to make him moral, religious. She tried to force him to face
things. He could not endure it--it drove him out of his mind.
While the baby was still tiny, the father's temper had become so
irritable that it was not to be trusted. The child had only to give a
little trouble when the man began to bully. A little more, and the hard
hands of the collier hit the baby. Then Mrs. Morel loathed her husband,
loathed him for days; and he went out and drank; and she cared very
little what he did. Only, on his return, she scathed him with her
satire.
The estrangement between them caused him, knowingly or unknowingly,
grossly to offend her where he would not have done.
William was only one year old, and his mother was proud of him, he was
so pretty. She was not well off now, but her sisters kept the boy in
clothes. Then, with his little white hat curled with an ostrich feather,
and his white coat, he was a joy to her, the twining wisps of hair
clustering round his head. Mrs. Morel lay listening, one Sunday morning,
to the chatter of the father and child downstairs. Then she dozed off.
When she came downstairs, a great fire glowed in the grate, the room was
hot, the breakfast was roughly laid, and seated in his armchair, against
the chimney-piece, sat Morel, rather timid; and standing between
his legs, the child--cropped like a sheep, with such an odd round
poll--looking wondering at her; and on a newspaper spread out upon
the hearthrug, a myriad of crescent-shaped curls, like the petals of a
marigold scattered in the reddening firelight.
Mrs. Morel stood still. It was her first baby. She went very white, and
was unable to speak.
"What dost think o' 'im?" Morel laughed uneasily.
She gripped her two fists, lifted them, and came forward. Morel shrank
back.
"I could kill you, I could!" she said. She choked with rage, her two
fists uplifted.
"Yer non want ter make a wench on 'im," Morel said, in a frightened
tone, bending his head to shield his eyes from hers. His attempt at
laughter had vanished.
The mother looked down at the jagged, close-clipped head of her child.
She put her hands on his hair, and stroked and fondled his head.
"Oh--my boy!" she faltered. Her lip trembled, her face broke, and,
snatching up the child, she buried her face in his shoulder and cried
painfully. She was one of those women who cannot cry; whom it hurts as
it hurts a man. It was like ripping something out of her, her sobbing.
Morel sa
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