gertrude Morel was very ill when the boy was born. Morel was good to her, as good as gold. But she felt very lonely, miles away from her own people. She felt lonely with him now, and his presence only made it more intense.
The boy was small and frail at first, but he came on quickly. He was a beautiful child, with dark gold ringlets, and dark-blue eyes which changed gradually to a clear grey. His mother loved him passionately. He came just when her own bitterness of disillusion was hardest to bear; when her faith in life was shaken, and her soul felt dreary and lonely. She made much of the child, and the father was jealous.
At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband. She turned to the child; she turned from the father. He had begun to neglect her; the novelty of his own home was gone. He had no grit, she said bitterly to herself. What he felt just at the minute, that was all to him. He could not abide by anything. There was nothing at the back of all his show.
There began a battle between the husband and wife—a fearful, bloody battle that ended only with the death of one. She fought to make him undertake his own responsibilities, to make him fulfill his obligations. But he was too different from her. His nature was purely sensuous, and she strove to make him moral, religious. She tried to force him to face things. He could not endure it—it drove him out of his mind.
While the baby was still tiny, the father’s temper had become so irritable that it was not to be trusted. The child had only to give a little trouble when the man began to bully. A little more, and the hard hands of the collier hit the baby. Then Mrs. Morel loathed her husband, loathed him for days; and he went out and drank; and she cared very little what he did. Only, on his return, she scathed him with her satire.
The estrangement between them caused him, knowingly or unknowingly, grossly to offend her where he would not have done.
William was only one year old, and his mother was proud of him, he was so pretty. She was not well off now, but her sisters kept the boy in clothes. Then, with his little white hat curled with an ostrich feather, and his white coat, he was a joy to her, the twining wisps of hair clustering round his head. Mrs. Morel lay listening, one Sunday morning, to the chatter of the father and child downstairs. Then she dozed off. When she came downstairs, a great fire glowed in the grate, the room was hot, the breakfast was roughly laid, and seated in his armchair, against the chimneypiece, sat Morel, rather timid; and standing between his legs, the child—cropped like a sheep, with such an odd round poll—looking wondering at her; and on a newspaper spread out upon the hearthrug, a myriad of crescent-shaped curls, like the petals of a marigold scattered in the reddening firelight.
Mrs. Morel stood still. It was her first baby. She went very white, and was unable to speak.
“What dost think o’ ’im?” Morel laughed uneasily.
She gripped her two fists, lifted them, and came forward. Morel shrank back.
“I could kill you, I could!” she said. She choked with rage, her two fists uplifted.
“Yer non want ter make a wench on ’im,” Morel said, in a frightened tone, bending his head to shield his eyes from hers. His attempt at laughter had vanished.
The mother looked down at the jagged, close-clipped head of her child. She put her hands on his hair, and stroked and fondled his head.
“Oh—my boy!” she faltered. Her lip trembled, her face broke, and, snatching up the child, she buried her face in his shoulder
