Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by D. H. Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page B

out of her, her sobbing.
    Morel sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped together till the knuckles were white. He gazed in the fire, feeling almost stunned, as if he could not breathe.
    Presently she came to an end, soothed the child and cleared away the breakfast-table. She left the newspaper, littered with curls, spread upon the hearth-rug. At last her husband gathered it up and put it at the back of the fire. She went about her work with closed mouth and very quiet. Morel was subdued. He crept about wretchedly, and his meals were a misery that day. She spoke to him civilly, and never alluded to what he had done. But he felt something final had happened.
    Afterwards she said she had been silly, that the boy’s hair would have had to be cut, sooner or later. In the end, she even brought herself to say to her husband it was just as well he had played barber when he did. But she knew, and Morel knew, that that act had caused something momentous to take place in her soul. She remembered the scene all her life, as one in which she had suffered the most intensely.
    This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her love for Morel. 7 Before, while she had striven against him bitterly, she had fretted after him, as if he had gone astray from her. Now she ceased to fret for his love: he was an outsider to her. This made life much more bearable.
    Nevertheless, she still continued to strive with him. She still had her high moral sense, inherited from generations of Puritans. It was now a religious instinct, and she was almost a fanatic with him, because she loved him, or had loved him. If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, s sometimes a knave, she wielded the lash unmercifully.
    The pity was, she was too much his opposite. She could not be content with the little he might be; she would have him the much that he ought to be. So, in seeking to make him nobler than he could be, she destroyed him. She injured and hurt and scarred herself, but she lost none of her worth. She also had the children.
    He drank rather heavily, though not more than many miners, and always beer, so that whilst his health was affected, it was never injured. The week-end was his chief carouse. He sat in the Miners’ Arms until turning-out time every Friday, every Saturday, and every Sunday evening. On Monday and Tuesday he had to get up and reluctantly leave towards ten o’lock. Sometimes he stayed at home on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, or was only out for an hour. He practically never had to miss work owing to his drinking.
    But although he was very steady at work, his wages fell off He was blab-mouthed, a tongue-wagger. Authority was hateful to him, therefore he could only abuse the pit-managers. He would say, in the Palmerston:
    “Th’ gaffer t come down to our stall u this morning, an’ ‘e says, ’You know, Walter, this ‘ere’ll not do. What about these props?’ An’ I says to him, ‘Why, what art talkin’ about? What d’st mean about th’ props?’ ‘It’ll never do, this ‘ere,’ ‘e says. ’You’ll be havin’ th’ roof in, one o’ these days.’ An’ I says, ‘Tha’d better stan’ on a bit o’ clunch, v then, an’ hold it up wi’ thy ‘ead.’ So ‘e wor that mad, ‘e cossed an”e swore, an’ t’other chaps they did laugh.” Morel was a good mimic. He imitated the manager’s fat, squeaky voice, with its attempt at good English.
    “‘I shan’t have it, Walter. Who knows more about it, me or you?’ So I says, ‘I’ve niver fun out how much tha’ knows, Alfred. It’ll ’appen carry thee ter bed an’ back.’”
    So Morel would go on to the amusement of his boon companions. And some of this would be true. The pit-manager was not an educated man. He had been a boy along with Morel, so that, while the two disliked each other, they more or less took each other for granted. But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive the butty these