He smiled, uncomfortably, cynically. Ursula felt again the
revolt of hatred from him.
"I suppose their lives are not really so bad," said Winifred
Inger, superior to the Zolaesque tragedy.
He turned with his polite, distant attention.
"Yes, they are pretty bad. The pits are very deep, and hot,
and in some places wet. The men die of consumption fairly often.
But they earn good wages."
"How gruesome!" said Winifred Inger.
"Yes," he replied gravely. It was his grave, solid,
self-contained manner which made him so much respected as a
colliery manager.
The servant came in to ask where they would have tea.
"Put it in the summer-house, Mrs. Smith," he said.
The fair-haired, good-looking young woman went out.
"Is she married and in service?" asked Ursula.
"She is a widow. Her husband died of consumption a little
while ago." Brangwen gave a sinister little laugh. "He lay there
in the house-place at her mother's, and five or six other people
in the house, and died very gradually. I asked her if his death
wasn't a great trouble to her. 'Well,' she said, 'he was very
fretful towards the last, never satisfied, never easy, always
fret-fretting, an' never knowing what would satisfy him. So in
one way it was a relief when it was over--for him and for
everybody.' They had only been married two years, and she has
one boy. I asked her if she hadn't been very happy. 'Oh, yes,
sir, we was very comfortable at first, till he took
bad--oh, we was very comfortable--oh, yes--but,
you see, you get used to it. I've had my father and two brothers
go off just the same. You get used to it'."
"It's a horrible thing to get used to," said Winifred Inger,
with a shudder.
"Yes," he said, still smiling. "But that's how they are.
She'll be getting married again directly. One man or
another--it does not matter very much. They're all
colliers."
"What do you mean?" asked Ursula. "They're all colliers?"
"It is with the women as with us," he replied. "Her husband
was John Smith, loader. We reckoned him as a loader, he reckoned
himself as a loader, and so she knew he represented his job.
Marriage and home is a little side-show.
"The women know it right enough, and take it for what it's
worth. One man or another, it doesn't matter all the world. The
pit matters. Round the pit there will always be the sideshows,
plenty of 'em."
He looked round at the red chaos, the rigid, amorphous
confusion of Wiggiston.
"Every man his own little side-show, his home, but the pit
owns every man. The women have what is left. What's left of this
man, or what is left of that--it doesn't matter altogether.
The pit takes all that really matters."