Title Page
D. H. Lawrence
H. H. Munro
Mary Shelley
Anthony Trollope
Zona Gale
Emma Orczy
Don Marquis
Charles W. Chesnutt
Kathleen Norris
Ellis Parker Butler
About the Publisher
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE was born in 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the fourth child of Arthur Lawrence and Lydia Beardsall.
After attending Beauvale Board School he won a scholarship to Nottingham High School. On leaving school in 1901 he was employed for a short time as a clerk at the Nottingham firm of Haywards, manufacturers of surgical appliances, and from 1902 as a pupil teacher at the British School in Eastwood.
He attended the Pupil-Teacher Centre in Ilkeston from 1904 and in 1906 took up a teacher-training scholarship at University College, Nottingham. After qualifying in 1908 he took up a teaching post at the Davidson School in Croydon, remaining there until 1912.
In early 1912, after a period of serious illness, Lawrence left his teaching post at Croydon to return to Nottinghamshire, shortly afterwards eloping to Germany with Frieda Weekley, the wife of Professor Ernest Weekley. They returned to England in 1914 prior to the outbreak of war and were married at Kensington Register Office on 14 July. Confined to England during the war years, the Lawrences spent much of this time at Tregerthen in Cornwall.
In 1919 they left England once more, embarking on a period of extensive travelling within Europe and then further afield to Ceylon, Australia, Mexico and New Mexico.
His health continued to deteriorate and Lawrence returned to Europe with Frieda in 1925. During his last years Lawrence spent much of his time in Italy making only brief visits to England, the last in 1926. He died on 2 March 1930 at Vence in the south of France.
Lawrence was a prolific writer - of poetry, novels, short stories, plays, essays, and criticism. His works are heavily autobiographical and the experiences of his early years in Nottinghamshire continued to exert a profound influence throughout his life.
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THERE WAS A WOMAN WHO was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had boney children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.
Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went into town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.
At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.
And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money!"
It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: "There must be more money!"
Yet nobody ever said it aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: "We are breathing!" in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.
"Mother," said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we keep a car of our own? Why do we always use uncle's, or else a taxi?"
"Because we're the poor members of the family," said the mother.
"But why are we, mother?"
"Well - I suppose," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's because your father has no luck."
The boy was silent for some time.
"Is luck money, mother?" he asked, rather timidly.
"No, Paul. Not quite. It's what causes you to have money."
"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle Oscar said filthy lucker, it meant money."
"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother. "But it's lucre, not luck."
"Oh!" said the boy. "Then what is luck, mother?"
"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."
"Oh! Will you? And is father not lucky?"
"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.
The boy watched her with unsure eyes.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know. Nobody ever knows why one person is lucky and another unlucky."
"Don't they? Nobody at all? Does nobody know?"
"Perhaps God. But He never tells."
"He ought to, then. And aren't you lucky either, mother?"
"I can't be, if I married an unlucky husband."
"But by yourself, aren't you?"
"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed."
"Why?"
"Well - never mind! Perhaps I'm not really," she said.
The child looked at her to see if she meant it. But he saw, by the lines of her mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him.
"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky person."
"Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh.
He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had said it.
"God told me," he asserted, brazening it out.
"I hope He did, dear!", she said, again with a laugh, but rather bitter.
"He did, mother!"
"Excellent!" said the mother, using one of her husband's exclamations.
The boy saw she did not believe him; or rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered him somewhere, and made him want to compel her attention.
He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way, seeking for the clue to 'luck'. Absorbed, taking no heed of other people, he went about with a sort of stealth, seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. When the two girls were playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily. Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them. The little girls dared not speak to him.
When he had ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy-bright.
"Now!" he would silently command the snorting steed. "Now take me to where there is luck! Now take me!"
And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for. He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he forced it. So he would mount again and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there.
"You'll break your horse, Paul!" said the nurse.
"He's always riding like that! I wish he'd leave off!" said his elder sister Joan.
But he only glared down on them in silence. Nurse gave him up. She could make nothing of him. Anyhow, he was growing beyond her.
One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in when he was on one of his furious rides. He did not speak to them.
"Hallo, you young jockey! Riding a winner?" said his uncle.
"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse? You're not a very little boy any longer, you know," said his mother.
But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes. He would speak to nobody when he was in full tilt. His mother watched him with an anxious expression on her face.
At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the mechanical gallop and slid down.
"Well, I got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.
"Where did you get to?" asked his mother.
"Where I wanted to go," he flared back at her.
"That's right, son!" said Uncle Oscar. "Don't you stop till you get there. What's the horse's name?"
"He doesn't have a name," said the boy.
"Get's on without all right?" asked the uncle.
"Well, he has different names. He was called Sansovino last week."
"Sansovino, eh? Won the Ascot. How did you know this name?"
"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett," said Joan.
The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew was posted with all the racing news. Bassett, the young gardener, who had been wounded in the left foot in the war and had got his present job through Oscar Cresswell, whose batman he had been, was a perfect blade of the 'turf'. He lived in the racing events, and the small boy lived with him.
Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.
"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more than tell him, sir," said Bassett, his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.
"And does he ever put anything on a horse he fancies?"
"Well - I don't want to give him away - he's a young sport, a fine sport, sir. Would you mind asking him himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't mind.
Bassett was serious as a church.
The uncle went back to his nephew and took him off for a ride in the car.
"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a horse?" the uncle asked.
The boy watched the handsome man closely.
"Why, do you think I oughtn't to?" he parried.
"Not a bit of it! I thought perhaps you might give me a tip for the Lincoln."
The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire.
"Honour bright?" said the nephew.
"Honour bright, son!" said the uncle.
"Well, then, Daffodil."
"Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?"
"I only know the winner," said the boy. "That's Daffodil."
"Daffodil, eh?"
There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively.
"Uncle!"
"Yes, son?"
"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised Bassett."
"Bassett be damned, old man! What's he got to do with it?"
"We're partners. We've been partners from the first. Uncle, he lent me my first five shillings, which I lost. I promised him, honour bright, it was only between me and him; only you gave me that ten-shilling note I started winning with, so I thought you were lucky. You won't let it go any further, will you?"
The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together. The uncle stirred and laughed uneasily.
"Right you are, son! I'll keep your tip private. How much are you putting on him?"
"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that in reserve."
The uncle thought it a good joke.
"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you young romancer? What are you betting, then?"
"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely. "But it's between you and me, Uncle Oscar! Honour bright?"
"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat Gould," he said, laughing. "But where's your three hundred?"
"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partner's."
"You are, are you! And what is Bassett putting on Daffodil?"
"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect. Perhaps he'll go a hundred and fifty."
"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.
"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his uncle. "Bassett keeps a bigger reserve than I do."
Between wonder and amusement Uncle Oscar was silent. He pursued the matter no further, but he determined to take his nephew with him to the Lincoln races.
"Now, son," he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza, and I'll put five on for you on any horse you fancy. What's your pick?"
"Daffodil, uncle."
"No, not the fiver on Daffodil!"
"I should if it was my own fiver," said the child.
"Good! Good! Right you are! A fiver for me and a fiver for you on Daffodil."
The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire. He pursed his mouth tight and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his money on Lancelot. Wild with excitement, he flayed his arms up and down, yelling "Lancelot!, Lancelot!" in his French accent.
Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third. The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene. His uncle brought him four five-pound notes, four to one.
"What am I to do with these?" he cried, waving them before the boys eyes.
"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy. "I expect I have fifteen hundred now; and twenty in reserve; and this twenty."
His uncle studied him for some moments.
"Look here, son!" he said. "You're not serious about Bassett and that fifteen hundred, are you?"
"Yes, I am. But it's between you and me, uncle. Honour bright?"
"Honour bright all right, son! But I must talk to Bassett."
"If you'd like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and me, we could all be partners. Only, you'd have to promise, honour bright, uncle, not to let it go beyond us three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be lucky, because it was your ten shillings I started winning with ..."
Uncle Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into Richmond Park for an afternoon, and there they talked.
"It's like this, you see, sir," Bassett said. "Master Paul would get me talking about racing events, spinning yarns, you know, sir. And he was always keen on knowing if I'd made or if I'd lost. It's about a year since, now, that I put five shillings on Blush of Dawn for him: and we lost. Then the luck turned, with that ten shillings he had from you: that we put on Singhalese. And since that time, it's been pretty steady, all things considering. What do you say, Master Paul?"
"We're all right when we're sure," said Paul. "It's when we're not quite sure that we go down."
"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.
"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.
"It's Master Paul, sir," said Bassett in a secret, religious voice. "It's as if he had it from heaven. Like Daffodil, now, for the Lincoln. That was as sure as eggs."
"Did you put anything on Daffodil?" asked Oscar Cresswell.
"Yes, sir, I made my bit."
"And my nephew?"
Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at Paul.
"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Bassett? I told uncle I was putting three hundred on Daffodil."
"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.
"But where's the money?" asked the uncle.
"I keep it safe locked up, sir. Master Paul he can have it any minute he likes to ask for it."
"What, fifteen hundred pounds?"
"And twenty! And forty, that is, with the twenty he made on the course."
"It's amazing!" said the uncle.
"If Master Paul offers you to be partners, sir, I would, if I were you: if you'll excuse me," said Bassett.
Oscar Cresswell thought about it.
"I'll see the money," he said.
They drove home again, and, sure enough, Bassett came round to the garden-house with fifteen hundred pounds in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left with Joe Glee, in the Turf Commission deposit.
"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm sure! Then we go strong, for all we're worth, don't we, Bassett?"
"We do that, Master Paul."
"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.
"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure, like about Daffodil," said the boy; "and sometimes I have an idea; and sometimes I haven't even an idea, have I, Bassett? Then we're careful, because we mostly go down."
"You do, do you! And when you're sure, like about Daffodil, what makes you sure, sonny?"
"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily. "I'm sure, you know, uncle; that's all."
"It's as if he had it from heaven, sir," Bassett reiterated.
"I should say so!" said the uncle.
But he became a partner. And when the Leger was coming on Paul was 'sure' about Lively Spark, which was a quite inconsiderable horse. The boy insisted on putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five hundred, and Oscar Cresswell two hundred. Lively Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against him. Paul had made ten thousand.
"You see," he said. "I was absolutely sure of him."
Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.
"Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes me nervous."
"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a long time."
"But what are you going to do with your money?" asked the uncle.
"Of course," said the boy, "I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."
"What might stop whispering?"
"Our house. I hate our house for whispering."
"What does it whisper?"
"Why - why" - the boy fidgeted - "why, I don't know. But it's always short of money, you know, uncle."
"I know it, son, I know it."
"You know people send mother writs, don't you, uncle?"
"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.
"And then the house whispers, like people laughing at you behind your back. It's awful, that is! I thought if I was lucky -"
"You might stop it," added the uncle.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.
"Well, then!" said the uncle. "What are we doing?"
"I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky," said the boy.
"Why not, son?"
"She'd stop me."
"I don't think she would."
"Oh!" - and the boy writhed in an odd way - "I don't want her to know, uncle."
"All right, son! We'll manage it without her knowing."
They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand pounds into his hands, which sum was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday, for the next five years.
"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five successive years," said Uncle Oscar. "I hope it won't make it all the harder for her later."
Paul's mother had her birthday in November. The house had been 'whispering' worse than ever lately, and, even in spite of his luck, Paul could not bear up against it. He was very anxious to see the effect of the birthday letter, telling his mother about the thousand pounds.
When there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals with his parents, as he was beyond the nursery control. His mother went into town nearly every day. She had discovered that she had an odd knack of sketching furs and dress materials, so she worked secretly in the studio of a friend who was the chief 'artist' for the leading drapers. She drew the figures of ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the newspaper advertisements. This young woman artist earned several thousand pounds a year, but Paul's mother only made several hundreds, and she was again dissatisfied. She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements.
She was down to breakfast on the morning of her birthday. Paul watched her face as she read her letters. He knew the lawyer's letter. As his mother read it, her face hardened and became more expressionless. Then a cold, determined look came on her mouth. She hid the letter under the pile of others, and said not a word about it.
"Didn't you have anything nice in the post for your birthday, mother?" said Paul.
"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice cold and hard and absent.
She went away to town without saying more.
But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared. He said Paul's mother had had a long interview with the lawyer, asking if the whole five thousand could not be advanced at once, as she was in debt.
"What do you think, uncle?" said the boy.
"I leave it to you, son."
"Oh, let her have it, then! We can get some more with the other," said the boy.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, laddie!" said Uncle Oscar.
"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National; or the Lincolnshire; or else the Derby. I'm sure to know for one of them," said Paul.
So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's mother touched the whole five thousand. Then something very curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly went mad, like a chorus of frogs on a spring evening. There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father's school, in the following autumn. There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almond-blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w - there must be more money! - more than ever! More than ever!"
It frightened Paul terribly. He studied away at his Latin and Greek with his tutor. But his intense hours were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had gone by: he had not 'known', and had lost a hundred pounds. Summer was at hand. He was in agony for the Lincoln. But even for the Lincoln he didn't 'know', and he lost fifty pounds. He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.
"Let it alone, son! Don't you bother about it!" urged Uncle Oscar. But it was as if the boy couldn't really hear what his uncle was saying.
"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.
His mother noticed how overwrought he was.
"You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think you'd better," she said, looking down at him anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.
But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.
"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby, mother!" he said. "I couldn't possibly!"
"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy when she was opposed. "Why not? You can still go from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if that that's what you wish. No need for you to wait here. Besides, I think you care too much about these races. It's a bad sign. My family has been a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage. I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you, unless you promise to be reasonable about it: go away to the seaside and forget it. You're all nerves!"
"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as you don't send me away till after the Derby," the boy said.
"Send you away from where? Just from this house?"
"Yes," he said, gazing at her.
"Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you loved it."
He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.
But his mother, after standing undecided and a little bit sullen for some moments, said: "Very well, then! Don't go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you don't wish it. But promise me you won't think so much about horse-racing and events as you call them!"
"Oh no," said the boy casually. "I won't think much about them, mother. You needn't worry. I wouldn't worry, mother, if I were you."
"If you were me and I were you," said his mother, "I wonder what we should do!"
"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't you?" the boy repeated.
"I should be awfully glad to know it," she said wearily.
"Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean, you ought to know you needn't worry," he insisted.
"Ought I? Then I'll see about it," she said.
Paul's secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name. Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery-governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.
"Surely you're too big for a rocking-horse!" his mother had remonstrated.
"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about," had been his quaint answer.
"Do you feel he keeps you company?" she laughed.
"Oh yes! He's very good, he always keeps me company, when I'm there," said Paul.
So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy's bedroom.
The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.
Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in common sense. But it was too strong. She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. The children's nursery-governess was terribly surprised and startled at being rung up in the night.
"Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?"
"Oh yes, they are quite all right."
"Master Paul? Is he all right?"
"He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and look at him?"
"No," said Paul's mother reluctantly. "No! Don't trouble. It's all right. Don't sit up. We shall be home fairly soon." She did not want her son's privacy intruded upon.
"Very good," said the governess.
It was about one o'clock when Paul's mother and father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul's mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak. She had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a whisky and soda.
And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her son's room. Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise? What was it?
She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God's name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it was.
Yet she could not place it. She couldn't say what it was. And on and on it went, like a madness.
Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.
The room was dark. Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.
Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging on the rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.
"Paul!" she cried. "Whatever are you doing?"
"It's Malabar!" he screamed in a powerful, strange voice. "It's Malabar!"
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.
But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever. He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.
"Malabar! It's Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know! It's Malabar!"
So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" asked the heart-frozen mother.
"I don't know," said the father stonily.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked her brother Oscar.
"It's one of the horses running for the Derby," was the answer.
And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at fourteen to one.
The third day of the illness was critical: they were waiting for a change. The boy, with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.
In the evening Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, just one moment? Paul's mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thoughts she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.
The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul's mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes at the tossing, dying child.
"Master Paul!" he whispered. "Master Paul! Malabar came in first all right, a clean win. I did as you told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you have; you've got over eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right, Master Paul."
"Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you think I'm lucky, mother? I knew Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that lucky, don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you can go as high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth, Bassett?"
"I went a thousand on it, Master Paul."
"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"
"No, you never did," said his mother.
But the boy died in the night.
And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her, "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner."
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THERE IS IN THE NORTH a single-line system of tramcars which boldly leaves the county town and plunges off into the black, industrial countryside, up hill and down dale, through the long, ugly villages of workmen's houses, over canals and railways, past churches perched high and nobly over the smoke and shadows, through dark, grimy, cold little market-places, tilting away in a rush past cinemas and shops down to the hollow where the collieries are, then up again, past a little rural church under the ash-trees, on in a bolt to the terminus, the last little ugly place of industry, the cold little town that shivers on the edge of the wild, gloomy country beyond. There the blue and creamy coloured tramcar seems to pause and purr with curious satisfaction. But in a few minutes—the clock on the turret of the Co-operative Wholesale Society's shops gives the time—away it starts once more on the adventure. Again there are the reckless swoops downhill, bouncing the loops; again the chilly wait in the hill-top market-place: again the breathless slithering round the precipitous drop under the church: again the patient halts at the loops, waiting for the outcoming car: so on and on, for two long hours, till at last the city looms beyond, the fat gasworks, the narrow factories draw near, we are in the sordid streets of the great town, once more we sidle to a standstill at our terminus, abashed by the great crimson and cream-coloured city cars, but still jerky, jaunty, somewhat daredevil, pert as a blue-tit out of a black colliery garden.
To ride on these cars is always an adventure. The drivers are often men unfit for active service: cripples and hunchbacks. So they have the spirit of the devil in them. The ride becomes a steeplechase. Hurrah! we have leapt in a clean jump over the canal bridges—now for the four-lane corner! With a shriek and a trail of sparks we are clear again. To be sure a tram often leaps the rails—but what matter! It sits in a ditch till other trams come to haul it out. It is quite common for a car, packed with one solid mass of living people, to come to a dead halt in the midst of unbroken blackness, the heart of nowhere on a dark night, and for the driver and the girl-conductor to call: 'All get off—car's on fire.' Instead of rushing out in a panic, the passengers stolidly reply: 'Get on—get on. We're not coming out. We're stopping where we are. Push on, George.' So till flames actually appear.
The reason for this reluctance to dismount is that the nights are howlingly cold, black and windswept, and a car is a haven of refuge. From village to village the miners travel, for a change of cinema, of girl, of pub. The trams are desperately packed. Who is going to risk himself in the black gulf outside, to wait perhaps an hour for another tram, then to see the forlorn notice 'Depot Only'—because there is something wrong; or to greet a unit of three bright cars all so tight with people that they sail past with a howl of derision? Trams that pass in the night!
This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities themselves declare, with pride, is entirely conducted by girls, and driven by rash young men, or else by invalids who creep forward in terror. The girls are fearless young hussies. In their ugly blue uniforms, skirts up to their knees, shapeless old peaked caps on their heads, they have all the sang-froid of an old non-commissioned officer. With a tram packed with howling colliers, roaring hymns downstairs and a sort of antiphony of obscenities upstairs, the lasses are perfectly at their ease. They pounce on the youths who try to evade their ticket-machine. They push off the men at the end of their distance. They are not going to be done in the eye—not they. They fear nobody—and everybody fears them.
'Halloa, Annie!'
'Halloa, Ted!' 'Oh, mind my corn, Miss Stone! It's my belief you've got a heart of stone, for you've trod on it again.'
'You should keep it in your pocket,' replies Miss Stone, and she goes sturdily upstairs in her high boots.
'Tickets, please.'
She is peremptory, suspicious, and ready to hit first. She can hold her own against ten thousand.
Therefore there is a certain wild romance aboard these cars—and in the sturdy bosom of Annie herself. The romantic time is in the morning, between ten o'clock and one, when things are rather slack: that is, except market-day and Saturday. Then Annie has time to look about her. Then she often hops off her car and into a shop where she has spied something, while her driver chats in the main road. There is very good feeling between the girls and the drivers. Are they not companions in peril, shipmates aboard this careering vessel of a tramcar, for ever rocking on the waves of a hilly land?
Then, also, in the easy hours the inspectors are most in evidence. For some reason, everybody employed in this tram-service is young: there are no grey heads. It would not do. Therefore the inspectors are of the right age, and one, the chief, is also good-looking. See him stand on a wet, gloomy morning in his long oilskin, his peaked cap well down over his eyes, waiting to board a car. His face is ruddy, his small brown moustache is weathered, he has a faint, impudent smile. Fairly tall and agile, even in his waterproof, he springs aboard a car and greets Annie.
'Halloa, Annie! Keeping the wet out?'
'Trying to.'
There are only two people in the car. Inspecting is soon over. Then for a long and impudent chat on the footboard—a good, easy, twelve-mile chat.
The inspector's name is John Joseph Raynor: always called John Joseph. His face sets in fury when he is addressed, from a distance, with this abbreviation. There is considerable scandal about John Joseph in half-a-dozen villages. He flirts with the girl-conductors in the morning, and walks out with them in the dark night when they leave their tramcar at the depot. Of course, the girls quit the service frequently. Then he flirts and walks out with a newcomer: always providing she is sufficiently attractive, and that she will consent to walk. It is remarkable, however, that most of the girls are quite comely, they are all young, and this roving life aboard the car gives them a sailor's dash and recklessness. What matter how they behave when the ship is in port? Tomorrow they will be aboard again.
Annie, however, was something of a tartar, and her sharp tongue had kept John Joseph at arm's length for many months. Perhaps, therefore, she liked him all the more; for he always came up smiling, with impudence. She watched him vanquish one girl, then another. She could tell by the movement of his mouth and eyes, when he flirted with her in the morning, that he had been walking out with this lass, or the other the night before. She could sum him up pretty well.
In their subtle antagonism, they knew each other like old friends; they were as shrewd with one another almost as man and wife. But Annie had always kept him fully at arm's length. Besides, she had a boy of her own.
The Statutes fair, however, came in November, at Middleton. It happened that Annie had the Monday night off. It was a drizzling, ugly night, yet she dressed herself up and went to the fairground. She was alone, but she expected soon to find a pal of some sort.
The roundabouts were veering round and grinding out their music, the side-shows were making as much commotion as possible. In the coconut shies there were no coconuts, but artificial substitutes, which the lads declared were fastened into the irons. There was a sad decline in brilliance and luxury. None the less, the ground was muddy as ever, there was the same crush, the press of faces lighted up by the flares and the electric lights, the same smell of naphtha and fried potatoes and electricity.
Who should be the first to greet Miss Annie, on the show-ground, but John Joseph! He had a black overcoat buttoned up to his chin, and a tweed cap pulled down over his brows, his face between was ruddy and smiling and hardy as ever. She knew so well the way his mouth moved.
She was very glad to have a 'boy'. To be at the Statutes without a fellow was no fun. Instantly, like the gallant he was, he took her on the dragons, grim-toothed, round-about switchbacks. It was not nearly so exciting as a tramcar, actually. But then, to be seated in a shaking green dragon, uplifted above the sea of bubble faces, careering in a rickety fashion in the lower heavens, whilst John Joseph leaned over her, his cigarette in his mouth, was, after all, the right style. She was a plump, quick, alive little creature. So she was quite excited and happy.
John Joseph made her stay on for the next round. And therefore she could hardly for shame to repulse him when he put his arm round her and drew her a little nearer to him, in a very warm and cuddly manner. Besides, he was fairly discreet, he kept his movement as hidden as possible. She looked down, and saw that his red, clean hand was out of sight of the crowd. And they knew each other so well. So they warmed up to the fair.
After the dragons they went on the horses. John Joseph paid each time, she could but be complaisant. He, of course, sat astride on the outer horse—named 'Black Bess'—and she sat sideways towards him, on the inner horse—named 'Wildfire'. But, of course, John Joseph was not going to sit discreetly on 'Black Bess', holding the brass bar. Round they spun and heaved, in the light. And round he swung on his wooden steed, flinging one leg across her mount, and perilously tipping up and down, across the space, half-lying back, laughing at her. He was perfectly happy; she was afraid her hat was on one side, but she was excited.
He threw quoits on a table, and won her two large, pale-blue hatpins. And then, hearing the noise of the cinema, announcing another performance, they climbed the boards and went in.
Of course, during these performances, pitch darkness falls from time to time, when the machine goes wrong. Then there is a wild whooping, and a loud smacking of simulated kisses. In these moments John Joseph drew Annie towards him. After all, he had a wonderfully warm, cosy way of holding a girl with his arm, he seemed to make such a nice fit. And, after all, it was pleasant to be so held; so very comforting and cosy and nice. He leaned over her and she felt his breath on her hair. She knew he wanted to kiss her on the lips. And, after all, he was so warm and she fitted in to him so softly. After all, she wanted him to touch her lips.
But the light sprang up, she also started electrically, and put her hat straight. He left his arm lying nonchalant behind her. Well, it was fun, it was exciting to be at the Statutes with John Joseph.
When the cinema was over they went for a walk across the dark, damp fields. He had all the arts of love-making. He was especially good at holding a girl, when he sat with her on a stile in the black, drizzling darkness. He seemed to be holding her in space, against his own warmth and gratification. And his kisses were soft and slow and searching.
So Annie walked out with John Joseph, though she kept her own boy dangling in the distance. Some of the tram-girls chose to be huffy. But there, you must take things as you find them, in this life.
There was no mistake about it, Annie liked John Joseph a good deal. She felt so pleasant and warm in herself, whenever he was near. And John Joseph really liked Annie, more than usual. The soft, melting way in which she could flow into a fellow, as if she melted into his very bones, was something rare and gratifying. He fully appreciated this.
But with a developing acquaintance there began a developing intimacy. Annie wanted to consider him a person, a man; she wanted to take an intelligent interest in him, and to have an intelligent response. She did not want a mere nocturnal presence— which was what he was so far. And she prided herself that he could not leave her.
Here she made a mistake. John Joseph intended to remain a nocturnal presence, he had no idea of becoming an all-round individual to her. When she started to take an intelligent interest in him and his life and his character, he sheered off. He hated intelligent interest. And he knew that the only way to stop it was to avoid it. The possessive female was aroused in Annie. So he left her.
It was no use saying she was not surprised. She was at first startled, thrown out of her count. For she had been so very sure of holding him. For a while she was staggered, and everything became uncertain to her. Then she wept with fury, indignation, desolation, and misery. Then she had a spasm of despair. And then, when he came, still impudently, on to her car, still familiar, but letting her see by the movement of his eyes that he had gone away to somebody else, for the time being, and was enjoying pastures new, then she determined to have her own back.
She had a very shrewd idea what girls John Joseph had taken out. She went to Nora Purdy. Nora was a tall, rather pale, but well-built girl, with beautiful yellow hair. She was somewhat secretive.
'Hey!' said Annie, accosting her; then, softly: 'Who's John Joseph on with now?'
'I don't know,' said Nora.
'Why tha does,' said Annie, ironically lapsing into dialect. 'Tha knows as well as I do.'
'Well, I do, then,' said Nora. 'It isn't me, so don't bother.'
'It's Cissy Meakin, isn't it?'
'It is for all I know.'
'Hasn't he got a face on him!' said Annie. 'I don't half like his cheek! I could knock him off the footboard when he comes round me!'
'He'll get dropped on one of these days,' said Nora.
'Ay, he will when somebody makes up their mind to drop it on him. I should like to see him taken down a peg or two, shouldn't you?'
'I shouldn't mind,' said Nora.
'You've got quite as much cause to as I have,' said Annie. 'But we'll drop on him one of these days, my girl. What! don't you want to?'
'I don't mind,' said Nora.
But as a matter of fact Nora was much more vindictive than Annie.
One by one Annie went the round of the old flames. It so happened that Cissy Meakin left the tramway service in quite a short time. Her mother made her leave. Then John Joseph was on the qui vive. He cast his eyes over his old flock. And his eyes lighted on Annie. He thought she would be safe now. Besides, he liked her.
She arranged to walk home with him on Sunday night. It so happened that her car would be in the depot at half-past nine: the last car would come in at ten-fifteen. So John Joseph was to wait for her there.
At the depot the girls had a little waiting-room of their own. It was quite rough, but cosy, with a fire and an oven and a mirror and table and wooden chairs. The half-dozen girls who knew John Joseph only too well had arranged to take service this Sunday afternoon. So as the cars began to come in early, the girls dropped into the waiting-room. And instead of hurrying off home they sat round the fire and had a cup of tea.
John Joseph came on the car after Annie, at about a quarter to ten. He poked his head easily into the girls' waiting-room.
'Prayer meeting?' he asked.
'Ay,' said Laura Sharp. 'Ladies' effort.'
'That's me!' said John Joseph. It was one of his favourite exclamations.
'Shut the door, boy,' said Muriel Baggaley.
'On which side of me?' said John Joseph.
'Which tha likes,' said Polly Birken.
He had come in and closed the door behind him. The girls moved in their circle to make a place for him near the fire. He took off his greatcoat and pushed back his hat.
'Who handles the teapot?' he said.
Nora silently poured him out a cup of tea.
'Want a bit o' my bread and dripping?' said Muriel Baggaley to him.
'Ay, all's welcome.'
And he began to eat his piece of bread.
'There's no place like home, girls,' he said.
They all looked at him as he uttered this piece of impudence. He seemed to be sunning himself in the presence of so many damsels.
'Especially if you're not afraid to go home in the dark,' said Laura Sharp.
'Me? By myself I am!'
They sat till they heard the last tram come in. In a few minutes Emma Housely entered.
'Come on, my old duck!' cried Polly Birkin.
'It is perishing,' said Emma, holding her fingers to the fire.
'"But I'm afraid to go home in the dark,"' sang Laura Sharp, the tune having got into her mind.
'Who're you going with tonight, Mr Raynor?' asked Muriel Baggaley, coolly.
'Tonight?' said John Joseph. 'Oh, I'm going home by myself tonight—all on my lonely-o.'
'That's me!' said Nora Purdy, using his own ejaculation. The girls laughed shrilly.
'Me as well, Nora,' said John Joseph.
'Don't know what you mean,' said Laura.
'Yes, I'm toddling,' said he, rising and reaching for his coat.
'Nay,' said Polly. 'We're all here waiting for you.'
'We've got to be up in good time in the morning,' he said, in the benevolent official manner. They all laughed.
'Nay,' said Muriel. 'Don't disappoint us all.' 'I'll take the lot, if you like,' he responded, gallantly.
'That you won't, either,' said Muriel. 'Two's company; seven's too much of a good thing.'
'Nay, take one,' said Laura. 'Fair and square, all above board, say which one.'
'Ay!' cried Annie, speaking for the first time. 'Choose, John Joseph—let's hear thee.'
'Nay,' he said. 'I'm going home quiet tonight.' He frowned at the use of his double name.
'Who says?' said Annie. 'Tha's got to ta'e one.'
'Nay, how can I take one?' he said, laughing uneasily. 'I don't want to make enemies.'
'You'd only make one,' said Annie, grimly.
'The chosen one,' said Laura. A laugh went up.
'Oh, ay! Who said girls!' exclaimed John Joseph, again turning as if to escape. 'Well, good-night!'
'Nay, you've got to take one,' said Muriel. 'Turn your face to the wall, and say which one touches you. Go on—we shall only just touch your back—one of us. Go on—turn your face to the wall, and don't look, and say which one touches you.'
They pushed him to a wall and stood him there with his face to it. Behind his back they all grimaced, tittering. He looked so comical.
'Go on!' he cried.
'You're looking—you're looking!' they shouted.
He turned his head away. And suddenly, with a movement like a swift cat, Annie went forward and fetched him a box on the side of the head that sent his cap flying. He started round.