Odour of Chrysanthemums

by D. H. Lawrence

THE small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, 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 beneath the jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they curved away towards the coppice where the withered oak-leaves dropped noiselessly, 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 whimsey*, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned their run among the shaggy black alders, to roost in the tarred fowl-house. The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon's stagnant light. Just beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the clumsy black headstocks of Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning fast up against the sky, and the winding-engine rapped out its little spasms. The miners were being turned up.

The engine whistled as it came near the rows of trucks that were standing in the bay of railway-lines by Brinsley pit. Already among the waggons the men were moving: those who were going up to Underwood stood aside to let the train jolt past, lifting their blackened faces to call something to the driver. Then they passed on, loudly talking, their shapeless grey-black figures seeming of a piece with the raw November afternoon, the tea-bottles rolling in their pockets, while the stumbling of their great boots across the sleepers resounded from afar.

 

The train slowed down as it drew near a small cottage squat* beside the great bay of railway-lines. Four black steps, old sleepers, led down from the cinder-track to the threshold of the house, which was small and grimy, a large bony vine scrambling over it, as if trying to claw down the tiled roof. Round the small bricked yard was a rim of sooty garden with a few chill primroses. Beyond, a long garden sloped down to a tree-hidden brook course. There were twiggy apple-trees and winter-crack trees*, forlorn and black, and a number of ragged cabbages. Beside the path there hung torn and scattered groups of dishevelled pink chrysanthemums. A woman came bending out of the felt-covered fowl-house half-way down the garden. She closed and padlocked the door, then drew herself erect, having brushed some bits from her white apron.

 

She was a tall 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 passed along the railway: then she turned towards the brook-course. There was no quickness, no lightness, in her movements. Her face was calm and proud with defiance, her mouth was closed 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 that crowded darkly on the bank of the brook. The woman looked piercingly through the dusk.

"Are you at that brook?" she asked sternly.

For answer the child showed himself before the raspberry-canes that rose like whips towards alders. He was a small, sturdy boy of five, and he stood quite still, like some "farouche" creature.

"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 and cold--and listen, there's your grandfather's engine coming down the line!"

The lad came slowly forward, with resentful, taciturn movement. He was dressed in trousers 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. He wore no coat, and his mother looked at his little flannelette shirt-sleeves as she waited for him to precede her up the path.

"You'll be catching cold, out at nightfall without your jacket," she said.

 

As they went slowly towards the house he tore at the ragged pink locks of the pale 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 small, wan flowers and held them against her face. When they reached the yard her hand hesitated, and instead of throwing the flower away, she pushed it in her apron band. Mother and boy stood at the foot of the wooden steps looking across the bay of lines at the passing home of the miners