“Oh, I’d come!” exclaimed William.
Then the son turned round to his mother.
“But you look well,” she said proudly,
laughing.
“Well!” he exclaimed. “I should
think so—coming home!”
He was a fine fellow, big, straight, and fearless-looking.
He looked round at the evergreens and the kissing
bunch, and the little tarts that lay in their tins
on the hearth.
“By jove! mother, it’s not different!”
he said, as if in relief.
Everybody was still for a second. Then he suddenly
sprang forward, picked a tart from the hearth, and
pushed it whole into his mouth.
“Well, did iver you see such a parish oven!”
the father exclaimed.
He had brought them endless presents. Every penny
he had he had spent on them. There was a sense
of luxury overflowing in the house. For his mother
there was an umbrella with gold on the pale handle.
She kept it to her dying day, and would have lost
anything rather than that. Everybody had something
gorgeous, and besides, there were pounds of unknown
sweets: Turkish delight, crystallised pineapple,
and such-like things which, the children thought,
only the splendour of London could provide. And
Paul boasted of these sweets among his friends.
“Real pineapple, cut off in slices, and then
turned into crystal—fair grand!”
Everybody was mad with happiness in the family.
Home was home, and they loved it with a passion of
love, whatever the suffering had been. There
were parties, there were rejoicings. People came
in to see William, to see what difference London had
made to him. And they all found him “such
a gentleman, and such a fine fellow, my word”!
When he went away again the children retired to various
places to weep alone. Morel went to bed in misery,
and Mrs. Morel felt as if she were numbed by some
drug, as if her feelings were paralysed. She loved
him passionately.
He was in the office of a lawyer connected with a
large shipping firm, and at the midsummer his chief
offered him a trip in the Mediterranean on one of
the boats, for quite a small cost. Mrs. Morel
wrote: “Go, go, my boy. You may never
have a chance again, and I should love to think of
you cruising there in the Mediterranean almost better
than to have you at home.” But William
came home for his fortnight’s holiday. Not
even the Mediterranean, which pulled at all his young
man’s desire to travel, and at his poor man’s
wonder at the glamorous south, could take him away
when he might come home. That compensated his
mother for much.
PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE
Morel was rather a heedless man, careless of
danger. So he had endless accidents. Now,
when Mrs. Morel heard the rattle of an empty coal-cart
cease at her entry-end, she ran into the parlour to
look, expecting almost to see her husband seated in
the waggon, his face grey under his dirt, his body
limp and sick with some hurt or other. If it were
he, she would run out to help.
