Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics - D. H. Lawrence [91]
When he was nineteen, he was earning only twenty shillings a week, but he was happy. His painting went well, and life went well enough. On the Good Friday he organised a walk to the Hemlock Stone.14 There were three lads of his own age, then Annie and Arthur, Miriam and Geoffrey. Arthur, apprenticed as an electrician in Nottingham, was home for the holiday. Morel, as usual, was up early, whistling and sawing in the yard. At seven o’clock the family heard him buy threepennyworth of hot-cross buns; he talked with gusto to the little girl who brought them, calling her “my darling.” He turned away several boys who came with more buns, telling them they had been “kested”dc by a little lass. Then Mrs. Morel got up, and the family straggled down. It was an immense luxury to everybody, this lying in bed just beyond the ordinary time on a weekday. And Paul and Arthur read before breakfast, and had the meal unwashed, sitting in their shirt-sleeves. This was another holiday luxury. The room was warm. Everything felt free of care and anxiety. There was a sense of plenty in the house.
While the boys were reading, Mrs. Morel went into the garden. They were now in another house, an old one, near the Scargill Street home, which had been left soon after William had died. Directly came an excited cry from the garden:
“Paul! Paul! come and look!”
It was his mother’s voice. He threw down his book and went out. There was a long garden that ran to a field. It was a grey, cold day, with a sharp wind blowing out of Derbyshire. Two fields away Bestwood began, with a jumble of roofs and red house-ends, out of which rose the church tower and the spire of the Congregational Chapel. And beyond went woods and hills, right away to the pale grey heights of the Pennine Chain.
Paul looked down the garden for his mother. Her head appeared among the young currant-bushes.
“Come here!” she cried.
“What for?” he answered.
“Come and see.”
She had been looking at the buds on the currant trees. Paul went up.
“To think,” she said, “that here I might never have seen them!”
Her son went to her side. Under the fence, in a little bed, was a ravel of poor grassy leaves, such as come from very immature bulbs, and three scyllas in bloom. Mrs. Morel pointed to the deep blue flowers.
“Now, just see those!” she exclaimed. “I was looking at the currant bushes, when, thinks I to myself, ‘There’s something very blue; is it a bit of sugar-bag?’ and there, behold you! Sugar-bag! Three glories of the snow, and such beauties! But where on earth did they come from?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul.
“Well, that’s a marvel, now! I thought I knew every weed and blade in this garden. But baven’t they done well? You see, that gooseberry-bush just shelters them. Not nipped, not touched!”
He crouched down and turned up the bells of the little blue flowers.
“They’re a glorious colour!” he said.
“Aren’t they!” she cried. “I guess they come from Switzerland, where they say they have such lovely things. Fancy them against the snow! But where have they come from? They can’t have blown here, can they?”
Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash of bulbs to mature.
“And you never told me,” she said.
“No! I thought I’d leave it till they might flower.”
“And now, you see! I might have missed them. And I’ve never had a glory of the snow in my garden in my life.”
She was full of excitement and elation. The garden was an endless joy to her. Paul was thankful for her sake at last to be in a house with a long garden that went down to a field. Every morning after breakfast she went out and was happy pottering about in it. And it was true, she knew every weed and blade.
Everybody turned up for the walk. Food was packed, and they set off, a merry, delighted party. They hung over the wall of the mill-race, dropped paper in the water on one side of the tunnel and watched it shoot out on the other. They stood on the footbridge over Boathouse Station and looked at the metals gleaming coldly.
“You should see the Flying Scotsman come through at half-past six!” said Leonard, whose father was a signalman.