And Paul hated her because, somehow, she spoilt his
ease and naturalness. And he writhed himself
with a feeling of humiliation.
STRIFE IN LOVE
Arthur finished his apprenticeship, and got a
job on the electrical plant at Minton Pit. He
earned very little, but had a good chance of getting
on. But he was wild and restless. He did
not drink nor gamble. Yet he somehow contrived
to get into endless scrapes, always through some hot-headed
thoughtlessness. Either he went rabbiting in the
woods, like a poacher, or he stayed in Nottingham
all night instead of coming home, or he miscalculated
his dive into the canal at Bestwood, and scored his
chest into one mass of wounds on the raw stones and
tins at the bottom.
He had not been at his work many months when again
he did not come home one night.
“Do you know where Arthur is?” asked Paul
at breakfast.
“I do not,” replied his mother.
“He is a fool,” said Paul. “And
if he did anything I shouldn’t mind.
But no, he simply can’t come away from a game
of whist, or else he must see a girl home from the
skating-rink—quite proprietously—and
so can’t get home. He’s a fool.”
“I don’t know that it would make it any
better if he did something to make us all ashamed,”
said Mrs. Morel.
“Well, I should respect him more,” said
Paul.
“I very much doubt it,” said his mother
coldly.
They went on with breakfast.
“Are you fearfully fond of him?” Paul
asked his mother.
“What do you ask that for?”
“Because they say a woman always like the youngest
best.”
“She may do—but I don’t.
No, he wearies me.”
“And you’d actually rather he was good?”
“I’d rather he showed some of a man’s
common sense.”
Paul was raw and irritable. He also wearied his
mother very often. She saw the sunshine going
out of him, and she resented it.
As they were finishing breakfast came the postman
with a letter from Derby. Mrs. Morel screwed
up her eyes to look at the address.
“Give it here, blind eye!” exclaimed her
son, snatching it away from her.
She started, and almost boxed his ears.
“It’s from your son, Arthur,” he
said.
“What now—!” cried Mrs. Morel.
“‘My dearest Mother,’” Paul
read, “’I don’t know what made me
such a fool. I want you to come and fetch me
back from here. I came with Jack Bredon yesterday,
instead of going to work, and enlisted. He said
he was sick of wearing the seat of a stool out, and,
like the idiot you know I am, I came away with him.
“’I have taken the King’s shilling,
but perhaps if you came for me they would let me go
back with you. I was a fool when I did it.
I don’t want to be in the army. My dear
mother, I am nothing but a trouble to you. But
if you get me out of this, I promise I will have more
sense and consideration. . . .’”
