Page 212 - sons-and-lovers

The man went to the telephone and rang up the bottom
office.
‘Walter Morel’s wanted, number 42, Hard. Summat’s
amiss; there’s his lad here.’
Then he turned round to Paul.
‘He’ll be up in a few minutes,’ he said.
Paul wandered out to the pit-top. He watched the chair
come up, with its wagon of coal. The great iron cage sank
back on its rest, a full carfle was hauled off, an empty tram
run on to the chair, a bell ting’ed somewhere, the chair
heaved, then dropped like a stone.
Paul did not realise William was dead; it was impossible,
with such a bustle going on. The puller-off swung the small
truck on to the turn-table, another man ran with it along
the bank down the curving lines.
‘And William is dead, and my mother’s in London, and
what will she be doing?’ the boy asked himself, as if it were
a conundrum.
He watched chair after chair come up, and still no father.
At last, standing beside a wagon, a man’s form! the chair
sank on its rests, Morel stepped off. He was slightly lame
from an accident.
‘Is it thee, Paul? Is ‘e worse?’
‘You’ve got to go to London.’
The two walked off the pit-bank, where men were watch-
ing curiously. As they came out and went along the railway,
with the sunny autumn field on one side and a wall of trucks
on the other, Morel said in a frightened voice:
‘E’s niver gone, child?’

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