After vain efforts, she began to shiver, partly from
contact with the stone, and from exhaustion.
Fearful always for the unborn child, she wondered
what she could do for warmth. She went down to
the coal-house, where there was an old hearthrug she
had carried out for the rag-man the day before.
This she wrapped over her shoulders. It was warm,
if grimy. Then she walked up and down the garden
path, peeping every now and then under the blind,
knocking, and telling herself that in the end the very
strain of his position must wake him.
At last, after about an hour, she rapped long and
low at the window. Gradually the sound penetrated
to him. When, in despair, she had ceased to tap,
she saw him stir, then lift his face blindly.
The labouring of his heart hurt him into consciousness.
She rapped imperatively at the window. He started
awake. Instantly she saw his fists set and his
eyes glare. He had not a grain of physical fear.
If it had been twenty burglars, he would have gone
blindly for them. He glared round, bewildered,
but prepared to fight.
“Open the door, Walter,” she said coldly.
His hands relaxed. It dawned on him what he had
done. His head dropped, sullen and dogged.
She saw him hurry to the door, heard the bolt chock.
He tried the latch. It opened—and there
stood the silver-grey night, fearful to him, after
the tawny light of the lamp. He hurried back.
When Mrs. Morel entered, she saw him almost running
through the door to the stairs. He had ripped
his collar off his neck in his haste to be gone ere
she came in, and there it lay with bursten button-holes.
It made her angry.
She warmed and soothed herself. In her weariness
forgetting everything, she moved about at the little
tasks that remained to be done, set his breakfast,
rinsed his pit-bottle, put his pit-clothes on the hearth
to warm, set his pit-boots beside them, put him out
a clean scarf and snap-bag and two apples, raked the
fire, and went to bed. He was already dead asleep.
His narrow black eyebrows were drawn up in a sort of
peevish misery into his forehead while his cheeks’
down-strokes, and his sulky mouth, seemed to be saying:
“I don’t care who you are nor what you
are, I shall have my own way.”
Mrs. Morel knew him too well to look at him.
As she unfastened her brooch at the mirror, she smiled
faintly to see her face all smeared with the yellow
dust of lilies. She brushed it off, and at last
lay down. For some time her mind continued snapping
and jetting sparks, but she was asleep before her
husband awoke from the first sleep of his drunkenness.
CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF PAUL, AND ANOTHER BATTLE
After such a scene as the last, Walter Morel
was for some days abashed and ashamed, but he soon
regained his old bullying indifference. Yet there
was a slight shrinking, a diminishing in his assurance.
Physically even, he shrank, and his fine full presence
waned. He never grew in the least stout, so that,
as he sank from his erect, assertive bearing, his
physique seemed to contract along with his pride and
moral strength.
