Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/55

Rh was paddled with wet feet. But the air was warm, if foul, and full of the sound of voices and the smell of beer and smoke.

“What shollt ha’e, Walter?” cried a voice, as soon as Morel appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, Jim, my lad, wheriver has thee sprung frae?”

The men made a seat for him, and took him in warmly. He was glad. In a minute or two they had thawed all responsibility out of him, all shame, all trouble, and he was clear as a bell for a jolly night.

On the Wednesday following, Morel was penniless. He dreaded his wife. Having hurt her, he hated her. He did not know what to do with himself that evening, having not even twopence with which to go to the Palmerston, and being already rather deeply in debt. So, while his wife was down the garden with the child, he hunted in the top drawer of the dresser where she kept her purse, found it, and looked inside. It contained a half-crown, two halfpennies, and a sixpence. So he took the sixpence, put the purse carefully back, and went out.

The next day, when she wanted to pay the greengrocer, she looked in the purse for her sixpence, and her heart sank to her shoes. Then she sat down and thought: “Was there a sixpence? I hadn’t spent it, had I? And I hadn’t left it anywhere else?”

She was much put about. She hunted round everywhere for it. And, as she sought, the conviction came into her heart that her husband had taken it. What she had in her purse was all the money she possessed. But that he should sneak it from her thus was unbearable. He had done so twice before. The first time she had not accused him, and at the week-end he had put the shilling again into her purse. So that was how she had known he had taken it. The second time he had not paid back.

This time she felt it was too much. When he had had his dinner—he came home early that day—she said to him coldly:

“Did you take sixpence out of my purse last night?”

“Me!” he said, looking up in an offended way. “No, I didna! I niver clapped eyes on your purse.”

But she could detect the lie.

“Why, you know you did,” she said quietly.

“I tell you I didna,” he shouted. “Yer at me again, are yer? I’ve had about enough on’t.”