Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

Whereupon Mrs. Morel, trying to soothe the baby, jumped up,
rushed at him, boxed his ears, saying:
"What are YOU putting in for?"
And then she sat down and laughed, till tears ran over
her cheeks, while William kicked the stool he had been sitting on,
and Morel growled:
"I canna see what there is so much to laugh at."
One evening, directly after the parson's visit, feeling unable
to bear herself after another display from her husband, she took
Annie and the baby and went out. Morel had kicked William,
and the mother would never forgive him.
She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the
meadow to the cricket-ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe,
evening light, whispering with the distant mill-race. She sat
on a seat under the alders in the cricket-ground, and fronted
the evening. Before her, level and solid,
spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of light.
Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion. Many rooks,
high up, came cawing home across the softly-woven sky. They stooped
in a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating, cawing,
wheeling, like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump
that made a dark boss among the pasture.
A few gentlemen were practising, and Mrs. Morel could hear
the chock of the ball, and the voices of men suddenly roused;
could see the white forms of men shifting silently over the green,
upon which already the under shadows were smouldering. Away at
the grange, one side of the haystacks was lit up, the other sides
blue-grey. A waggon of sheaves rocked small across the melting
yellow light.
The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of
Derbyshire were blazed over with red sunset. Mrs. Morel watched the sun
sink from the glistening sky, leaving a soft flower-blue overhead,
while the western space went red, as if all the fire had swum down there,
leaving the bell cast flawless blue. The mountain-ash berries across
the field stood fierily out from the dark leaves, for a moment.
A few shocks of corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive;
she imagined them bowing; perhaps her son would be a Joseph.
In the east, a mirrored sunset floated pink opposite the west's scarlet.
The big haystacks on the hillside, that butted into the glare,
went cold.
With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the
small frets vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she
had the peace and the strength to see herself. Now and again,
a swallow cut close to her. Now and again, Annie came up with a