bad. The children played in the street, on the brim of
the wide, dark valley, until eight o'clock. Then they went to bed. Their
mother sat sewing below. Having such a great space in front of the house
gave the children a feeling of night, of vastness, and of terror. This
terror came in from the shrieking of the tree and the anguish of the
home discord. Often Paul would wake up, after he had been asleep a long
time, aware of thuds downstairs. Instantly he was wide awake. Then he
heard the booming shouts of his father, come home nearly drunk, then the
sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, bang of his father's fist on
the table, and the nasty snarling shout as the man's voice got higher.
And then the whole was drowned in a piercing medley of shrieks and
cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree. The children lay silent in
suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear what their father was
doing. He might hit their mother again. There was a feeling of horror,
a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with
their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through
the tree fiercer and fiercer. All the chords of the great harp hummed,
whistled, and shrieked. And then came the horror of the sudden silence,
silence everywhere, outside and downstairs. What was it? Was it a
silence of blood? What had he done?

The children lay and breathed the darkness. And then, at last, they
heard their father throw down his boots and tramp upstairs in his
stockinged feet. Still they listened. Then at last, if the wind allowed,
they heard the water of the tap drumming into the kettle, which their
mother was filling for morning, and they could go to sleep in peace.

So they were happy in the morning--happy, very happy playing, dancing at
night round the lonely lamp-post in the midst of the darkness. But they
had one tight place of anxiety in their hearts, one darkness in their
eyes, which showed all their lives.

Paul hated his father. As a boy he had a fervent private religion.

"Make him stop drinking," he prayed every night. "Lord, let my father
die," he prayed very often. "Let him not be killed at pit," he prayed
when, after tea, the father did not come home from work.

That was another time when the family suffered intensely. The children
came from school and had their teas. On the hob the big black saucepan
was simmering, the stew-jar was in the oven, ready for Morel's dinner.
He was expect