No one remarked on her exit. She put on her fur hat, that the village
people knew so well, and the old Norfolk jacket. Louisa was short and
plump and plain. She had her mother’s heavy jaw, her father’s proud
brow, and her own grey, brooding eyes that were very beautiful when she
smiled. It was true, as the people said, that she looked sulky. Her
chief attraction was her glistening, heavy, deep-blond hair, which
shone and gleamed with a richness that was not entirely foreign to her.
“Where am I going?” she said to herself, when she got outside in the
snow. She did not hesitate, however, but by mechanical walking found
herself descending the hill towards Old Aldecross. In the valley that
was black with trees, the colliery breathed in stertorous pants,
sending out high conical columns of steam that remained upright, whiter
than the snow on the hills, yet shadowy, in the dead air. Louisa would
not acknowledge to herself whither she was making her way, till she
came to the railway crossing. Then the bunches of snow in the twigs of
the apple tree that leaned towards the fence told her she must go and
see Mrs Durant. The tree was in Mrs Durant’s garden.
Alfred was now at home again, living with his mother in the cottage
below the road. From the highway hedge, by the railway crossing, the
snowy garden sheered down steeply, like the side of a hole, then
dropped straight in a wall. In this depth the house was snug, its
chimney just level with the road. Miss Louisa descended the stone
stairs, and stood below in the little backyard, in the dimness and the
semi-secrecy. A big tree leaned overhead, above the paraffin hut.
Louisa felt secure from all the world down there. She knocked at the
open door, then looked round. The tongue of garden narrowing in from
the quarry bed was white with snow: she thought of the thick fringes of
snowdrops it would show beneath the currant bushes in a month’s time.
The ragged fringe of pinks hanging over the garden brim behind her was
whitened now with snow-flakes, that in summer held white blossom to
Louisa’s face. It was pleasant, she thought, to gather flowers that
stooped to one’s face from above.
She knocked again. Peeping in, she saw the scarlet glow of the kitchen,
red firelight falling on the brick floor and on the bright chintz
cushions. It was alive and bright as a peep-show. She crossed the
scullery, where still an almanac hung. There was no one about. “Mrs
Durant,” called Louisa softly, “Mrs Durant.”
She went up the brick step into the front room, that still had its
little shop counter and its bundles of goods, and she called from the
stair-foot. Then she knew Mrs Durant was out.
She went into the yard to follow the old woman’s footsteps up the
garden path.
She emerged from the bushes and raspberry canes. There was the whole
quarry bed, a wide garden white and dimmed, brindled with dark bushes,
lying half submerged. On the left, overhead, the little colliery train
rumbled by. Right away at the back was a mass of trees.
Louisa followed the open path, looking from right to left, and then she
gave a cry of concern. The old woman was sitting rocking slightly among
the ragged snowy cabbages. Louisa ran to her, found her whimpering with
little, involuntary cries.
“Whatever have you done?” cried Louisa, kneeling in the snow.
“I’ve—I’ve—I was pulling a brussel-sprout stalk—and—oh-h!—something
tore inside me. I’ve had a pain,” the old woman wept from shock and
suffering, gasping between her whimpers—“I’ve had a pain there—a long
time—and now—oh—oh!” She panted, pressed her hand on her side, leaned
as if she would faint, looking yellow against the snow. Louisa
supported her.
“Do you think you could walk now?” she asked.
“Yes,” gasped the old woman.
Louisa helped her to her feet.
“Get the cabbage—I want it for Alfred’s dinner,” panted Mrs Durant.
Louisa picked up the stalk of brussel-sprouts, and with difficulty got
the old woman indoors. She gave her brandy, laid her on the couch,
saying:
“I’m going to send for a doctor—wait just a minute.”
The young woman ran up the steps to the public-house a few yards away.
The landlady was astonished to see Miss Louisa.
“Will you send for a doctor at once to Mrs Durant,” she said, with some
of her father in her commanding tone.
“Is something the matter?” fluttered the landlady in concern.
Louisa, glancing out up the road, saw the grocer’s cart driving to
Eastwood. She ran and stopped the man, and told him.
Mrs Durant lay on the sofa, her face turned away, when the young woman
came back.
“Let me put you to bed,” Louisa said. Mrs Durant did not resist.
Louisa knew the ways of the working people. In the bottom drawer of the
dresser she found dusters and flannels. With the old pit-flannel she
snatched out the oven shelves, wrapped them up, and put them in the
bed. From the son’s bed she took a blanket, and, running down, set it
before the fire. Having undressed the little old woman, Louisa carried
her upstairs.
“You’ll drop me, you’ll drop me!” cried Mrs Durant.
Louisa did not answer, but bore her burden quickly. She could not light
a fire, because there was no fire-place in the bedroom. And the floor
was plaster. So she fetched the lamp, and stood it lighted in one
corner.
“It will air the room,” she said.
“Yes,” moaned the old woman.
Louisa ran with more hot flannels, replacing those from the oven
shelves. Then she made a bran-bag and laid it on the woman’s side.
There was a big lump on the side of the abdomen.
“I’ve felt it coming a long time,” moaned the old lady, when the pain
was easier, “but I’ve not said anything; I didn’t want to upset our
Alfred.”
Louisa did not see why “our Alfred” should be spared.
“What time is it?” came the plaintive voice.
“A quarter to four.”
“Oh!” wailed the old lady, “he’ll be here in half an hour, and no
dinner ready for him.”
“Let me do it?” said Louisa, gently.
“There’s that cabbage—and you’ll find the meat in the pantry—and
there’s an apple pie you can hot up. But _don’t you_ do it——!”
“Who will, then?” asked Louisa.
“I don’t know,” moaned the sick woman, unable to consider.
Louisa did it. The doctor came and gave serious examination. He looked
very grave.
“What is it, doctor?” asked the old lady, looking up at him with old,
pathetic eyes in which already hope was dead.
“I think you’ve torn the skin in which a tumour hangs,” he replied.
“Ay!” she murmured, and she turned away.
“You see, she may die any minute—and it _may_ be swaled away,” said the
old doctor to Louisa.
The young woman went upstairs again.
“He says the lump may be swaled away, and you may get quite well
again,” she said.
“Ay!” murmured the old lady. It did not deceive her. Presently she
asked:
“Is there a good fire?”
“I think so,” answered Louisa.
“He’ll want a good fire,” the mother said. Louisa attended to it.
Since the death of Durant, the widow had come to church occasionally,
and Louisa had been friendly to her. In the girl’s heart the purpose
was fixed. No man had affected her as Alfred Durant had done, and to
that she kept. In her heart, she adhered to him. A natural sympathy
existed between her and his rather hard, materialistic mother.
Alfred was the most lovable of the old woman’s sons. He had grown up
like the rest, however, headstrong and blind to everything but his own
will. Like the other boys, he had insisted on going into the pit as
soon as he left school, because that was the only way speedily to
become a man, level with all the other men. This was a great chagrin to
his mother, who would have liked to have this last of her sons a
gentleman.
But still he remained constant to her. His feeling for her was deep and
unexpressed. He noticed when she was tired, or when she had a new cap.
And he bought little things for her occasionally. She was not wise
enough to see how much he lived by her.
At the bottom he did not satisfy her, he did not seem manly enough. He
liked to read books occasionally, and better still he liked to play the
piccolo. It amused her to see his head nod over the instrument as he
made an effort to get the right note. It made her fond of him, with
tenderness, almost pity, but not with respect. She wanted a man to be
fixed, going his own way without knowledge of women. Whereas she knew
Alfred depended on her. He sang in the choir because he liked singing.
In the summer he worked in the garden, attended to the fowls and pigs.
He kept pigeons. He played on Saturday in the cricket or football team.
But to her he did not seem the man, the independent man her other boys
had been. He was her baby—and whilst she loved him for it, she was a
little bit contemptuous of him.
There grew up a little hostility between them. Then he began to drink,
as the others had done; but not in their blind, oblivious way. He was a
little self-conscious over it. She saw this, and she pitied it in him.
She loved him most, but she was not satisfied with him because he was
not free of her. He could not quite go his own way.
Then at twenty he ran away and served his time in the Navy. This made a
man of him. He had hated it bitterly, the service, the subordination.
For years he fought with himself under the military discipline, for his
own self-respect, struggling through blind anger and shame and a
cramping sense of inferiority. Out of humiliation and self-hatred, he
rose into a sort of inner freedom. And his love for his mother, whom he
idealised, remained the fact of hope and of belief.
He came home again, nearly thirty years old, but naïve and
inexperienced as a boy, only with a silence about him that was new: a
sort of dumb humility before life, a fear of living. He was almost
quite chaste. A strong sensitiveness had kept him from women. Sexual
talk was all very well among men, but somehow it had no application to
living women. There were two things for him, the _idea_ of women, with
which he sometimes debauched himself, and real women, before whom he
felt a deep uneasiness, and a need to draw away. He shrank and defended
himself from the approach of any woman. And then he felt ashamed. In
his innermost soul he felt he was not a man, he was less than the
normal man. In Genoa he went with an under officer to a drinking house
where the cheaper sort of girl came in to look for lovers. He sat there
with his glass, the girls looked at him, but they never came to him. He
knew that if they did come he could only pay for food and drink for
them, because he felt a pity for them, and was anxious lest they lacked
good necessities. He could not have gone with one of them: he knew it,
and was ashamed, looking with curious envy at the swaggering,
easy-passionate Italian whose body went to a woman by instinctive
impersonal attraction. They were men, he was not a man. He sat feeling
short, feeling like a leper. And he went away imagining sexual scenes
between himself and a woman, walking wrapt in this indulgence. But when
the ready woman presented herself, the very fact that she was a
palpable woman made it impossible for him to touch her. And this
incapacity was like a core of rottenness in him.
So several times he went, drunk, with his companions, to the licensed
prostitute houses abroad. But the sordid insignificance of the
experience appalled him. It had not been anything really: it meant
nothing. He felt as if he were, not physically, but spiritually
impotent: not actually impotent, but intrinsically so.
He came home with this secret, never changing burden of his unknown,
unbestowed self torturing him. His navy training left him in perfect
physical condition. He was sensible of, and proud of his body. He
bathed and used dumb-bells, and kept himself fit. He played cricket and
football. He read books and began to hold fixed ideas which he got from
the Fabians. He played his piccolo, and was considered an expert. But
at the bottom of his soul was always this canker of shame and
incompleteness: he was miserable beneath all his healthy cheerfulness,
he was uneasy and felt despicable among all his confidence and
superiority of ideas. He would have changed with any mere brute, just
to be free of himself, to be free of this shame of self-consciousness.
He saw some collier lurching straight forward without misgiving,
pursuing his own satisfactions, and he envied him. Anything, he would
have given anything for this spontaneity and this blind stupidity which
went to its own satisfaction direct.