Odour Of Chrysanthemums
D. H. Lawrence
The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston - with ven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gor, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past, one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly trapped between the jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they curved away towards the coppice where the withered oak leaves dropped noilessly, while the birds, pulling at the scarlet hips beside the track, made off into the dusk that had already crept into the spinney. In the open, the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough grass. The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip that led to the whimy, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned their run among the alders, to roost in the tarred fowl-hou. The pit-ban天气预报的英文
k loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon's stagnant light. Just beyond ro the tapering chimneys and the clumsy black head-stocks of Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning fast up against the sky, and the winding-engine rapped out its lit
tle spasms. The miners were being turned up.
The engine whistled as it came into the wide bay of railway lines beside the colliery, where rows of trucks stood in harbour.
Miners, single, trailing and in groups, 清肺抑火片说明书
pasd like shadows diverging home. At the edge of the ribbed level of sidings squat a low cottage, three steps down from the cinder track. A large bony vine clutched at the hou, as if to claw down the tiled roof. Round the bricked yard grew a few wintry primros. Beyond, the long garden sloped down to a bush-covered brook cour. There were some twiggy apple trees, winter-crack trees, and ragged cabbages. Beside the path hung dishevelled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. A woman came stooping out of the felt- covered fowl-hou, half-way down the garden. She clod and padlocked the door, then drew herlf erect, having brushed some bits from her white apron.
She was a till woman of imperious mien, handsome, with definite black eyebrows. Her smooth black hair was parted exactly. For a few moments she stood steadily watching the miners as they pasd along the railway: then she turned towards the brook cour. Her face was calm and t, her mouth was clod with disillusionment. After a moment she called:
"John!" There was no answer. She waited, and then said distinctly:
"Where are you?"
"Here!" replied a child's sulky voice from among the bushes. The woman looked piercingly through the dusk.
"Are you at that brook?" she asked sternly.
For answer the chil
d showed himlf before the raspberry-canes that ro like whips. He was a small, sturdy boy of five. He stood quite still, defiantly.
"Oh!" said the mother, conciliated. "I thought you were down at that wet brook - and you remember what I told you - "
The boy did not move or answer.
"Come, come on in," she said more gently, "it's getting dark. There's your grandfather's engine coming down the line!"
The lad advanced slowly, with rentful, taciturn movement. He was dresd in trours and waistcoat of cloth that was too thick and hard for the size of the garments. They were evidently cut down from a man's clothes.
As they went slowly towards the hou he tore at the ragged wisps of chrysanthemums and dropped the petals in handfuls along the path.
"Don't do that - it does look nasty," said his mother. He refrained, and she, suddenly pitiful, broke off a twig with three or four wan flowers and held them against her face. When mother and son reached the yard her hand hesitated, and instead of laying the flower aside, she pushed it in her apron-band. The mother and son stood at the foot of the three steps looking across the bay of lines at the passing home of the miners. The trundle of the small train was imminent. Suddenly the engine loomed past the hou and came to a stop opposite the gate.
The engine-driver, a short man with round grey beard, leaned out of the cab high above the woman.
"Have you got a cup of tea?" he said in a cheery, hearty fashion.
It was her father. She went in, saying she would mash. Directly, she returned.
"I didn't come to e you on Sunday," began the little grey-bearded man.
"I didn't expect you," said his daughter.
The engine-driver winced; then, reassuming his cheery, airy manner, he said:
"Oh, have you heard then? Well, and what do you think - ?"
"I think it is soon enough," she replied.
At her brief censure the little man made an impatient gesture, and said coaxingly, yet with dangerous coldness:
"Well, what's a man to do? It's no sort of life for a man of my years, to sit at my own hearth like a stranger. And if I'm going to marry again it may as well be soon as late - what does it matter to anybody?"
The woman did not reply, but turned and went into the hopbl教学法
u. The man in the engine-cab stood asrtive, till she returned with a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter on a plate. She went up the steps and stood near the footplate of the hissing engine.
"You needn't 'a' brought me bread an' butter," said her father. "But a cup of tea" - he sipped appreciatively - "it's very nice." He sipped for a moment or two, then: "I hear as Walter's got another bout on," he said.
"When hasn't he?" said the woman bitterly.
"I heered tell of him in the 'Lord Nelson' braggin' as he was going to spend that b - - afore he went: half a sovereign that was."
"When?" asked the woman.
"A' Sat'day night - I know that's true."
"Very likely," she laughed bitterly. "He give
s me twenty-three shillings."
"Aye, it's a nice thing, when a man can do nothing with his money but make a beast of himlf!" said the grey-whiskered man. The woman turned her head away. Her father swallowed the last of his tea and handed her the cup.
"Aye," he sighed, wiping his mouth. "It's a ttler, it is - "
He put his hand on the lever. The little engine strained and groaned, and the train rumbled towards the crossing. The woman again looked across the metals. Darkness was ttling over the spaces of the railway and trucks: the miners, in grey sombre groups, were still passing home. The winding-engine puld hurriedly, with brief paus. Elizabeth Bates looked at the dreary flow of men, then she went indoors. Her husband did not come.
The kitchen was small and full of firelight; red coals piled glowing up the chimney mouth. All the life of the room emed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire. The cloth was laid for tea; cups glinted in the shadows. At the back, where the lowest stairs protruded into the room, the boy sat struggling with a knife and a piece of whitewood. He was almost hidden in the shadow. It was half-past four. They had but to await the father's coming to begin tea. As the mother w酬
atched her son's sullen little struggle with the wood, she saw herlf in his silence and pertinacity; she saw the father in her child's indifference to all but himlf. She emed to be occupied by her husband. He had probably gone past his home, slunk past his own door, to drink before he came in, while his dinner spoiled and wasted in waiting. She glanced at the clock, then took the potatoes to strain them in the yard. The garden and fields beyond the brook were clod in uncertain darkness.
When she ro with the saucepan, leaving the drain steaming into the night behind her, she saw the yellow lamps were lit along the high road that went up the hill away beyond the space of the railway lines and the field.
Then again she watched the men trooping home, fewer now and fewer.
Indoors the fire was sinking and the room was dark red. The woman put her saucepan on the hob, and t a batter pudding near the mouth of the oven. Then she stood unmoving. Directly, gratefully, came quick young steps to the door. Someone hung on the latch a moment, then a little girl entered and began pulling off her outdoor things, dragging a mass of curls, just ripening from gold to brown, over her eyes with her hat.
Her mother chid her for coming late from school, and said she would have to keep her at home the dark winter days.
"Why, mother, it's hardly a bit dark yet. The lamp's not lighted, and my father's not home."
"No, he isn't. But it's a quarter to five! Did you e anything of him?"
The child became rious. She looked at her mother with large, wistful blue eyes.
"No, mother, I've never en him. Why? Has he come up an' gone past, to Old Brinsley? He hasn't, mother, 'cos I never saw him."
"He'
d watch that," said the mother bitterly, "he'd take care as you didn't e him. But you may depend upon it, he's ated in the 卡罗拉英文
'Prince o' Wales'. He wouldn't be this late."
The girl looked at her mother piteously.
"Let's have our teas, mother, should we?" said she.
The mother called John to table. She opened the door once more and looked out across the darkness of the lines. All was derted: she could not hear the winding-engines.
"Perhaps," she said to herlf, "he's stopped to get some ripping done."
They sat down to tea. John, at the end of the table near the door, was almost lost in the darkness. Their faces were hidden from each other. The girl crouched against the fender slowly moving a thick piece of bread before the fire. The lad, his face a dusky mark on the shadow, sat watching her who was transfigured in the red glow.
"I do think it's beautiful to look in the fire," said the child.
"Do you?" said her mother. "Why?"
"It's so red, and full of little caves - and it feels so nice, and you can fair smell it."
"It'll want mending directly," replied her mother, "and then if your father comes he'll carry on and say there never is a fire when a man comes home sweating from the pit. - A public-ho遇见英文怎么写
u is always warm enough."
There was silence till the boy said complainingly: "Make haste, our Annie."
"Well, I am doing! I can't make the fire do it no faster, can I?"
"She keeps wafflin' it about so's to make 'er slow," grumbled the boy.
"Don't have such an evil imagination, child," replied the mother.
Soon the room was busy in the darkness with the crisp sound of crunching. The mother ate very little. She drank her tea determinedly, and sat thinking. When she ro her anger was evident in the stern unbending of her head. She looked at the pudding in the fender, and broke out:
"It is a scandalous thing as a man can't even come home to his dinner! If it's crozzled up to a cinder I don't e why I should care. Past his 博学的意思
very door he goes to get to a public-hou, and here I sit with his dinner waiting for him - "
She went out. As she dropped piece after piece of coal on the red fire, the shadows fell on the walls, till the room was almost in total darkness.
"I canna e," grumbled the invisible John. In spite of herlf, the mother laughed.
"You know the way to your mouth," she said. She t the dustpan outside the door. When she came again like a shadow on the hearth, the lad repeated, complaining sulkily:
"I canna e."
"Good gracious!" cried the mother irritably, "you're as bad as your father if it's a bit dusk!"
Nevertheless she took a paper spill from a sheaf on the mantelpi晚会开场白
ece and proceeded to light the lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of cpk是什么
the room. As she reached up, her figure displayed itlf just rounding with maternity.
"Oh, mother - !" exclaimed the girl.
"What?" said the woman, suspended in the act of putting the lamp glass over the flame. The copper reflector
shone handsomely on her, as she stood with uplifted arm, turning to face her daughter.
"You've got a flower in your apron!" said the child, in a little rapture at this unusual event.
"Goodness me!" exclaimed the woman, relieved. "One would think the hou was afire." She replaced the glass and waited a moment before turning up the wick. A pale shadow was en floating vaguely on the floor.
"Let me smell!" said the child, still rapturously, coming forward and putting her face to her mother's waist.
"Go along, silly!" said the mother, turning up the lamp. The light revealed their s三角函数的奇偶性
uspen so that the woman felt it almost unbearable. Annie was still bending at her waist. Irritably, the mother took the flowers out from her apron-band.
"Oh, mother - don't take them out!" Annie cried, catching her hand and trying to replace the sprig.
"Such nonn!" said the mother, turning away. The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
"Don't they smell beautiful!"
Her mother gave a short laugh.
"No," she said, "not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
She looked at the children. Their eyes and their parted lips were wondering. The mother sat rocking in silence for some time. Then she looked at the clock.
"Twenty minutes to six!" In a tone of fine bitter carelessness she continued: "Eh, he'll not come now till they bring him. There he'll stick! But he needn't come rolling in here in his pit-dirt, for I won't wash him. He can lie on the floor - Eh, what a fool I've been, what a fool! And this is what I came here for, to this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door. Twice last week - he's begun now-"
She silenced herlf, and ro to clear the table.
While for an hour or more the children played, subduedly intent, fertile of imagination, united in fear of the mother's wrath, and in dread of their father's home-coming, Mrs Bates sat in her rocking-chair making a 'singlet' of thick cream-coloured flannel, which gave a dull wounded sound as she tore off the grey edge. She worked at her wing with energy, listening to the children, and her anger wearied itlf, lay down to rest, opening its eyes from time to time and steadily watching, its ears raid to listen. Sometimes even her anger quailed and shrank, and the mother suspended her wing, tracing the footsteps that thudded along the sleepers outside; she would lift her head sharply to bid the children 'hush', but she recovered herlf in time, and the footsteps went past the gate, and the children were not flung out of their playing world.
But at last Annie sighed, and gave in. She glanced at her waggon of slippers, and loathed the game. She turned plaintively to her mother.
"Mother!" - but she was inarticulate.
John crept out like a frog from under the sofa. His mother glanc
