Odour of Chrysanthemums

By D. H. Lawrence

THE small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumb-
ling 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 indis-
tinctly 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 in-
significantly trapped between 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 alders, to roost in the tarred
fowlhouse. 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 into the wide bay of railway
lines beside the colliery, where rows of trucks stood in harbour.

Miners, single, trailing and in groups, passed 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 scrambled over the house, as if to claw down
the tiled roof. Round the bricked yard grew a few primroses.
Beyond, the long garden sloped down to a bush-covered brook
course. There were many twiggy apple-trees, winter-crack
trees*, sinister looking bushes, and ragged cabbages. Beside the

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