Footsteps

The footsteps have their, er, footprints all over the story. Elizabeth is always listening for them, since they usually announce the arrival of a family member. For example, early in the story, they signal the arrival of their daughter, Annie:

Indoors the fire was sinking and the room was dark red. The woman put her saucepan on the hob, and set a batter pudding near the mouth of the oven. Then she stood unmoving. Directly, gratefully, came quick young steps to the door. Someone hung on the latch a moment, then a little girl entered and began pulling off her outdoor things, dragging a mass of curls, just ripening from gold to brown, over her eyes with her hat. (1.38)

The girl's "grateful" homecoming is a surprisingly cozy, warm moment in what is otherwise becoming a suspenseful and tense situation.

As Elizabeth becomes increasingly anxious about Walter's whereabouts, she seems to look to the footsteps as a potential sign that he's coming home. However, their appearance becomes increasingly ominous as we get further in, symbolic more of Walter's absence than his presence. At first, while Elizabeth is sitting there waiting, she seems torn between fear that he's not coming home, and fear that he is:

Sometimes even her anger quailed and shrank, and the mother suspended her sewing, tracing the footsteps that thudded along the sleepers outside; she would lift her head sharply to bid the children
"hush," but she recovered herself in time, and the footsteps went past the gate, and the children were not flung out of their playing world. (1.80)

As you can see, she's definitely jumpy, and it's unclear whether she's more nervous about his absence or the fact that he might come in completely hammered.

Later on, she's still on footstep alert, and still getting her hopes dashed:

At a quarter to ten there were footsteps. One person! She watched for the door to open. It was an elderly woman, in a black bonnet and a black woollen shawl—his mother. (2.41)

Since Elizabeth was expecting Walter to be accompanied/carried home by other men that night, she seems to be surprised to hear only one set of footsteps. Of course, this set of footsteps is kind of the beginning of the end, as it signals the arrival of her mother-in-law, who bears news of Walter's accident.

The last set of footsteps we get occur when a man (presumably the pit manager, although this is never specified) comes to tell Elizabeth that Walter is dead and other men are bringing his body home:

It was half-past ten, and the old woman was saying: "But it's trouble from beginning to end; you're never too old for trouble, never too old for that—" when the gate banged back, and there were heavy feet on the steps. (2.58)

In the end, the footsteps that had started out as such benevolent, happy sounds (e.g., when Annie came home) ultimately become the symbol of Walter's absence and a harbinger of death.