Sons and Lovers | Page 6

from a candle, not
baffled and gripped into incandescence by thought and spirit as her life
was, seemed to her something wonderful, beyond her.
He came and bowed above her. A warmth radiated through her as if she
had drunk wine.
"Now do come and have this one wi' me," he said caressively. "It's easy,

you know. I'm pining to see you dance."
She had told him before she could not dance. She glanced at his
humility and smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. It moved the man so
that he forgot everything.
"No, I won't dance," she said softly. Her words came clean and ringing.
Not knowing what he was doing--he often did the right thing by
instinct--he sat beside her, inclining reverentially.
"But you mustn't miss your dance," she reproved.
"Nay, I don't want to dance that--it's not one as I care about."
"Yet you invited me to it."
He laughed very heartily at this.
"I never thought o' that. Tha'rt not long in taking the curl out of me."
It was her turn to laugh quickly.
"You don't look as if you'd come much uncurled," she said.
"I'm like a pig's tail, I curl because I canna help it," he laughed, rather
boisterously.
"And you are a miner!" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Yes. I went down when I was ten."
She looked at him in wondering dismay.
"When you were ten! And wasn't it very hard?" she asked.
"You soon get used to it. You live like th' mice, an' you pop out at night
to see what's going on."

"It makes me feel blind," she frowned.
"Like a moudiwarp!" he laughed. "Yi, an' there's some chaps as does go
round like moudiwarps." He thrust his face forward in the blind,
snout-like way of a mole, seeming to sniff and peer for direction. "They
dun though!" he protested naively. "Tha niver seed such a way they get
in. But tha mun let me ta'e thee down some time, an' tha can see for
thysen."
She looked at him, startled. This was a new tract of life suddenly
opened before her. She realised the life of the miners, hundreds of them
toiling below earth and coming up at evening. He seemed to her noble.
He risked his life daily, and with gaiety. She looked at him, with a
touch of appeal in her pure humility.
"Shouldn't ter like it?" he asked tenderly. "'Appen not, it 'ud dirty thee."
She had never been "thee'd" and "thou'd" before.
The next Christmas they were married, and for three months she was
perfectly happy: for six months she was very happy.
He had signed the pledge, and wore the blue ribbon of a tee-totaller: he
was nothing if not showy. They lived, she thought, in his own house. It
was small, but convenient enough, and quite nicely furnished, with
solid, worthy stuff that suited her honest soul. The women, her
neighbours, were rather foreign to her, and Morel's mother and sisters
were apt to sneer at her ladylike ways. But she could perfectly well live
by herself, so long as she had her husband close.
Sometimes, when she herself wearied of love-talk, she tried to open her
heart seriously to him. She saw him listen deferentially, but without
understanding. This killed her efforts at a finer intimacy, and she had
flashes of fear. Sometimes he was restless of an evening: it was not
enough for him just to be near her, she realised. She was glad when he
set himself to little jobs.
He was a remarkably handy man--could make or mend anything. So

she would say:
"I do like that coal-rake of your mother's--it is small and natty."
"Does ter, my wench? Well, I made that, so I can make thee one!"
"What! why, it's a steel one!"
"An' what if it is! Tha s'lt ha'e one very similar, if not exactly same."
She did not mind the mess, nor the hammering and noise. He was busy
and happy.
But in the seventh month, when she was brushing his Sunday coat, she
felt papers in the breast pocket, and, seized with a sudden curiosity,
took them out to read. He very rarely wore the frock-coat he was
married in: and it had not occurred to her before to feel curious
concerning the papers. They were the bills of the household furniture,
still unpaid.
"Look here," she said at night, after he was washed and had had his
dinner. "I found these in the pocket of your wedding-coat. Haven't you
settled the bills yet?"
"No. I haven't had a chance."
"But you told me all was paid. I had better go into Nottingham on
Saturday and settle them. I don't like sitting on another man's chairs and
eating from an unpaid table."
He did not