Slaves who would cause the superimposed day-order to fall. Not
because, individually, they wanted to. But because, collectively,
something bubbled up in them, the force of darkness which had no
master and no control. It would bubble and stir in them as
earthquakes stir the earth. It would be simply disastrous, because
it had no master. There was no dark master in the world. The puerile
world went on crying out for a new Jesus, another Saviour from the
sky, another heavenly superman. When what was wanted was a Dark
Master from the underworld.
So they streamed past her, home from work--grey from head to foot,
distorted in shape, cramped, with curious faces that came out pallid
from under their dirt. Their walk was heavy-footed and slurring,
their bearing stiff and grotesque. A stream they were--yet they
seemed to her to loom like strange, valid figures of fairy-lore,
unrealized and as yet unexperienced. The miners, the iron-workers,
those who fashion the stuff of the underworld.
As it always comes to its children, the nostalgia of the repulsive,
heavy-footed Midlands came over her again, even whilst she was
there in the midst. The curious, dark, inexplicable and yet
insatiable craving--as if for an earthquake. To feel the earth heave
and shudder and shatter the world from beneath. To go down in the
débâcle.
And so, in spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and
nothingness, she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the
time. True, she was filled with the same old, slow, dreadful craving
of the Midlands: a craving insatiable and inexplicable. But the very
craving kept her still. For at this time she did not translate it
into a desire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind somewhere
was the fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But
as yet, at this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act.
The craving that possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a
greater or less degree, in those parts, sustained her darkly and
unconsciously.
A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in,
the transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and
noon, deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody.
There was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton,
like an excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making
his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with
purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged with
life.
Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold
rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through
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