Sons and Lovers | Page 4

were taken into account."
Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes
one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred
over.
"I wait," Mrs. Morel said to herself--"I wait, and what I wait for can
never come."
Then she straightened the kitchen, lit the lamp, mended the fire, looked
out the washing for the next day, and put it to soak. After which she sat
down to her sewing. Through the long hours her needle flashed
regularly through the stuff. Occasionally she sighed, moving to relieve
herself. And all the time she was thinking how to make the most of
what she had, for the children's sakes.
At half-past eleven her husband came. His cheeks were very red and
very shiny above his black moustache. His head nodded slightly. He
was pleased with himself.
"Oh! Oh! waitin' for me, lass? I've bin 'elpin' Anthony, an' what's think
he's gen me? Nowt b'r a lousy hae'f-crown, an' that's ivry penny--"
"He thinks you've made the rest up in beer," she said shortly.
"An' I 'aven't--that I 'aven't. You b'lieve me, I've 'ad very little this day,
I have an' all." His voice went tender. "Here, an' I browt thee a bit o'
brandysnap, an' a cocoanut for th' children." He laid the gingerbread
and the cocoanut, a hairy object, on the table. "Nay, tha niver said
thankyer for nowt i' thy life, did ter?"
As a compromise, she picked up the cocoanut and shook it, to see if it
had any milk.

"It's a good 'un, you may back yer life o' that. I got it fra' Bill
Hodgkisson. 'Bill,' I says, 'tha non wants them three nuts, does ter?
Arena ter for gi'ein' me one for my bit of a lad an' wench?' 'I ham,
Walter, my lad,' 'e says; 'ta'e which on 'em ter's a mind.' An' so I took
one, an' thanked 'im. I didn't like ter shake it afore 'is eyes, but 'e says,
'Tha'd better ma'e sure it's a good un, Walt.' An' so, yer see, I knowed it
was. He's a nice chap, is Bill Hodgkisson, e's a nice chap!"
"A man will part with anything so long as he's drunk, and you're drunk
along with him," said Mrs. Morel.
"Eh, tha mucky little 'ussy, who's drunk, I sh'd like ter know?" said
Morel. He was extraordinarily pleased with himself, because of his
day's helping to wait in the Moon and Stars. He chattered on.
Mrs. Morel, very tired, and sick of his babble, went to bed as quickly as
possible, while he raked the fire.
Mrs. Morel came of a good old burgher family, famous independents
who had fought with Colonel Hutchinson, and who remained stout
Congregationalists. Her grandfather had gone bankrupt in the
lace-market at a time when so many lace-manufacturers were ruined in
Nottingham. Her father, George Coppard, was an engineer--a large,
handsome, haughty man, proud of his fair skin and blue eyes, but more
proud still of his integrity. Gertrude resembled her mother in her small
build. But her temper, proud and unyielding, she had from the
Coppards.
George Coppard was bitterly galled by his own poverty. He became
foreman of the engineers in the dockyard at Sheerness. Mrs.
Morel--Gertrude--was the second daughter. She favoured her mother,
loved her mother best of all; but she had the Coppards' clear, defiant
blue eyes and their broad brow. She remembered to have hated her
father's overbearing manner towards her gentle, humorous,
kindly-souled mother. She remembered running over the breakwater at
Sheerness and finding the boat. She remembered to have been petted
and flattered by all the men when she had gone to the dockyard, for she
was a delicate, rather proud child. She remembered the funny old

mistress, whose assistant she had become, whom she had loved to help
in the private school. And she still had the Bible that John Field had
given her. She used to walk home from chapel with John Field when
she was nineteen. He was the son of a well-to-do tradesman, had been
to college in London, and was to devote himself to business.
She could always recall in detail a September Sunday afternoon, when
they had sat under the vine at the back of her father's house. The sun
came through the chinks of the vine-leaves and made beautiful patterns,
like a lace scarf, falling on her and on him. Some of the leaves were
clean yellow, like yellow flat flowers.
"Now sit still," he had cried. "Now your hair, I don't know what it IS
like! It's as bright as copper and gold, as red as burnt copper, and it has
gold threads where the sun shines on it. Fancy their saying it's brown.
Your mother calls it