Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics - D. H. Lawrence [19]
His wife lay listening to him tinkering away in the garden, his whistling ringing out as he sawed and hammered away. It always gave her a sense of warmth and peace to hear him thus as she lay in bed, the children not yet awake, in the bright early morning, happy in his man’s fashion.
At nine o’clock, while the children with bare legs and feet were sitting playing on the sofa, and the mother was washing up, he came in from his carpentry, his sleeves rolled up, his waist-coat hanging open. He was still a good-looking man, with black, wavy hair, and a large black moustache. His face was perhaps too much inflamed, and there was about him a look almost of peevishness. But now he was jolly. He went straight to the sink where his wife was washing up.
“What, are thee there!” he said boisterously. “Sluthew off an’ let me wesh mysen.”
“You may wait till I’ve finished,” said his wife.
“Oh, mun I? An’ what if I shonna?”
This good-humoured threat amused Mrs. Morel.
“Then you can go and wash yourself in the soft-water tub.”x
“Ha! I can’ an’ a‘, tha mucky little ’ussy.”
With which he stood watching her a moment, then went away to wait for her.
When he chose he could still make himself again a real gallant. Usually he preferred to go out with a scarf round his neck. Now, however, he made a toilet. There seemed so much gusto in the way he puffed and swilled as he washed himself, so much alacrity with which he hurried to the mirror in the kitchen, and, bending because it was too low for him, scrupulously parted his wet black hair, that it irritated Mrs. Morel. He put on a turn-down collar, a black bow, and wore his Sunday tail-coat. As such, he looked spruce, and what his clothes would not do, his instinct for making the most of his good looks would.
At half-past nine Jerry Purdy came to call for his pal. Jerry was Morel’s bosom friend, and Mrs. Morel disliked him. He was a tall, thin man, with a rather foxy face, the kind of face that seems to lack eyelashes. He walked with a stiff, brittle dignity, as if his head were on a wooden spring. His nature was cold and shrewd. Generous where he intended to be generous, he seemed to be very fond of Morel, and more or less to take charge of him.
Mrs. Morel hated him. She had known his wife, who had died of consumption, and who had, at the end, conceived such a violent dislike of her husband, that if he came into her room it caused her hæmorrhage. None of which Jerry had seemed to mind. And now his eldest daughter, a girl of fifteen, kept a poor house for him, and looked after the two younger children.
“A mean, wizzen-hearted stick!” Mrs. Morel said of him.
“I’ve never known Jerry mean in my life,” protested Morel. “A opener-handed and more freer chap you couldn’t find anywhere, accordin’ to my knowledge.”
“Open-handed to you,” retorted Mrs. Morel. “But his fist is shut tight enough to his children, poor things.”
“Poor things! And what for are they poor things, I should like to know.”
But Mrs. Morel would not be appeased on Jerry’s score.
The subject of argument was seen, craning his thin neck over the scullery curtain. He caught Mrs. Morel’s eye.
“Mornin’, missis! Mester in?”
“Yes—he is.”
Jerry entered unasked, and stood by the kitchen doorway. He was not invited to sit down, but stood there, coolly asserting the rights of men and husbands.
“A nice day,” he said to Mrs. Morel.
“Yes.”
“Grand out this morning—grand for a walk.”
“Do you mean you’re going for a walk?” she asked.
“Yes. We mean walkin’ to Nottingham,” he replied.
“H’m!”
The two men greeted each other, both glad: Jerry, however, full of assurance, Morel rather subdued, afraid to seem too jubilant in presence of his wife. But he laced his boots quickly, with spirit. They were going for a ten-mile walk across the fields to Nottingham. Climbing the hillside from the Bottoms, they mounted gaily