Chapter 6

She watched him walk off down the Street, stopping to light his pipe where the oast of Egypt Farm made a lee against the racing wind. Then she walked slowly and heavily back to the house, planning a little consolation for herself in listening to Nell’s tale of wonders.

But when she came to the kitchen she found that Nell had gone upstairs—to wash, Mus’ Beatup told her. Moved by a spasm of tenderness, she took the kettle from the fire and creaked off with it to her daughter’s room.

Knocking at bedroom doors was a refinement unknown at Worge. Mrs. Beatup accordingly burst in, to find Nell sitting on the bed, with her face hidden in her hands. [259] She had taken off her gown, and sat arrayed in a short silk petticoat and an under-bodice of a transparency that made her mother gasp; over her shoulders was nothing but two pale-blue ribbons, against which her arms showed yellowish-white and plumper than they used to be. So astonished was Mrs. Beatup at this display that she scarcely noticed the hidden face.

“Nell, how fine! But you’ll catch your death—I wonder your husband let you....” Her voice trailed off, for Nell had dropped her hands, and her face was running with tears.

“My poor liddle girl!”—the mother’s heart went out in pity. She put the kettle on the floor, and going over to the bed, sat down on it with a great creaking of springs, and put her arms round her daughter—at first rather gingerly, for fear of spoiling so much elegance, then straining them closer, as Nell, melted into an abandonment of weakness, began to sob against her breast.

“My poor liddle girl!... It’s unaccountable sad fur you. I know.... I know.... But doan’t you vrother, chick—he’ll come back. I’ve a feeling as he’ll come back.”

A long shudder passed through Nell. Then suddenly she raised herself, gripping her mother’s arms, while her eyes blazed through her tears. “Oh, mother, mother ... don’t you see? ... it’s not that I’m afraid he won’t come back ... it’s that I’m afraid he will.”

She threw herself down upon the pillow, sobbing with the accumulated misery, humiliation, rage and dread of weeks. Mrs. Beatup stared at her, dumbfounded.

“Nell—wot are you talking of? You doan’t want Steve to come back?”

[260]

“No—I hate him. I—I ... if he comes back ... and takes me away to be my husband for good, I—I’ll kill myself.”

“Reckon you doan’t know what you’re saying. You loved him unaccountable when you wur wed.”

“I didn’t love him ... not truly. And he’s killed the little love I had.”

“But all the fine things he’s guv you....”

“Doan’t talk about them. They’re just part of the horribleness.”

“Then you’re telling me as you maade a mistake?”

“Reckon I did. Reckon my only chance now is that he won’t come back.”

She began to sob again, not tempestuously, but slowly and painfully, gradually jerking to silence. A soft green twilight deepened in the room, and the low gurgling calls of starlings trilled under the eaves. The mother still sat on the bed-foot, staring at her daughter, who now lay still, a pool of blue in the dusk with her silk petticoat, her shoulders showing nacreous against the dead-white of the pillow. Mrs. Beatup was stunned, her mind slowly adjusting itself to the revelation that there was in war another tragedy besides the tragedy of those who do not come back—and that is the tragedy of some who do.