Title: The Rainbow
Author: D H Lawrence
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0100341.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted: December 2001
Date most recently updated: December 2001

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Title:      The Rainbow
Author:     D H Lawrence





TABLE OF CONTENTS


Chapter 1 How Tom Brangwen Married a Polish Lady
Chapter 2 They Live at the Marsh
Chapter 3 Childhood of Anna Lensky
Chapter 4 Girlhood of Anna Brangwen
Chapter 5 Wedding at the Marsh
Chapter 6 Anna Victrix
Chapter 7 The Cathedral
Chapter 8 The Child
Chapter 9 The Marsh and the Flood
Chapter 10 The Widening Circle
Chapter 11 First Love
Chapter 12 Shame
Chapter 13 The Man's World
Chapter 14 The Widening Circle
Chapter 15 The Bitterness of Ecstasy
Chapter 16 The Rainbow





Chapter 1



How Tom Brangwen Married a Polish Lady


I

The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the
meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees,
separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles away, a
church-tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little country town
climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the
fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at
Ilkeston in the empty sky. So that as he turned again to the horizontal
land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in
the distance.

There was a look in the eyes of the Brangwens as if they were expecting
something unknown, about which they were eager. They had that air of
readiness for what would come to them, a kind of surety, an expectancy,
the look of an inheritor.

They were fresh, blond, slow-speaking people, revealing themselves
plainly, but slowly, so that one could watch the change in their eyes
from laughter to anger, blue, lit-up laughter, to a hard blue-staring
anger; through all the irresolute stages of the sky when the weather is
changing.

Living on rich land, on their own land, near to a growing town, they
had forgotten what it was to be in straitened circumstances. They had
never become rich, because there were always children, and the
patrimony was divided every time. But always, at the Marsh, there was
ample.

So the Brangwens came and went without fear of necessity, working hard
because of the life that was in them, not for want of the money.
Neither were they thriftless. They were aware of the last halfpenny,
and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, for it
would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around
them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in
spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws
forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born
on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth,
sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the
daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the
birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations were
such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that opened to their
furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their
ploughing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like
desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn
away. The young corn waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along
the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the
cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, the pulse of
the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of
the men. They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of
their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand
on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will.

In autumn the partridges whirred up, birds in flocks blew like spray
across the fallow, rooks appeared on the grey, watery heavens, and flew
cawing into the winter. Then the men sat by the fire in the house where
the women moved about with surety, and the limbs and the body of the
men were impregnated with the day, cattle and earth and vegetation and
the sky, the men sat by the fire and their brains were inert, as their
blood flowed heavy with the accumulation from the living day.

The women were different. On them too was the drowse of blood-intimacy,
calves sucking and hens running together in droves, and young geese
palpitating in the hand while the food was pushed down their throttle.
But the women looked out from the heated, blind intercourse of
farm-life, to the spoken world beyond. They were aware of the lips and
the mind of the world speaking and giving utterance, they heard the
sound in the distance, and they strained to listen.

It was enough for the men, that the earth heaved and opened its furrow
to them, that the wind blew to dry the wet wheat, and set the young
ears of corn wheeling freshly round about; it was enough that they
helped the cow in labour, or ferreted the rats from under the barn, or
broke the back of a rabbit with a sharp knock of the hand. So much
warmth and generating and pain and death did they know in their blood,
earth and sky and beast and green plants, so much exchange and
interchange they had with these, that they lived full and surcharged,
their senses full fed, their faces always turned to the heat of the blood,
staring into the sun, dazed with looking towards the source of generation,
unable to turn round.

But the woman wanted another form of life than this, something that was
not blood-intimacy. Her house faced out from the farm-buildings and
fields, looked out to the road and the village with church and Hall and
the world beyond. She stood to see the far-off world of cities and
governments and the active scope of man, the magic land to her, where
secrets were made known and desires fulfilled. She faced outwards to
where men moved dominant and creative, having turned their back on the
pulsing heat of creation, and with this behind them, were set out to
discover what was beyond, to enlarge their own scope and range and
freedom; whereas the Brangwen men faced inwards to the teeming life of
creation, which poured unresolved into their veins.

Looking out, as she must, from the front of her house towards the
activity of man in the world at large, whilst her husband looked out to
the back at sky and harvest and beast and land, she strained her eyes
to see what man had done in fighting outwards to knowledge, she
strained to hear how he uttered himself in his conquest, her deepest
desire hung on the battle that she heard, far off, being waged on the
edge of the unknown. She also wanted to know, and to be of the fighting
host.

At home, even so near as Cossethay, was the vicar, who spoke the other,
magic language, and had the other, finer bearing, both of which she
could perceive, but could never attain to. The vicar moved in worlds
beyond where her own menfolk existed. Did she not know her own menfolk:
fresh, slow, full-built men, masterful enough, but easy, native to the
earth, lacking outwardness and range of motion. Whereas the vicar, dark
and dry and small beside her husband, had yet a quickness and a range
of being that made Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and
local. She knew her husband. But in the vicar's nature was that which
passed beyond her knowledge. As Brangwen had power over the cattle so
the vicar had power over her husband. What was it in the vicar, that
raised him above the common men as man is raised above the beast? She
craved to know. She craved to achieve this higher being, if not in
herself, then in her children. That which makes a man strong even if he
be little and frail in body, just as any man is little and frail beside
a bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what was it? It was not money
nor power nor position. What power had the vicar over Tom
Brangwen-none. Yet strip them and set them on a desert island, and the
vicar was the master. His soul was master of the other man's. And
why-why? She decided it was a question of knowledge.

The curate was poor enough, and not very efficacious as a man, either,
yet he took rank with those others, the superior. She watched his
children being born, she saw them running as tiny things beside their
mother. And already they were separate from her own children, distinct.
Why were her own children marked below the others? Why should the
curate's children inevitably take precedence over her children, why
should dominance be given them from the start? It was not money, nor
even class. It was education and experience, she decided.

It was this, this education, this higher form of being, that the mother
wished to give to her children, so that they too could live the supreme
life on earth. For her children, at least the children of her heart,
had the complete nature that should take place in equality with the
living, vital people in the land, not be left behind obscure among the
labourers. Why must they remain obscured and stifled all their lives,
why should they suffer from lack of freedom to move? How should they
learn the entry into the finer, more vivid circle of life?

Her imagination was fired by the squire's lady at Shelly Hall, who came
to church at Cossethay with her little children, girls in tidy capes of
beaver fur, and smart little hats, herself like a winter rose, so fair
and delicate. So fair, so fine in mould, so luminous, what was it that
Mrs. Hardy felt which she, Mrs. Brangwen, did not feel? How was Mrs.
Hardy's nature different from that of the common women of Cossethay, in
what was it beyond them? All the women of Cossethay talked eagerly
about Mrs. Hardy, of her husband, her children, her guests, her dress,
of her servants and her housekeeping. The lady of the Hall was the living
dream of their lives, her life was the epic that inspired their lives.
In her they lived imaginatively, and in gossiping of her husband who
drank, of her scandalous brother, of Lord William Bentley her friend,
member of Parliament for the division, they had their own Odyssey enacting
itself, Penelope and Ulysses before them, and Circe and the swine and the
endless web.

So the women of the village were fortunate. They saw themselves in the
lady of the manor, each of them lived her own fulfilment of the life of
Mrs. Hardy. And the Brangwen wife of the Marsh aspired beyond herself,
towards the further life of the finer woman, towards the extended being
she revealed, as a traveller in his self-contained manner reveals
far-off countries present in himself. But why should a knowledge of
far-off countries make a man's life a different thing, finer, bigger?
And why is a man more than the beast and the cattle that serve him? It
is the same thing.

The male part of the poem was filled in by such men as the vicar and
Lord William, lean, eager men with strange movements, men who had
command of the further fields, whose lives ranged over a great extent.
Ah, it was something very desirable to know, this touch of the
wonderful men who had the power of thought and comprehension. The women
of the village might be much fonder of Tom Brangwen, and more at their
ease with him, yet if their lives had been robbed of the vicar, and of
Lord William, the leading shoot would have been cut away from them,
they would have been heavy and uninspired and inclined to hate. So long
as the wonder of the beyond was before them, they could get along,
whatever their lot. And Mrs. Hardy, and the vicar, and Lord William,
these moved in the wonder of the beyond, and were visible to the eyes
of Cossethay in their motion.


II


About 1840, a canal was constructed across the meadows of the Marsh
Farm, connecting the newly-opened collieries of the Erewash Valley. A
high embankment travelled along the fields to carry the canal, which
passed close to the homestead, and, reaching the road, went over in a
heavy bridge.

So the Marsh was shut off from Ilkeston, and enclosed in the small
valley bed, which ended in a bushy hill and the village spire of
Cossethay.

The Brangwens received a fair sum of money from this trespass across
their land. Then, a short time afterwards, a colliery was sunk on the
other side of the canal, and in a while the Midland Railway came down
the valley at the foot of the Ilkeston hill, and the invasion was
complete. The town grew rapidly, the Brangwens were kept busy producing
supplies, they became richer, they were almost tradesmen.

Still the Marsh remained remote and original, on the old, quiet side of
the canal embankment, in the sunny valley where slow water wound along
in company of stiff alders, and the road went under ash-trees past the
Brangwens' garden gate.

But, looking from the garden gate down the road to the right, there,
through the dark archway of the canal's square aqueduct, was a colliery
spinning away in the near distance, and further, red, crude houses
plastered on the valley in masses, and beyond all, the dim smoking hill
of the town.

The homestead was just on the safe side of civilisation, outside the
gate. The house stood bare from the road, approached by a straight
garden path, along which at spring the daffodils were thick in green
and yellow. At the sides of the house were bushes of lilac and
guelder-rose and privet, entirely hiding the farm buildings behind.

At the back a confusion of sheds spread into the home-close from out of
two or three indistinct yards. The duck-pond lay beyond the furthest
wall, littering its white feathers on the padded earthen banks, blowing
its stray soiled feathers into the grass and the gorse bushes below the
canal embankment, which rose like a high rampart near at hand, so that
occasionally a man's figure passed in silhouette, or a man and a towing
horse traversed the sky.

At first the Brangwens were astonished by all this commotion around
them. The building of a canal across their land made them strangers in
their own place, this raw bank of earth shutting them off disconcerted
them. As they worked in the fields, from beyond the now familiar
embankment came the rhythmic run of the winding engines, startling at
first, but afterwards a narcotic to the brain. Then the shrill whistle
of the trains re-echoed through the heart, with fearsome pleasure,
announcing the far-off come near and imminent.

As they drove home from town, the farmers of the land met the blackened
colliers trooping from the pit-mouth. As they gathered the harvest, the
west wind brought a faint, sulphurous smell of pit-refuse burning. As
they pulled the turnips in November, the sharp
clink-clink-clink-clink-clink of empty trucks shunting on the line,
vibrated in their hearts with the fact of other activity going on
beyond them.

The Alfred Brangwen of this period had married a woman from Heanor, a
daughter of the "Black Horse". She was a slim, pretty, dark woman,
quaint in her speech, whimsical, so that the sharp things she said did
not hurt. She was oddly a thing to herself, rather querulous in her
manner, but intrinsically separate and indifferent, so that her long
lamentable complaints, when she raised her voice against her husband in
particular and against everybody else after him, only made those who
heard her wonder and feel affectionately towards her, even while they
were irritated and impatient with her. She railed long and loud about
her husband, but always with a balanced, easy-flying voice and a quaint
manner of speech that warmed his belly with pride and male triumph
while he scowled with mortification at the things she said.

Consequently Brangwen himself had a humorous puckering at the eyes, a
sort of fat laugh, very quiet and full, and he was spoilt like a lord
of creation. He calmly did as he liked, laughed at their railing,
excused himself in a teasing tone that she loved, followed his natural
inclinations, and sometimes, pricked too near the quick, frightened and
broke her by a deep, tense fury which seemed to fix on him and hold him
for days, and which she would give anything to placate in him. They
were two very separate beings, vitally connected, knowing nothing of
each other, yet living in their separate ways from one root.

There were four sons and two daughters. The eldest boy ran away early
to sea, and did not come back. After this the mother was more the node
and centre of attraction in the home. The second boy, Alfred, whom the
mother admired most, was the most reserved. He was sent to school in
Ilkeston and made some progress. But in spite of his dogged, yearning
effort, he could not get beyond the rudiments of anything, save of
drawing. At this, in which he had some power, he worked, as if it were
his hope. After much grumbling and savage rebellion against everything,
after much trying and shifting about, when his father was incensed
against him and his mother almost despairing, he became a draughtsman
in a lace-factory in Nottingham.

He remained heavy and somewhat uncouth, speaking with broad Derbyshire
accent, adhering with all his tenacity to his work and to his town
position, making good designs, and becoming fairly well-off. But at
drawing, his hand swung naturally in big, bold lines, rather lax, so
that it was cruel for him to pedgill away at the lace designing,
working from the tiny squares of his paper, counting and plotting and
niggling. He did it stubbornly, with anguish, crushing the bowels
within him, adhering to his chosen lot whatever it should cost. And he
came back into life set and rigid, a rare-spoken, almost surly man.

He married the daughter of a chemist, who affected some social
superiority, and he became something of a snob, in his dogged fashion,
with a passion for outward refinement in the household, mad when
anything clumsy or gross occurred. Later, when his three children were
growing up, and he seemed a staid, almost middle-aged man, he turned
after strange women, and became a silent, inscrutable follower of
forbidden pleasure, neglecting his indignant bourgeois wife without a
qualm.

Frank, the third son, refused from the first to have anything to do
with learning. From the first he hung round the slaughter-house which
stood away in the third yard at the back of the farm. The Brangwens
had always killed their own meat, and supplied the neighbourhood. Out
of this grew a regular butcher's business in connection with the farm.

As a child Frank had been drawn by the trickle of dark blood that ran
across the pavement from the slaughter-house to the crew-yard, by the
sight of the man carrying across to the meat-shed a huge side of beef,
with the kidneys showing, embedded in their heavy laps of fat.

He was a handsome lad with soft brown hair and regular features
something like a later Roman youth. He was more easily excitable, more
readily carried away than the rest, weaker in character. At eighteen he
married a little factory girl, a pale, plump, quiet thing with sly eyes
and a wheedling voice, who insinuated herself into him and bore him a
child every year and made a fool of him. When he had taken over the
butchery business, already a growing callousness to it, and a sort of
contempt made him neglectful of it. He drank, and was often to be found
in his public house blathering away as if he knew everything, when in
reality he was a noisy fool.

Of the daughters, Alice, the elder, married a collier and lived for a
time stormily in Ilkeston, before moving away to Yorkshire with her
numerous young family. Effie, the younger, remained at home.

The last child, Tom, was considerably younger than his brothers, so had
belonged rather to the company of his sisters. He was his mother's
favourite. She roused herself to determination, and sent him forcibly
away to a grammar-school in Derby when he was twelve years old. He did
not want to go, and his father would have given way, but Mrs. Brangwen
had set her heart on it. Her slender, pretty, tightly-covered body,
with full skirts, was now the centre of resolution in the house, and
when she had once set upon anything, which was not often, the family
failed before her.

So Tom went to school, an unwilling failure from the first. He believed
his mother was right in decreeing school for him, but he knew she was
only right because she would not acknowledge his constitution. He knew,
with a child's deep, instinctive foreknowledge of what is going to
happen to him, that he would cut a sorry figure at school. But he took
the infliction as inevitable, as if he were guilty of his own nature,
as if his being were wrong, and his mother's conception right. If he
could have been what he liked, he would have been that which his mother
fondly but deludedly hoped he was. He would have been clever, and
capable of becoming a gentleman. It was her aspiration for him,
therefore he knew it as the true aspiration for any boy. But you can't
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as he told his mother very early,
with regard to himself; much to her mortification and chagrin.

When he got to school, he made a violent struggle against his physical
inability to study. He sat gripped, making himself pale and ghastly in
his effort to concentrate on the book, to take in what he had to learn.
But it was no good. If he beat down his first repulsion, and got like a
suicide to the stuff, he went very little further. He could not learn
deliberately. His mind simply did not work.

In feeling he was developed, sensitive to the atmosphere around him,
brutal perhaps, but at the same time delicate, very delicate. So he had
a low opinion of himself. He knew his own limitation. He knew that his
brain was a slow hopeless good-for-nothing. So he was humble.

But at the same time his feelings were more discriminating than those
of most of the boys, and he was confused. He was more sensuously
developed, more refined in instinct than they. For their mechanical
stupidity he hated them, and suffered cruel contempt for them. But when
it came to mental things, then he was at a disadvantage. He was at
their mercy. He was a fool. He had not the power to controvert even the
most stupid argument, so that he was forced to admit things he did not
in the least believe. And having admitted them, he did not know whether
he believed them or not; he rather thought he did.

But he loved anyone who could convey enlightenment to him through
feeling. He sat betrayed with emotion when the teacher of literature
read, in a moving fashion, Tennyson's "Ulysses", or Shelley's "Ode to
the West Wind". His lips parted, his eyes filled with a strained,
almost suffering light. And the teacher read on, fired by his power
over the boy. Tom Brangwen was moved by this experience beyond all
calculation, he almost dreaded it, it was so deep. But when, almost
secretly and shamefully, he came to take the book himself, and began the
words "Oh wild west wind, thou breath of autumn's being," the very fact of
the print caused a prickly sensation of repulsion to go over his skin, the
blood came to his face, his heart filled with a bursting passion of
rage and incompetence. He threw the book down and walked over it and
went out to the cricket field. And he hated books as if they were his
enemies. He hated them worse than ever he hated any person.

He could not voluntarily control his attention. His mind had no fixed
habits to go by, he had nothing to get hold of, nowhere to start from.
For him there was nothing palpable, nothing known in himself, that he
could apply to learning. He did not know how to begin. Therefore he was
helpless when it came to deliberate understanding or deliberate
learning.

He had an instinct for mathematics, but if this failed him, he was
helpless as an idiot. So that he felt that the ground was never sure
under his feet, he was nowhere. His final downfall was his complete
inability to attend to a question put without suggestion. If he had to
write a formal composition on the Army, he did at last learn to repeat
the few facts he knew: "You can join the army at eighteen. You have to
be over five foot eight." But he had all the time a living conviction
that this was a dodge and that his common-places were beneath contempt.
Then he reddened furiously, felt his bowels sink with shame, scratched
out what he had written, made an agonised effort to think of something
in the real composition style, failed, became sullen with rage and
humiliation, put the pen down and would have been torn to pieces rather
than attempt to write another word.

He soon got used to the Grammar School, and the Grammar School got used
to him, setting him down as a hopeless duffer at learning, but
respecting him for a generous, honest nature. Only one narrow,
domineering fellow, the Latin master, bullied him and made the blue
eyes mad with shame and rage. There was a horrid scene, when the boy
laid open the master's head with a slate, and then things went on as
before. The teacher got little sympathy. But Brangwen winced and could
not bear to think of the deed, not even long after, when he was a grown
man.

He was glad to leave school. It had not been unpleasant, he had enjoyed
the companionship of the other youths, or had thought he enjoyed it,
the time had passed very quickly, in endless activity. But he knew all
the time that he was in an ignominious position, in this place of
learning. He was aware of failure all the while, of incapacity. But he
was too healthy and sanguine to be wretched, he was too much alive. Yet
his soul was wretched almost to hopelessness.

He had loved one warm, clever boy who was frail in body, a consumptive
type. The two had had an almost classic friendship, David and Jonathan,
wherein Brangwen was the Jonathan, the server. But he had never felt
equal with his friend, because the other's mind outpaced his, and left
him ashamed, far in the rear. So the two boys went at once apart on
leaving school. But Brangwen always remembered his friend that had
been, kept him as a sort of light, a fine experience to remember.

Tom Brangwen was glad to get back to the farm, where he was in his own
again. "I have got a turnip on my shoulders, let me stick to th'
fallow," he said to his exasperated mother. He had too low an opinion
of himself. But he went about at his work on the farm gladly enough,
glad of the active labour and the smell of the land again, having youth
and vigour and humour, and a comic wit, having the will and the power
to forget his own shortcomings, finding himself violent with occasional
rages, but usually on good terms with everybody and everything.

When he was seventeen, his father fell from a stack and broke his neck.
Then the mother and son and daughter lived on at the farm, interrupted
by occasional loud-mouthed lamenting, jealous-spirited visitations from
the butcher Frank, who had a grievance against the world, which he felt
was always giving him less than his dues. Frank was particularly
against the young Tom, whom he called a mardy baby, and Tom returned
the hatred violently, his face growing red and his blue eyes staring.
Effie sided with Tom against Frank. But when Alfred came, from
Nottingham, heavy jowled and lowering, speaking very little,
but treating those at home with some contempt, Effie and the mother
sided with him and put Tom into the shade. It irritated the youth that
his elder brother should be made something of a hero by the women, just
because he didn't live at home and was a lace-designer and almost a
gentleman. But Alfred was something of a Prometheus Bound, so the women
loved him. Tom came later to understand his brother better.

As youngest son, Tom felt some importance when the care of the farm
devolved on to him. He was only eighteen, but he was quite capable of
doing everything his father had done. And of course, his mother
remained as centre to the house.

The young man grew up very fresh and alert, with zest for every moment
of life. He worked and rode and drove to market, he went out with
companions and got tipsy occasionally and played skittles and went to
the little travelling theatres. Once, when he was drunk at a public
house, he went upstairs with a prostitute who seduced him. He was then
nineteen.

The thing was something of a shock to him. In the close intimacy of the
farm kitchen, the woman occupied the supreme position. The men deferred
to her in the house, on all household points, on all points of morality
and behaviour. The woman was the symbol for that further life which
comprised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands
their own conscience, they said to her "Be my conscience-keeper, be
the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming." And the
woman fulfilled her trust, the men rested implicitly in her, receiving
her praise or her blame with pleasure or with anger, rebelling and
storming, but never for a moment really escaping in their own souls
from her prerogative. They depended on her for their stability. Without
her, they would have felt like straws in the wind, to be blown hither
and thither at random. She was the anchor and the security, she was the
restraining hand of God, at times highly to be execrated.

Now when Tom Brangwen, at nineteen, a youth fresh like a plant, rooted
in his mother and his sister, found that he had lain with a prostitute
woman in a common public house, he was very much startled. For him
there was until that time only one kind of woman-his mother and sister.

But now? He did not know what to feel. There was a slight wonder, a
pang of anger, of disappointment, a first taste of ash and of cold fear
lest this was all that would happen, lest his relations with woman were
going to be no more than this nothingness; there was a slight sense of
shame before the prostitute, fear that she would despise him for his
inefficiency; there was a cold distaste for her, and a fear of her;
there was a moment of paralysed horror when he felt he might have taken
a disease from her; and upon all this startled tumult of emotion, was
laid the steadying hand of common sense, which said it did not matter
very much, so long as he had no disease. He soon recovered balance, and
really it did not matter so very much.

But it had shocked him, and put a mistrust into his heart, and
emphasised his fear of what was within himself. He was, however, in a
few days going about again in his own careless, happy-go-lucky fashion,
his blue eyes just as clear and honest as ever, his face just as fresh,
his appetite just as keen.

Or apparently so. He had, in fact, lost some of his buoyant confidence,
and doubt hindered his outgoing.

For some time after this, he was quieter, more conscious when he drank,
more backward from companionship. The disillusion of his first carnal
contact with woman, strengthened by his innate desire to find in a
woman the embodiment of all his inarticulate, powerful religious
impulses, put a bit in his mouth. He had something to lose which he was
afraid of losing, which he was not sure even of possessing. This first
affair did not matter much: but the business of love was, at the bottom
of his soul, the most serious and terrifying of all to him.

He was tormented now with sex desire, his imagination reverted always
to lustful scenes. But what really prevented his returning to a loose
woman, over and above the natural squeamishness, was the recollection
of the paucity of the last experience. It had been so nothing, so
dribbling and functional, that he was ashamed to expose himself to the
risk of a repetition of it.

He made a strong, instinctive fight to retain his native cheerfulness
unimpaired. He had naturally a plentiful stream of life and humour, a
sense of sufficiency and exuberance, giving ease. But now it tended to
cause tension. A strained light came into his eyes, he had a slight
knitting of the brows. His boisterous humour gave place to lowering
silences, and days passed by in a sort of suspense.

He did not know there was any difference in him, exactly; for the most
part he was filled with slow anger and resentment. But he knew he was
always thinking of women, or a woman, day in, day out, and that
infuriated him. He could not get free: and he was ashamed. He had one
or two sweethearts, starting with them in the hope of speedy
development. But when he had a nice girl, he found that he was
incapable of pushing the desired development. The very presence of the
girl beside him made it impossible. He could not think of her like
that, he could not think of her actual nakedness. She was a girl and he
liked her, and dreaded violently even the thought of uncovering her. He
knew that, in these last issues of nakedness, he did not exist to her
nor she to him. Again, if he had a loose girl, and things began to
develop, she offended him so deeply all the time, that he never knew
whether he was going to get away from her as quickly as possible, or
whether he were going to take her out of inflamed necessity. Again he
learnt his lesson: if he took her it was a paucity which he was forced
to despise. He did not despise himself nor the girl. But he despised
the net result in him of the experience-he despised it deeply and
bitterly.

Then, when he was twenty-three, his mother died, and he was left at
home with Effie. His mother's death was another blow out of the dark.
He could not understand it, he knew it was no good his trying. One had
to submit to these unforeseen blows that come unawares and leave a
bruise that remains and hurts whenever it is touched. He began to be
afraid of all that which was up against him. He had loved his mother.

After this, Effie and he quarrelled fiercely. They meant a very great
deal to each other, but they were both under a strange, unnatural
tension. He stayed out of the house as much as possible. He got a
special corner for himself at the "Red Lion" at Cossethay, and became a
usual figure by the fire, a fresh, fair young fellow with heavy limbs
and head held back, mostly silent, though alert and attentive, very
hearty in his greeting of everybody he knew, shy of strangers. He
teased all the women, who liked him extremely, and he was very
attentive to the talk of the men, very respectful.

To drink made him quickly flush very red in the face, and brought out
the look of self-consciousness and unsureness, almost bewilderment, in
his blue eyes. When he came home in this state of tipsy confusion his
sister hated him and abused him, and he went off his head, like a mad
bull with rage.

He had still another turn with a light-o'-love. One Whitsuntide he went
a jaunt with two other young fellows, on horseback, to Matlock and
thence to Bakewell. Matlock was at that time just becoming a famous
beauty-spot, visited from Manchester and from the Staffordshire towns.
In the hotel where the young men took lunch, were two girls, and the
parties struck up a friendship.

The Miss who made up to Tom Brangwen, then twenty-four years old, was a
handsome, reckless girl neglected for an afternoon by the man who had
brought her out. She saw Brangwen and liked him, as all women did, for
his warmth and his generous nature, and for the innate delicacy in him.
But she saw he was one who would have to be brought to the scratch.
However, she was roused and unsatisfied and made mischievous, so she
dared anything. It would be an easy interlude, restoring her pride.

She was a handsome girl with a bosom, and dark hair and blue eyes, a
girl full of easy laughter, flushed from the sun, inclined to wipe her
laughing face in a very natural and taking manner.

Brangwen was in a state of wonder. He treated her with his chaffing
deference, roused, but very unsure of himself, afraid to death of being
too forward, ashamed lest he might be thought backward, mad with
desire yet restrained by instinctive regard for women from making any
definite approach, feeling all the while that his attitude was
ridiculous, and flushing deep with confusion. She, however, became hard
and daring as he became confused, it amused her to see him come on.

"When must you get back?" she asked.

"I'm not particular," he said.

There the conversation again broke down.

Brangwen's companions were ready to go on.

"Art commin', Tom," they called, "or art for stoppin'?"

"Ay, I'm commin'," he replied, rising reluctantly, an angry sense of
futility and disappointment spreading over him.

He met the full, almost taunting look of the girl, and he trembled with
unusedness.

"Shall you come an' have a look at my mare," he said to her, with his
hearty kindliness that was now shaken with trepidation.

"Oh, I should like to," she said, rising.

And she followed him, his rather sloping shoulders and his cloth
riding-gaiters, out of the room. The young men got their own horses out
of the stable.

"Can you ride?" Brangwen asked her.

"I should like to if I could-I have never tried," she said.

"Come then, an' have a try," he said.

And he lifted her, he blushing, she laughing, into the saddle.

"I s'll slip off-it's not a lady's saddle," she cried.

"Hold yer tight," he said, and he led her out of the hotel gate.

The girl sat very insecurely, clinging fast. He put a hand on her
waist, to support her. And he held her closely, he clasped her as in an
embrace, he was weak with desire as he strode beside her.

The horse walked by the river.

"You want to sit straddle-leg," he said to her.

"I know I do," she said.

It was the time of very full skirts. She managed to get astride the
horse, quite decently, showing an intent concern for covering her
pretty leg.

"It's a lot's better this road," she said, looking down at him.

"Ay, it is," he said, feeling the marrow melt in his bones from the
look in her eyes. "I dunno why they have that side-saddle business,
twistin' a woman in two."

"Should us leave you then-you seem to be fixed up there?" called
Brangwen's companions from the road.

He went red with anger.

"Ay-don't worry," he called back.

"How long are yer stoppin'?" they asked.

"Not after Christmas," he said.

And the girl gave a tinkling peal of laughter.

"All right-by-bye!" called his friends.

And they cantered off, leaving him very flushed, trying to be quite
normal with the girl. But presently he had gone back to the hotel and
given his horse into the charge of an ostler and had gone off with the
girl into the woods, not quite knowing where he was or what he was
doing. His heart thumped and he thought it the most glorious adventure,
and was mad with desire for the girl.

Afterwards he glowed with pleasure. By Jove, but that was something
like! He stayed the afternoon with the girl, and wanted to stay the
night. She, however, told him this was impossible: her own man would be
back by dark, and she must be with him. He, Brangwen, must not let on
that there had been anything between them.

She gave him an intimate smile, which made him feel confused and
gratified.

He could not tear himself away, though he had promised not to interfere
with the girl. He stayed on at the hotel over night. He saw the other
fellow at the evening meal: a small, middle-aged man with iron-grey
hair and a curious face, like a monkey's, but interesting, in its way
almost beautiful. Brangwen guessed that he was a foreigner. He was in
company with another, an Englishman, dry and hard. The four sat at
table, two men and two women. Brangwen watched with all his eyes.

He saw how the foreigner treated the women with courteous contempt, as
if they were pleasing animals. Brangwen's girl had put on a ladylike
manner, but her voice betrayed her. She wanted to win back her man.
When dessert came on, however, the little foreigner turned round from
his table and calmly surveyed the room, like one unoccupied. Brangwen
marvelled over the cold, animal intelligence of the face. The brown
eyes were round, showing all the brown pupil, like a monkey's, and just
calmly looking, perceiving the other person without referring to him at
all. They rested on Brangwen. The latter marvelled at the old face
turned round on him, looking at him without considering it necessary to
know him at all. The eyebrows of the round, perceiving, but unconcerned
eyes were rather high up, with slight wrinkles above them, just as a
monkey's had. It was an old, ageless face.

The man was most amazingly a gentleman all the time, an aristocrat.
Brangwen stared fascinated. The girl was pushing her crumbs about on
the cloth, uneasily, flushed and angry.

As Brangwen sat motionless in the hall afterwards, too much moved and
lost to know what to do, the little stranger came up to him with a
beautiful smile and manner, offering a cigarette and saying:

"Will you smoke?"

Brangwen never smoked cigarettes, yet he took the one offered, fumbling
painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then
he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes
of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began to
talk, chiefly of horses.

Brangwen loved the other man for his exquisite graciousness, for his
tact and reserve, and for his ageless, monkey-like self-surety. They
talked of horses, and of Derbyshire, and of farming. The stranger
warmed to the young fellow with real warmth, and Brangwen was excited.
He was transported at meeting this odd, middle-aged, dry-skinned man,
personally. The talk was pleasant, but that did not matter so much. It
was the gracious manner, the fine contact that was all.

They talked a long while together, Brangwen flushing like a girl when
the other did not understand his idiom. Then they said good night, and
shook hands. Again the foreigner bowed and repeated his good night.

"Good night, and bon voyage."

Then he turned to the stairs.

Brangwen went up to his room and lay staring out at the stars of the
summer night, his whole being in a whirl. What was it all? There was a
life so different from what he knew it. What was there outside his
knowledge, how much? What was this that he had touched? What was he in
this new influence? What did everything mean? Where was life, in that
which he knew or all outside him?

He fell asleep, and in the morning had ridden away before any other
visitors were awake. He shrank from seeing any of them again, in the
morning.

His mind was one big excitement. The girl and the foreigner: he knew
neither of their names. Yet they had set fire to the homestead of his
nature, and he would be burned out of cover. Of the two experiences,
perhaps the meeting with the foreigner was the more significant. But
the girl-he had not settled about the girl.

He did not know. He had to leave it there, as it was. He could not sum
up his experiences.

The result of these encounters was, that he dreamed day and night,
absorbedly, of a voluptuous woman and of the meeting with a small,
withered foreigner of ancient breeding. No sooner was his mind free, no
sooner had he left his own companions, than he began to imagine an
intimacy with fine-textured, subtle-mannered people such as the
foreigner at Matlock, and amidst this subtle intimacy was always the
satisfaction of a voluptuous woman.

He went about absorbed in the interest and the actuality of this dream.
His eyes glowed, he walked with his head up, full of the exquisite
pleasure of aristocratic subtlety and grace, tormented with the desire
for the girl.

Then gradually the glow began to fade, and the cold material of his
customary life to show through. He resented it. Was he cheated in his
illusion? He balked the mean enclosure of reality, stood stubbornly
like a bull at a gate, refusing to re-enter the well-known round of his
own life.

He drank more than usual to keep up the glow. But it faded more and
more for all that. He set his teeth at the commonplace, to which he
would not submit. It resolved itself starkly before him, for all that.

He wanted to marry, to get settled somehow, to get out of the quandary
he found himself in. But how? He felt unable to move his limbs. He had
seen a little creature caught in bird-lime, and the sight was a
nightmare to him. He began to feel mad with the rage of impotency.

He wanted something to get hold of, to pull himself out. But there was
nothing. Steadfastly he looked at the young women, to find a one he
could marry. But not one of them did he want. And he knew that the idea
of a life among such people as the foreigner was ridiculous.

Yet he dreamed of it, and stuck to his dreams, and would not have the
reality of Cossethay and Ilkeston. There he sat stubbornly in his
corner at the "Red Lion", smoking and musing and occasionally lifting
his beer-pot, and saying nothing, for all the world like a gorping
farm-labourer, as he said himself.

Then a fever of restless anger came upon him. He wanted to go
away-right away. He dreamed of foreign parts. But somehow he had no
contact with them. And it was a very strong root which held him to the
Marsh, to his own house and land.

Then Effie got married, and he was left in the house with only Tilly,
the cross-eyed woman-servant who had been with them for fifteen years.
He felt things coming to a close. All the time, he had held himself
stubbornly resistant to the action of the commonplace unreality which
wanted to absorb him. But now he had to do something.

He was by nature temperate. Being sensitive and emotional, his nausea
prevented him from drinking too much.

But, in futile anger, with the greatest of determination and apparent
good humour, he began to drink in order to get drunk. "Damn it," he
said to himself, "you must have it one road or another-you can't hitch
your horse to the shadow of a gate-post-if you've got legs you've got
to rise off your backside some time or other."

So he rose and went down to Ilkeston, rather awkwardly took his place
among a gang of young bloods, stood drinks to the company, and
discovered he could carry it off quite well. He had an idea that
everybody in the room was a man after his own heart, that everything
was glorious, everything was perfect. When somebody in alarm told him
his coat pocket was on fire, he could only beam from a red, blissful
face and say "Iss-all-ri-ight-iss-al'-ri-ight-it's a' right-let it be,
let it be-" and he laughed with pleasure, and was rather indignant that
the others should think it unnatural for his coat pocket to burn:-it
was the happiest and most natural thing in the world-what?

He went home talking to himself and to the moon, that was very high and
small, stumbling at the flashes of moonlight from the puddles at his
feet, wondering What the Hanover! then laughing confidently to the
moon, assuring her this was first class, this was.

In the morning he woke up and thought about it, and for the first time
in his life, knew what it was to feel really acutely irritable, in a
misery of real bad temper. After bawling and snarling at Tilly, he took
himself off for very shame, to be alone. And looking at the ashen
fields and the putty roads, he wondered what in the name of Hell he
could do to get out of this prickly sense of disgust and physical
repulsion. And he knew that this was the result of his glorious
evening.

And his stomach did not want any more brandy. He went doggedly across
the fields with his terrier, and looked at everything with a jaundiced
eye.

The next evening found him back again in his place at the "Red Lion",
moderate and decent. There he sat and stubbornly waited for what would
happen next.

Did he, or did he not believe that he belonged to this world of
Cossethay and Ilkeston? There was nothing in it he wanted. Yet could he
ever get out of it? Was there anything in himself that would carry him
out of it? Or was he a dunderheaded baby, not man enough to be like the
other young fellows who drank a good deal and wenched a little without
any question, and were satisfied.

He went on stubbornly for a time. Then the strain became too great for
him. A hot, accumulated consciousness was always awake in his chest,
his wrists felt swelled and quivering, his mind became full of lustful
images, his eyes seemed blood-flushed. He fought with himself
furiously, to remain normal. He did not seek any woman. He just went on
as if he were normal. Till he must either take some action or beat his
head against the wall.

Then he went deliberately to Ilkeston, in silence, intent and beaten.
He drank to get drunk. He gulped down the brandy, and more brandy, till
his face became pale, his eyes burning. And still he could not get
free. He went to sleep in drunken unconsciousness, woke up at four
o'clock in the morning and continued drinking. He would get free.
Gradually the tension in him began to relax. He began to feel happy.
His riveted silence was unfastened, he began to talk and babble. He was
happy and at one with all the world, he was united with all flesh in a
hot blood-relationship. So, after three days of incessant
brandy-drinking, he had burned out the youth from his blood, he had
achieved this kindled state of oneness with all the world, which is the
end of youth's most passionate desire. But he had achieved his
satisfaction by obliterating his own individuality, that which it
depended on his manhood to preserve and develop.

So he became a bout-drinker, having at intervals these bouts of three
or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was drunk for the whole time.
He did not think about it. A deep resentment burned in him. He kept
aloof from any women, antagonistic.

When he was twenty-eight, a thick-limbed, stiff, fair man with fresh
complexion, and blue eyes staring very straight ahead, he was coming
one day down from Cossethay with a load of seed out of Nottingham. It
was a time when he was getting ready for another bout of drinking, so
he stared fixedly before him, watchful yet absorbed, seeing everything
and aware of nothing, coiled in himself. It was early in the year.

He walked steadily beside the horse, the load clanked behind as the
hill descended steeper. The road curved down-hill before him, under
banks and hedges, seen only for a few yards ahead.

Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope, his horse
britching between the shafts, he saw a woman approaching. But he was
thinking for the moment of the horse.

Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, was apparently
rather small and slight, beneath her long black cloak, and she wore a
black bonnet. She walked hastily, as if unseeing, her head rather
forward. It was her curious, absorbed, flitting motion, as if she were
passing unseen by everybody, that first arrested him.

She had heard the cart, and looked up. Her face was pale and clear, she
had thick dark eyebrows and a wide mouth, curiously held. He saw her
face clearly, as if by a light in the air. He saw her face so
distinctly, that he ceased to coil on himself, and was suspended.

"That's her," he said involuntarily. As the cart passed by, splashing
through the thin mud, she stood back against the bank. Then, as he
walked still beside his britching horse, his eyes met hers. He looked
quickly away, pressing back his head, a pain of joy running through
him. He could not bear to think of anything.

He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, her shape in the
black cloak, the movement as she walked. Then she was gone round the
bend.

She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a far world,
not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He went on, quiet,
suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think or to speak, nor make
any sound or sign, nor change his fixed motion. He could scarcely bear
to think of her face. He moved within the knowledge of her, in the
world that was beyond reality.

The feeling that they had exchanged recognition possessed him like a
madness, like a torment. How could he be sure, what confirmation had
he? The doubt was like a sense of infinite space, a nothingness,
annihilating. He kept within his breast the will to surety. They had
exchanged recognition.

He walked about in this state for the next few days. And then again
like a mist it began to break to let through the common, barren world.
He was very gentle with man and beast, but he dreaded the starkness of
disillusion cropping through again.

As he was standing with his back to the fire after dinner a few days
later, he saw the woman passing. He wanted to know that she knew him,
that she was aware. He wanted it said that there was something between
them. So he stood anxiously watching, looking at her as she went down
the road. He called to Tilly.

"Who might that be?" he asked.

Tilly, the cross-eyed woman of forty, who adored him, ran gladly to the
window to look. She was glad when he asked her for anything. She craned
her head over the short curtain, the little tight knob of her black
hair sticking out pathetically as she bobbed about.

"Oh why"-she lifted her head and peered with her twisted, keen brown
eyes-"why, you know who it is-it's her from th' vicarage-you know-"

"How do I know, you hen-bird," he shouted.

Tilly blushed and drew her neck in and looked at him with her
squinting, sharp, almost reproachful look.

"Why you do-it's the new housekeeper."

"Ay-an' what by that?"

"Well, an' what by that?" rejoined the indignant Tilly.

"She's a woman, isn't she, housekeeper or no housekeeper? She's got
more to her than that! Who is she-she's got a name?"

"Well, if she has, I don't know," retorted Tilly, not to be badgered by
this lad who had grown up into a man.

"What's her name?" he asked, more gently.

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you," replied Tilly, on her dignity.

"An' is that all as you've gathered, as she's housekeeping at the
vicarage?"

"I've 'eered mention of 'er name, but I couldn't remember it for my
life."

"Why, yer riddle-skulled woman o' nonsense, what have you got a head
for?"

"For what other folks 'as got theirs for," retorted Tilly, who loved
nothing more than these tilts when he would call her names.

There was a lull.

"I don't believe as anybody could keep it in their head," the
woman-servant continued, tentatively.

"What?" he asked.

"Why, 'er name."

"How's that?"

"She's fra some foreign parts or other."

"Who told you that?"

"That's all I do know, as she is."

"An' wheer do you reckon she's from, then?"

"I don't know. They do say as she hails fra th' Pole. I don't know,"
Tilly hastened to add, knowing he would attack her.

"Fra th' Pole, why do you hail fra th' Pole? Who set up that menagerie
confabulation?"

"That's what they say-I don't know-"

"Who says?"

"Mrs. Bentley says as she's fra th' Pole-else she is a Pole, or
summat."

Tilly was only afraid she was landing herself deeper now.

"Who says she's a Pole?"

"They all say so."

"Then what's brought her to these parts?"

"I couldn't tell you. She's got a little girl with her."

"Got a little girl with her?"

"Of three or four, with a head like a fuzz-ball."

"Black?"

"White-fair as can be, an' all of a fuzz."

"Is there a father, then?"

"Not to my knowledge. I don't know."

"What brought her here?"

"I couldn't say, without th' vicar axed her."

"Is the child her child?"

"I s'd think so-they say so."

"Who told you about her?"

"Why, Lizzie-a-Monday-we seed her goin' past."

"You'd have to be rattling your tongues if anything went past."

Brangwen stood musing. That evening he went up to Cossethay to the "Red
Lion", half with the intention of hearing more.

She was the widow of a Polish doctor, he gathered. Her husband had
died, a refugee, in London. She spoke a bit foreign-like, but you could
easily make out what she said. She had one little girl named Anna.
Lensky was the woman's name, Mrs. Lensky.

Brangwen felt that here was the unreality established at last. He felt
also a curious certainty about her, as if she were destined to him. It
was to him a profound satisfaction that she was a foreigner.

A swift change had taken place on the earth for him, as if a new
creation were fulfilled, in which he had real existence. Things had all
been stark, unreal, barren, mere nullities before. Now they were
actualities that he could handle.

He dared scarcely think of the woman. He was afraid. Only all the time
he was aware of her presence not far off, he lived in her. But he dared
not know her, even acquaint himself with her by thinking of her.

One day he met her walking along the road with her little girl. It was
a child with a face like a bud of apple-blossom, and glistening fair
hair like thistle-down sticking out in straight, wild, flamy pieces,
and very dark eyes. The child clung jealously to her mother's side when
he looked at her, staring with resentful black eyes. But the mother
glanced at him again, almost vacantly. And the very vacancy of her look
inflamed him. She had wide grey-brown eyes with very dark, fathomless
pupils. He felt the fine flame running under his skin, as if all his
veins had caught fire on the surface. And he went on walking without
knowledge.

It was coming, he knew, his fate. The world was submitting to its
transformation. He made no move: it would come, what would come.

When his sister Effie came to the Marsh for a week, he went with her
for once to church. In the tiny place, with its mere dozen pews, he sat
not far from the stranger. There was a fineness about her, a poignancy
about the way she sat and held her head lifted. She was strange, from
far off, yet so intimate. She was from far away, a presence, so close
to his soul. She was not really there, sitting in Cossethay church
beside her little girl. She was not living the apparent life of her
days. She belonged to somewhere else. He felt it poignantly, as
something real and natural. But a pang of fear for his own concrete
life, that was only Cossethay, hurt him, and gave him misgiving.

Her thick dark brows almost met above her irregular nose, she had a
wide, rather thick mouth. But her face was lifted to another world of
life: not to heaven or death: but to some place where she still lived,
in spite of her body's absence.

The child beside her watched everything with wide, black eyes. She had
an odd little defiant look, her little red mouth was pinched shut. She
seemed to be jealously guarding something, to be always on the alert
for defence. She met Brangwen's near, vacant, intimate gaze, and a
palpitating hostility, almost like a flame of pain, came into the wide,
over-conscious dark eyes.

The old clergyman droned on, Cossethay sat unmoved as usual. And there
was the foreign woman with a foreign air about her, inviolate, and the
strange child, also foreign, jealously guarding something.

When the service was over, he walked in the way of another existence
out of the church. As he went down the churchpath with his sister,
behind the woman and child, the little girl suddenly broke from her
mother's hand, and slipped back with quick, almost invisible movement,
and was picking at something almost under Brangwen's feet. Her tiny
fingers were fine and quick, but they missed the red button.

"Have you found something?" said Brangwen to her.

And he also stooped for the button. But she had got it, and she stood
back with it pressed against her little coat, her black eyes flaring at
him, as if to forbid him to notice her. Then, having silenced him, she
turned with a swift "Mother-," and was gone down the path.

The mother had stood watching impassive, looking not at the child, but
at Brangwen. He became aware of the woman looking at him, standing
there isolated yet for him dominant in her foreign existence.

He did not know what to do, and turned to his sister. But the wide grey
eyes, almost vacant yet so moving, held him beyond himself.

"Mother, I may have it, mayn't I?" came the child's proud, silvery
tones. "Mother"-she seemed always to be calling her mother to remember
her-"mother"-and she had nothing to continue now her mother had replied
"Yes, my child." But, with ready invention, the child stumbled and ran
on, "What are those people's names?"

Brangwen heard the abstract:

"I don't know, dear."

He went on down the road as if he were not living inside himself, but
somewhere outside.

"Who was that person?" his sister Effie asked.

"I couldn't tell you," he answered unknowing.

"She's somebody very funny," said Effie, almost in condemnation. "That
child's like one bewitched."

"Bewitched-how bewitched?" he repeated.

"You can see for yourself. The mother's plain, I must say-but the child
is like a changeling. She'd be about thirty-five."

But he took no notice. His sister talked on.

"There's your woman for you," she continued. "You'd better marry her."
But still he took no notice. Things were as they were.

Another day, at tea-time, as he sat alone at table, there came a knock
at the front door. It startled him like a portent. No one ever knocked
at the front door. He rose and began slotting back the bolts, turning
the big key. When he had opened the door, the strange woman stood on
the threshold.

"Can you give me a pound of butter?" she asked, in a curious detached
way of one speaking a foreign language.

He tried to attend to her question. She was looking at him
questioningly. But underneath the question, what was there, in her very
standing motionless, which affected him?

He stepped aside and she at once entered the house, as if the door had
been opened to admit her. That startled him. It was the custom for
everybody to wait on the doorstep till asked inside. He went into the
kitchen and she followed.

His tea-things were spread on the scrubbed deal table, a big fire was
burning, a dog rose from the hearth and went to her. She stood
motionless just inside the kitchen.

"Tilly," he called loudly, "have we got any butter?"

The stranger stood there like a silence in her black cloak.

"Eh?" came the shrill cry from the distance.

He shouted his question again.

"We've got what's on t' table," answered Tilly's shrill voice out of
the dairy.

Brangwen looked at the table. There was a large pat of butter on a
plate, almost a pound. It was round, and stamped with acorns and
oak-leaves.

"Can't you come when you're wanted?" he shouted.

"Why, what d'you want?" Tilly protested, as she came peeking
inquisitively through the other door.

She saw the strange woman, stared at her with cross-eyes, but said
nothing.

"Haven't we any butter?" asked Brangwen again, impatiently, as if he
could command some by his question.

"I tell you there's what's on t' table," said Tilly, impatient that she
was unable to create any to his demand. "We haven't a morsel besides."

There was a moment's silence.

The stranger spoke, in her curiously distinct, detached manner of one
who must think her speech first.

"Oh, then thank you very much. I am sorry that I have come to trouble
you."

She could not understand the entire lack of manners, was slightly
puzzled. Any politeness would have made the situation quite impersonal.
But here it was a case of wills in confusion. Brangwen flushed at her
polite speech. Still he did not let her go.

"Get summat an' wrap that up for her," he said to Tilly, looking at the
butter on the table.

And taking a clean knife, he cut off that side of the butter where it
was touched.

His speech, the "for her", penetrated slowly into the foreign woman and
angered Tilly.

"Vicar has his butter fra Brown's by rights," said the insuppressible
servant-woman. "We s'll be churnin' to-morrow mornin' first thing."

"Yes"-the long-drawn foreign yes-"yes," said the Polish woman, "I went
to Mrs. Brown's. She hasn't any more."

Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according to the
etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort of manners
whatever coming to a place cool as you like and knocking at the front
door asking for a pound as a stop-gap while your other people were
short. If you go to Brown's you go to Brown's, an' my butter isn't just
to make shift when Brown's has got none.

Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of Tilly's. The
Polish lady did not. And as she wanted butter for the vicar, and as
Tilly was churning in the morning, she waited.

"Sluther up now," said Brangwen loudly after this silence had resolved
itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the inner door.

"I am afraid that I should not come, so," said the stranger, looking at
him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it was usual to do.

He felt confused.

"How's that?" he said, trying to be genial and being only protective.

"Do you--?" she began deliberately. But she was not sure of her ground,
and the conversation came to an end. Her eyes looked at him all the
while, because she could not speak the language.

They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from her to him. He
bent down to it.

"And how's your little girl?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you, she is very well," was the reply, a phrase of polite
speech in a foreign language merely.

"Sit you down," he said.

And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through the slits of her
cloak, resting on her lap.

"You're not used to these parts," he said, still standing on the
hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking with curious
directness at the woman. Her self-possession pleased him and inspired
him, set him curiously free. It seemed to him almost brutal to feel so
master of himself and of the situation.

Her eyes rested on him for a moment, questioning, as she thought of the
meaning of his speech.

"No," she said, understanding. "No-it is strange."

"You find it middlin' rough?" he said.

Her eyes waited on him, so that he should say it again.

"Our ways are rough to you," he repeated.

"Yes-yes, I understand. Yes, it is different, it is strange. But I was
in Yorkshire--"

"Oh, well then," he said, "it's no worse here than what they are up
there."

She did not quite understand. His protective manner, and his sureness,
and his intimacy, puzzled her. What did he mean? If he was her equal,
why did he behave so without formality?

"No--" she said, vaguely, her eyes resting on him.

She saw him fresh and naive, uncouth, almost entirely beyond
relationship with her. Yet he was good-looking, with his fair hair and
blue eyes full of energy, and with his healthy body that seemed to take
equality with her. She watched him steadily. He was difficult for her
to understand, warm, uncouth, and confident as he was, sure on his feet
as if he did not know what it was to be unsure. What then was it that
gave him this curious stability?

She did not know. She wondered. She looked round the room he lived in.
It had a close intimacy that fascinated and almost frightened her. The
furniture was old and familiar as old people, the whole place seemed so
kin to him, as if it partook of his being, that she was uneasy.

"It is already a long time that you have lived in this house-yes?" she
asked.

"I've always lived here," he said.

"Yes-but your people-your family?"

"We've been here above two hundred years," he said. Her eyes were on
him all the time, wide-open and trying to grasp him. He felt that he
was there for her.

"It is your own place, the house, the farm--?"

"Yes," he said. He looked down at her and met her look. It disturbed
her. She did not know him. He was a foreigner, they had nothing to do
with each other. Yet his look disturbed her to knowledge of him. He was
so strangely confident and direct.

"You live quite alone?"

"Yes-if you call it alone?"

She did not understand. It seemed unusual to her. What was the meaning
of it?

And whenever her eyes, after watching him for some time, inevitably met
his, she was aware of a heat beating up over her consciousness. She sat
motionless and in conflict. Who was this strange man who was at once so
near to her? What was happening to her? Something in his young,
warm-twinkling eyes seemed to assume a right to her, to speak to her,
to extend her his protection. But how? Why did he speak to her? Why
were his eyes so certain, so full of light and confident, waiting for
no permission nor signal?

Tilly returned with a large leaf and found the two silent. At once he
felt it incumbent on him to speak, now the serving-woman had come back.

"How old is your little girl?" he asked.

"Four years," she replied.

"Her father hasn't been dead long, then?" he asked.

"She was one year when he died."

"Three years?"

"Yes, three years that he is dead-yes."

Curiously quiet she was, almost abstracted, answering these questions.
She looked at him again, with some maidenhood opening in her eyes. He
felt he could not move, neither towards her nor away from her.
Something about her presence hurt him, till he was almost rigid before
her. He saw the girl's wondering look rise in her eyes.

Tilly handed her the butter and she rose.

"Thank you very much," she said. "How much is it?"

"We'll make th' vicar a present of it," he said. "It'll do for me goin'
to church."

"It 'ud look better of you if you went to church and took th' money for
your butter," said Tilly, persistent in her claim to him.

"You'd have to put in, shouldn't you?" he said.

"How much, please?" said the Polish woman to Tilly. Brangwen stood by
and let be.

"Then, thank you very much," she said.

"Bring your little girl down sometime to look at th' fowls and horses,"
he said,-"if she'd like it."

"Yes, she would like it," said the stranger.

And she went. Brangwen stood dimmed by her departure. He could not
notice Tilly, who was looking at him uneasily, wanting to be reassured.
He could not think of anything. He felt that he had made some invisible
connection with the strange woman.

A daze had come over his mind, he had another centre of consciousness.
In his breast, or in his bowels, somewhere in his body, there had
started another activity. It was as if a strong light were burning
there, and he was blind within it, unable to know anything, except that
this transfiguration burned between him and her, connecting them, like
a secret power.

Since she had come to the house he went about in a daze, scarcely
seeing even the things he handled, drifting, quiescent, in a state of
metamorphosis. He submitted to that which was happening to him, letting
go his will, suffering the loss of himself, dormant always on the brink
of ecstasy, like a creature evolving to a new birth.

She came twice with her child to the farm, but there was this lull
between them, an intense calm and passivity like a torpor upon them, so
that there was no active change took place. He was almost unaware of
the child, yet by his native good humour he gained her confidence, even
her affection, setting her on a horse to ride, giving her corn for the
fowls.

Once he drove the mother and child from Ilkeston, picking them up on
the road. The child huddled close to him as if for love, the mother sat
very still. There was a vagueness, like a soft mist over all of them,
and a silence as if their wills were suspended. Only he saw her hands,
ungloved, folded in her lap, and he noticed the wedding-ring on her
finger. It excluded him: it was a closed circle. It bound her life, the
wedding-ring, it stood for her life in which he could have no part.
Nevertheless, beyond all this, there was herself and himself which
should meet.

As he helped her down from the trap, almost lifting her, he felt he had
some right to take her thus between his hands. She belonged as yet to
that other, to that which was behind. But he must care for her also.
She was too living to be neglected.

Sometimes her vagueness, in which he was lost, made him angry, made him
rage. But he held himself still as yet. She had no response, no being
towards him. It puzzled and enraged him, but he submitted for a long
time. Then, from the accumulated troubling of her ignoring him,
gradually a fury broke out, destructive, and he wanted to go away, to
escape her.

It happened she came down to the Marsh with the child whilst he was in
this state. Then he stood over against her, strong and heavy in his
revolt, and though he said nothing, still she felt his anger and heavy
impatience grip hold of her, she was shaken again as out of a torpor.
Again her heart stirred with a quick, out-running impulse, she looked
at him, at the stranger who was not a gentleman yet who insisted on
coming into her life, and the pain of a new birth in herself strung all
her veins to a new form. She would have to begin again, to find a new
being, a new form, to respond to that blind, insistent figure standing
over against her.

A shiver, a sickness of new birth passed over her, the flame leaped up
him, under his skin. She wanted it, this new life from him, with him,
yet she must defend herself against it, for it was a destruction.

As he worked alone on the land, or sat up with his ewes at lambing
time, the facts and material of his daily life fell away, leaving the
kernel of his purpose clean. And then it came upon him that he would
marry her and she would be his life.

Gradually, even without seeing her, he came to know her. He would have
liked to think of her as of something given into his protection, like a
child without parents. But it was forbidden him. He had to come down
from this pleasant view of the case. She might refuse him. And besides,
he was afraid of her.

But during the long February nights with the ewes in labour, looking
out from the shelter into the flashing stars, he knew he did not belong
to himself. He must admit that he was only fragmentary, something
incomplete and subject. There were the stars in the dark heaven
travelling, the whole host passing by on some eternal voyage. So he sat
small and submissive to the greater ordering.

Unless she would come to him, he must remain as a nothingness. It was a
hard experience. But, after her repeated obliviousness to him, after he
had seen so often that he did not exist for her, after he had raged and
tried to escape, and said he was good enough by himself, he was a man,
and could stand alone, he must, in the starry multiplicity of the night
humble himself, and admit and know that without her he was nothing.

He was nothing. But with her, he would be real. If she were now walking
across the frosty grass near the sheep-shelter, through the fretful
bleating of the ewes and lambs, she would bring him completeness and
perfection. And if it should be so, that she should come to him! It
should be so-it was ordained so.

He was a long time resolving definitely to ask her to marry him. And he
knew, if he asked her, she must really acquiesce. She must, it could
not be otherwise.

He had learned a little of her. She was poor, quite alone, and had had
a hard time in London, both before and after her husband died. But in
Poland she was a lady well born, a landowner's daughter.

All these things were only words to him, the fact of her superior
birth, the fact that her husband had been a brilliant doctor, the fact
that he himself was her inferior in almost every way of distinction.
There was an inner reality, a logic of the soul, which connected her
with him.

One evening in March, when the wind was roaring outside, came the
moment to ask her. He had sat with his hands before him, leaning to the
fire. And as he watched the fire, he knew almost without thinking that
he was going this evening.

"Have you got a clean shirt?" he asked Tilly.

"You know you've got clean shirts," she said.

"Ay,-bring me a white one."

Tilly brought down one of the linen shirts he had inherited from his
father, putting it before him to air at the fire. She loved him with a
dumb, aching love as he sat leaning with his arms on his knees, still
and absorbed, unaware of her. Lately, a quivering inclination to cry
had come over her, when she did anything for him in his presence. Now
her hands trembled as she spread the shirt. He was never shouting and
teasing now. The deep stillness there was in the house made her
tremble.

He went to wash himself. Queer little breaks of consciousness seemed to
rise and burst like bubbles out of the depths of his stillness.

"It's got to be done," he said as he stooped to take the shirt out of
the fender, "it's got to be done, so why balk it?" And as he combed his
hair before the mirror on the wall, he retorted to himself,
superficially: "The woman's not speechless dumb. She's not clutterin'
at the nipple. She's got the right to please herself, and displease
whosoever she likes."

This streak of common sense carried him a little further.

"Did you want anythink?" asked Tilly, suddenly appearing, having heard
him speak. She stood watching him comb his fair beard. His eyes were
calm and uninterrupted.

"Ay," he said, "where have you put the scissors?"

She brought them to him, and stood watching as, chin forward, he
trimmed his beard.

"Don't go an' crop yourself as if you was at a shearin' contest," she
said, anxiously. He blew the fine-curled hair quickly off his lips.

He put on all clean clothes, folded his stock carefully, and donned his
best coat. Then, being ready, as grey twilight was falling, he went
across to the orchard to gather the daffodils. The wind was roaring in
the apple trees, the yellow flowers swayed violently up and down, he
heard even the fine whisper of their spears as he stooped to break the
flattened, brittle stems of the flowers.

"What's to-do?" shouted a friend who met him as he left the garden
gate.

"Bit of courtin', like," said Brangwen.

And Tilly, in a great state of trepidation and excitement, let the wind
whisk her over the field to the big gate, whence she could watch him
go.

He went up the hill and on towards the vicarage, the wind roaring
through the hedges, whilst he tried to shelter his bunch of daffodils
by his side. He did not think of anything, only knew that the wind was
blowing.

Night was falling, the bare trees drummed and whistled. The vicar, he
knew, would be in his study, the Polish woman in the kitchen, a
comfortable room, with her child. In the darkest of twilight, he went
through the gate and down the path where a few daffodils stooped in the
wind, and shattered crocuses made a pale, colourless ravel.

There was a light streaming on to the bushes at the back from the
kitchen window. He began to hesitate. How could he do this? Looking
through the window, he saw her seated in the rocking-chair with the
child, already in its nightdress, sitting on her knee. The fair head
with its wild, fierce hair was drooping towards the fire-warmth, which
reflected on the bright cheeks and clear skin of the child, who seemed
to be musing, almost like a grown-up person. The mother's face was dark
and still, and he saw, with a pang, that she was away back in the life
that had been. The child's hair gleamed like spun glass, her face was
illuminated till it seemed like wax lit up from the inside. The wind
boomed strongly. Mother and child sat motionless, silent, the child
staring with vacant dark eyes into the fire, the mother looking into
space. The little girl was almost asleep. It was her will which kept
her eyes so wide.

Suddenly she looked round, troubled, as the wind shook the house, and
Brangwen saw the small lips move. The mother began to rock, he heard
the slight crunch of the rockers of the chair. Then he heard the low,
monotonous murmur of a song in a foreign language. Then a great burst
of wind, the mother seemed to have drifted away, the child's eyes were
black and dilated. Brangwen looked up at the clouds which packed in
great, alarming haste across the dark sky.

Then there came the child's high, complaining, yet imperative voice:

"Don't sing that stuff, mother; I don't want to hear it."

The singing died away.

"You will go to bed," said the mother.

He saw the clinging protest of the child, the unmoved farawayness of
the mother, the clinging, grasping effort of the child. Then suddenly
the clear childish challenge:

"I want you to tell me a story."

The wind blew, the story began, the child nestled against the mother,
Brangwen waited outside, suspended, looking at the wild waving of the
trees in the wind and the gathering darkness. He had his fate to
follow, he lingered there at the threshold.

The child crouched distinct and motionless, curled in against her
mother, the eyes dark and unblinking among the keen wisps of hair, like
a curled-up animal asleep but for the eyes. The mother sat as if in
shadow, the story went on as if by itself. Brangwen stood outside
seeing the night fall. He did not notice the passage of time. The hand
that held the daffodils was fixed and cold.

The story came to an end, the mother rose at last, with the child
clinging round her neck. She must be strong, to carry so large a child
so easily. The little Anna clung round her mother's neck. The fair,
strange face of the child looked over the shoulder of the mother, all
asleep but the eyes, and these, wide and dark, kept up the resistance
and the fight with something unseen.

When they were gone, Brangwen stirred for the first time from the place
where he stood, and looked round at the night. He wished it were really
as beautiful and familiar as it seemed in these few moments of release.
Along with the child, he felt a curious strain on him, a suffering,
like a fate.

The mother came down again, and began folding the child's clothes. He
knocked. She opened wondering, a little bit at bay, like a foreigner,
uneasy.

"Good evening," he said. "I'll just come in a minute."

A change went quickly over her face; she was unprepared. She looked
down at him as he stood in the light from the window, holding the
daffodils, the darkness behind. In his black clothes she again did not
know him. She was almost afraid.

But he was already stepping on to the threshold, and closing the door
behind him. She turned into the kitchen, startled out of herself by
this invasion from the night. He took off his hat, and came towards
her. Then he stood in the light, in his black clothes and his black
stock, hat in one hand and yellow flowers in the other. She stood away,
at his mercy, snatched out of herself. She did not know him, only she
knew he was a man come for her. She could only see the dark-clad man's
figure standing there upon her, and the gripped fist of flowers. She
could not see the face and the living eyes.

He was watching her, without knowing her, only aware underneath of her
presence.

"I come to have a word with you," he said, striding forward to the
table, laying down his hat and the flowers, which tumbled apart and lay
in a loose heap. She had flinched from his advance. She had no will, no
being. The wind boomed in the chimney, and he waited. He had
disembarrassed his hands. Now he shut his fists.

He was aware of her standing there unknown, dread, yet related to him.

"I came up," he said, speaking curiously matter-of-fact and level, "to
ask if you'd marry me. You are free, aren't you?"

There was a long silence, whilst his blue eyes, strangely impersonal,
looked into her eyes to seek an answer to the truth. He was looking for
the truth out of her. And she, as if hypnotised, must answer at length.

"Yes, I am free to marry."

The expression of his eyes changed, became less impersonal, as if he
were looking almost at her, for the truth of her. Steady and intent and
eternal they were, as if they would never change. They seemed to fix
and to resolve her. She quivered, feeling herself created, will-less,
lapsing into him, into a common will with him.

"You want me?" she said.

A pallor came over his face.

"Yes," he said.

Still there was no response and silence.

"No," she said, not of herself. "No, I don't know."

He felt the tension breaking up in him, his fists slackened, he was
unable to move. He stood there looking at her, helpless in his vague
collapse. For the moment she had become unreal to him. Then he saw her
come to him, curiously direct and as if without movement, in a sudden
flow. She put her hand to his coat.

"Yes I want to," she said, impersonally, looking at him with wide,
candid, newly-opened eyes, opened now with supreme truth. He went very
white as he stood, and did not move, only his eyes were held by hers,
and he suffered. She seemed to see him with her newly-opened, wide
eyes, almost of a child, and with a strange movement, that was agony to
him, she reached slowly forward her dark face and her breast to him,
with a slow insinuation of a kiss that made something break in his
brain, and it was darkness over him for a few moments.

He had her in his arms, and, obliterated, was kissing her. And it was
sheer, bleached agony to him, to break away from himself. She was there
so small and light and accepting in his arms, like a child, and yet
with such an insinuation of embrace, of infinite embrace, that he could
not bear it, he could not stand.

He turned and looked for a chair, and keeping her still in his arms,
sat down with her close to him, to his breast. Then, for a few seconds,
he went utterly to sleep, asleep and sealed in the darkest sleep,
utter, extreme oblivion.

From which he came to gradually, always holding her warm and close upon
him, and she as utterly silent as he, involved in the same oblivion,
the fecund darkness.

He returned gradually, but newly created, as after a gestation, a new
birth, in the womb of darkness. Aerial and light everything was, new as
a morning, fresh and newly-begun. Like a dawn the newness and the bliss
filled in. And she sat utterly still with him, as if in the same.

Then she looked up at him, the wide, young eyes blazing with light. And
he bent down and kissed her on the lips. And the dawn blazed in them,
their new life came to pass, it was beyond all conceiving good, it was
so good, that it was almost like a passing-away, a trespass. He drew
her suddenly closer to him.

For soon the light began to fade in her, gradually, and as she was in
his arms, her head sank, she leaned it against him, and lay still, with
sunk head, a little tired, effaced because she was tired. And in her
tiredness was a certain negation of him.

"There is the child," she said, out of the long silence.

He did not understand. It was a long time since he had heard a voice.
Now also he heard the wind roaring, as if it had just begun again.

"Yes," he said, not understanding. There was a slight contraction of
pain at his heart, a slight tension on his brows. Something he wanted
to grasp and could not.

"You will love her?" she said.

The quick contraction, like pain, went over him again.

"I love her now," he said.

She lay still against him, taking his physical warmth without heed. It
was great confirmation for him to feel her there, absorbing the warmth
from him, giving him back her weight and her strange confidence. But
where was she, that she seemed so absent? His mind was open with
wonder. He did not know her.

"But I am much older than you," she said.

"How old?" he asked.

"I am thirty-four," she said.

"I am twenty-eight," he said.

"Six years."

She was oddly concerned, even as if it pleased her a little. He sat and
listened and wondered. It was rather splendid, to be so ignored by her,
whilst she lay against him, and he lifted her with his breathing, and
felt her weight upon his living, so he had a completeness and an
inviolable power. He did not interfere with her. He did not even know
her. It was so strange that she lay there with her weight abandoned
upon him. He was silent with delight. He felt strong, physically,
carrying her on his breathing. The strange, inviolable completeness of
the two of them made him feel as sure and as stable as God. Amused, he
wondered what the vicar would say if he knew.

"You needn't stop here much longer, housekeeping," he said.

"I like it also, here," she said. "When one has been in many places, it
is very nice here."

He was silent again at this. So close on him she lay, and yet she
answered him from so far away. But he did not mind.

"What was your own home like, when you were little?" he asked.

"My father was a landowner," she replied. "It was near a river."

This did not convey much to him. All was as vague as before. But he did
not care, whilst she was so close.

"I am a landowner-a little one," he said.

"Yes," she said.

He had not dared to move. He sat there with his arms round her, her
lying motionless on his breathing, and for a long time he did not stir.
Then softly, timidly, his hand settled on the roundness of her arm, on
the unknown. She seemed to lie a little closer. A hot flame licked up
from his belly to his chest.

But it was too soon. She rose, and went across the room to a drawer,
taking out a little tray-cloth. There was something quiet and
professional about her. She had been a nurse beside her husband, both
in Warsaw and in the rebellion afterwards. She proceeded to set a tray.
It was as if she ignored Brangwen. He sat up, unable to bear a
contradiction in her. She moved about inscrutably.

Then, as he sat there, all mused and wondering, she came near to him,
looking at him with wide, grey eyes that almost smiled with a low
light. But her ugly-beautiful mouth was still unmoved and sad. He was
afraid.

His eyes, strained and roused with unusedness, quailed a little before
her, he felt himself quailing and yet he rose, as if obedient to her,
he bent and kissed her heavy, sad, wide mouth, that was kissed, and did
not alter. Fear was too strong in him. Again he had not got her.

She turned away. The vicarage kitchen was untidy, and yet to him
beautiful with the untidiness of her and her child. Such a wonderful
remoteness there was about her, and then something in touch with him,
that made his heart knock in his chest. He stood there and waited,
suspended.

Again she came to him, as he stood in his black clothes, with blue eyes
very bright and puzzled for her, his face tensely alive, his hair
dishevelled. She came close up to him, to his intent, black-clothed
body, and laid her hand on his arm. He remained unmoved. Her eyes, with
a blackness of memory struggling with passion, primitive and electric
away at the back of them, rejected him and absorbed him at once. But he
remained himself. He breathed with difficulty, and sweat came out at
the roots of his hair, on his forehead.

"Do you want to marry me?" she asked slowly, always uncertain.

He was afraid lest he could not speak. He drew breath hard, saying:

"I do."

Then again, what was agony to him, with one hand lightly resting on his
arm, she leaned forward a little, and with a strange, primeval
suggestion of embrace, held him her mouth. It was ugly-beautiful, and
he could not bear it. He put his mouth on hers, and slowly, slowly the
response came, gathering force and passion, till it seemed to him she
was thundering at him till he could bear no more. He drew away, white,
unbreathing. Only, in his blue eyes, was something of himself
concentrated. And in her eyes was a little smile upon a black void.

She was drifting away from him again. And he wanted to go away. It was
intolerable. He could bear no more. He must go. Yet he was irresolute.
But she turned away from him.

With a little pang of anguish, of denial, it was decided.

"I'll come an' speak to the vicar to-morrow," he said, taking his hat.

She looked at him, her eyes expressionless and full of darkness. He
could see no answer.

"That'll do, won't it?" he said.

"Yes," she answered, mere echo without body or meaning.

"Good night," he said.

"Good night."

He left her standing there, expressionless and void as she was. Then
she went on laying the tray for the vicar. Needing the table, she put
the daffodils aside on the dresser without noticing them. Only their
coolness, touching her hand, remained echoing there a long while.

They were such strangers, they must for ever be such strangers, that
his passion was a clanging torment to him. Such intimacy of embrace,
and such utter foreignness of contact! It was unbearable. He could not
bear to be near her, and know the utter foreignness between them, know
how entirely they were strangers to each other. He went out into the
wind. Big holes were blown into the sky, the moonlight blew about.
Sometimes a high moon, liquid-brilliant, scudded across a hollow space
and took cover under electric, brown-iridescent cloud-edges. Then there
was a blot of cloud, and shadow. Then somewhere in the night a radiance
again, like a vapour. And all the sky was teeming and tearing along, a
vast disorder of flying shapes and darkness and ragged fumes of light
and a great brown circling halo, then the terror of a moon running
liquid-brilliant into the open for a moment, hurting the eyes before
she plunged under cover of cloud again.




Chapter 2



They Live at the Marsh


She was the daughter of a Polish landowner who, deeply in debt to the
Jews, had married a German wife with money, and who had died just
before the rebellion. Quite young, she had married Paul Lensky, an
intellectual who had studied at Berlin, and had returned to Warsaw a
patriot. Her mother had married a German merchant and gone away.

Lydia Lensky, married to the young doctor, became with him a patriot
and an emancipee. They were poor, but they were very conceited. She
learned nursing as a mark of her emancipation. They represented in
Poland the new movement just begun in Russia. But they were very
patriotic: and, at the same time, very "European".

They had two children. Then came the great rebellion. Lensky, very
ardent and full of words, went about inciting his countrymen. Little
Poles flamed down the streets of Warsaw, on the way to shoot every
Muscovite. So they crossed into the south of Russia, and it was common
for six little insurgents to ride into a Jewish village, brandishing
swords and words, emphasising the fact that they were going to shoot
every living Muscovite.

Lensky was something of a fire-eater also. Lydia, tempered by her
German blood, coming of a different family, was obliterated, carried
along in her husband's emphasis of declaration, and his whirl of
patriotism. He was indeed a brave man, but no bravery could quite have
equalled the vividness of his talk. He worked very hard, till nothing
lived in him but his eyes. And Lydia, as if drugged, followed him like
a shadow, serving, echoing. Sometimes she had her two children,
sometimes they were left behind.

She returned once to find them both dead of diphtheria. Her husband
wept aloud, unaware of everybody. But the war went on, and soon he was
back at his work. A darkness had come over Lydia's mind. She walked
always in a shadow, silenced, with a strange, deep terror having hold
of her, her desire was to seek satisfaction in dread, to enter a
nunnery, to satisfy the instincts of dread in her, through service of a
dark religion. But she could not.

Then came the flight to London. Lensky, the little, thin man, had got
all his life locked into a resistance and could not relax again. He
lived in a sort of insane irritability, touchy, haughty to the last
degree, fractious, so that as assistant doctor in one of the hospitals
he soon became impossible. They were almost beggars. But he kept still
his great ideas of himself, he seemed to live in a complete
hallucination, where he himself figured vivid and lordly. He guarded
his wife jealously against the ignominy of her position, rushed round
her like a brandished weapon, an amazing sight to the English eye, had
her in his power, as if he hypnotised her. She was passive, dark,
always in shadow.

He was wasting away. Already when the child was born he seemed nothing
but skin and bone and fixed idea. She watched him dying, nursed him,
nursed the baby, but really took no notice of anything. A darkness was
on her, like remorse, or like a remembering of the dark, savage, mystic
ride of dread, of death, of the shadow of revenge. When her husband
died, she was relieved. He would no longer dart about her.

England fitted her mood, its aloofness and foreignness. She had known a
little of the language before coming, and a sort of parrot-mind made
her pick it up fairly easily. But she knew nothing of the English, nor
of English life. Indeed, these did not exist for her. She was like one
walking in the Underworld, where the shades throng intelligibly but
have no connection with one. She felt the English people as a potent,
cold, slightly hostile host amongst whom she walked isolated.

The English people themselves were almost deferential to her, the
Church saw that she did not want. She walked without passion, like a
shade, tormented into moments of love by the child. Her dying husband
with his tortured eyes and the skin drawn tight over his face, he was
as a vision to her, not a reality. In a vision he was buried and put
away. Then the vision ceased, she was untroubled, time went on grey,
uncoloured, like a long journey where she sat unconscious as the
landscape unrolled beside her. When she rocked her baby at evening,
maybe she fell into a Polish slumber song, or she talked sometimes to
herself in Polish. Otherwise she did not think of Poland, nor of that
life to which she had belonged. It was a great blot looming blank in
its darkness. In the superficial activity of her life, she was all
English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and
darknesses of abstraction were Polish.

So she lived for some time. Then, with slight uneasiness, she used half
to awake to the streets of London. She realised that there was
something around her, very foreign, she realised she was in a strange
place. And then, she was sent away into the country. There came into
her mind now the memory of her home where she had been a child, the big
house among the land, the peasants of the village.

She was sent to Yorkshire, to nurse an old rector in his rectory by the
sea. This was the first shake of the kaleidoscope that brought in front
of her eyes something she must see. It hurt her brain, the open country
and the moors. It hurt her and hurt her. Yet it forced itself upon her
as something living, it roused some potency of her childhood in her, it
had some relation to her.

There was green and silver and blue in the air about her now. And there
was a strange insistence of light from the sea, to which she must
attend. Primroses glimmered around, many of them, and she stooped to
the disturbing influence near her feet, she even picked one or two
flowers, faintly remembering in the new colour of life, what had been.
All the day long, as she sat at the upper window, the light came off
the sea, constantly, constantly, without refusal, till it seemed to
bear her away, and the noise of the sea created a drowsiness in her, a
relaxation like sleep. Her automatic consciousness gave way a little,
she stumbled sometimes, she had a poignant, momentary vision of her
living child, that hurt her unspeakably. Her soul roused to attention.

Very strange was the constant glitter of the sea unsheathed in heaven,
very warm and sweet the graveyard, in a nook of the hill catching the
sunshine and holding it as one holds a bee between the palms of the
hands, when it is benumbed. Grey grass and lichens and a little church,
and snowdrops among coarse grass, and a cupful of incredibly warm
sunshine.

She was troubled in spirit. Hearing the rushing of the beck away down
under the trees, she was startled, and wondered what it was. Walking
down, she found the bluebells around her glowing like a presence, among
the trees.

Summer came, the moors were tangled with harebells like water in the
ruts of the roads, the heather came rosy under the skies, setting the
whole world awake. And she was uneasy. She went past the gorse bushes
shrinking from their presence, she stepped into the heather as into a
quickening bath that almost hurt. Her fingers moved over the clasped
fingers of the child, she heard the anxious voice of the baby, as it
tried to make her talk, distraught.

And she shrank away again, back into her darkness, and for a long while
remained blotted safely away from living. But autumn came with the
faint red glimmer of robins singing, winter darkened the moors, and
almost savagely she turned again to life, demanding her life back
again, demanding that it should be as it had been when she was a girl,
on the land at home, under the sky. Snow lay in great expanses, the
telegraph posts strode over the white earth, away under the gloom of
the sky. And savagely her desire rose in her again, demanding that this
was Poland, her youth, that all was her own again.

But there were no sledges nor bells, she did not see the peasants
coming out like new people, in their sheepskins and their fresh, ruddy,
bright faces, that seemed to become new and vivid when the snow lit up
the ground. It did not come to her, the life of her youth, it did not
come back. There was a little agony of struggle, then a relapse into
the darkness of the convent, where Satan and the devils raged round the
walls, and Christ was white on the cross of victory.

She watched from the sick-room the snow whirl past, like flocks of
shadows in haste, flying on some final mission out to a leaden
inalterable sea, beyond the final whiteness of the curving shore, and
the snow-speckled blackness of the rocks half submerged. But near at
hand on the trees the snow was soft in bloom. Only the voice of the
dying vicar spoke grey and querulous from behind.

By the time the snowdrops were out, however, he was dead. He was dead.
But with curious equanimity the returning woman watched the snowdrops
on the edge of the grass below, blown white in the wind, but not to be
blown away. She watched them fluttering and bobbing, the white, shut
flowers, anchored by a thread to the grey-green grass, yet never blown
away, not drifting with the wind.

As she rose in the morning, the dawn was beating up white, gusts of
light blown like a thin snowstorm from the east, blown stronger and
fiercer, till the rose appeared, and the gold, and the sea lit up
below. She was impassive and indifferent. Yet she was outside the
enclosure of darkness.

There passed a space of shadow again, the familiarity of dread-worship,
during which she was moved, oblivious, to Cossethay. There, at first,
there was nothing-just grey nothing. But then one morning there was a
light from the yellow jasmine caught her, and after that, morning and
evening, the persistent ringing of thrushes from the shrubbery, till
her heart, beaten upon, was forced to lift up its voice in rivalry and
answer. Little tunes came into her mind. She was full of trouble almost
like anguish. Resistant, she knew she was beaten, and from fear of
darkness turned to fear of light. She would have hidden herself
indoors, if she could. Above all, she craved for the peace and heavy
oblivion of her old state. She could not bear to come to, to realise.
The first pangs of this new parturition were so acute, she knew she
could not bear it. She would rather remain out of life, than be torn,
mutilated into this birth, which she could not survive. She had not the
strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile.
She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that
the end of the winter puts forth mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour
her modicum of twinkling life.

But a sunshiny day came full of the scent of a mezereon tree, when bees
were tumbling into the yellow crocuses, and she forgot, she felt like
somebody else, not herself, a new person, quite glad. But she knew it
was fragile, and she dreaded it. The vicar put pea-flower into the
crocuses, for his bees to roll in, and she laughed. Then night came,
with brilliant stars that she knew of old, from her girlhood. And they
flashed so bright, she knew they were victors.

She could neither wake nor sleep. As if crushed between the past and
the future, like a flower that comes above-ground to find a great stone
lying above it, she was helpless.

The bewilderment and helplessness continued, she was surrounded by
great moving masses that must crush her. And there was no escape. Save
in the old obliviousness, the cold darkness she strove to retain. But
the vicar showed her eggs in the thrush's nest near the back door. She
saw herself the mother-thrush upon the nest, and the way her wings
were spread, so eager down upon her secret. The tense, eager, nesting
wings moved her beyond endurance. She thought of them in the morning,
when she heard the thrush whistling as he got up, and she thought, "Why
didn't I die out there, why am I brought here?"

She was aware of people who passed around her, not as persons, but as
looming presences. It was very difficult for her to adjust herself. In
Poland, the peasantry, the people, had been cattle to her, they had
been her cattle that she owned and used. What were these people? Now
she was coming awake, she was lost.

But she had felt Brangwen go by almost as if he had brushed her. She
had tingled in body as she had gone on up the road. After she had been
with him in the Marsh kitchen, the voice of her body had risen strong
and insistent. Soon, she wanted him. He was the man who had come
nearest to her for her awakening.

Always, however, between-whiles she lapsed into the old
unconsciousness, indifference and there was a will in her to save
herself from living any more. But she would wake in the morning one day
and feel her blood running, feel herself lying open like a flower
unsheathed in the sun, insistent and potent with demand.

She got to know him better, and her instinct fixed on him--just on him.
Her impulse was strong against him, because he was not of her own sort.
But one blind instinct led her, to take him, to leave him, and then to
relinquish herself to him. It would be safety. She felt the rooted
safety of him, and the life in him. Also he was young and very fresh.
The blue, steady livingness of his eyes she enjoyed like morning. He
was very young.

Then she lapsed again to stupor and indifference. This, however, was
bound to pass. The warmth flowed through her, she felt herself opening,
unfolding, asking, as a flower opens in full request under the sun, as
the beaks of tiny birds open flat, to receive, to receive. And unfolded
she turned to him, straight to him. And he came, slowly, afraid, held
back by uncouth fear, and driven by a desire bigger than himself.

When she opened and turned to him, then all that had been and all that
was, was gone from her, she was as new as a flower that unsheathes
itself and stands always ready, waiting, receptive. He could not
understand this. He forced himself, through lack of understanding, to
the adherence to the line of honourable courtship and sanctioned,
licensed marriage. Therefore, after he had gone to the vicarage and
asked for her, she remained for some days held in this one spell, open,
receptive to him, before him. He was roused to chaos. He spoke to the
vicar and gave in the banns. Then he stood to wait.

She remained attentive and instinctively expectant before him,
unfolded, ready to receive him. He could not act, because of self-fear
and because of his conception of honour towards her. So he remained in
a state of chaos.

And after a few days, gradually she closed again, away from him, was
sheathed over, impervious to him, oblivious. Then a black, bottomless
despair became real to him, he knew what he had lost. He felt he had
lost it for good, he knew what it was to have been in communication
with her, and to be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy
stone, he went about unliving.

Till gradually he became desperate, lost his understanding, was plunged
in a revolt that knew no bounds. Inarticulate, he moved with her at the
Marsh in violent, gloomy, wordless passion, almost in hatred of her.
Till gradually she became aware of him, aware of herself with regard to
him, her blood stirred to life, she began to open towards him, to flow
towards him again. He waited till the spell was between them again,
till they were together within one rushing, hastening flame. And then
again he was bewildered, he was tied up as with cords, and could not
move to her. So she came to him, and unfastened the breast of his
waistcoat and his shirt, and put her hand on him, needing to know him.
For it was cruel to her, to be opened and offered to him, yet not to
know what he was, not even that he was there. She gave herself to the
hour, but he could not, and he bungled in taking her.

So that he lived in suspense, as if only half his faculties worked,
until the wedding. She did not understand. But the vagueness came over
her again, and the days lapsed by. He could not get definitely into
touch with her. For the time being, she let him go again.

He suffered very much from the thought of actual marriage, the intimacy
and nakedness of marriage. He knew her so little. They were so foreign
to each other, they were such strangers. And they could not talk to
each other. When she talked, of Poland or of what had been, it was all
so foreign, she scarcely communicated anything to him. And when he
looked at her, an over-much reverence and fear of the unknown changed
the nature of his desire into a sort of worship, holding her aloof from
his physical desire, self-thwarting.

She did not know this, she did not understand. They had looked at each
other, and had accepted each other. It was so, then there was nothing
to balk at, it was complete between them.

At the wedding, his face was stiff and expressionless. He wanted to
drink, to get rid of his forethought and afterthought, to set the
moment free. But he could not. The suspense only tightened at his
heart. The jesting and joviality and jolly, broad insinuation of the
guests only coiled him more. He could not hear. That which was
impending obsessed him, he could not get free.

She sat quiet, with a strange, still smile. She was not afraid. Having
accepted him, she wanted to take him, she belonged altogether to the
hour, now. No future, no past, only this, her hour. She did not even
notice him, as she sat beside him at the head of the table. He was very
near, their coming together was close at hand. What more!

As the time came for all the guests to go, her dark face was softly
lighted, the bend of her head was proud, her grey eyes clear and
dilated, so that the men could not look at her, and the women were
elated by her, they served her. Very wonderful she was, as she bade
farewell, her ugly wide mouth smiling with pride and recognition, her
voice speaking softly and richly in the foreign accent, her dilated
eyes ignoring one and all the departing guests. Her manner was gracious
and fascinating, but she ignored the being of him or her to whom she
gave her hand.

And Brangwen stood beside her, giving his hearty handshake to his
friends, receiving their regard gratefully, glad of their attention.
His heart was tormented within him, he did not try to smile. The time
of his trial and his admittance, his Gethsemane and his Triumphal Entry
in one, had come now.

Behind her, there was so much unknown to him. When he approached her,
he came to such a terrible painful unknown. How could he embrace it and
fathom it? How could he close his arms round all this darkness and hold
it to his breast and give himself to it? What might not happen to him?
If he stretched and strained for ever he would never be able to grasp
it all, and to yield himself naked out of his own hands into the
unknown power! How could a man be strong enough to take her, put his
arms round her and have her, and be sure he could conquer this awful
unknown next his heart? What was it then that she was, to which he must
also deliver himself up, and which at the same time he must embrace,
contain?

He was to be her husband. It was established so. And he wanted it more
than he wanted life, or anything. She stood beside him in her silk
dress, looking at him strangely, so that a certain terror, horror took
possession of him, because she was strange and impending and he had no
choice. He could not bear to meet her look from under her strange,
thick brows.

"Is it late?" she said.

He looked at his watch.

"No-half-past eleven," he said. And he made an excuse to go into the
kitchen, leaving her standing in the room among the disorder and the
drinking-glasses.

Tilly was seated beside the fire in the kitchen, her head in her hands.
She started up when he entered.

"Why haven't you gone to bed?" he said.

"I thought I'd better stop an' lock up an' do," she said. Her agitation
quietened him. He gave her some little order, then returned, steadied
now, almost ashamed, to his wife. She stood a moment watching him, as
he moved with averted face. Then she said:

"You will be good to me, won't you?"

She was small and girlish and terrible, with a queer, wide look in her
eyes. His heart leaped in him, in anguish of love and desire, he went
blindly to her and took her in his arms.

"I want to," he said as he drew her closer and closer in. She was
soothed by the stress of his embrace, and remained quite still, relaxed
against him, mingling in to him. And he let himself go from past and
future, was reduced to the moment with her. In which he took her and
was with her and there was nothing beyond, they were together in an
elemental embrace beyond their superficial foreignness. But in the
morning he was uneasy again. She was still foreign and unknown to him.
Only, within the fear was pride, belief in himself as mate for her. And
she, everything forgotten in her new hour of coming to life, radiated
vigour and joy, so that he quivered to touch her.

It made a great difference to him, marriage. Things became so remote
and of so little significance, as he knew the powerful source of his
life, his eyes opened on a new universe, and he wondered in thinking of
his triviality before. A new, calm relationship showed to him in the
things he saw, in the cattle he used, the young wheat as it eddied in a
wind.

And each time he returned home, he went steadily, expectantly, like a
man who goes to a profound, unknown satisfaction. At dinner-time, he
appeared in the doorway, hanging back a moment from entering, to see if
she was there. He saw her setting the plates on the white-scrubbed
table. Her arms were slim, she had a slim body and full skirts, she had
a dark, shapely head with close-banded hair. Somehow it was her head,
so shapely and poignant, that revealed her his woman to him. As she
moved about clothed closely, fullskirted and wearing her little silk
apron, her dark hair smoothly parted, her head revealed itself to him
in all its subtle, intrinsic beauty, and he knew she was his woman, he
knew her essence, that it was his to possess. And he seemed to live
thus in contact with her, in contact with the unknown, the
unaccountable and incalculable.

They did not take much notice of each other, consciously.

"I'm betimes," he said.

"Yes," she answered.

He turned to the dogs, or to the child if she was there. The little
Anna played about the farm, flitting constantly in to call something to
her mother, to fling her arms round her mother's skirts, to be noticed,
perhaps caressed, then, forgetting, to slip out again.

Then Brangwen, talking to the child, or to the dog between his knees,
would be aware of his wife, as, in her tight, dark bodice and her lace
fichu, she was reaching up to the corner cupboard. He realised with a
sharp pang that she belonged to him, and he to her. He realised that he
lived by her. Did he own her? Was she here for ever? Or might she go
away? She was not really his, it was not a real marriage, this marriage
between them. She might go away. He did not feel like a master,
husband, father of her children. She belonged elsewhere. Any moment,
she might be gone. And he was ever drawn to her, drawn after her, with
ever-raging, ever-unsatisfied desire. He must always turn home,
wherever his steps were taking him, always to her, and he could never
quite reach her, he could never quite be satisfied, never be at peace,
because she might go away.

At evening, he was glad. Then, when he had finished in the yard, and
come in and washed himself, when the child was put to bed, he could sit
on the other side of the fire with his beer on the hob and his long
white pipe in his fingers, conscious of her there opposite him, as she
worked at her embroidery, or as she talked to him, and he was safe with
her now, till morning. She was curiously self-sufficient and did not
say very much. Occasionally she lifted her head, her grey eyes shining
with a strange light, that had nothing to do with him or with this
place, and would tell him about herself. She seemed to be back again in
the past, chiefly in her childhood or her girlhood, with her father.
She very rarely talked of her first husband. But sometimes, all
shining-eyed, she was back at her own home, telling him about the
riotous times, the trip to Paris with her father, tales of the mad acts
of the peasants when a burst of religious, self-hurting fervour had
passed over the country.

She would lift her head and say:

"When they brought the railway across the country, they made afterwards
smaller railways, of shorter width, to come down to our town-a hundred
miles. When I was a girl, Gisla, my German gouvernante, was very
shocked and she would not tell me. But I heard the servants talking. I
remember, it was Pierre, the coachman. And my father, and some of his
friends, landowners, they had taken a wagon, a whole railway wagon-that
you travel in--"

"A railway-carriage," said Brangwen.

She laughed to herself.

"I know it was a great scandal: yes-a whole wagon, and they had girls,
you know, filles, naked, all the wagon-full, and so they came down to
our village. They came through villages of the Jews, and it was a great
scandal. Can you imagine? All the countryside! And my mother, she did
not like it. Gisla said to me, 'Madame, she must not know that you have
heard such things.'

"My mother, she used to cry, and she wished to beat my father, plainly
beat him. He would say, when she cried because he sold the forest, the
wood, to jingle money in his pocket, and go to Warsaw or Paris or Kiev,
when she said he must take back his word, he must not sell the forest,
he would stand and say, 'I know, I know, I have heard it all, I have
heard it all before. Tell me some new thing. I know, I know, I know.'
Oh, but can you understand, I loved him when he stood there under the
door, saying only, 'I know, I know, I know it all already.' She could
not change him, no, not if she killed herself for it. And she could
change everybody else, but him, she could not change him--"

Brangwen could not understand. He had pictures of a cattle-truck full
of naked girls riding from nowhere to nowhere, of Lydia laughing
because her father made great debts and said, "I know, I know"; of Jews
running down the street shouting in Yiddish, "Don't do it, don't do
it," and being cut down by demented peasants-she called them
"cattle"-whilst she looked on interested and even amused; of tutors and
governesses and Paris and a convent. It was too much for him. And there
she sat, telling the tales to the open space, not to him, arrogating a
curious superiority to him, a distance between them, something strange
and foreign and outside his life, talking, rattling, without rhyme or
reason, laughing when he was shocked or astounded, condemning nothing,
confounding his mind and making the whole world a chaos, without order
or stability of any kind. Then, when they went to bed, he knew that he
had nothing to do with her. She was back in her childhood, he was a
peasant, a serf, a servant, a lover, a paramour, a shadow, a nothing.
He lay still in amazement, staring at the room he knew so well, and
wondering whether it was really there, the window, the chest of
drawers, or whether it was merely a figment in the atmosphere. And
gradually he grew into a raging fury against her. But because he was so
much amazed, and there was as yet such a distance between them, and she
was such an amazing thing to him, with all wonder opening out behind
her, he made no retaliation on her. Only he lay still and wide-eyed
with rage, inarticulate, not understanding, but solid with hostility.

And he remained wrathful and distinct from her, unchanged outwardly to
her, but underneath a solid power of antagonism to her. Of which she
became gradually aware. And it irritated her to be made aware of him as
a separate power. She lapsed into a sort of sombre exclusion, a curious
communion with mysterious powers, a sort of mystic, dark state which
drove him and the child nearly mad. He walked about for days stiffened
with resistance to her, stiff with a will to destroy her as she was.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, there was connection between them again.
It came on him as he was working in the fields. The tension, the bond,
burst, and the passionate flood broke forward into a tremendous,
magnificent rush, so that he felt he could snap off the trees as he
passed, and create the world afresh.

And when he arrived home, there was no sign between them. He waited and
waited till she came. And as he waited, his limbs seemed strong and
splendid to him, his hands seemed like passionate servants to him,
goodly, he felt a stupendous power in himself, of life, and of urgent,
strong blood.

She was sure to come at last, and touch him. Then he burst into flame
for her, and lost himself. They looked at each other, a deep laugh at
the bottom of their eyes, and he went to take of her again, wholesale,
mad to revel in the inexhaustible wealth of her, to bury himself in the
depths of her in an inexhaustible exploration, she all the while
revelling in that he revelled in her, tossed all her secrets aside and
plunged to that which was secret to her as well, whilst she quivered
with fear and the last anguish of delight.

What did it matter who they were, whether they knew each other or not?

The hour passed away again, there was severance between them, and rage
and misery and bereavement for her, and deposition and toiling at the
mill with slaves for him. But no matter. They had had their hour, and
should it chime again, they were ready for it, ready to renew the game
at the point where it was left off, on the edge of the outer darkness,
when the secrets within the woman are game for the man, hunted
doggedly, when the secrets of the woman are the man's adventure, and
they both give themselves to the adventure.

She was with child, and there was again the silence and distance
between them. She did not want him nor his secrets nor his game, he was
deposed, he was cast out. He seethed with fury at the small, ugly-
mouthed woman who had nothing to do with him. Sometimes his anger broke
on her, but she did not cry. She turned on him like a tiger, and there
was battle.

He had to learn to contain himself again, and he hated it. He hated her
that she was not there for him. And he took himself off, anywhere.

But an instinct of gratitude and a knowledge that she would receive him
back again, that later on she would be there for him again, prevented
his straying very far. He cautiously did not go too far. He knew she
might lapse into ignorance of him, lapse away from him, farther,
farther, farther, till she was lost to him. He had sense enough,
premonition enough in himself, to be aware of this and to measure
himself accordingly. For he did not want to lose her: he did not want
her to lapse away.

Cold, he called her, selfish, only caring about herself, a foreigner
with a bad nature, caring really about nothing, having no proper
feelings at the bottom of her, and no proper niceness. He raged, and
piled up accusations that had some measure of truth in them all. But a
certain grace in him forbade him from going too far. He knew, and he
quivered with rage and hatred, that she was all these vile things, that
she was everything vile and detestable. But he had grace at the bottom
of him, which told him that, above all things, he did not want to lose
her, he was not going to lose her.

So he kept some consideration for her, he preserved some relationship.
He went out more often, to the "Red Lion" again, to escape the madness
of sitting next to her when she did not belong to him, when she was as
absent as any woman in indifference could be. He could not stay at
home. So he went to the "Red Lion". And sometimes he got drunk. But he
preserved his measure, some things between them he never forfeited.

A tormented look came into his eyes, as if something were always
dogging him. He glanced sharp and quick, he could not bear to sit still
doing nothing. He had to go out, to find company, to give himself away
there. For he had no other outlet, he could not work to give himself
out, he had not the knowledge.

As the months of her pregnancy went on, she left him more and more
alone, she was more and more unaware of him, his existence was
annulled. And he felt bound down, bound, unable to stir, beginning to
go mad, ready to rave. For she was quiet and polite, as if he did not
exist, as one is quiet and polite to a servant.

Nevertheless she was great with his child, it was his turn to submit.
She sat opposite him, sewing, her foreign face inscrutable and
indifferent. He felt he wanted to break her into acknowledgment of him,
into awareness of him. It was insufferable that she had so obliterated
him. He would smash her into regarding him. He had a raging agony of
desire to do so.

But something bigger in him withheld him, kept him motionless. So he
went out of the house for relief. Or he turned to the little girl for
her sympathy and her love, he appealed with all his power to the small
Anna. So soon they were like lovers, father and child.

For he was afraid of his wife. As she sat there with bent head, silent,
working or reading, but so unutterably silent that his heart seemed
under the millstone of it, she became herself like the upper millstone
lying on him, crushing him, as sometimes a heavy sky lies on the earth.

Yet he knew he could not tear her away from the heavy obscurity into
which she was merged. He must not try to tear her into recognition of
himself, and agreement with himself. It were disastrous, impious. So,
let him rage as he might, he must withhold himself. But his wrists
trembled and seemed mad, seemed as if they would burst.

When, in November, the leaves came beating against the window shutters,
with a lashing sound, he started, and his eyes flickered with flame.
The dog looked up at him, he sunk his head to the fire. But his wife
was startled. He was aware of her listening.

"They blow up with a rattle," he said.

"What?" she asked.

"The leaves."

She sank away again. The strange leaves beating in the wind on the wood
had come nearer than she. The tension in the room was overpowering, it
was difficult for him to move his head. He sat with every nerve, every
vein, every fibre of muscle in his body stretched on a tension. He felt
like a broken arch thrust sickeningly out from support. For her
response was gone, he thrust at nothing. And he remained himself, he
saved himself from crashing down into nothingness, from being
squandered into fragments, by sheer tension, sheer backward resistance.

During the last months of her pregnancy, he went about in a surcharged,
imminent state that did not exhaust itself. She was also depressed, and
sometimes she cried. It needed so much life to begin afresh, after she
had lost so lavishly. Sometimes she cried. Then he stood stiff, feeling
his heart would burst. For she did not want him, she did not want even
to be made aware of him. By the very puckering of her face he knew that
he must stand back, leave her intact, alone. For it was the old grief
come back in her, the old loss, the pain of the old life, the dead
husband, the dead children. This was sacred to her, and he must not
violate her with his comfort. For what she wanted she would come to
him. He stood aloof with turgid heart.

He had to see her tears come, fall over her scarcely moving face, that
only puckered sometimes, down on to her breast, that was so still,
scarcely moving. And there was no noise, save now and again, when, with
a strange, somnambulant movement, she took her handkerchief and wiped
her face and blew her nose, and went on with the noiseless weeping. He
knew that any offer of comfort from himself would be worse than
useless, hateful to her, jangling her. She must cry. But it drove him
insane. His heart was scalded, his brain hurt in his head, he went
away, out of the house.

His great and chiefest source of solace was the child. She had been at
first aloof from him, reserved. However friendly she might seem one
day, the next she would have lapsed to her original disregard of him,
cold, detached, at her distance.

The first morning after his marriage he had discovered it would not be
so easy with the child. At the break of dawn he had started awake
hearing a small voice outside the door saying plaintively:

"Mother!"

He rose and opened the door. She stood on the threshold in her
night-dress, as she had climbed out of bed, black eyes staring round
and hostile, her fair hair sticking out in a wild fleece. The man and
child confronted each other.

"I want my mother," she said, jealously accenting the "my".

"Come on then," he said gently.

"Where's my mother?"

"She's here-come on."

The child's eyes, staring at the man with ruffled hair and beard, did
not change. The mother's voice called softly. The little bare feet
entered the room with trepidation.

"Mother!"

"Come, my dear."

The small bare feet approached swiftly.

"I wondered where you were," came the plaintive voice. The mother
stretched out her arms. The child stood beside the high bed. Brangwen
lightly lifted the tiny girl, with an "up-a-daisy", then took his own
place in the bed again.

"Mother!" cried the child, as in anguish.

"What, my pet?"

Anna wriggled close into her mother's arms, clinging tight, hiding from
the fact of the man. Brangwen lay still, and waited. There was a long
silence.

Then suddenly, Anna looked round, as if she thought he would be gone.
She saw the face of the man lying upturned to the ceiling. Her black
eyes stared antagonistic from her exquisite face, her arms clung
tightly to her mother, afraid. He did not move for some time, not
knowing what to say. His face was smooth and soft-skinned with love,
his eyes full of soft light. He looked at her, scarcely moving his
head, his eyes smiling.

"Have you just wakened up?" he said.

"Go away," she retorted, with a little darting forward of the head,
something like a viper.

"Nay," he answered, "I'm not going. You can go."

"Go away," came the sharp little command.

"There's room for you," he said.

"You can't send your father from his own bed, my little bird," said her
mother, pleasantly.

The child glowered at him, miserable in her impotence.

"There's room for you as well," he said. "It's a big bed enough."

She glowered without answering, then turned and clung to her mother.
She would not allow it.

During the day she asked her mother several times:

"When are we going home, mother?"

"We are at home, darling, we live here now. This is our house, we live
here with your father."

The child was forced to accept it. But she remained against the man. As
night came on, she asked:

"Where are you going to sleep, mother?"

"I sleep with the father now."

And when Brangwen came in, the child asked fiercely:

"Why do you sleep with my mother? My mother sleeps with me," her voice
quivering.

"You come as well, an' sleep with both of us," he coaxed.

"Mother!" she cried, turning, appealing against him.

"But I must have a husband, darling. All women must have a husband."

"And you like to have a father with your mother, don't you?" said
Brangwen.

Anna glowered at him. She seemed to cogitate.

"No," she cried fiercely at length, "no, I don't want." And slowly her
face puckered, she sobbed bitterly. He stood and watched her, sorry.
But there could be no altering it.

Which, when she knew, she became quiet. He was easy with her, talking
to her, taking her to see the live creatures, bringing her the first
chickens in his cap, taking her to gather the eggs, letting her throw
crusts to the horse. She would easily accompany him, and take all he
had to give, but she remained neutral still.

She was curiously, incomprehensibly jealous of her mother, always
anxiously concerned about her. If Brangwen drove with his wife to
Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or unconcerned, for a long
time. Then, as afternoon came on, there was only one cry-"I want my
mother, I want my mother--" and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon
had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child's anguish was that
her mother was gone, gone.

Yet as a rule, Anna seemed cold, resenting her mother, critical of her.
It was:

"I don't like you to do that, mother," or, "I don't like you to say
that." She was a sore problem to Brangwen and to all the people at the
Marsh. As a rule, however, she was active, lightly flitting about the
farmyard, only appearing now and again to assure herself of her mother.
Happy she never seemed, but quick, sharp, absorbed, full of imagination
and changeability. Tilly said she was bewitched. But it did not matter
so long as she did not cry. There was something heart-rending about
Anna's crying, her childish anguish seemed so utter and so timeless, as
if it were a thing of all the ages.

She made playmates of the creatures of the farmyard, talking to them,
telling them the stories she had from her mother, counselling them and
correcting them. Brangwen found her at the gate leading to the paddock
and to the duckpond. She was peering through the bars and shouting to
the stately white geese, that stood in a curving line:

"You're not to call at people when they want to come. You must not do
it."

The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face and the
fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and they raised their
heads and swayed off, producing the long, can-canking, protesting noise
of geese, rocking their ship-like, beautiful white bodies in a line
beyond the gate.

"You're naughty, you're naughty," cried Anna, tears of dismay and
vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her slipper.

"Why, what are they doing?" said Brangwen.

"They won't let me come in," she said, turning her flushed little face
to him.

"Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to," and he pushed open the
gate for her.

She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey-white geese
standing monumental under the grey, cold day.

"Go on," he said.

She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body started
convulsively at the sudden, derisive can-cank-ank of the geese. A
blankness spread over her. The geese trailed away with uplifted heads
under the low grey sky.

"They don't know you," said Brangwen. "You should tell 'em what your
name is."

"They're naughty to shout at me," she flashed.

"They think you don't live here," he said.

Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and imperiously:

"My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because Mr. Brangwen's
my father now. He is, yes he is. And I live here."

This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, without knowing it
herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish, desolate moments,
when it was good to creep up to something big and warm, and bury her
little self in his big, unlimited being. Instinctively he was careful
of her, careful to recognise her and to give himself to her disposal.

She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a childish,
essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor woman was such a
servant. The child would not let the serving-woman attend to her, do
intimate things for her, not for a long time. She treated her as one of
an inferior race. Brangwen did not like it.

"Why aren't you fond of Tilly?" he asked.

"Because-because-because she looks at me with her eyes bent."

Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the household, never
as a person.

For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were for ever on the
watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient, spoiled by Tilly, was an
easy blusterer. If for a few minutes he upset the household with his
noisy impatience, he found at the end the child glowering at him with
intense black eyes, and she was sure to dart forward her little head,
like a serpent, with her biting:

"Go away."

"I'm not going away," he shouted, irritated at last. "Go
yourself-hustle-stir thysen-hop." And he pointed to the door. The child
backed away from him, pale with fear. Then she gathered up courage,
seeing him become patient.

"We don't live with you," she said, thrusting forward her little head
at him. "You-you're-you're a bomakle."

"A what?" he shouted.

Her voice wavered-but it came.

"A bomakle."

"Ay, an' you're a comakle."

She meditated. Then she hissed forwards her head.

"I'm not."

"Not what?"

"A comakle."

"No more am I a bomakle."

He was really cross.

Other times she would say:

"My mother doesn't live here."

"Oh, ay?"

"I want her to go away."

"Then want's your portion," he replied laconically.

So they drew nearer together. He would take her with him when he went
out in the trap. The horse ready at the gate, he came noisily into the
house, which seemed quiet and peaceful till he appeared to set
everything awake.

"Now then, Topsy, pop into thy bonnet."

The child drew herself up, resenting the indignity of the address.

"I can't fasten my bonnet myself," she said haughtily.

"Not man enough yet," he said, tying the ribbons under her chin with
clumsy fingers.

She held up her face to him. Her little bright-red lips moved as he
fumbled under her chin.

"You talk-nonsents," she said, re-echoing one of his phrases.

"That face shouts for th' pump," he said, and taking out a big red
handkerchief, that smelled of strong tobacco, began wiping round her
mouth.

"Is Kitty waiting for me?" she asked.

"Ay," he said. "Let's finish wiping your face-it'll pass wi' a
cat-lick."

She submitted prettily. Then, when he let her go, she began to skip,
with a curious flicking up of one leg behind her.

"Now my young buck-rabbit," he said. "Slippy!"

She came and was shaken into her coat, and the two set off. She sat
very close beside him in the gig, tucked tightly, feeling his big body
sway, against her, very splendid. She loved the rocking of the gig,
when his big, live body swayed upon her, against her. She laughed, a
poignant little shrill laugh, and her black eyes glowed.

She was curiously hard, and then passionately tenderhearted. Her mother
was ill, the child stole about on tip-toe in the bedroom for hours,
being nurse, and doing the thing thoughtfully and diligently. Another
day, her mother was unhappy. Anna would stand with her legs apart,
glowering, balancing on the sides of her slippers. She laughed when the
goslings wriggled in Tilly's hand, as the pellets of food were rammed
down their throats with a skewer, she laughed nervously. She was hard
and imperious with the animals, squandering no love, running about
amongst them like a cruel mistress.

Summer came, and hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish mite dancing
about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more than she loved her.

But always in the child was some anxious connection with the mother. So
long as Mrs. Brangwen was all right, the little girl played about and
took very little notice of her. But corn-harvest went by, the autumn
drew on, and the mother, the later months of her pregnancy beginning,
was strange and detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, the old,
unhealthy uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility came on the child
again. If she went to the fields with her father, then, instead of
playing about carelessly, it was:

"I want to go home."

"Home, why tha's nobbut this minute come."

"I want to go home."

"What for? What ails thee?"

"I want my mother."

"Thy mother! Thy mother none wants thee."

"I want to go home."

There would be tears in a moment.

"Can ter find t'road, then?"

And he watched her scudding, silent and intent, along the hedge-bottom,
at a steady, anxious pace, till she turned and was gone through the
gateway. Then he saw her two fields off, still pressing forward, small
and urgent. His face was clouded as he turned to plough up the stubble.

The year drew on, in the hedges the berries shone red and twinkling
above bare twigs, robins were seen, great droves of birds dashed like
spray from the fallow, rooks appeared, black and flapping down to
earth, the ground was cold as he pulled the turnips, the roads were
churned deep in mud. Then the turnips were pitted and work was slack.

Inside the house it was dark, and quiet. The child flitted uneasily
round, and now and again came her plaintive, startled cry:

"Mother!"

Mrs. Brangwen was heavy and unresponsive, tired, lapsed back. Brangwen
went on working out of doors.

At evening, when he came in to milk, the child would run behind him.
Then, in the cosy cow-sheds, with the doors shut and the air looking
warm by the light of the hanging lantern, above the branching horns of
the cows, she would stand watching his hands squeezing rhythmically the
teats of the placid beast, watch the froth and the leaping squirt of
milk, watch his hand sometimes rubbing slowly, understandingly, upon a
hanging udder. So they kept each other company, but at a distance,
rarely speaking.

The darkest days of the year came on, the child was fretful, sighing as
if some oppression were on her, running hither and thither without
relief. And Brangwen went about at his work, heavy, his heart heavy as
the sodden earth.

The winter nights fell early, the lamp was lighted before tea-time, the
shutters were closed, they were all shut into the room with the tension
and stress. Mrs. Brangwen went early to bed, Anna playing on the floor
beside her. Brangwen sat in the emptiness of the downstairs room,
smoking, scarcely conscious even of his own misery. And very often he
went out to escape it.

Christmas passed, the wet, drenched, cold days of January recurred
monotonously, with now and then a brilliance of blue flashing in, when
Brangwen went out into a morning like crystal, when every sound rang
again, and the birds were many and sudden and brusque in the hedges.
Then an elation came over him in spite of everything, whether his wife
were strange or sad, or whether he craved for her to be with him, it
did not matter, the air rang with clear noises, the sky was like
crystal, like a bell, and the earth was hard. Then he worked and was
happy, his eyes shining, his cheeks flushed. And the zest of life was
strong in him.

The birds pecked busily round him, the horses were fresh and ready, the
bare branches of the trees flung themselves up like a man yawning, taut
with energy, the twigs radiated off into the clear light. He was alive
and full of zest for it all. And if his wife were heavy, separated from
him, extinguished, then, let her be, let him remain himself. Things
would be as they would be. Meanwhile he heard the ringing crow of a
cockerel in the distance, he saw the pale shell of the moon effaced on
a blue sky.

So he shouted to the horses, and was happy. If, driving into Ilkeston,
a fresh young woman were going in to do her shopping, he hailed her,
and reined in his horse, and picked her up. Then he was glad to have
her near him, his eyes shone, his voice, laughing, teasing in a warm
fashion, made the poise of her head more beautiful, her blood ran
quicker. They were both stimulated, the morning was fine.

What did it matter that, at the bottom of his heart, was care and pain?
It was at the bottom, let it stop at the bottom. His wife, her
suffering, her coming pain-well, it must be so. She suffered, but he
was out of doors, full in life, and it would be ridiculous, indecent,
to pull a long face and to insist on being miserable. He was happy,
this morning, driving to town, with the hoofs of the horse spanking the
hard earth. Well he was happy, if half the world were weeping at the
funeral of the other half. And it was a jolly girl sitting beside him.
And Woman was immortal, whatever happened, whoever turned towards
death. Let the misery come when it could not be resisted.

The evening arrived later very beautiful, with a rosy flush hovering
above the sunset, and passing away into violet and lavender, with
turquoise green north and south in the sky, and in the east, a great,
yellow moon hanging heavy and radiant. It was magnificent to walk
between the sunset and the moon, on a road where little holly trees
thrust black into the rose and lavender, and starlings flickered in
droves across the light. But what was the end of the journey? The pain
came right enough, later on, when his heart and his feet were heavy,
his brain dead, his life stopped.

One afternoon, the pains began, Mrs. Brangwen was put to bed, the
midwife came. Night fell, the shutters were closed, Brangwen came in to
tea, to the loaf and the pewter teapot, the child, silent and
quivering, playing with glass beads, the house, empty, it seemed, or
exposed to the winter night, as if it had no walls.

Sometimes there sounded, long and remote in the house, vibrating
through everything, the moaning cry of a woman in labour. Brangwen,
sitting downstairs, was divided. His lower, deeper self was with her,
bound to her, suffering. But the big shell of his body remembered the
sound of owls that used to fly round the farmstead when he was a boy.
He was back in his youth, a boy, haunted by the sound of the owls,
waking up his brother to speak to him. And his mind drifted away to the
birds, their solemn, dignified faces, their flight so soft and
broad-winged. And then to the birds his brother had shot, fluffy,
dust-coloured, dead heaps of softness with faces absurdly asleep. It
was a queer thing, a dead owl.

He lifted his cup to his lips, he watched the child with the beads. But
his mind was occupied with owls, and the atmosphere of his boyhood,
with his brothers and sisters. Elsewhere, fundamental, he was with his
wife in labour, the child was being brought forth out of their one
flesh. He and she, one flesh, out of which life must be put forth. The
rent was not in his body, but it was of his body. On her the blows
fell, but the quiver ran through to him, to his last fibre. She must be
torn asunder for life to come forth, yet still they were one flesh, and
still, from further back, the life came out of him to her, and still he
was the unbroken that has the broken rock in its arms, their flesh was
one rock from which the life gushed, out of her who was smitten and
rent, from him who quivered and yielded.

He went upstairs to her. As he came to the bedside she spoke to him in
Polish.

"Is it very bad?" he asked.

She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the effort to
understand another language, the weariness of hearing him, attending to
him, making out who he was, as he stood there fair-bearded and alien,
looking at her. She knew something of him, of his eyes. But she could
not grasp him. She closed her eyes.

He turned away, white to the gills.

"It's not so very bad," said the midwife.

He knew he was a strain on his wife. He went downstairs.

The child glanced up at him, frightened.

"I want my mother," she quavered.

"Ay, but she's badly," he said mildly, unheeding.

She looked at him with lost, frightened eyes.

"Has she got a headache?"

"No-she's going to have a baby."

The child looked round. He was unaware of her. She was alone again in
terror.

"I want my mother," came the cry of panic.

"Let Tilly undress you," he said. "You're tired."

There was another silence. Again came the cry of labour.

"I want my mother," rang automatically from the wincing, panic-stricken
child, that felt cut off and lost in a horror of desolation.

Tilly came forward, her heart wrung.

"Come an' let me undress her then, pet-lamb," she crooned. "You s'll
have your mother in th' mornin', don't you fret, my duckie; never mind,
angel."

But Anna stood upon the sofa, her back to the wall.

"I want my mother," she cried, her little face quivering, and the great
tears of childish, utter anguish falling.

"She's poorly, my lamb, she's poorly to-night, but she'll be better by
mornin'. Oh, don't cry, don't cry, love, she doesn't want you to cry,
precious little heart, no, she doesn't."

Tilly took gently hold of the child's skirts. Anna snatched back her
dress, and cried, in a little hysteria:

"No, you're not to undress me-I want my mother,"-and her child's face
was running with grief and tears, her body shaken.

"Oh, but let Tilly undress you. Let Tilly undress you, who loves you,
don't be wilful to-night. Mother's poorly, she doesn't want you to
cry."

The child sobbed distractedly, she could not hear.

"I want my mother," she wept.

"When you're undressed, you s'll go up to see your mother--when you're
undressed, pet, when you've let Tilly undress you, when you're a little
jewel in your nightie, love. Oh, don't you cry, don't you--"

Brangwen sat stiff in his chair. He felt his brain going tighter. He
crossed over the room, aware only of the maddening sobbing.

"Don't make a noise," he said.

And a new fear shook the child from the sound of his voice. She cried
mechanically, her eyes looking watchful through her tears, in terror,
alert to what might happen.

"I want-my-mother," quavered the sobbing, blind voice.

A shiver of irritation went over the man's limbs. It was the utter,
persistent unreason, the maddening blindness of the voice and the
crying.

"You must come and be undressed," he said, in a quiet voice that was
thin with anger.

And he reached his hand and grasped her. He felt her body catch in a
convulsive sob. But he too was blind, and intent, irritated into
mechanical action. He began to unfasten her little apron. She would
have shrunk from him, but could not. So her small body remained in his
grasp, while he fumbled at the little buttons and tapes, unthinking,
intent, unaware of anything but the irritation of her. Her body was
held taut and resistant, he pushed off the little dress and the
petticoats, revealing the white arms. She kept stiff, overpowered,
violated, he went on with his task. And all the while she sobbed,
choking:

"I want my mother."

He was unheedingly silent, his face stiff. The child was now incapable
of understanding, she had become a little, mechanical thing of fixed
will. She wept, her body convulsed, her voice repeating the same cry.

"Eh, dear o' me!" cried Tilly, becoming distracted herself. Brangwen,
slow, clumsy, blind, intent, got off all the little garments, and stood
the child naked in its shift upon the sofa.

"Where's her nightie?" he asked.

Tilly brought it, and he put it on her. Anna did not move her limbs to
his desire. He had to push them into place. She stood, with fixed,
blind will, resistant, a small, convulsed, unchangeable thing weeping
ever and repeating the same phrase. He lifted one foot after the other,
pulled off slippers and socks. She was ready.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked.

She did not change. Unheeding, uncaring, she stood on the sofa,
standing back, alone, her hands shut and half lifted, her face, all
tears, raised and blind. And through the sobbing and choking came the
broken:

"I-want-my-mother."

"Do you want a drink?" he said again.

There was no answer. He lifted the stiff, denying body between his
hands. Its stiff blindness made a flash of rage go through him. He
would like to break it.

He set the child on his knee, and sat again in his chair beside the
fire, the wet, sobbing, inarticulate noise going on near his ear, the
child sitting stiff, not yielding to him or anything, not aware.

A new degree of anger came over him. What did it all matter? What did
it matter if the mother talked Polish and cried in labour, if this
child were stiff with resistance, and crying? Why take it to heart? Let
the mother cry in labour, let the child cry in resistance, since they
would do so. Why should he fight against it, why resist? Let it be, if
it were so. Let them be as they were, if they insisted.

And in a daze he sat, offering no fight. The child cried on, the
minutes ticked away, a sort of torpor was on him.

It was some little time before he came to, and turned to attend to the
child. He was shocked by her little wet, blinded face. A bit dazed, he
pushed back the wet hair. Like a living statue of grief, her blind face
cried on.

"Nay," he said, "not as bad as that. It's not as bad as that, Anna, my
child. Come, what are you crying for so much? Come, stop now, it'll
make you sick. I wipe you dry, don't wet your face any more. Don't cry
any more wet tears, don't, it's better not to. Don't cry-it's not so
bad as all that. Hush now, hush-let it be enough."

His voice was queer and distant and calm. He looked at the child. She
was beside herself now. He wanted her to stop, he wanted it all to
stop, to become natural.

"Come," he said, rising to turn away, "we'll go an' supper-up the
beast."

He took a big shawl, folded her round, and went out into the kitchen
for a lantern.

"You're never taking the child out, of a night like this," said Tilly.

"Ay, it'll quieten her," he answered.

It was raining. The child was suddenly still, shocked, finding the rain
on its face, the darkness.

"We'll just give the cows their something-to-eat, afore they go to
bed," Brangwen was saying to her, holding her close and sure.

There was a trickling of water into the butt, a burst of rain-drops
sputtering on to her shawl, and the light of the lantern swinging,
flashing on a wet pavement and the base of a wet wall. Otherwise it was
black darkness: one breathed darkness.

He opened the doors, upper and lower, and they entered into the high,
dry barn, that smelled warm even if it were not warm. He hung the
lantern on the nail and shut the door. They were in another world now.
The light shed softly on the timbered barn, on the whitewashed walls,
and the great heap of hay; instruments cast their shadows largely, a
ladder rose to the dark arch of a loft. Outside there was the driving
rain, inside, the softly-illuminated stillness and calmness of the
barn.

Holding the child on one arm, he set about preparing the food for the
cows, filling a pan with chopped hay and brewer's grains and a little
meal. The child, all wonder, watched what he did. A new being was
created in her for the new conditions. Sometimes, a little spasm,
eddying from the bygone storm of sobbing, shook her small body. Her
eyes were wide and wondering, pathetic. She was silent, quite still.

In a sort of dream, his heart sunk to the bottom, leaving the surface
of him still, quite still, he rose with the panful of food, carefully
balancing the child on one arm, the pan in the other hand. The silky
fringe of the shawl swayed softly, grains and hay trickled to the
floor; he went along a dimly-lit passage behind the mangers, where the
horns of the cows pricked out of the obscurity. The child shrank, he
balanced stiffly, rested the pan on the manger wall, and tipped out the
food, half to this cow, half to the next. There was a noise of chains
running, as the cows lifted or dropped their heads sharply; then a
contented, soothing sound, a long snuffing as the beasts ate in
silence.

The journey had to be performed several times. There was the rhythmic
sound of the shovel in the barn, then the man returned walking stiffly
between the two weights, the face of the child peering out from the
shawl. Then the next time, as he stooped, she freed her arm and put it
round his neck, clinging soft and warm, making all easier.

The beasts fed, he dropped the pan and sat down on a box, to arrange
the child.

"Will the cows go to sleep now?" she said, catching her breath as she
spoke.

"Yes."

"Will they eat all their stuff up first?"

"Yes. Hark at them."

And the two sat still listening to the snuffing and breathing of cows
feeding in the sheds communicating with this small barn. The lantern
shed a soft, steady light from one wall. All outside was still in the
rain. He looked down at the silky folds of the paisley shawl. It
reminded him of his mother. She used to go to church in it. He was back
again in the old irresponsibility and security, a boy at home.

The two sat very quiet. His mind, in a sort of trance, seemed to become
more and more vague. He held the child close to him. A quivering little
shudder, re-echoing from her sobbing, went down her limbs. He held her
closer. Gradually she relaxed, the eyelids began to sink over her dark,
watchful eyes. As she sank to sleep, his mind became blank.

When he came to, as if from sleep, he seemed to be sitting in a
timeless stillness. What was he listening for? He seemed to be
listening for some sound a long way off, from beyond life. He
remembered his wife. He must go back to her. The child was asleep, the
eyelids not quite shut, showing a slight film of black pupil between.
Why did she not shut her eyes? Her mouth was also a little open.

He rose quickly and went back to the house.

"Is she asleep?" whispered Tilly.

He nodded. The servant-woman came to look at the child who slept in the
shawl, with cheeks flushed hot and red, and a whiteness, a wanness
round the eyes.

"God-a-mercy!" whispered Tilly, shaking her head.

He pushed off his boots and went upstairs with the child. He became
aware of the anxiety grasped tight at his heart, because of his wife.
But he remained still. The house was silent save for the wind outside,
and the noisy trickling and splattering of water in the water-butts.
There was a slit of light under his wife's door.

He put the child into bed wrapped as she was in the shawl, for the
sheets would be cold. Then he was afraid that she might not be able to
move her arms, so he loosened her. The black eyes opened, rested on him
vacantly, sank shut again. He covered her up. The last little quiver
from the sobbing shook her breathing.

This was his room, the room he had had before he married. It was
familiar. He remembered what it was to be a young man, untouched.

He remained suspended. The child slept, pushing her small fists from
the shawl. He could tell the woman her child was asleep. But he must go
to the other landing. He started. There was the sound of the owls-the
moaning of the woman. What an uncanny sound! It was not human-at least
to a man.

He went down to her room, entering softly. She was lying still, with
eyes shut, pale, tired. His heart leapt, fearing she was dead. Yet he
knew perfectly well she was not. He saw the way her hair went loose
over her temples, her mouth was shut with suffering in a sort of grin.
She was beautiful to him-but it was not human. He had a dread of her as
she lay there. What had she to do with him? She was other than himself.

Something made him go and touch her fingers that were still grasped on
the sheet. Her brown-grey eyes opened and looked at him. She did not
know him as himself. But she knew him as the man. She looked at him as
a woman in childbirth looks at the man who begot the child in her: an
impersonal look, in the extreme hour, female to male. Her eyes closed
again. A great, scalding peace went over him, burning his heart and his
entrails, passing off into the infinite.

When her pains began afresh, tearing her, he turned aside, and could
not look. But his heart in torture was at peace, his bowels were glad.
He went downstairs, and to the door, outside, lifted his face to the
rain, and felt the darkness striking unseen and steadily upon him.

The swift, unseen threshing of the night upon him silenced him and he
was overcome. He turned away indoors, humbly. There was the infinite
world, eternal, unchanging, as well as the world of life.




Chapter 3



Childhood of Anna Lensky


Tom Brangwen never loved his own son as he loved his stepchild Anna.
When they told him it was a boy, he had a thrill of pleasure. He liked
the confirmation of fatherhood. It gave him satisfaction to know he had
a son. But he felt not very much outgoing to the baby itself. He was
its father, that was enough.

He was glad that his wife was mother of his child. She was serene, a
little bit shadowy, as if she were transplanted. In the birth of the
child she seemed to lose connection with her former self. She became
now really English, really Mrs. Brangwen. Her vitality, however, seemed
lowered.

She was still, to Brangwen, immeasurably beautiful. She was still
passionate, with a flame of being. But the flame was not robust and
present. Her eyes shone, her face glowed for him, but like some flower
opened in the shade, that could not bear the full light. She loved the
baby. But even this, with a sort of dimness, a faint absence about her,
a shadowiness even in her mother-love. When Brangwen saw her nursing
his child, happy, absorbed in it, a pain went over him like a thin
flame. For he perceived how he must subdue himself in his approach to
her. And he wanted again the robust, moral exchange of love and passion
such as he had had at first with her, at one time and another, when
they were matched at their highest intensity. This was the one
experience for him now. And he wanted it, always, with remorseless
craving.

She came to him again, with the same lifting of her mouth as had driven
him almost mad with trammelled passion at first. She came to him again,
and, his heart delirious in delight and readiness, he took her. And it
was almost as before.

Perhaps it was quite as before. At any rate, it made him know
perfection, it established in him a constant eternal knowledge.

But it died down before he wanted it to die down. She was finished, she
could take no more. And he was not exhausted, he wanted to go on. But
it could not be.

So he had to begin the bitter lesson, to abate himself, to take less
than he wanted. For she was Woman to him, all other women were her
shadows. For she had satisfied him. And he wanted it to go on. And it
could not. However he raged, and, filled with suppression that became
hot and bitter, hated her in his soul that she did not want him,
however he had mad outbursts, and drank and made ugly scenes, still he
knew, he was only kicking against the pricks. It was not, he had to
learn, that she would not want him enough, as much as he demanded that
she should want him. It was that she could not. She could only want him
in her own way, and to her own measure. And she had spent much life
before he found her as she was, the woman who could take him and give
him fulfilment. She had taken him and given him fulfilment. She still
could do so, in her own times and ways. But he must control himself,
measure himself to her.

He wanted to give her all his love, all his passion, all his essential
energy. But it could not be. He must find other things than her, other
centres of living. She sat close and impregnable with the child. And he
was jealous of the child.

But he loved her, and time came to give some sort of course to his
troublesome current of life, so that it did not foam and flood and make
misery. He formed another centre of love in her child, Anna. Gradually
a part of his stream of life was diverted to the child, relieving the
main flood to his wife. Also he sought the company of men, he drank
heavily now and again.

The child ceased to have so much anxiety for her mother after the baby
came. Seeing the mother with the baby boy, delighted and serene and
secure, Anna was at first puzzled, then gradually she became indignant,
and at last her little life settled on its own swivel, she was no more
strained and distorted to support her mother. She became more childish,
not so abnormal, not charged with cares she could not understand. The
charge of the mother, the satisfying of the mother, had devolved
elsewhere than on her. Gradually the child was freed. She became an
independent, forgetful little soul, loving from her own centre.

Of her own choice, she then loved Brangwen most, or most obviously. For
these two made a little life together, they had a joint activity. It
amused him, at evening, to teach her to count, or to say her letters.
He remembered for her all the little nursery rhymes and childish songs
that lay forgotten at the bottom of his brain.

At first she thought them rubbish. But he laughed, and she laughed.
They became to her a huge joke. Old King Cole she thought was Brangwen.
Mother Hubbard was Tilly, her mother was the old woman who lived in a
shoe. It was a huge, it was a frantic delight to the child, this
nonsense, after her years with her mother, after the poignant
folk-tales she had had from her mother, which always troubled and
mystified her soul.

She shared a sort of recklessness with her father, a complete, chosen
carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it. He loved to make her
voice go high and shouting and defiant with laughter. The baby was
dark-skinned and dark-haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes.
Brangwen called him the blackbird.

"Hallo," Brangwen would cry, starting as he heard the wail of the child
announcing it wanted to be taken out of the cradle, "there's the
blackbird tuning up."

"The blackbird's singing," Anna would shout with delight, "the
blackbird's singing."

"When the pie was opened," Brangwen shouted in his bawling bass voice,
going over to the cradle, "the bird began to sing."

"Wasn't it a dainty dish to set before a king?" cried Anna, her eyes
flashing with joy as she uttered the cryptic words, looking at Brangwen
for confirmation. He sat down with the baby, saying loudly:

"Sing up, my lad, sing up."

And the baby cried loudly, and Anna shouted lustily, dancing in wild
bliss:


"Sing a song of sixpence
Pocketful of posies,
Ascha! Ascha!----"


Then she stopped suddenly in silence and looked at Brangwen again, her
eyes flashing, as she shouted loudly and delightedly:

"I've got it wrong, I've got it wrong."

"Oh, my sirs," said Tilly entering, "what a racket!"

Brangwen hushed the child and Anna flipped and danced on. She loved her
wild bursts of rowdiness with her father. Tilly hated it, Mrs. Brangwen
did not mind.

Anna did not care much for other children. She domineered them, she
treated them as if they were extremely young and incapable, to her they
were little people, they were not her equals. So she was mostly alone,
flying round the farm, entertaining the farm-hands and Tilly and the
servant-girl, whirring on and never ceasing.

She loved driving with Brangwen in the trap. Then, sitting high up and
bowling along, her passion for eminence and dominance was satisfied.
She was like a little savage in her arrogance. She thought her father
important, she was installed beside him on high. And they spanked
along, beside the high, flourishing hedge-tops, surveying the activity
of the countryside. When people shouted a greeting to him from the road
below, and Brangwen shouted jovially back, her little voice was soon
heard shrilling along with his, followed by her chuckling laugh, when
she looked up at her father with bright eyes, and they laughed at each
other. And soon it was the custom for the passerby to sing out: "How
are ter, Tom? Well, my lady!" or else, "Mornin', Tom, mornin', my
Lass!" or else, "You're off together then?" or else, "You're lookin'
rarely, you two."

Anna would respond, with her father: "How are you, John! Good mornin',
William! Ay, makin' for Derby," shrilling as loudly as she could.
Though often, in response to "You're off out a bit then," she would
reply, "Yes, we are," to the great joy of all. She did not like the
people who saluted him and did not salute her.

She went into the public-house with him, if he had to call, and often
sat beside him in the bar-parlour as he drank his beer or brandy. The
landladies paid court to her, in the obsequious way landladies have.

"Well, little lady, an' what's your name?"

"Anna Brangwen," came the immediate, haughty answer.

"Indeed it is! An' do you like driving in a trap with your father?"

"Yes," said Anna, shy, but bored by these inanities. She had a
touch-me-not way of blighting the inane inquiries of grown-up people.

"My word, she's a fawce little thing," the landlady would say to
Brangwen.

"Ay," he answered, not encouraging comments on the child. Then there
followed the present of a biscuit, or of cake, which Anna accepted as
her dues.

"What does she say, that I'm a fawce little thing?" the small girl
asked afterwards.

"She means your're a sharp-shins."

Anna hesitated. She did not understand. Then she laughed at some
absurdity she found.

Soon he took her every week to market with him. "I can come, can't I?"
she asked every Saturday, or Thursday morning, when he made himself
look fine in his dress of a gentleman farmer. And his face clouded at
having to refuse her.

So at last, he overcame his own shyness, and tucked her beside him.
They drove into Nottingham and put up at the "Black Swan". So far all
right. Then he wanted to leave her at the inn. But he saw her face, and
knew it was impossible. So he mustered his courage, and set off with
her, holding her hand, to the cattle-market.

She stared in bewilderment, flitting silent at his side. But in the
cattle-market she shrank from the press of men, all men, all in heavy,
filthy boots, and leathern leggins. And the road underfoot was all
nasty with cow-muck. And it frightened her to see the cattle in the
square pens, so many horns, and so little enclosure, and such a madness
of men and a yelling of drovers. Also she felt her father was
embarrassed by her, and ill-at-ease.

He brought her a cake at the refreshment-booth, and set her on a seat.
A man hailed him.

"Good morning, Tom. That thine, then?"-and the bearded farmer jerked
his head at Anna.

"Ay," said Brangwen, deprecating.

"I did-na know tha'd one that old."

"No, it's my missis's."

"Oh, that's it!" And the man looked at Anna as if she were some odd
little cattle. She glowered with black eyes.

Brangwen left her there, in charge of the barman, whilst he went to see
about the selling of some young stirks. Farmers, butchers, drovers,
dirty, uncouth men from whom she shrank instinctively stared down at
her as she sat on her seat, then went to get their drink, talking in
unabated tones. All was big and violent about her.

"Whose child met that be?" they asked of the barman.

"It belongs to Tom Brangwen."

The child sat on in neglect, watching the door for her father. He never
came; many, many men came, but not he, and she sat like a shadow. She
knew one did not cry in such a place. And every man looked at her
inquisitively, she shut herself away from them.

A deep, gathering coldness of isolation took hold on her. He was never
coming back. She sat on, frozen, unmoving.

When she had become blank and timeless he came, and she slipped off her
seat to him, like one come back from the dead. He had sold his beast as
quickly as he could. But all the business was not finished. He took her
again through the hurtling welter of the cattle-market.

Then at last they turned and went out through the gate. He was always
hailing one man or another, always stopping to gossip about land and
cattle and horses and other things she did not understand, standing in
the filth and the smell, among the legs and great boots of men. And
always she heard the questions:

"What lass is that, then? I didn't know tha'd one o' that age."

"It belongs to my missis."

Anna was very conscious of her derivation from her mother, in the end,
and of her alienation.

But at last they were away, and Brangwen went with her into a little
dark, ancient eating-house in the Bridlesmith-Gate. They had cow's-tail
soup, and meat and cabbage and potatoes. Other men, other people, came
into the dark, vaulted place, to eat. Anna was wide-eyed and silent
with wonder.

Then they went into the big market, into the corn exchange, then to
shops. He bought her a little book off a stall. He loved buying things,
odd things that he thought would be useful. Then they went to the
"Black Swan", and she drank milk and he brandy, and they harnessed the
horse and drove off, up the Derby Road.

She was tired out with wonder and marvelling. But the next day, when
she thought of it, she skipped, flipping her leg in the odd dance she
did, and talked the whole time of what had happened to her, of what she
had seen. It lasted her all the week. And the next Saturday she was
eager to go again.

She became a familiar figure in the cattle-market, sitting waiting in
the little booth. But she liked best to go to Derby. There her father
had more friends. And she liked the familiarity of the smaller town,
the nearness of the river, the strangeness that did not frighten her,
it was so much smaller. She liked the covered-in market, and the old
women. She liked the "George Inn", where her father put up. The
landlord was Brangwen's old friend, and Anna was made much of. She sat
many a day in the cosy parlour talking to Mr. Wigginton, a fat man with
red hair, the landlord. And when the farmers all gathered at twelve
o'clock for dinner, she was a little heroine.

At first she would only glower or hiss at these strange men with their
uncouth accent. But they were good-humoured. She was a little oddity,
with her fierce, fair hair like spun glass sticking out in a flamy halo
round the apple-blossom face and the black eyes, and the men liked an
oddity. She kindled their attention.

She was very angry because Marriott, a gentleman-farmer from Ambergate,
called her the little pole-cat.

"Why, you're a pole-cat," he said to her.

"I'm not," she flashed.

"You are. That's just how a pole-cat goes."

She thought about it.

"Well, you're-you're--" she began.

"I'm what?"

She looked him up and down.

"You're a bow-leg man."

Which he was. There was a roar of laughter. They loved her that she was
indomitable.

"Ah," said Marriott. "Only a pole-cat says that."

"Well, I am a pole-cat," she flamed.

There was another roar of laughter from the men.

They loved to tease her.

"Well, me little maid," Braithwaite would say to her, "an' how's th'
lamb's wool?"

He gave a tug at a glistening, pale piece of her hair.

"It's not lamb's wool," said Anna, indignantly putting back her
offended lock.

"Why, what'st ca' it then?"

"It's hair."

"Hair! Wheriver dun they rear that sort?"

"Wheriver dun they?" she asked, in dialect, her curiosity overcoming
her.

Instead of answering he shouted with joy. It was the triumph, to make
her speak dialect.

She had one enemy, the man they called Nut-Nat, or Nat-Nut, a cretin,
with inturned feet, who came flap-lapping along, shoulder jerking up at
every step. This poor creature sold nuts in the public-houses where he
was known. He had no roof to his mouth, and the men used to mock his
speech.

The first time he came into the "George" when Anna was there, she
asked, after he had gone, her eyes very round:

"Why does he do that when he walks?"

"'E canna 'elp 'isself, Duckie, it's th' make o' th' fellow."

She thought about it, then she laughed nervously. And then she
bethought herself, her cheeks flushed, and she cried:

"He's a horrid man."

"Nay, he's non horrid; he canna help it if he wor struck that road."

But when poor Nat came wambling in again, she slid away. And she would
not eat his nuts, if the men bought them for her. And when the farmers
gambled at dominoes for them, she was angry.

"They are dirty-man's nuts," she cried.

So a revulsion started against Nat, who had not long after to go to the
workhouse.

There grew in Brangwen's heart now a secret desire to make her a lady.
His brother Alfred, in Nottingham, had caused a great scandal by
becoming the lover of an educated woman, a lady, widow of a doctor.
Very often, Alfred Brangwen went down as a friend to her cottage, which
was in Derbyshire, leaving his wife and family for a day or two, then
returning to them. And no-one dared gainsay him, for he was a
strong-willed, direct man, and he said he was a friend of this widow.

One day Brangwen met his brother on the station.

"Where are you going to, then?" asked the younger brother.

"I'm going down to Wirksworth."

"You've got friends down there, I'm told."

"Yes."

"I s'll have to be lookin' in when I'm down that road."

"You please yourself."

Tom Brangwen was so curious about the woman that the next time he was
in Wirksworth he asked for her house.

He found a beautiful cottage on the steep side of a hill, looking clean
over the town, that lay in the bottom of the basin, and away at the old
quarries on the opposite side of the space. Mrs. Forbes was in the
garden. She was a tall woman with white hair. She came up the path
taking off her thick gloves, laying down her shears. It was autumn. She
wore a wide-brimmed hat.

Brangwen blushed to the roots of his hair, and did not know what to
say.

"I thought I might look in," he said, "knowing you were friends of my
brother's. I had to come to Wirksworth."

She saw at once that he was a Brangwen.

"Will you come in?" she said. "My father is lying down."

She took him into a drawing-room, full of books, with a piano and a
violin-stand. And they talked, she simply and easily. She was full of
dignity. The room was of a kind Brangwen had never known; the
atmosphere seemed open and spacious, like a mountain-top to him.

"Does my brother like reading?" he asked.

"Some things. He has been reading Herbert Spencer. And we read Browning
sometimes."

Brangwen was full of admiration, deep thrilling, almost reverential
admiration. He looked at her with lit-up eyes when she said, "we
read". At last he burst out, looking round the room:

"I didn't know our Alfred was this way inclined."

"He is quite an unusual man."

He looked at her in amazement. She evidently had a new idea of his
brother: she evidently appreciated him. He looked again at the woman.
She was about forty, straight, rather hard, a curious, separate
creature. Himself, he was not in love with her, there was something
chilling about her. But he was filled with boundless admiration.

At tea-time he was introduced to her father, an invalid who had to be
helped about, but who was ruddy and well-favoured, with snowy hair and
watery blue eyes, and a courtly naive manner that again was new and
strange to Brangwen, so sauve, so merry, so innocent.

His brother was this woman's lover! It was too amazing. Brangwen went
home despising himself for his own poor way of life. He was a
clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud. More than ever he
wanted to clamber out, to this visionary polite world.

He was well off. He was as well off as Alfred, who could not have above
six hundred a year, all told. He himself made about four hundred, and
could make more. His investments got better every day. Why did he not
do something? His wife was a lady also.

But when he got to the Marsh, he realised how fixed everything was, how
the other form of life was beyond him, and he regretted for the first
time that he had succeeded to the farm. He felt a prisoner, sitting
safe and easy and unadventurous. He might, with risk, have done more
with himself. He could neither read Browning nor Herbert Spencer, nor
have access to such a room as Mrs. Forbes's. All that form of life was
outside him.

But then, he said he did not want it. The excitement of the visit began
to pass off. The next day he was himself, and if he thought of the
other woman, there was something about her and her place that he did
not like, something cold something alien, as if she were not a woman,
but an inhuman being who used up human life for cold, unliving
purposes.

The evening came on, he played with Anna, and then sat alone with his
own wife. She was sewing. He sat very still, smoking, perturbed. He was
aware of his wife's quiet figure, and quiet dark head bent over her
needle. It was too quiet for him. It was too peaceful. He wanted to
smash the walls down, and let the night in, so that his wife should not
be so secure and quiet, sitting there. He wished the air were not so
close and narrow. His wife was obliterated from him, she was in her own
world, quiet, secure, unnoticed, unnoticing. He was shut down by her.

He rose to go out. He could not sit still any longer. He must get out
of this oppressive, shut-down, woman-haunt.

His wife lifted her head and looked at him.

"Are you going out?" she asked.

He looked down and met her eyes. They were darker than darkness, and
gave deeper space. He felt himself retreating before her, defensive,
whilst her eyes followed and tracked him own.

"I was just going up to Cossethay," he said.

She remained watching him.

"Why do you go?" she said.

His heart beat fast, and he sat down, slowly.

"No reason particular," he said, beginning to fill his pipe again,
mechanically.

"Why do you go away so often?" she said.

"But you don't want me," he replied.

She was silent for a while.

"You do not want to be with me any more," she said.

It startled him. How did she know this truth? He thought it was his
secret.

"Yi," he said.

"You want to find something else," she said.

He did not answer. "Did he?" he asked himself.

"You should not want so much attention," she said. "You are not a
baby."

"I'm not grumbling," he said. Yet he knew he was.

"You think you have not enough," she said.

"How enough?"

"You think you have not enough in me. But how do you know me? What do
you do to make me love you?"

He was flabbergasted.

"I never said I hadn't enough in you," he replied. "I didn't know you
wanted making to love me. What do you want?"

"You don't make it good between us any more, you are not interested.
You do not make me want you."

"And you don't make me want you, do you now?" There was a silence. They
were such strangers.

"Would you like to have another woman?" she asked.

His eyes grew round, he did not know where he was. How could she, his
own wife, say such a thing? But she sat there, small and foreign and
separate. It dawned upon him she did not consider herself his wife,
except in so far as they agreed. She did not feel she had married him.
At any rate, she was willing to allow he might want another woman. A
gap, a space opened before him.

"No," he said slowly. "What other woman should I want?"

"Like your brother," she said.

He was silent for some time, ashamed also.

"What of her?" he said. "I didn't like the woman."

"Yes, you liked her," she answered persistently.

He stared in wonder at his own wife as she told him his own heart so
callously. And he was indignant. What right had she to sit there
telling him these things? She was his wife, what right had she to speak
to him like this, as if she were a stranger.

"I didn't," he said. "I want no woman."

"Yes, you would like to be like Alfred."

His silence was one of angry frustration. He was astonished. He had
told her of his visit to Wirksworth, but briefly, without interest, he
thought.

As she sat with her strange dark face turned towards him, her eyes
watched him, inscrutable, casting him up. He began to oppose her. She
was again the active unknown facing him. Must he admit her? He resisted
involuntarily.

"Why should you want to find a woman who is more to you than me?" she
said.

The turbulence raged in his breast.

"I don't," he said.

"Why do you?" she repeated. "Why do you want to deny me?"

Suddenly, in a flash, he saw she might be lonely, isolated, unsure. She
had seemed to him the utterly certain, satisfied, absolute, excluding
him. Could she need anything?

"Why aren't you satisfied with me?-I'm not satisfied with you. Paul
used to come to me and take me like a man does. You only leave me alone
or take me like your cattle, quickly, to forget me again-so that you
can forget me again."

"What am I to remember about you?" said Brangwen.

"I want you to know there is somebody there besides yourself."

"Well, don't I know it?"

"You come to me as if it was for nothing, as if I was nothing there.
When Paul came to me, I was something to him-a woman, I was. To you I
am nothing-it is like cattle-or nothing--"

"You make me feel as if I was nothing," he said.

They were silent. She sat watching him. He could not move, his soul was
seething and chaotic. She turned to her sewing again. But the sight of
her bent before him held him and would not let him be. She was a
strange, hostile, dominant thing. Yet not quite hostile. As he sat he
felt his limbs were strong and hard, he sat in strength.

She was silent for a long time, stitching. He was aware, poignantly, of
the round shape of her head, very intimate, compelling. She lifted her
head and sighed. The blood burned in him, her voice ran to him like
fire.

"Come here," she said, unsure.

For some moments he did not move. Then he rose slowly and went across
the hearth. It required an almost deathly effort of volition, or of
acquiescence. He stood before her and looked down at her. Her face was
shining again, her eyes were shining again like terrible laughter. It
was to him terrible, how she could be transfigured. He could not look
at her, it burnt his heart.

"My love!" she said.

And she put her arms round him as he stood before her round his thighs,
pressing him against her breast. And her hands on him seemed to reveal
to him the mould of his own nakedness, he was passionately lovely to
himself. He could not bear to look at her.

"My dear!" she said. He knew she spoke a foreign language. The fear was
like bliss in his heart. He looked down. Her face was shining, her eyes
were full of light, she was awful. He suffered from the compulsion to
her. She was the awful unknown. He bent down to her, suffering, unable
to let go, unable to let himself go, yet drawn, driven. She was now the
transfigured, she was wonderful, beyond him. He wanted to go. But he
could not as yet kiss her. He was himself apart. Easiest he could kiss
her feet. But he was too ashamed for the actual deed, which were like
an affront. She waited for him to meet her, not to bow before her and
serve her. She wanted his active participation, not his submission. She
put her fingers on him. And it was torture to him, that he must give
himself to her actively, participate in her, that he must meet and
embrace and know her, who was other than himself. There was that in him
which shrank from yielding to her, resisted the relaxing towards her,
opposed the mingling with her, even while he most desired it. He was
afraid, he wanted to save himself.

There were a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, the tension, the
withholding relaxed in him, and he began to flow towards her. She was
beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go his hold on himself, he
relinquished himself, and knew the subterranean force of his desire to
come to her, to be with her, to mingle with her, losing himself to find
her, to find himself in her. He began to approach her, to draw near.

His blood beat up in waves of desire. He wanted to come to her, to meet
her. She was there, if he could reach her. The reality of her who was
just beyond him absorbed him. Blind and destroyed, he pressed forward,
nearer, nearer, to receive the consummation of himself, he received
within the darkness which should swallow him and yield him up to
himself. If he could come really within the blazing kernel of darkness,
if really he could be destroyed, burnt away till he lit with her in one
consummation, that were supreme, supreme.

Their coming together now, after two years of married life, was much
more wonderful to them than it had been before. It was the entry into
another circle of existence, it was the baptism to another life, it was
the complete confirmation. Their feet trod strange ground of knowledge,
their footsteps were lit-up with discovery. Wherever they walked, it
was well, the world re-echoed round them in discovery. They went gladly
and forgetful. Everything was lost, and everything was found. The new
world was discovered, it remained only to be explored.

They had passed through the doorway into the further space, where
movement was so big, that it contained bonds and constraints and
labours, and still was complete liberty. She was the doorway to him, he
to her. At last they had thrown open the doors, each to the other, and
had stood in the doorways facing each other, whilst the light flooded
out from behind on to each of their faces, it was the transfiguration,
glorification, the admission.

And always the light of the transfiguration burned on in their hearts.
He went his way, as before, she went her way, to the rest of the world
there seemed no change. But to the two of them, there was the perpetual
wonder of the transfiguration.

He did not know her any better, any more precisely, now that he knew
her altogether. Poland, her husband, the war--he understood no more of
this in her. He did not understand her foreign nature, half German,
half Polish, nor her foreign speech. But he knew her, he knew her
meaning, without understanding. What she said, what she spoke, this was
a blind gesture on her part. In herself she walked strong and clear, he
knew her, he saluted her, was with her. What was memory after all, but
the recording of a number of possibilities which had never been
fulfilled? What was Paul Lensky to her, but an unfulfilled possibility
to which he, Brangwen, was the reality and the fulfilment? What did it
matter, that Anna Lensky was born of Lydia and Paul? God was her father
and her mother. He had passed through the married pair without fully
making Himself known to them.

Now He was declared to Brangwen and to Lydia Brangwen, as they stood
together. When at last they had joined hands, the house was finished,
and the Lord took up his abode. And they were glad.

The days went on as before, Brangwen went out to his work, his wife
nursed her child and attended in some measure to the farm. They did not
think of each other-why should they? Only when she touched him, he knew
her instantly, that she was with him, near him, that she was the
gateway and the way out, that she was beyond, and that he was
travelling in her through the beyond. Whither?-What does it matter? He
responded always. When she called, he answered, when he asked, her
response came at once, or at length.

Anna's soul was put at peace between them. She looked from one to the
other, and she saw them established to her safety, and she was free.
She played between the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud in
confidence, having the assurance on her right hand and the assurance on
her left. She was no longer called upon to uphold with her childish
might the broken end of the arch. Her father and her mother now met to
the span of the heavens, and she, the child, was free to play in the
space beneath, between.




Chapter 4



Girlhood of Anna Brangwen


When Anna was nine years old, Brangwen sent her to the dames' school in
Cossethay. There she went, flipping and dancing in her inconsequential
fashion, doing very much as she liked, disconcerting old Miss Coates by
her indifference to respectability and by her lack of reverence. Anna
only laughed at Miss Coates, liked her, and patronised her in superb,
childish fashion.

The girl was at once shy and wild. She had a curious contempt for
ordinary people, a benevolent superiority. She was very shy, and
tortured with misery when people did not like her. On the other hand,
she cared very little for anybody save her mother, whom she still
rather resentfully worshipped, and her father, whom she loved and
patronised, but upon whom she depended. These two, her mother and
father, held her still in fee. But she was free of other people,
towards whom, on the whole, she took the benevolent attitude. She
deeply hated ugliness or intrusion or arrogance, however. As a child,
she was as proud and shadowy as a tiger, and as aloof. She could confer
favours, but, save from her mother and father, she could receive none.
She hated people who came too near to her. Like a wild thing, she
wanted her distance. She mistrusted intimacy.

In Cossethay and Ilkeston she was always an alien. She had plenty of
acquaintances, but no friends. Very few people whom she met were
significant to her. They seemed part of a herd, undistinguished. She
did not take people very seriously.

She had tow brothers, Tom, dark-haired, small, volatile, whom she was
intimately related to but whom she never mingled with, and Fred, fair
and responsive, whom she adored but did not consider as a real,
separate thing. She was too much the centre of her own universe, too
little aware of anything outside.

The first person she met, who affected her as a real, living person,
whom she regarded as having definite existence, was Baron Skrebensky,
her mother's friend. He also was a Polish exile, who had taken orders,
and had received from Mr. Gladstone a small country living in
Yorkshire.

When Anna was about ten years old, she went with her mother to spend a
few days with the Baron Skrebensky. He was very unhappy in his
red-brick vicarage. He was vicar of a country church, a living worth a
little over two hundred pounds a year, but he had a large parish
containing several collieries, with a new, raw, heathen population. He
went to the north of England expecting homage from the common people,
for he was an aristocrat. He was roughly, even cruelly received. But he
never understood it. He remained a fiery aristocrat. Only he had to
learn to avoid his parishioners.

Anna was very much impressed by him. He was a smallish man with a
rugged, rather crumpled face and blue eyes set very deep and glowing.
His wife was a tall thin woman, of noble Polish family, mad with pride.
He still spoke broken English, for he had kept very close to his wife,
both of them forlorn in this strange, inhospitable country, and they
always spoke in Polish together. He was disappointed with Mrs.
Brangwen's soft, natural English, very disappointed that her child
spoke no Polish.

Anna loved to watch him. She liked the big, new, rambling vicarage,
desolate and stark on its hill. It was so exposed, so bleak and bold
after the Marsh. The Baron talked endlessly in Polish to Mrs. Brangwen;
he made furious gestures with his hands, his blue eyes were full of
fire. And to Anna, there was a significance about his sharp, flinging
movements. Something in her responded to his extravagance and his
exuberant manner. She thought him a very wonderful person. She was shy
of him, she liked him to talk to her. She felt a sense of freedom near
him.

She never could tell how she knew it, but she did know that he was a
knight of Malta. She could never remember whether she had seen his
star, or cross, of his order or not, but it flashed in her mind, like a
symbol. He at any rate represented to the child the real world, where
kings and lords and princes moved and fulfilled their shining lives,
whilst queens and ladies and princesses upheld the noble order.

She had recognised the Baron Skrebensky as a real person, he had had
some regard for her. But when she did not see him any more, he faded
and became a memory. But as a memory he was always alive to her.

Anna became a tall, awkward girl. Her eyes were still very dark and
quick, but they had grown careless, they had lost their watchful,
hostile look. Her fierce, spun hair turned brown, it grew heavier and
was tied back. She was sent to a young ladies' school in Nottingham.

And at this period she was absorbed in becoming a young lady. She was
intelligent enough, but not interested in learning. At first, she
thought all the girls at school very ladylike and wonderful, and she
wanted to be like them. She came to a speedy disillusion: they galled
and maddened her, they were petty and mean. After the loose, generous
atmosphere of her home, where little things did not count, she was
always uneasy in the world, that would snap and bite at every trifle.

A quick change came over her. She mistrusted herself, she mistrusted
the outer world. She did not want to go on, she did not want to go out
into it, she wanted to go no further.

"What do I care about that lot of girls?" she would say to her father,
contemptuously; "they are nobody."

The trouble was that the girls would not accept Anna at her measure.
They would have her according to themselves or not at all. So she was
confused, seduced, she became as they were for a time, and then, in
revulsion, she hated them furiously.

"Why don't you ask some of your girls here?" her father would say.

"They're not coming here," she cried.

"And why not?"

"They're bagatelle," she said, using one of her mother's rare phrases.

"Bagatelles or billiards, it makes no matter, they're nice young lasses
enough."

But Anna was not to be won over. She had a curious shrinking from
commonplace people, and particularly from the young lady of her day.
She would not go into company because of the ill-at-ease feeling other
people brought upon her. And she never could decide whether it were her
fault or theirs. She half respected these other people, and continuous
disillusion maddened her. She wanted to respect them. Still she thought
the people she did not know were wonderful. Those she knew seemed
always to be limiting her, tying her up in little falsities that
irritated her beyond bearing. She would rather stay at home and avoid
the rest of the world, leaving it illusory.

For at the Marsh life had indeed a certain freedom and largeness. There
was no fret about money, no mean little precedence, nor care for what
other people thought, because neither Mrs. Brangwen nor Brangwen could
be sensible of any judgment passed on them from outside. Their lives
were too separate.

So Anna was only easy at home, where the common sense and the supreme
relation between her parents produced a freer standard of being than
she could find outside. Where, outside the Marsh, could she find the
tolerant dignity she had been brought up in? Her parents stood
undiminished and unaware of criticism. The people she met outside
seemed to begrudge her her very existence. They seemed to want to
belittle her also. She was exceedingly reluctant to go amongst them.
She depended upon her mother and her father. And yet she wanted to go
out.

At school, or in the world, she was usually at fault, she felt usually
that she ought to be slinking in disgrace. She never felt quite sure,
in herself, whether she were wrong, or whether the others were wrong.
She had not done her lessons: well, she did not see any reason why she
should do her lessons, if she did not want to. Was there some occult
reason why she should? Were these people, schoolmistresses,
representatives of some mystic Right, some Higher Good? They seemed to
think so themselves. But she could not for her life see why a woman
should bully and insult her because she did not know thirty lines of As
You Like It. After all, what did it matter if she knew them or not?
Nothing could persuade her that it was of the slightest importance.
Because she despised inwardly the coarsely working nature of the
mistress. Therefore she was always at outs with authority. From
constant telling, she came almost to believe in her own badness, her
own intrinsic inferiority. She felt that she ought always to be in a
state of slinking disgrace, if she fulfilled what was expected of her.
But she rebelled. She never really believed in her own badness. At the
bottom of her heart she despised the other people, who carped and were
loud over trifles. She despised them, and wanted revenge on them. She
hated them whilst they had power over her.

Still she kept an ideal: a free, proud lady absolved from the petty
ties, existing beyond petty considerations. She would see such ladies
in pictures: Alexandra, Princess of Wales, was one of her models. This
lady was proud and royal, and stepped indifferently over all small,
mean desires: so thought Anna, in her heart. And the girl did up her
hair high under a little slanting hat, her skirts were fashionably
bunched up, she wore an elegant, skin-fitting coat.

Her father was delighted. Anna was very proud in her bearing, too
naturally indifferent to smaller bonds to satisfy Ilkeston, which would
have liked to put her down. But Brangwen was having no such thing. If
she chose to be royal, royal she should be. He stood like a rock
between her and the world.

After the fashion of his family, he grew stout and handsome. His blue
eyes were full of light, twinkling and sensitive, his manner was
deliberate, but hearty, warm. His capacity for living his own life
without attention from his neighbours made them respect him. They would
run to do anything for him. He did not consider them, but was
open-handed towards them, so they made profit of their willingness. He
liked people, so long as they remained in the background.

Mrs. Brangwen went on in her own way, following her own devices. She
had her husband, her two sons and Anna. These staked out and marked her
horizon. The other people were outsiders. Inside her own world, her
life passed along like a dream for her, it lapsed, and she lived within
its lapse, active and always pleased, intent. She scarcely noticed the
outer things at all. What was outside was outside, non-existent. She
did not mind if the boys fought, so long as it was out of her presence.
But if they fought when she was by, she was angry, and they were afraid
of her. She did not care if they broke a window of a railway carriage
or sold their watches to have a revel at the Goose Fair. Brangwen was
perhaps angry over these things. To the mother they were insignificant.
It was odd little things that offended her. She was furious if the boys
hung around the slaughter-house, she was displeased when the school
reports were bad. It did not matter how many sins her boys were accused
of, so long as they were not stupid, or inferior. If they seemed to
brook insult, she hated them. And it was only a certain gaucherie, a
gawkiness on Anna's part that irritated her against the girl. Certain
forms of clumsiness, grossness, made the mother's eyes glow with
curious rage. Otherwise she was pleased, indifferent.

Pursuing her splendid-lady ideal, Anna became a lofty demoiselle of
sixteen, plagued by family shortcomings. She was very sensitive to her
father. She knew if he had been drinking, were he ever so little
affected, and she could not bear it. He flushed when he drank, the
veins stood out on his temples, there was a twinkling, cavalier
boisterousness in his eye, his manner was jovially overbearing and
mocking. And it angered her. When she heard his loud, roaring,
boisterous mockery, an anger of resentment filled her. She was quick to
forestall him, the moment he came in.

"You look a sight, you do, red in the face," she cried.

"I might look worse if I was green," he answered.

"Boozing in Ilkeston."

"And what's wrong wi' Il'son?"

She flounced away. He watched her with amused, twinkling eyes, yet in
spite of himself said that she flouted him.

They were a curious family, a law to themselves, separate from the
world, isolated, a small republic set in invisible bounds. The mother
was quite indifferent to Ilkeston and Cossethay, to any claims made on
her from outside, she was very shy of any outsider, exceedingly
courteous, winning even. But the moment the visitor had gone, she
laughed and dismissed him, he did not exist. It had been all a game to
her. She was still a foreigner, unsure of her ground. But alone with
her own children and husband at the Marsh, she was mistress of a little
native land that lacked nothing.

She had some beliefs somewhere, never defined. She had been brought up
a Roman Catholic. She had gone to the Church of England for protection.
The outward form was a matter of indifference to her. Yet she had some
fundamental religion. It was as if she worshipped God as a mystery,
never seeking in the least to define what He was.

And inside her, the subtle sense of the Great Absolute wherein she had
her being was very strong. The English dogma never reached her: the
language was too foreign. Through it all she felt the great Separator
who held life in His hands, gleaming, imminent, terrible, the Great
Mystery, immediate beyond all telling.

She shone and gleamed to the Mystery, Whom she knew through all her
senses, she glanced with strange, mystic superstitions that never found
expression in the English language, never mounted to thought in
English. But so she lived, within a potent, sensuous belief that
included her family and contained her destiny.

To this she had reduced her husband. He existed with her entirely
indifferent to the general values of the world. Her very ways, the very
mark of her eyebrows were symbols and indication to him. There, on the
farm with her, he lived through a mystery of life and death and
creation, strange, profound ecstasies and incommunicable satisfactions,
of which the rest of the world knew nothing; which made the pair of
them apart and respected in the English village, for they were also
well-to-do.

But Anna was only half safe within her mother's unthinking knowledge.
She had a mother-of-pearl rosary that had been her own father's. What
it meant to her she could never say. But the string of moonlight and
silver, when she had it between her fingers, filled her with strange
passion. She learned at school a little Latin, she learned an Ave Maria
and a Pater Noster, she learned how to say her rosary. But that was no
good. "Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, Benedicta tu in
mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus. Ave Maria, Sancta
Maria, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,
Amen."

It was not right, somehow. What these words meant when translated was
not the same as the pale rosary meant. There was a discrepancy, a
falsehood. It irritated her to say, "Dominus tecum," or, "benedicta tu
in mulieribus." She loved the mystic words, "Ave Maria, Sancta Maria;"
she was moved by "benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus," and by "nunc
et in hora mortis nostrae." But none of it was quite real. It was not
satisfactory, somehow.

She avoided her rosary, because, moving her with curious passion as it
did, it meant only these not very significant things. She put it away.
It was her instinct to put all these things away. It was her instinct
to avoid thinking, to avoid it, to save herself.

She was seventeen, touchy, full of spirits, and very moody: quick to
flush, and always uneasy, uncertain. For some reason or other, she
turned more to her father, she felt almost flashes of hatred for her
mother. Her mother's dark muzzle and curiously insidious ways, her
mother's utter surety and confidence, her strange satisfaction, even
triumph, her mother's way of laughing at things and her mother's silent
overriding of vexatious propositions, most of all her mother's
triumphant power maddened the girl.

She became sudden and incalculable. Often she stood at the window,
looking out, as if she wanted to go. Sometimes she went, she mixed with
people. But always she came home in anger, as if she were diminished,
belittled, almost degraded.

There was over the house a kind of dark silence and intensity, in which
passion worked its inevitable conclusions. There was in the house a
sort of richness, a deep, inarticulate interchange which made other
places seem thin and unsatisfying. Brangwen could sit silent, smoking
in his chair, the mother could move about in her quiet, insidious way,
and the sense of the two presences was powerful, sustaining. The whole
intercourse was wordless, intense and close.

But Anna was uneasy. She wanted to get away. Yet wherever she went,
there came upon her that feeling of thinness, as if she were made
smaller, belittled. She hastened home.

There she raged and interrupted the strong, settled interchange.
Sometimes her mother turned on her with a fierce, destructive anger, in
which was no pity or consideration. And Anna shrank, afraid. She went
to her father.

He would still listen to the spoken word, which fell sterile on the
unheeding mother. Sometimes Anna talked to her father. She tried to
discuss people, she wanted to know what was meant. But her father
became uneasy. He did not want to have things dragged into
consciousness. Only out of consideration for her he listened. And there
was a kind of bristling rousedness in the room. The cat got up and
stretching itself, went uneasily to the door. Mrs. Brangwen was silent,
she seemed ominous. Anna could not go on with her fault-finding, her
criticism, her expression of dissatisfactions. She felt even her father
against her. He had a strong, dark bond with her mother, a potent
intimacy that existed inarticulate and wild, following its own course,
and savage if interrupted, uncovered.

Nevertheless Brangwen was uneasy about the girl, the whole house
continued to be disturbed. She had a pathetic, baffled appeal. She was
hostile to her parents, even whilst she lived entirely with them,
within their spell.

Many ways she tried, of escape. She became an assiduous church-goer.
But the language meant nothing to her: it seemed false. She hated to
hear things expressed, put into words. Whilst the religious feelings
were inside her they were passionately moving. In the mouth of the
clergyman, they were false, indecent. She tried to read. But again the
tedium and the sense of the falsity of the spoken word put her off. She
went to stay with girl friends. At first she thought it splendid. But
then the inner boredom came on, it seemed to her all nothingness. And
she felt always belittled, as if never, never could she stretch her
length and stride her stride.

Her mind reverted often to the torture cell of a certain Bishop of
France, in which the victim could neither stand nor lie stretched out,
never. Not that she thought of herself in any connection with this. But
often there came into her mind the wonder, how the cell was built, and
she could feel the horror of the crampedness, as something very real.

She was, however, only eighteen when a letter came from Mrs. Alfred
Brangwen, in Nottingham, saying that her son William was coming to
Ilkeston to take a place as junior draughtsman, scarcely more than
apprentice, in a lace factory. He was twenty years old, and would the
Marsh Brangwens be friendly with him.

Tom Brangwen at once wrote offering the young man a home at the Marsh.
This was not accepted, but the Nottingham Brangwens expressed
gratitude.

There had never been much love lost between the Nottingham Brangwens
and the Marsh. Indeed, Mrs. Alfred, having inherited three thousand
pounds, and having occasion to be dissatisfied with her husband, held
aloof from all the Brangwens whatsoever. She affected, however, some
esteem of Mrs. Tom, as she called the Polish woman, saying that at any
rate she was a lady.

Anna Brangwen was faintly excited at the news of her Cousin Will's
coming to Ilkeston. She knew plenty of young men, but they had never
become real to her. She had seen in this young gallant a nose she
liked, in that a pleasant moustache, in the other a nice way of wearing
clothes, in one a ridiculous fringe of hair, in another a comical way
of talking. They were objects of amusement and faint wonder to her,
rather than real beings, the young men.

The only man she knew was her father; and, as he was something large,
looming, a kind of Godhead, he embraced all manhood for her, and other
men were just incidental.

She remembered her cousin Will. He had town clothes and was thin, with
a very curious head, black as jet, with hair like sleek, thin fur. It
was a curious head: it reminded her she knew not of what: of some
animal, some mysterious animal that lived in the darkness under the
leaves and never came out, but which lived vividly, swift and intense.
She always thought of him with that black, keen, blind head. And she
considered him odd.

He appeared at the Marsh one Sunday morning: a rather long, thin youth
with a bright face and a curious self-possession among his shyness, a
native unawareness of what other people might be, since he was himself.

When Anna came downstairs in her Sunday clothes, ready for church, he
rose and greeted her conventionally, shaking hands. His manners were
better than hers. She flushed. She noticed that he now had a thick
fledge on his upper lip, a black, finely-shapen line marking his wide
mouth. It rather repelled her. It reminded her of the thin, fine fur of
his hair. She was aware of something strange in him.

His voice had rather high upper notes, and very resonant middle notes.
It was queer. She wondered why he did it. But he sat very naturally in
the Marsh living-room. He had some uncouthness, some natural
self-possession of the Brangwens, that made him at home there.

Anna was rather troubled by the strangely intimate, affectionate way
her father had towards this young man. He seemed gentle towards him, he
put himself aside in order to fill out the young man. This irritated
Anna.

"Father," she said abruptly, "give me some collection."

"What collection?" asked Brangwen.

"Don't be ridiculous," she cried, flushing.

"Nay," he said, "what collection's this?"

"You know it's the first Sunday of the month."

Anna stood confused. Why was he doing this, why was he making her
conspicuous before this stranger?

"I want some collection," she reasserted.

"So tha says," he replied indifferently, looking at her, then turning
again to this nephew.

She went forward, and thrust her hand into his breeches pocket. He
smoked steadily, making no resistance, talking to his nephew. Her hand
groped about in his pocket, and then drew out his leathern purse. Her
colour was bright in her clear cheeks, her eyes shone. Brangwen's eyes
were twinkling. The nephew sat sheepishly. Anna, in her finery, sat
down and slid all the money into her lap. There was silver and gold.
The youth could not help watching her. She was bent over the heap of
money, fingering the different coins.

"I've a good mind to take half a sovereign," she said, and she looked
up with glowing dark eyes. She met the light-brown eyes of her cousin,
close and intent upon her. She was startled. She laughed quickly, and
turned to her father.

"I've a good mind to take half a sovereign, our Dad," she said.

"Yes, nimble fingers," said her father. "You take what's your own."

"Are you coming, our Anna?" asked her brother from the door.

She suddenly chilled to normal, forgetting both her father and her
cousin.

"Yes, I'm ready," she said, taking sixpence from the heap of money and
sliding the rest back into the purse, which she laid on the table.

"Give it here," said her father.

Hastily she thrust the purse into his pocket and was going out.

"You'd better go wi' 'em, lad, hadn't you?" said the father to the
nephew.

Will Brangwen rose uncertainly. He had golden-brown, quick, steady
eyes, like a bird's, like a hawk's, which cannot look afraid.

"Your Cousin Will 'll come with you," said the father.

Anna glanced at the strange youth again. She felt him waiting there for
her to notice him. He was hovering on the edge of her consciousness,
ready to come in. She did not want to look at him. She was antagonistic
to him.

She waited without speaking. Her cousin took his hat and joined her. It
was summer outside. Her brother Fred was plucking a sprig of flowery
currant to put in his coat, from the bush at the angle of the house.
She took no notice. Her cousin followed just behind her.

They were on the high road. She was aware of a strangeness in her
being. It made her uncertain. She caught sight of the flowering currant
in her brother's buttonhole.

"Oh, our Fred," she cried. "Don't wear that stuff to go to church."

Fred looked down protectively at the pink adornment on his breast.

"Why, I like it," he said.

"Then you're the only one who does, I'm sure," she said.

And she turned to her cousin.

"Do you like the smell of it?" she asked.

He was there beside her, tall and uncouth and yet self-possessed. It
excited her.

"I can't say whether I do or not," he replied.

"Give it here, Fred, don't have it smelling in church," she said to the
little boy, her page.

Her fair, small brother handed her the flower dutifully. She sniffed it
and gave it without a word to her cousin, for his judgment. He smelled
the dangling flower curiously.

"It's a funny smell," he said.

And suddenly she laughed, and a quick light came on all their faces,
there was a blithe trip in the small boy's walk.

The bells were ringing, they were going up the summery hill in their
Sunday clothes. Anna was very fine in a silk frock of brown and white
stripes, tight along the arms and the body, bunched up very elegantly
behind the skirt. There was something of the cavalier about Will
Brangwen, and he was well dressed.

He walked along with the sprig of currant-blossom dangling between his
fingers, and none of them spoke. The sun shone brightly on little
showers of buttercup down the bank, in the fields the fool's-parsley
was foamy, held very high and proud above a number of flowers that
flitted in the greenish twilight of the mowing-grass below.

They reached the church. Fred led the way to the pew, followed by the
cousin, then Anna. She felt very conspicuous and important. Somehow,
this young man gave her away to other people. He stood aside and let
her pass to her place, then sat next to her. It was a curious
sensation, to sit next to him.

The colour came streaming from the painted window above her. It lit on
the dark wood of the pew, on the stone, worn aisle, on the pillar
behind her cousin, and on her cousin's hands, as they lay on his knees.
She sat amid illumination, illumination and luminous shadow all around
her, her soul very bright. She sat, without knowing it, conscious of
the hands and motionless knees of her cousin. Something strange had
entered into her world, something entirely strange and unlike what she
knew.

She was curiously elated. She sat in a glowing world of unreality, very
delightful. A brooding light, like laughter, was in her eyes. She was
aware of a strange influence entering in to her, which she enjoyed. It
was a dark enrichening influence she had not known before. She did not
think of her cousin. But she was startled when his hands moved.

She wished he would not say the responses so plainly. It diverted her
from her vague enjoyment. Why would he obtrude, and draw notice to
himself? It was bad taste. But she went on all right till the hymn
came. He stood up beside her to sing, and that pleased her. Then
suddenly, at the very first word, his voice came strong and
over-riding, filling the church. He was singing the tenor. Her soul
opened in amazement. His voice filled the church! It rang out like a
trumpet, and rang out again. She started to giggle over her hymn-book.
But he went on, perfectly steady. Up and down rang his voice, going its
own way. She was helplessly shocked into laughter. Between moments of
dead silence in herself she shook with laughter. On came the laughter,
seized her and shook her till the tears were in her eyes. She was
amazed, and rather enjoyed it. And still the hymn rolled on, and still
she laughed. She bent over her hymn-book crimson with confusion, but
still her sides shook with laughter. She pretended to cough, she
pretended to have a crumb in her throat. Fred was gazing up at her with
clear blue eyes. She was recovering herself. And then a slur in the
strong, blind voice at her side brought it all on again, in a gust of
mad laughter.

She bent down to prayer in cold reproof of herself. And yet, as she
knelt, little eddies of giggling went over her. The very sight of his
knees on the praying cushion sent the little shock of laughter over
her.

She gathered herself together and sat with prim, pure face, white and
pink and cold as a christmas rose, her hands in her silk gloves folded
on her lap, her dark eyes all vague, abstracted in a sort of dream,
oblivious of everything.

The sermon rolled on vaguely, in a tide of pregnant peace.

Her cousin took out his pocket-handkerchief. He seemed to be drifted
absorbed into the sermon. He put his handkerchief to his face. Then
something dropped on to his knee. There lay the bit of flowering
currant! He was looking down at it in real astonishment. A wild snort
of laughter came from Anna. Everybody heard: it was torture. He had
shut the crumpled flower in his hand and was looking up again with the
same absorbed attention to the sermon. Another snort of laughter from
Anna. Fred nudged her remindingly.

Her cousin sat motionless. Somehow he was aware that his face was red.
She could feel him. His hand, closed over the flower, remained quite
still, pretending to be normal. Another wild struggle in Anna's breast,
and the snort of laughter. She bent forward shaking with laughter. It
was now no joke. Fred was nudge-nudging at her. She nudged him back
fiercely. Then another vicious spasm of laughter seized her. She tried
to ward it off in a little cough. The cough ended in a suppressed
whoop. She wanted to die. And the closed hand crept away to the pocket.
Whilst she sat in taut suspense, the laughter rushed back at her,
knowing he was fumbling in his pocket to shove the flower away.

In the end, she felt weak, exhausted and thoroughly depressed. A
blankness of wincing depression came over her. She hated the presence
of the other people. Her face became quite haughty. She was unaware of
her cousin any more.

When the collection arrived with the last hynm, her cousin was again
singing resoundingly. And still it amused her. In spite of the shameful
exhibition she had made of herself, it amused her still. She listened
to it in a spell of amusement. And the bag was thrust in front of her,
and her sixpence was mingled in the folds of her glove. In her haste to
get it out, it flipped away and went twinkling in the next pew. She
stood and giggled. She could not help it: she laughed outright, a
figure of shame.

"What were you laughing about, our Anna?" asked Fred, the moment they
were out of the church.

"Oh, I couldn't help it," she said, in her careless, half-mocking
fashion. "I don't know why Cousin Will's singing set me off."

"What was there in my singing to make you laugh?" he asked.

"It was so loud," she said.

They did not look at each other, but they both laughed again, both
reddening.

"What were you snorting and laughing for, our Anna?" asked Tom, the
elder brother, at the dinner table, his hazel eyes bright with joy.
"Everybody stopped to look at you." Tom was in the choir.

She was aware of Will's eyes shining steadily upon her, waiting for her
to speak.

"It was Cousin Will's singing," she said.

At which her cousin burst into a suppressed, chuckling laugh, suddenly
showing all his small, regular, rather sharp teeth, and just as quickly
closing his mouth again.

"Has he got such a remarkable voice on him then?" asked Brangwen.

"No, it's not that," said Anna. "Only it tickled me-I couldn't tell you
why."

And again a ripple of laughter went down the table.

Will Brangwen thrust forward his dark face, his eyes dancing, and said:

"I'm in the choir of St. Nicholas."

"Oh, you go to church then!" said Brangwen.

"Mother does-father doesn't," replied the youth.

It was the little things, his movement, the funny tones of his voice,
that showed up big to Anna. The matter-of-fact things he said were
absurd in contrast. The things her father said seemed meaningless and
neutral.

During the afternoon they sat in the parlour, that smelled of geranium,
and they ate cherries, and talked. Will Brangwen was called on to give
himself forth. And soon he was drawn out.

He was interested in churches, in church architecture. The influence of
Ruskin had stimulated him to a pleasure in the medieval forms. His talk
was fragmentary, he was only half articulate. But listening to him, as
he spoke of church after church, of nave and chancel and transept, of
rood-screen and font, of hatchet-carving and moulding and tracery,
speaking always with close passion of particular things, particular
places, there gathered in her heart a pregnant hush of churches, a
mystery, a ponderous significance of bowed stone, a dim-coloured light
through which something took place obscurely, passing into darkness: a
high, delighted framework of the mystic screen, and beyond, in the
furthest beyond, the altar. It was a very real experience. She was
carried away. And the land seemed to be covered with a vast, mystic
church, reserved in gloom, thrilled with an unknown Presence.

Almost it hurt her, to look out of the window and see the lilacs
towering in the vivid sunshine. Or was this the jewelled glass?

He talked of Gothic and Renaissance and Perpendicular, and Early
English and Norman. The words thrilled her.

"Have you been to Southwell?" he said. "I was there at twelve o'clock
at midday, eating my lunch in the churchyard. And the bells played a
hymn.

"Ay, it's a fine Minster, Southwell, heavy. It's got heavy, round
arches, rather low, on thick pillars. It's grand, the way those arches
travel forward.

"There's a sedilia as well-pretty. But I like the main body of the
church-and that north porch--"

He was very much excited and filled with himself that afternoon. A
flame kindled round him, making his experience passionate and glowing,
burningly real.

His uncle listened with twinkling eyes, half-moved. His aunt bent
forward her dark face, half-moved, but held by other knowledge. Anna
went with him.

He returned to his lodging at night treading quick, his eyes
glittering, and his face shining darkly as if he came from some
passionate, vital tryst.

The glow remained in him, the fire burned, his heart was fierce like a
sun. He enjoyed his unknown life and his own self. And he was ready to
go back to the Marsh.

Without knowing it, Anna was wanting him to come. In him she had
escaped. In him the bounds of her experience were transgressed: he was
the hole in the wall, beyond which the sunshine blazed on an outside
world.

He came. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, talking again, there
recurred the strange, remote reality which carried everything before
it. Sometimes, he talked of his father, whom he hated with a hatred
that was burningly close to love, of his mother, whom he loved, with a
love that was keenly close to hatred, or to revolt. His sentences were
clumsy, he was only half articulate. But he had the wonderful voice,
that could ring its vibration through the girl's soul, transport her
into his feeling. Sometimes his voice was hot and declamatory,
sometimes it had a strange, twanging, almost cat-like sound, sometimes
it hesitated, puzzled, sometimes there was the break of a little laugh.
Anna was taken by him. She loved the running flame that coursed through
her as she listened to him. And his mother and his father became to her
two separate people in her life.

For some weeks the youth came frequently, and was received gladly by
them all. He sat amongst them, his dark face glowing, an eagerness and
a touch of derisiveness on his wide mouth, something grinning and
twisted, his eyes always shining like a bird's, utterly without depth.
There was no getting hold of the fellow, Brangwen irritably thought. He
was like a grinning young tom-cat, that came when he thought he would,
and without cognisance of the other person.

At first the youth had looked towards Tom Brangwen when he talked; and
then he looked towards his aunt, for her appreciation, valuing it more
than his uncle's; and then he turned to Anna, because from her he got
what he wanted, which was not in the elder people.

So that the two young people, from being always attendant on the elder,
began to draw apart and establish a separate kingdom. Sometimes Tom
Brangwen was irritated. His nephew irritated him. The lad seemed to him
too special, self-contained. His nature was fierce enough, but too much
abstracted, like a separate thing, like a cat's nature. A cat could lie
perfectly peacefully on the hearthrug whilst its master or mistress
writhed in agony a yard away. It had nothing to do with other people's
affairs. What did the lad really care about anything, save his own
instinctive affairs?

Brangwen was irritated. Nevertheless he liked and respected his nephew.
Mrs. Brangwen was irritated by Anna, who was suddenly changed, under
the influence of the youth. The mother liked the boy: he was not quite
an outsider. But she did not like her daughter to be so much under the
spell.

So that gradually the two young people drew apart, escaped from the
elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He worked in the garden to
propitiate his uncle. He talked churches to propitiate his aunt. He
followed Anna like a shadow: like a long, persistent, unswerving black
shadow he went after the girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It
exasperated him beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat-grin as
he called it, on his nephew's face.

And Anna had a new reserve, a new independence. Suddenly she began to
act independently of her parents, to live beyond them. Her mother had
flashes of anger.

But the courtship went on. Anna would find occasion to go shopping in
Ilkeston at evening. She always returned with her cousin; he walking
with his head over her shoulder, a little bit behind her, like the
Devil looking over Lincoln, as Brangwen noted angrily and yet with
satisfaction.

To his own wonder, Will Brangwen found himself in an electric state of
passion. To his wonder, he had stopped her at the gate as they came
home from Ilkeston one night, and had kissed her, blocking her way and
kissing her whilst he felt as if some blow were struck at him in the
dark. And when they went indoors, he was acutely angry that her parents
looked up scrutinisingly at him and her. What right had they there: why
should they look up! Let them remove themselves, or look elsewhere.

And the youth went home with the stars in heaven whirling fiercely
about the blackness of his head, and his heart fierce, insistent, but
fierce as if he felt something baulking him. He wanted to smash through
something.

A spell was cast over her. And how uneasy her parents were, as she went
about the house unnoticing, not noticing them, moving in a spell as if
she were invisible to them. She was invisible to them. It made them
angry. Yet they had to submit. She went about absorbed, obscured for a
while.

Over him too the darkness of obscurity settled. He seemed to be hidden
in a tense, electric darkness, in which his soul, his life was
intensely active, but without his aid or attention. His mind was
obscured. He worked swiftly and mechanically, and he produced some
beautiful things.

His favourite work was wood-carving. The first thing he made for her
was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mythological bird, a phoenix,
something like an eagle, rising on symmetrical wings, from a circle of
very beautiful flickering flames that rose upwards from the rim of the
cup.

Anna thought nothing of the gift on the evening when he gave it to her.
In the morning, however, when the butter was made, she fetched his seal
in place of the old wooden stamper of oak-leaves and acorns. She was
curiously excited to see how it would turn out. Strange, the uncouth
bird moulded there, in the cup-like hollow, with curious, thick
waverings running inwards from a smooth rim. She pressed another mould.
Strange, to lift the stamp and see that eagle-beaked bird raising its
breast to her. She loved creating it over and over again. And every
time she looked, it seemed a new thing come to life. Every piece of
butter became this strange, vital emblem.

She showed it to her mother and father.

"That is beautiful," said her mother, a little light coming on to her
face.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed the father, puzzled, fretted. "Why, what sort of
a bird does he call it?"

And this was the question put by the customers during the next weeks.

"What sort of a bird do you call that, as you've got on th' butter?"

When he came in the evening, she took him into the dairy to show him.

"Do you like it?" he asked, in his loud, vibrating voice that always
sounded strange, re-echoing in the dark places of her being.

They very rarely touched each other. They liked to be alone together,
near to each other, but there was still a distance between them.

In the cool dairy the candle-light lit on the large, white surfaces of
the cream pans. He turned his head sharply. It was so cool and remote
in there, so remote. His mouth was open in a little, strained laugh.
She stood with her head bent, turned aside. He wanted to go near to
her. He had kissed her once. Again his eye rested on the round blocks
of butter, where the emblematic bird lifted its breast from the shadow
cast by the candle flame. What was restraining him? Her breast was near
him; his head lifted like an eagle's. She did not move. Suddenly, with
an incredibly quick, delicate movement, he put his arms round her and
drew her to him. It was quick, cleanly done, like a bird that swoops
and sinks close, closer.

He was kissing her throat. She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were
dark and flowing with fire. His eyes were hard and bright with a fierce
purpose and gladness, like a hawk's. She felt him flying into the dark
space of her flames, like a brand, like a gleaming hawk.

They had looked at each other, and seen each other strange, yet near,
very near, like a hawk stooping, swooping, dropping into a flame of
darkness. So she took the candle and they went back to the kitchen.

They went on in this way for some time, always coming together, but
rarely touching, very seldom did they kiss. And then, often, it was
merely a touch of the lips, a sign. But her eyes began to waken with a
constant fire, she paused often in the midst of her transit, as if to
recollect something, or to discover something.

And his face became sombre, intent, he did not really hear what was
said to him.

One evening in August he came when it was raining. He came in with his
jacket collar turned up, his jacket buttoned close, his face wet. And
he looked so slim and definite, coming out of the chill rain, she was
suddenly blinded with love for him. Yet he sat and talked with her
father and mother, meaninglessly, whilst her blood seethed to anguish
in her. She wanted to touch him now, only to touch him.

There was the queer, abstract look on her silvery radiant face that
maddened her father, her dark eyes were hidden. But she raised them to
the youth. And they were dark with a flare that made him quail for a
moment.

She went into the second kitchen and took a lantern. Her father watched
her as she returned.

"Come with me, Will," she said to her cousin. "I want to see if I put
the brick over where that rat comes in."

"You've no need to do that," retorted her father. She took no notice.
The youth was between the two wills. The colour mounted into the
father's face, his blue eyes stared. The girl stood near the door, her
head held slightly back, like an indication that the youth must come.
He rose, in his silent, intent way, and was gone with her. The blood
swelled in Brangwen's forehead veins.

It was raining. The light of the lantern flashed on the cobbled path
and the bottom of the wall. She came to a small ladder, and climbed up.
He reached her the lantern, and followed. Up there in the fowl-loft,
the birds sat in fat bunches on the perches, the red combs shining like
fire. Bright, sharp eyes opened. There was a sharp crawk of
expostulation as one of the hens shifted over. The cock sat watching,
his yellow neck-feathers bright as glass. Anna went across the dirty
floor. Brangwen crouched in the loft watching. The light was soft under
the red, naked tiles. The girl crouched in a corner. There was another
explosive bustle of a hen springing from her perch.

Anna came back, stooping under the perches. He was waiting for her near
the door. Suddenly she had her arms round him, was clinging close to
him, cleaving her body against his, and crying, in a whispering,
whimpering sound.

"Will, I love you, I love you, Will, I love you." It sounded as if it
were tearing her.

He was not even very much surprised. He held her in his arms, and his
bones melted. He leaned back against the wall. The door of the loft was
open. Outside, the rain slanted by in fine, steely, mysterious haste,
emerging out of the gulf of darkness. He held her in his arms, and he
and she together seemed to be swinging in big, swooping oscillations,
the two of them clasped together up in the darkness. Outside the open
door of the loft in which they stood, beyond them and below them, was
darkness, with a travelling veil of rain.

"I love you, Will, I love you," she moaned, "I love you, Will."

He held her as thought they were one, and was silent.

In the house, Tom Brangwen waited a while. Then he got up and went out.
He went down the yard. He saw the curious misty shaft coming from the
loft door. He scarcely knew it was the light in the rain. He went on
till the illumination fell on him dimly. Then looking up, through the
blurr, he saw the youth and the girl together, the youth with his back
against the wall, his head sunk over the head of the girl. The elder
man saw them, blurred through the rain, but lit up. They thought
themselves so buried in the night. He even saw the lighted dryness of
the loft behind, and shadows and bunches of roosting fowls, up in the
night, strange shadows cast from the lantern on the floor.

And a black gloom of anger, and a tenderness of self-effacement, fought
in his heart. She did not understand what she was doing. She betrayed
herself. She was a child, a mere child. She did not know how much of
herself she was squandering. And he was blackly and furiously
miserable. Was he then an old man, that he should be giving her away in
marriage? Was he old? He was not old. He was younger than that young
thoughtless fellow in whose arms she lay. Who knew her-he or that
blind-headed youth? To whom did she belong, if not to himself?

He thought again of the child he had carried out at night into the
barn, whilst his wife was in labour with the young Tom. He remembered
the soft, warm weight of the little girl on his arm, round his neck.
Now she would say he was finished. She was going away, to deny him, to
leave an unendurable emptiness in him, a void that he could not bear.
Almost he hated her. How dared she say he was old. He walked on in the
rain, sweating with pain, with the horror of being old, with the agony
of having to relinquish what was life to him.

Will Brangwen went home without having seen his uncle. He held his hot
face to the rain, and walked on in a trance. "I love you, Will, I love
you." The words repeated themselves endlessly. The veils had ripped and
issued him naked into the endless space, and he shuddered. The walls
had thrust him out and given him a vast space to walk in. Whither,
through this darkness of infinite space, was he walking blindly? Where,
at the end of all the darkness, was God the Almighty still darkly,
seated, thrusting him on? "I love you, Will, I love you." He trembled
with fear as the words beat in his heart again. And he dared not think
of her face, of her eyes which shone, and of her strange, transfigured
face. The hand of the Hidden Almighty, burning bright, had thrust out
of the darkness and gripped him. He went on subject and in fear, his
heart gripped and burning from the touch.

The days went by, they ran on dark-padded feet in silence. He went to
see Anna, but again there had come a reserve between them. Tom Brangwen
was gloomy, his blue eyes sombre. Anna was strange and delivered up.
Her face in its delicate colouring was mute, touched dumb and poignant.
The mother bowed her head and moved in her own dark world, that was
pregnant again with fulfilment.

Will Brangwen worked at his wood-carving. It was a passion, a passion
for him to have the chisel under his grip. Verily the passion of his
heart lifted the fine bite of steel. He was carving, as he had always
wanted, the Creation of Eve. It was a panel in low relief, for a
church. Adam lay asleep as if suffering, and God, a dim, large figure,
stooped towards him, stretching forward His unveiled hand; and Eve, a
small vivid, naked female shape, was issuing like a flame towards the
hand of God, from the torn side of Adam.

Now, Will Brangwen was working at the Eve. She was thin, a keen, unripe
thing. With trembling passion, fine as a breath of air, he sent the
chisel over her belly, her hard, unripe, small belly. She was a stiff
little figure, with sharp lines, in the throes and torture and ecstasy
of her creation. But he trembled as he touched her. He had not finished
any of his figures. There was a bird on a bough overhead, lifting its
wings for flight, and a serpent wreathing up to it. It was not finished
yet. He trembled with passion, at last able to create the new, sharp
body of his Eve.

At the sides, at the far sides, at either end, were two Angels covering
their faces with their wings. They were like trees. As he went to the
Marsh, in the twilight, he felt that the Angels, with covered faces,
were standing back as he went by. The darkness was of their shadows and
the covering of their faces. When he went through the Canal bridge, the
evening glowed in its last deep colours, the sky was dark blue, the
stars glittered from afar, very remote and approaching above the
darkening cluster of the farm, above the paths of crystal along the
edge of the heavens.

She waited for him like the glow of light, and as if his face were
covered. And he dared not lift his face to look at her.

Corn harvest came on. One evening they walked out through the farm
buildings at nightfall. A large gold moon hung heavily to the grey
horizon, trees hovered tall, standing back in the dusk, waiting. Anna
and the young man went on noiselessly by the hedge, along where the
farm-carts had made dark ruts in the grass. They came through a gate
into a wide open field where still much light seemed to spread against
their faces. In the under-shadow the sheaves lay on the ground where
the reapers had left them, many sheaves like bodies prostrate in
shadowy bulk; others were riding hazily in shocks, like ships in the
haze of moonlight and of dusk, farther off.

They did not want to turn back, yet whither were they to go, towards
the moon? For they were separate, single.

"We will put up some sheaves," said Anna. So they could remain there in
the broad, open place.

They went across the stubble to where the long rows of upreared shocks
ended. Curiously populous that part of the field looked, where the
shocks rode erect; the rest was open and prostrate.

The air was all hoary silver. She looked around her. Trees stood
vaguely at their distance, as if waiting like heralds, for the signal
to approach. In this space of vague crystal her heart seemed like a
bell ringing. She was afraid lest the sound should be heard.

"You take this row," she said to the youth, and passing on, she stooped
in the next row of lying sheaves, grasping her hands in the tresses of
the oats, lifting the heavy corn in either hand, carrying it, as it
hung heavily against her, to the cleared space, where she set the two
sheaves sharply down, bringing them together with a faint, keen clash.
Her two bulks stood leaning together. He was coming, walking shadowily
with the gossamer dusk, carrying his two sheaves. She waited near-by.
He set his sheaves with a keen, faint clash, next to her sheaves. They
rode unsteadily. He tangled the tresses of corn. It hissed like a
fountain. He looked up and laughed.

Then she turned away towards the moon, which seemed glowingly to
uncover her bosom every time she faced it. He went to the vague
emptiness of the field opposite, dutifully.

They stooped, grasped the wet, soft hair of the corn, lifted the heavy
bundles, and returned. She was always first. She set down her sheaves,
making a pent-house with those others. He was coming shadowy across the
stubble, carrying his bundles, She turned away, hearing only the sharp
hiss of his mingling corn. She walked between the moon and his shadowy
figure.

She took her two new sheaves and walked towards him, as he rose from
stooping over the earth. He was coming out of the near distance. She
set down her sheaves to make a new stook. They were unsure. Her hands
fluttered. Yet she broke away, and turned to the moon, which laid bare
her bosom, so she felt as if her bosom were heaving and panting with
moonlight. And he had to put up her two sheaves, which had fallen down.
He worked in silence. The rhythm of the work carried him away again, as
she was coming near.

They worked together, coming and going, in a rhythm, which carried
their feet and their bodies in tune. She stooped, she lifted the burden
of sheaves, she turned her face to the dimness where he was, and went
with her burden over the stubble. She hesitated, set down her sheaves,
there was a swish and hiss of mingling oats, he was drawing near, and
she must turn again. And there was the flaring moon laying bare her
bosom again, making her drift and ebb like a wave.

He worked steadily, engrossed, threading backwards and forwards like a
shuttle across the strip of cleared stubble, weaving the long line of
riding shocks, nearer and nearer to the shadowy trees, threading his
sheaves with hers.

And always, she was gone before he came. As he came, she drew away, as
he drew away, she came. Were they never to meet? Gradually a low,
deep-sounding will in him vibrated to her, tried to set her in accord,
tried to bring her gradually to him, to a meeting, till they should be
together, till they should meet as the sheaves that swished together.

And the work went on. The moon grew brighter, clearer, the corn
glistened. He bent over the prostrate bundles, there was a hiss as the
sheaves left the ground, a trailing of heavy bodies against him, a
dazzle of moonlight on his eyes. And then he was setting the corn
together at the stook. And she was coming near.

He waited for her, he fumbled at the stook. She came. But she stood
back till he drew away. He saw her in shadow, a dark column, and spoke
to her, and she answered. She saw the moonlight flash question on his
face. But there was a space between them, and he went away, the work
carried them, rhythmic.

Why was there always a space between them, why were they apart? Why, as
she came up from under the moon, would she halt and stand off from him?
Why was he held away from her? His will drummed persistently, darkly,
it drowned everything else.

Into the rhythm of his work there came a pulse and a steadied purpose.
He stooped, he lifted the weight, he heaved it towards her, setting it
as in her, under the moonlit space. And he went back for more. Ever
with increasing closeness he lifted the sheaves and swung striding to
the centre with them, ever he drove her more nearly to the meeting,
ever he did his share, and drew towards her, overtaking her. There was
only the moving to and fro in the moonlight, engrossed, the swinging in
the silence, that was marked only by the splash of sheaves, and
silence, and a splash of sheaves. And ever the splash of his sheaves
broke swifter, beating up to hers, and ever the splash of her sheaves
recurred monotonously, unchanging, and ever the splash of his sheaves
beat nearer.

Till at last, they met at the shock, facing each other, sheaves in
hand. And he was silvery with moonlight, with a moonlit, shadowy face
that frightened her. She waited for him.

"Put yours down," she said.

"No, it's your turn." His voice was twanging and insistent.

She set her sheaves against the shock. He saw her hands glisten among
the spray of grain. And he dropped his sheaves and he trembled as he
took her in his arms. He had over-taken her, and it was his privilege
to kiss her. She was sweet and fresh with the night air, and sweet with
the scent of grain. And the whole rhythm of him beat into his kisses,
and still he pursued her, in his kisses, and still she was not quite
overcome. He wondered over the moonlight on her nose! All the moonlight
upon her, all the darkness within her! All the night in his arms,
darkness and shine, he possessed of it all! All the night for him now,
to unfold, to venture within, all the mystery to be entered, all the
discovery to be made.

Trembling with keen triumph, his heart was white as a star as he drove
his kisses nearer.

"My love!" she called, in a low voice, from afar. The low sound seemed
to call to him from far off, under the moon, to him who was unaware. He
stopped, quivered, and listened.

"My love," came again the low, plaintive call, like a bird unseen in
the night.

He was afraid. His heart quivered and broke. He was stopped.

"Anna," he said, as if he answered her from a distance, unsure.

"My love."

And he drew near, and she drew near.

"Anna," he said, in wonder and the birthpain of love.

"My love," she said, her voice growing rapturous. And they kissed on
the mouth, in rapture and surprise, long, real kisses. The kiss lasted,
there among the moonlight. He kissed her again, and she kissed him. And
again they were kissing together. Till something happened in him, he
was strange. He wanted her. He wanted her exceedingly. She was
something new. They stood there folded, suspended in the night. And his
whole being quivered with surprise, as from a blow. He wanted her, and
he wanted to tell her so. But the shock was too great to him. He had
never realised before. He trembled with irritation and unusedness, he
did not know what to do. He held her more gently, gently, much more
gently. The conflict was gone by. And he was glad, and breathless, and
almost in tears. But he knew he wanted her. Something fixed in him for
ever. He was hers. And he was very glad and afraid. He did not know
what to do, as they stood there in the open, moonlit field. He looked
through her hair at the moon, which seemed to swim liquid-bright.

She sighed, and seemed to wake up, then she kissed him again. Then she
loosened herself away from him and took his hand. It hurt him when she
drew away from his breast. It hurt him with a chagrin. Why did she draw
away from him? But she held his hand.

"I want to go home," she said, looking at him in a way he could not
understand.

He held close to her hand. He was dazed and he could not move, he did
not know how to move. She drew him away.

He walked helplessly beside her, holding her hand. She went with bent
head. Suddenly he said, as the simple solution stated itself to him:

"We'll get married, Anna."

She was silent.

"We'll get married, Anna, shall we?"

She stopped in the field again and kissed him, clinging to him
passionately, in a way he could not understand. He could not
understand. But he left it all now, to marriage. That was the solution
now, fixed ahead. He wanted her, he wanted to be married to her, he
wanted to have her altogether, as his own for ever. And he waited,
intent, for the accomplishment. But there was all the while a slight
tension of irritation.

He spoke to his uncle and aunt that night.

"Uncle," he said, "Anna and me think of getting married."

"Oh ay!" said Brangwen.

"But how, you have no money?" said the mother.

The youth went pale. He hated these words. But he was like a gleaming,
bright pebble, something bright and inalterable. He did not think. He
sat there in his hard brightness, and did not speak.

"Have you mentioned it to your own mother?" asked Brangwen.

"No-I'll tell her on Saturday."

"You'll go and see her?"

"Yes."

There was a long pause.

"And what are you going to marry on-your pound a week?"

Again the youth went pale, as if the spirit were being injured in him.

"I don't know," he said, looking at his uncle with his bright inhuman
eyes, like a hawk's.

Brangwen stirred in hatred.

"It needs knowing," he said.

"I shall have the money later on," said the nephew. "I will raise some
now, and pay it back then."

"Oh ay!-And why this desperate hurry? She's a child of eighteen, and
you're a boy of twenty. You're neither of you of age to do as you like
yet."

Will Brangwen ducked his head and looked at his uncle with swift,
mistrustful eyes, like a caged hawk.

"What does it matter how old she is, and how old I am?" he said.
"What's the difference between me now and when I'm thirty?"

"A big difference, let us hope."

"But you have no experience-you have no experience, and no money. Why
do you want to marry, without experience or money?" asked the aunt.

"What experience do I want, Aunt?" asked the boy.

And if Brangwen's heart had not been hard and intact with anger, like a
precious stone, he would have agreed.

Will Brangwen went home strange and untouched. He felt he could not
alter from what he was fixed upon, his will was set. To alter it he
must be destroyed. And he would not be destroyed. He had no money. But
he would get some from somewhere, it did not matter. He lay awake for
many hours, hard and clear and unthinking, his soul crystallising more
inalterably. Then he went fast asleep.

It was as if his soul had turned into a hard crystal. He might tremble
and quiver and suffer, it did not alter.

The next morning Tom Brangwen, inhuman with anger spoke to Anna.

"What's this about wanting to get married?" he said.

She stood, paling a little, her dark eyes springing to the hostile,
startled look of a savage thing that will defend itself, but trembles
with sensitiveness.

"I do," she said, out of her unconsciousness.

His anger rose, and he would have liked to break her.

"You do-you do-and what for?" he sneered with contempt. The old,
childish agony, the blindness that could recognise nobody, the
palpitating antagonism as of a raw, helpless, undefended thing came
back on her.

"I do because I do," she cried, in the shrill, hysterical way of her
childhood. "You are not my father-my father is dead-you are not my
father."

She was still a stranger. She did not recognise him. The cold blade cut
down, deep into Brangwen's soul. It cut him off from her.

"And what if I'm not?" he said.

But he could not bear it. It had been so passionately dear to him, her
"Father-Daddie."

He went about for some days as if stunned. His wife was bemused. She
did not understand. She only thought the marriage was impeded for want
of money and position.

There was a horrible silence in the house. Anna kept out of sight as
much as possible. She could be for hours alone.

Will Brangwen came back, after stupid scenes at Nottingham. He too was
pale and blank, but unchanging. His uncle hated him. He hated this
youth, who was so inhuman and obstinate. Nevertheless, it was to Will
Brangwen that the uncle, one evening, handed over the shares which he
had transferred to Anna Lensky. They were for two thousand five hundred
pounds. Will Brangwen looked at his uncle. It was a great deal of the
Marsh capital here given away. The youth, however, was only colder and
more fixed. He was abstract, purely a fixed will. He gave the shares to
Anna.

After which she cried for a whole day, sobbing her eyes out. And at
night, when she had heard her mother go to bed, she slipped down and
hung in the doorway. Her father sat in his heavy silence, like a
monument. He turned his head slowly.

"Daddy," she cried from the doorway, and she ran to him sobbing as if
her heart would break. "Daddy-daddy-daddy."

She crouched on the hearthrug with her arms round him and her face
against him. His body was so big and comfortable. But something hurt
her head intolerably. She sobbed almost with hysteria.

He was silent, with his hand on her shoulder. His heart was bleak. He
was not her father. That beloved image she had broken. Who was he then?
A man put apart with those whose life has no more developments. He was
isolated from her. There was a generation between them, he was old, he
had died out from hot life. A great deal of ash was in his fire, cold
ash. He felt the inevitable coldness, and in bitterness forgot the
fire. He sat in his coldness of age and isolation. He had his own wife.
And he blamed himself, he sneered at himself, for this clinging to the
young, wanting the young to belong to him.

The child who clung to him wanted her child-husband. As was natural.
And from him, Brangwen, she wanted help, so that her life might be
properly fitted out. But love she did not want. Why should there be
love between them, between the stout, middle-aged man and this child?
How could there be anything between them, but mere human willingness to
help each other? He was her guardian, no more. His heart was like ice,
his face cold and expressionless. She could not move him any more than
a statue.

She crept to bed, and cried. But she was going to be married to Will
Brangwen, and then she need not bother any more. Brangwen went to bed
with a hard, cold heart, and cursed himself. He looked at his wife. She
was still his wife. Her dark hair was threaded with grey, her face was
beautiful in its gathering age. She was just fifty. How poignantly he
saw her! And he wanted to cut out some of his own heart, which was
incontinent, and demanded still to share the rapid life of youth. How
he hated himself.

His wife was so poignant and timely. She was still young and naive,
with some girl's freshness. But she did not want any more the fight,
the battle, the control, as he, in his incontinence, still did. She was
so natural, and he was ugly, unnatural, in his inability to yield
place. How hideous, this greedy middle-age, which must stand in the way
of life, like a large demon.

What was missing in his life, that, in his ravening soul, he was not
satisfied? He had had that friend at school, his mother, his wife, and
Anna? What had he done? He had failed with his friend, he had been a
poor son; but he had known satifaction with his wife, let it be enough;
he loathed himself for the state he was in over Anna. Yet he was not
satisfied. It was agony to know it.

Was his life nothing? Had he nothing to show, no work? He did not count
his work, anybody could have done it. What had he known, but the long,
marital embrace with his wife! Curious, that this was what his life
amounted to! At any rate, it was something, it was eternal. He would
say so to anybody, and be proud of it. He lay with his wife in his
arms, and she was still his fulfilment, just the same as ever. And that
was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, and he was proud of it.

But the bitterness, underneath, that there still remained an
unsatisfied Tom Brangwen, who suffered agony because a girl cared
nothing for him. He loved his sons-he had them also. But it was the
further, the creative life with the girl, he wanted as well. Oh, and he
was ashamed. He trampled himself to extinguish himself.

What weariness! There was no peace, however old one grew! One was never
right, never decent, never master of oneself. It was as if his hope had
been in the girl.

Anna quickly lapsed again into her love for the youth. Will Brangwen
had fixed his marriage for the Saturday before Christmas. And he waited
for her, in his bright, unquestioning fashion, until then. He wanted
her, she was his, he suspended his being till the day should come. The
wedding day, December the twenty-third, had come into being for him as
an absolute thing. He lived in it.

He did not count the days. But like a man who journeys in a ship, he
was suspended till the coming to port.

He worked at his carving, he worked in his office, he came to see her;
all was but a form of waiting, without thought or question.

She was much more alive. She wanted to enjoy courtship. He seemed to
come and go like the wind, without asking why or whither. But she
wanted to enjoy his presence. For her, he was the kernel of life, to
touch him alone was bliss. But for him, she was the essence of life.
She existed as much when he was at his carving in his lodging in
Ilkeston, as when she sat looking at him in the Marsh kitchen. In
himself, he knew her. But his outward faculties seemed suspended. He
did not see her with his eyes, nor hear her with his voice.

And yet he trembled, sometimes into a kind of swoon, holding her in his
arms. They would stand sometimes folded together in the barn, in
silence. Then to her, as she felt his young, tense figure with her
hands, the bliss was intolerable, intolerable the sense that she
possessed him. For his body was so keen and wonderful, it was the only
reality in her world. In her world, there was this one tense, vivid
body of a man, and then many other shadowy men, all unreal. In him, she
touched the centre of reality. And they were together, he and she, at
the heart of the secret. How she clutched him to her, his body the
central body of all life. Out of the rock of his form the very fountain
of life flowed.

But to him, she was a flame that consumed him. The flame flowed up his
limbs, flowed through him, till he was consumed, till he existed only
as an unconscious, dark transit of flame, deriving from her.

Sometimes, in the darkness, a cow coughed. There was, in the darkness,
a slow sound of cud chewing. And it all seemed to flow round them and
upon them as the hot blood flows through the womb, laving the unborn
young.

Sometimes, when it was cold, they stood to be lovers in the stables,
where the air was warm and sharp with ammonia. And during these dark
vigils, he learned to know her, her body against his, they drew nearer
and nearer together, the kisses came more subtly close and fitting. So
when in the thick darkness a horse suddenly scrambled to its feet, with
a dull, thunderous sound, they listened as one person listening, they
knew as one person, they were conscious of the horse.

Tom Brangwen had taken them a cottage at Cossethay, on a twenty-one
years' lease. Will Brangwen's eyes lit up as he saw it. It was the
cottage next the church, with dark yewtrees, very black old trees,
along the side of the house and the grassy front garden; a red,
squarish cottage with a low slate roof, and low windows. It had a long
dairy-scullery, a big flagged kitchen, and a low parlour, that went up
one step from the kitchen. There were whitewashed beams across the
ceilings, and odd corners with cupboards. Looking out through the
windows, there was the grassy garden, the procession of black yew trees
down one side, and along the other sides, a red wall with ivy
separating the place from the high-road and the churchyard. The old,
little church, with its small spire on a square tower, seemed to be
looking back at the cottage windows.

"There'll be no need to have a clock," said Will Brangwen, peeping out
at the white clock-face on the tower, his neighbour.

At the back of the house was a garden adjoining the paddock, a cowshed
with standing for two cows, pig-cotes and fowl-houses. Will Brangwen
was very happy. Anna was glad to think of being mistress of her own
place.

Tom Brangwen was now the fairy godfather. He was never happy unless he
was buying something. Will Brangwen, with his interest in all
wood-work, was getting the furniture. He was left to buy tables and
round-staved chairs and the dressers, quite ordinary stuff, but such as
was identified with his cottage.

Tom Brangwen, with more particular thought, spied out what he called
handy little things for her. He appeared with a set of new-fangled
cooking-pans, with a special sort of hanging lamp, though the rooms
were so low, with canny little machines for grinding meat or mashing
potatoes or whisking eggs.

Anna took a sharp interest in what he bought, though she was not always
pleased. Some of the little contrivances, which he thought so canny,
left her doubtful. Nevertheless she was always expectant, on market
days there was always a long thrill of anticipation. He arrived with
the first darkness, the copper lamps of his cart glowing. And she ran
to the gate, as he, a dark, burly figure up in the cart, was bending
over his parcels.

"It's cupboard love as brings you out so sharp," he said, his voice
resounding in the cold darkness. Nevertheless he was excited. And she,
taking one of the cart lamps, poked and peered among the jumble of
things he had brought, pushing aside the oil or implements he had got
for himself.

She dragged out a pair of small, strong bellows, registered them in her
mind, and then pulled uncertainly at something else. It had a long
handle, and a piece of brown paper round the middle of it, like a
waistcoat.

"What's this?" she said, poking.

He stopped to look at her. She went to the lamp-light by the horse, and
stood there bent over the new thing, while her hair was like bronze,
her apron white and cheerful. Her fingers plucked busily at the paper.
She dragged forth a little wringer, with clean indiarubber rollers. She
examined it critically, not knowing quite how it worked.

She looked up at him. He stood a shadowy presence beyond the light.

"How does it go?" she asked.

"Why, it's for pulpin' turnips," he replied.

She looked at him. His voice disturbed her.

"Don't be silly. It's a little mangle," she said. "How do you stand it,
though?"

"You screw it on th' side o' your wash-tub." He came and held it out to
her.

"Oh, yes!" she cried, with one of her little skipping movements, which
still came when she was suddenly glad.

And without another thought she ran off into the house, leaving him to
untackle the horse. And when he came into the scullery, he found her
there, with the little wringer fixed on the dolly-tub, turning
blissfully at the handle, and Tilly beside her, exclaiming:

"My word, that's a natty little thing! That'll save you luggin' your
inside out. That's the latest contraption, that is."

And Anna turned away at the handle, with great gusto of possession.
Then she let Tilly have a turn.

"It fair runs by itself," said Tilly, turning on and on. "Your
clothes'll nip out on to th' line."




Chapter 5



Wedding at the Marsh


It was a beautiful sunny day for the wedding, a muddy earth but a
bright sky. They had three cabs and two big closed-in vehicles.
Everybody crowded in the parlour in excitement. Anna was still
upstairs. Her father kept taking a nip of brandy. He was handsome in
his black coat and grey trousers. His voice was hearty but troubled.
His wife came down in dark grey silk with lace, and a touch of peacock-
blue in her bonnet. Her little body was very sure and definite.
Brangwen was thankful she was there, to sustain him among all these
people.

The carriages! The Nottingham Mrs. Brangwen, in silk brocade, stands in
the doorway saying who must go with whom. There is a great bustle. The
front door is opened, and the wedding guests are walking down the
garden path, whilst those still waiting peer through the window, and
the little crowd at the gate gorps and stretches. How funny such
dressed-up people look in the winter sunshine!

They are gone-another lot! There begins to be more room. Anna comes
down blushing and very shy, to be viewed in her white silk and her
veil. Her mother-in-law surveys her objectively, twitches the white
train, arranges the folds of the veil and asserts herself.

Loud exclamations from the window that the bridegroom's carriage has
just passed.

"Where's your hat, father, and your gloves?" cries the bride, stamping
her white slipper, her eyes flashing through her veil. He hunts
round-his hair is ruffled. Everybody has gone but the bride and her
father. He is ready-his face very red and daunted. Tilly dithers in the
little porch, waiting to open the door. A waiting woman walks round
Anna, who asks:

"Am I all right?"

She is ready. She bridles herself and looks queenly. She waves her hand
sharply to her father:

"Come here!"

He goes. She puts her hand very lightly on his arm, and holding her
bouquet like a shower, stepping, oh, very graciously, just a little
impatient with her father for being so red in the face, she sweeps
slowly past the fluttering Tilly, and down the path. There are hoarse
shouts at the gate, and all her floating foamy whiteness passes slowly
into the cab.

Her father notices her slim ankle and foot as she steps up: a child's
foot. His heart is hard with tenderness. But she is in ecstasies with
herself for making such a lovely spectacle. All the way she sat
flamboyant with bliss because it was all so lovely. She looked down
solicitously at her bouquet: white roses and lilies-of-the-valley and
tube-roses and maidenhair fern-very rich and cascade-like.

Her father sat bewildered with all this strangeness, his heart was so
full it felt hard, and he couldn't think of anything.

The church was decorated for Christmas, dark with evergreens, cold and
snowy with white flowers. He went vaguely down to the altar. How long
was it since he had gone to be married himself? He was not sure whether
he was going to be married now, or what he had come for. He had a
troubled notion that he had to do something or other. He saw his wife's
bonnet, and wondered why she wasn't there with him.

They stood before the altar. He was staring up at the east window, that
glowed intensely, a sort of blue purple: it was deep blue glowing, and
some crimson, and little yellow flowers held fast in veins of shadow,
in a heavy web of darkness. How it burned alive in radiance among its
black web.

"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" He felt somebody
touch him. He started. The words still re-echoed in his memory, but
were drawing off.

"Me," he said hastily.

Ann bent her head and smiled in her veil. How absurd he was.

Brangwen was staring away at the burning blue window at the back of the
altar, and wondering vaguely, with pain, if he ever should get old, if
he ever should feel arrived and established. He was here at Anna's
wedding. Well, what right had he to feel responsible, like a father? He
was still as unsure and unfixed as when he had married himself. His
wife and he! With a pang of anguish he realised what uncertainties they
both were. He was a man of forty-five. Forty-five! In five more years
fifty. Then sixty-then seventy-then it was finished. My God-and one
still was so unestablished!

How did one grow old-how could one become confident? He wished he felt
older. Why, what difference was there, as far as he felt matured or
completed, between him now and him at his own wedding? He might be
getting married over again-he and his wife. He felt himself tiny, a
little, upright figure on a plain circled round with the immense,
roaring sky: he and his wife, two little, upright figures walking
across this plain, whilst the heavens shimmered and roared about them.
When did one come to an end? In which direction was it finished? There
was no end, no finish, only this roaring vast space. Did one never get
old, never die? That was the clue. He exulted strangely, with torture.
He would go on with his wife, he and she like two children camping in
the plains. What was sure but the endless sky? But that was so sure, so
boundless.

Still the royal blue colour burned and blazed and sported itself in the
web of darkness before him, unwearingly rich and splendid. How rich and
splendid his own life was, red and burning and blazing and sporting
itself in the dark meshes of his body: and his wife, how she glowed and
burned dark within her meshes! Always it was so unfinished and
unformed!

There was a loud noise of the organ. The whole party was trooping to
the vestry. There was a blotted, scrawled book-and that young girl
putting back her veil in her vanity, and laying her hand with the
wedding-ring self-consciously conspicuous, and signing her name
proudly because of the vain spectacle she made:

"Anna Theresa Lensky."

"Anna Theresa Lensky"-what a vain, independent minx she was! The
bridegroom, slender in his black swallow-tail and grey trousers, solemn
as a young solemn cat, was writing seriously:

"William Brangwen."

That looked more like it.

"Come and sign, father," cried the imperious young hussy.

"Thomas Brangwen-clumsy-fist," he said to himself as he signed.

Then his brother, a big, sallow fellow with black side-whiskers wrote:

"Alfred Brangwen."

"How many more Brangwens?" said Tom Brangwen, ashamed of the
too-frequent recurrence of his family name.

When they were out again in the sunshine, and he saw the frost hoary
and blue among the long grass under the tomb-stones, the holly-berries
overhead twinkling scarlet as the bells rang, the yew trees hanging
their black, motionless, ragged boughs, everything seemed like a
vision.

The marriage party went across the graveyard to the wall, mounted it by
the little steps, and descended. Oh, a vain white peacock of a bride
perching herself on the top of the wall and giving her hand to the
bridegroom on the other side, to be helped down! The vanity of her
white, slim, daintily-stepping feet, and her arched neck. And the regal
impudence with which she seemed to dismiss them all, the others,
parents and wedding guests, as she went with her young husband.

In the cottage big fires were burning, there were dozens of glasses on
the table, and holly and mistletoe hanging up. The wedding party
crowded in, and Tom Brangwen, becoming roisterous, poured out drinks.
Everybody must drink. The bells were ringing away against the windows.

"Lift your glasses up," shouted Tom Brangwen from the parlour, "lift
your glasses up, an' drink to the hearth an' home-hearth an' home, an'
may they enjoy it."

"Night an' day, an' may they enjoy it," shouted Frank Brangwen, in
addition.

"Hammer an' tongs, and may they enjoy it," shouted Alfred Brangwen, the
saturnine.

"Fill your glasses up, an' let's have it all over again," shouted Tom
Brangwen.

"Hearth an' home, an' may ye enjoy it."

There was a ragged shout of the company in response.

"Bed an' blessin', an' may ye enjoy it," shouted Frank Brangwen.

There was a swelling chorus in answer.

"Comin' and goin', an' may ye enjoy it," shouted the saturnine Alfred
Brangwen, and the men roared by now boldly, and the women said, "Just
hark, now!"

There was a touch of scandal in the air.

Then the party rolled off in the carriages, full speed back to the
Marsh, to a large meal of the high-tea order, which lasted for an hour
and a half. The bride and bridegroom sat at the head of the table, very
prim and shining both of them, wordless, whilst the company raged down
the table.

The Brangwen men had brandy in their tea, and were becoming
unmanageable. The saturnine Alfred had glittering, unseeing eyes, and a
strange, fierce way of laughing that showed his teeth. His wife
glowered at him and jerked her head at him like a snake. He was
oblivious. Frank Brangwen, the butcher, flushed and florid and
handsome, roared echoes to his two brothers. Tom Brangwen, in his solid
fashion, was letting himself go at last.

These three brothers dominated the whole company. Tom Brangwen wanted
to make a speech. For the first time in his life, he must spread
himself wordily.

"Marriage," he began, his eyes twinkling and yet quite profound, for he
was deeply serious and hugely amused at the same time, "Marriage," he
said, speaking in the slow, full-mouthed way of the Brangwens, "is what
we're made for----"

"Let him talk," said Alfred Brangwen, slowly and inscrutably, "let him
talk." Mrs. Alfred darted indignant eyes at her husband.

"A man," continued Tom Brangwen, "enjoys being a man: for what purpose
was he made a man, if not to enjoy it?"

"That a true word," said Frank, floridly.

"And likewise," continued Tom Brangwen, "a woman enjoys being a woman:
at least we surmise she does----"

"Oh, don't you bother----" called a farmer's wife.

"You may back your life they'd be summisin'." said Frank's wife.

"Now," continued Tom Brangwen, "for a man to be a man, it takes a
woman----"

"It does that," said a woman grimly.

"And for a woman to be a woman, it takes a man----" continued Tom
Brangwen.

"All speak up, men," chimed in a feminine voice.

"Therefore we have marriage," continued Tom Brangwen.

"Hold, hold," said Alfred Brangwen. "Don't run us off our legs."

And in dead silence the glasses were filled. The bride and bridegroom,
two children, sat with intent, shining faces at the head of the table,
abstracted.

"There's no marriage in heaven," went on Tom Brangwen; "but on earth
there is marriage."

"That's the difference between 'em," said Alfred Brangwen, mocking.

"Alfred," said Tom Brangwen, "keep your remarks till afterwards, and
then we'll thank you for them.-There's very little else, on earth, but
marriage. You can talk about making money, or saving souls. You can
save your own soul seven times over, and you may have a mint of money,
but your soul goes gnawin', gnawin', gnawin', and it says there's
something it must have. In heaven there is no marriage. But on earth
there is marriage, else heaven drops out, and there's no bottom to it."

"Just hark you now," said Frank's wife.

"Go on, Thomas," said Alfred sardonically.

"If we've got to be Angels," went on Tom Brangwen, haranguing the
company at large, "and if there is no such thing as a man nor a woman
amongst them, then it seems to me as a married couple makes one Angel."

"It's the brandy," said Alfred Brangwen wearily.

"For," said Tom Brangwen, and the company was listening to the
conundrum, "an Angel can't be less than a human being. And if it was
only the soul of a man minus the man, then it would be less than a
human being."

"Decidedly," said Alfred.

And a laugh went round the table. But Tom Brangwen was inspired.

"An Angel's got to be more than a human being," he continued. "So I
say, an Angel is the soul of man and woman in one: they rise united at
the Judgment Day, as one Angel----"

"Praising the Lord," said Frank.

"Praising the Lord," repeated Tom.

"And what about the women left over?" asked Alfred, jeering. The
company was getting uneasy.

"That I can't tell. How do I know as there is anybody left over at the
Judgment Day? Let that be. What I say is, that when a man's soul and a
woman's soul unites together--that makes an Angel----"

"I dunno about souls. I know as one plus one makes three, sometimes,"
said Frank. But he had the laugh to himself.

"Bodies and souls, it's the same," said Tom.

"And what about your missis, who was married afore you knew her?" asked
Alfred, set on edge by this discourse.

"That I can't tell you. If I am to become an Angel, it'll be my married
soul, and not my single soul. It'll not be the soul of me when I was a
lad: for I hadn't a soul as would make an Angel then."

"I can always remember," said Frank's wife, "when our Harold was bad,
he did nothink but see an angel at th' back o' th' lookin'-glass.
'Look, mother,' 'e said, 'at that angel!' 'Theer isn't no angel, my
duck,' I said, but he wouldn't have it. I took th' lookin'-glass off'n
th' dressin'-table, but it made no difference. He kep' on sayin' it was
there. My word, it did give me a turn. I thought for sure as I'd lost
him."

"I can remember," said another man, Tom's sister's husband, "my mother
gave me a good hidin' once, for sayin' I'd got an angel up my nose. She
seed me pokin', an' she said: 'What are you pokin' at your nose
for-give over.' 'There's an angel up it,' I said, an' she fetched me
such a wipe. But there was. We used to call them thistle things
'angels' as wafts about. An' I'd pushed one o' these up my nose, for
some reason or other."

"It's wonderful what children will get up their noses," said Frank's
wife. "I c'n remember our Hemmie, she shoved one o' them bluebell
things out o' th' middle of a bluebell, what they call 'candles', up
her nose, and oh, we had some work! I'd seen her stickin' 'em on the
end of her nose, like, but I never thought she'd be so soft as to shove
it right up. She was a gel of eight or more. Oh, my word, we got a
crochet-hook an' I don't know what ..."

Tom Brangwen's mood of inspiration began to pass away. He forgot all
about it, and was soon roaring and shouting with the rest. Outside the
wake came, singing the carols. They were invited into the bursting
house. They had two fiddles and a piccolo. There in the parlour they
played carols, and the whole company sang them at the top of its voice.
Only the bride and bridegroom sat with shining eyes and strange, bright
faces, and scarcely sang, or only with just moving lips.

The wake departed, and the guysers came. There was loud applause, and
shouting and excitement as the old mystery play of St. George, in which
every man present had acted as a boy, proceeded, with banging and
thumping of club and dripping pan.

"By Jove, I got a crack once, when I was playin' Beelzebub," said Tom
Brangwen, his eyes full of water with laughing. "It knocked all th'
sense out of me as you'd crack an egg. But I tell you, when I come to,
I played Old Johnny Roger with St. George, I did that."

He was shaking with laughter. Another knock came at the door. There was
a hush.

"It's th' cab," said somebody from the door.

"Walk in," shouted Tom Brangwen, and a red-faced grinning man entered.

"Now, you two, get yourselves ready an' off to blanket fair," shouted
Tom Brangwen. "Strike a daisy, but if you're not off like a blink o'
lightnin', you shanna go, you s'll sleep separate."

Anna rose silently and went to change her dress. Will Brangwen would
have gone out, but Tilly came with his hat and coat. The youth was
helped on.

"Well, here's luck, my boy," shouted his father.

"When th' fat's in th' fire, let it frizzle," admonished his uncle
Frank.

"Fair and softly does it, fair an' softly does it," cried his aunt,
Frank's wife, contrary.

"You don't want to fall over yourself," said his uncle by marriage.
"You're not a bull at a gate."

"Let a man have his own road," said Tom Brangwen testily. "Don't be so
free of your advice-it's his wedding this time, not yours."

"'E don't want many sign-posts," said his father. "There's some roads a
man has to be led, an' there's some roads a boss-eyed man can only
follow wi' one eye shut. But this road can't be lost by a blind man nor
a boss-eyed man nor a cripple-and he's neither, thank God."

"Don't you be so sure o' your walkin' powers," cried Frank's wife.
"There's many a man gets no further than half-way, nor can't to save
his life, let him live for ever."

"Why, how do you know?" said Alfred.

"It's plain enough in th' looks o' some," retorted Lizzie, his
sister-in-law.

The youth stood with a faint, half-hearing smile on his face. He was
tense and abstracted. These things, or anything, scarcely touched him.

Anna came down, in her day dress, very elusive. She kissed everybody,
men and women, Will Brangwen shook hands with everybody, kissed his
mother, who began to cry, and the whole party went surging out to the
cab.

The young couple were shut up, last injunctions shouted at them.

"Drive on," shouted Tom Brangwen.

The cab rolled off. They saw the light diminish under the ash trees.
Then the whole party, quietened, went indoors.

"They'll have three good fires burning," said Tom Brangwen, looking at
his watch. "I told Emma to make 'em up at nine, an' then leave the door
on th' latch. It's only half-past. They'll have three fires burning,
an' lamps lighted, an' Emma will ha' warmed th' bed wi' th' warmin'
pan. So I s'd think they'll be all right."

The party was much quieter. They talked of the young couple.

"She said she didn't want a servant in," said Tom Brangwen. "The house
isn't big enough, she'd always have the creature under her nose.
Emma'll do what is wanted of her, an' they'll be to themselves."

"It's best," said Lizzie, "you're more free."

The party talked on slowly. Brangwen looked at his watch.

"Let's go an' give 'em a carol," he said. "We s'll find th' fiddles at
the 'Cock an' Robin'."

"Ay, come on," said Frank.

Alfred rose in silence. The brother-in-law and one of Will's brothers
rose also.

The five men went out. The night was flashing with stars. Sirius blazed
like a signal at the side of the hill, Orion, stately and magnificent,
was sloping along.

Tom walked with his brother, Alfred. The men's heels rang on the
ground.

"It's a fine night," said Tom.

"Ay," said Alfred.

"Nice to get out."

"Ay."

The brothers walked close together, the bond of blood strong between
them. Tom always felt very much the junior to Alfred.

"It's a long while since you left home," he said.

"Ay," said Alfred. "I thought I was getting a bit oldish-but I'm not.
It's the things you've got as gets worn out, it's not you yourself."

"Why, what's worn out?"

"Most folks as I've anything to do with-as has anything to do with me.
They all break down. You've got to go on by yourself, if it's only to
perdition. There's nobody going alongside even there."

Tom Brangwen meditated this.

"Maybe you was never broken in," he said.

"No, I never was," said Alfred proudly.

And Tom felt his elder brother despised him a little. He winced under
it.

"Everybody's got a way of their own," he said, stubbornly. "It's only a
dog as hasn't. An' them as can't take what they give an' give what they
take, they must go by themselves, or get a dog as'll follow 'em."

"They can do without the dog," said his brother. And again Tom Brangwen
was humble, thinking his brother was bigger than himself. But if he
was, he was. And if it were finer to go alone, it was: he did not want
to go for all that.

They went over the field, where a thin, keen wind blew round the ball
of the hill, in the starlight. They came to the stile, and to the side
of Anna's house. The lights were out, only on the blinds of the rooms
downstairs, and of a bedroom upstairs, firelight flickered.

"We'd better leave 'em alone," said Alfred Brangwen.

"Nay, nay," said Tom. "We'll carol 'em, for th' last time."

And in a quarter of an hour's time, eleven silent, rather tipsy men
scrambled over the wall, and into the garden by the yew trees, outside
the windows where faint firelight glowered on the blinds. There came a
shrill sound, two violins and a piccolo shrilling on the frosty air.

"In the fields with their flocks abiding." A commotion of men's voices
broke out singing in ragged unison.

Anna Brangwen had started up, listening, when the music began. She was
afraid.

"It's the wake," he whispered.

She remained tense, her heart beating heavily, possessed with strange,
strong fear. Then there came the burst of men's singing, rather uneven.
She strained still, listening.

"It's Dad," she said, in a low voice. They were silent, listening.

"And my father," he said.

She listened still. But she was sure. She sank down again into bed,
into his arms. He held her very close, kissing her. The hymn rambled on
outside, all the men singing their best, having forgotten everything
else under the spell of the fiddles and the tune. The firelight glowed
against the darkness in the room. Anna could hear her father singing
with gusto.

"Aren't they silly," she whispered.

And they crept closer, closer together, hearts beating to one another.
And even as the hymn rolled on, they ceased to hear it.




Chapter 6



Anna Victrix


Will Brangwen had some weeks of holiday after his marriage, so the two
took their honeymoon in full hands, alone in their cottage together.

And to him, as the days went by, it was as if the heavens had fallen,
and he were sitting with her among the ruins, in a new world, everybody
else buried, themselves two blissful survivors, with everything to
squander as they would. At first, he could not get rid of a culpable
sense of licence on his part. Wasn't there some duty outside, calling
him and he did not come?

It was all very well at night, when the doors were locked and the
darkness drawn round the two of them. Then they were the only
inhabitants of the visible earth, the rest were under the flood. And
being alone in the world, they were a law unto themselves, they could
enjoy and squander and waste like conscienceless gods.

But in the morning, as the carts clanked by, and children shouted down
the lane; as the hucksters came calling their wares, and the church
clock struck eleven, and he and she had not got up yet, even to
breakfast, he could not help feeling guilty, as if he were committing a
breach of the law-ashamed that he was not up and doing.

"Doing what?" she asked. "What is there to do? You will only lounge
about."

Still, even lounging about was respectable. One was at least in
connection with the world, then. Whereas now, lying so still and
peacefully, while the daylight came obscurely through the drawn blind,
one was severed from the world, one shut oneself off in tacit denial of
the world. And he was troubled.

But it was so sweet and satisfying lying there talking desultorily with
her. It was sweeter than sunshine, and not so evanescent. It was even
irritating the way the church-clock kept on chiming: there seemed no
space between the hours, just a moment, golden and still, whilst she
traced his features with her finger-tips, utterly careless and happy,
and he loved her to do it.

But he was strange and unused. So suddenly, everything that had been
before was shed away and gone. One day, he was a bachelor, living with
the world. The next day, he was with her, as remote from the world as
if the two of them were buried like a seed in darkness. Suddenly, like
a chestnut falling out of a burr, he was shed naked and glistening on
to a soft, fecund earth, leaving behind him the hard rind of worldly
knowledge and experience. He heard it in the huckster's cries, the
noise of carts, the calling of children. And it was all like the hard,
shed rind, discarded. Inside, in the softness and stillness of the
room, was the naked kernel, that palpitated in silent activity,
absorbed in reality.

Inside the room was a great steadiness, a core of living eternity. Only
far outside, at the rim, went on the noise and the destruction. Here at
the centre the great wheel was motionless, centred upon itself. Here
was a poised, unflawed stillness that was beyond time, because it
remained the same, inexhaustible, unchanging, unexhausted.

As they lay close together, complete and beyond the touch of time or
change, it was as if they were at the very centre of all the slow
wheeling of space and the rapid agitation of life, deep, deep inside
them all, at the centre where there is utter radiance, and eternal
being, and the silence absorbed in praise: the steady core of all
movements, the unawakened sleep of all wakefulness. They found
themselves there, and they lay still, in each other's arms; for their
moment they were at the heart of eternity, whilst time roared far off,
for ever far off, towards the rim.

Then gradually they were passed away from the supreme centre, down the
circles of praise and joy and gladness, further and further out,
towards the noise and the friction. But their hearts had burned and
were tempered by the inner reality, they were unalterably glad.

Gradually they began to wake up, the noises outside became more real.
They understood and answered the call outside. They counted the strokes
of the bell. And when they counted midday, they understood that it was
midday, in the world, and for themselves also.

It dawned upon her that she was hungry. She had been getting hungrier
for a lifetime. But even yet it was not sufficiently real to rouse her.
A long way off she could hear the words, "I am dying of hunger." Yet
she lay still, separate, at peace, and the words were unuttered. There
was still another lapse.

And then, quite calmly, even a little surprised, she was in the
present, and was saying:

"I am dying with hunger."

"So am I," he said calmly, as if it were of not the slightest
significance. And they relapsed into the warm, golden stillness. And
the minutes flowed unheeded past the window outside.

Then suddenly she stirred against him.

"My dear, I am dying of hunger," she said.

It was a slight pain to him to be brought to.

"We'll get up," he said, unmoving.

And she sank her head on to him again, and they lay still, lapsing.
Half consciously, he heard the clock chime the hour. She did not hear.

"Do get up," she murmured at length, "and give me something to eat."

"Yes," he said, and he put his arms round her, and she lay with her
face on him. They were faintly astonished that they did not move. The
minutes rustled louder at the window.

"Let me go then," he said.

She lifted her head from him, relinquishingly. With a little breaking
away, he moved out of bed, and was taking his clothes. She stretched
out her hand to him.

"You are so nice," she said, and he went back for a moment or two.

Then actually he did slip into some clothes, and, looking round quickly
at her, was gone out of the room. She lay translated again into a pale,
clearer peace. As if she were a spirit, she listened to the noise of
him downstairs, as if she were no longer of the material world.

It was half-past one. He looked at the silent kitchen, untouched from
last night, dim with the drawn blind. And he hastened to draw up the
blind, so people should know they were not in bed any later. Well, it
was his own house, it did not matter. Hastily he put wood in the grate
and made a fire. He exulted in himself, like an adventurer on an
undiscovered island. The fire blazed up, he put on the kettle. How
happy he felt! How still and secluded the house was! There were only he
and she in the world.

But when he unbolted the door, and, half-dressed, looked out, he felt
furtive and guilty. The world was there, after all. And he had felt so
secure, as though this house were the Ark in the flood, and all the
rest was drowned. The world was there: and it was afternoon. The
morning had vanished and gone by, the day was growing old. Where was
the bright, fresh morning? He was accused. Was the morning gone, and he
had lain with blinds drawn, let it pass by unnoticed?

He looked again round the chill, grey afternoon. And he himself so soft
and warm and glowing! There were two sprigs of yellow jasmine in the
saucer that covered the milk-jug. He wondered who had been and left the
sign. Taking the jug, he hastily shut the door. Let the day and the
daylight drop out, let it go by unseen. He did not care. What did one
day more or less matter to him. It could fall into oblivion unspent if
it liked, this one course of daylight.

"Somebody has been and found the door locked," he said when he went
upstairs with the tray. He gave her the two sprigs of jasmine. She
laughed as she sat up in bed, childishly threading the flowers in the
breast of her nightdress. Her brown hair stuck out like a nimbus, all
fierce, round her softly glowing face. Her dark eyes watched the tray
eagerly.

"How good!" she cried, sniffing the cold air. "I'm glad you did a lot."
And she stretched out her hands eagerly for her plate-"Come back to
bed, quick-it's cold." She rubbed her hands together sharply.

He put off what little clothing he had on, and sat beside her in the
bed.

"You look like a lion, with your mane sticking out, and your nose
pushed over your food," he said.

She tinkled with laughter, and gladly ate her breakfast.

The morning was sunk away unseen, the afternoon was steadily going too,
and he was letting it go. One bright transit of daylight gone by
unacknowledged! There was something unmanly, recusant in it. He could
not quite reconcile himself to the fact. He felt he ought to get up, go
out quickly into the daylight, and work or spend himself energetically
in the open air of the afternoon, retrieving what was left to him of
the day.

But he did not go. Well, one might as well be hung for a sheep as for a
lamb. If he had lost this day of his life, he had lost it. He gave it
up. He was not going to count his losses. She didn't care. She didn't
care in the least. Then why should he? Should he be behind her in
recklessness and independence? She was superb in her indifference. He
wanted to be like her.

She took her responsibilities lightly. When she spilled her tea on the
pillow, she rubbed it carelessly with a handkerchief, and turned over
the pillow. He would have felt guilty. She did not. And it pleased him.
It pleased him very much to see how these things did not matter to her.

When the meal was over, she wiped her mouth on her handkerchief
quickly, satisfied and happy, and settled down on the pillow again,
with her fingers in his close, strange, fur-like hair.

The evening began to fall, the light was half alive, livid. He hid his
face against her.

"I don't like the twilight," he said.

"I love it," she answered.

He hid his face against her, who was warm and like sunlight. She seemed
to have sunlight inside her. Her heart beating seemed like sunlight
upon him. In her was a more real day than the day could give: so warm
and steady and restoring. He hid his face against her whilst the
twilight fell, whilst she lay staring out with her unseeing dark eyes,
as if she wandered forth untrammelled in the vagueness. The vagueness
gave her scope and set her free.

To him, turned towards her heart-pulse, all was very still and very
warm and very close, like noon-tide. He was glad to know this warm,
full noon. It ripened him and took away his responsibility, some of his
conscience.

They got up when it was quite dark. She hastily twisted her hair into a
knot, and was dressed in a twinkling. Then they went downstairs, drew
to the fire, and sat in silence, saying a few words now and then.

Her father was coming. She bundled the dishes away, flew round and
tidied the room, assumed another character, and again seated herself.
He sat thinking of his carving of Eve. He loved to go over his carving
in his mind, dwelling on every stroke, every line. How he loved it now!
When he went back to his Creation-panel again, he would finish his
Eve, tender and sparkling. It did not satisfy him yet. The Lord should
labour over her in a silent passion of Creation, and Adam should be
tense as if in a dream of immortality, and Eve should take form
glimmeringly, shadowily, as if the Lord must wrestle with His own soul
for her, yet she was a radiance.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

He found it difficult to say. His soul became shy when he tried to
communicate it.

"I was thinking my Eve was too hard and lively."

"Why?"

"I don't know. She should be more----," he made a gesture of infinite
tenderness.

There was a stillness with a little joy. He could not tell her any
more. Why could he not tell her any more? She felt a pang of
disconsolate sadness. But it was nothing. She went to him.

Her father came, and found them both very glowing, like an open flower.
He loved to sit with them. Where there was a perfume of love, anyone
who came must breathe it. They were both very quick and alive, lit up
from the other-world, so that it was quite an experience for them, that
anyone else could exist.

But still it troubled Will Brangwen a little, in his orderly,
conventional mind, that the established rule of things had gone so
utterly. One ought to get up in the morning and wash oneself and be a
decent social being. Instead, the two of them stayed in bed till
nightfall, and then got up, she never washed her face, but sat there
talking to her father as bright and shameless as a daisy opened out of
the dew. Or she got up at ten o'clock, and quite blithely went to bed
again at three, or at half-past four, stripping him naked in the
daylight, and all so gladly and perfectly, oblivious quite of his
qualms. He let her do as she liked with him, and shone with strange
pleasure. She was to dispose of him as she would. He was translated
with gladness to be in her hands. And down went his qualms, his maxims,
his rules, his smaller beliefs, she scattered them like an expert
skittle-player. He was very much astonished and delighted to see them
scatter.

He stood and gazed and grinned with wonder whilst his Tablets of Stone
went bounding and bumping and splintering down the hill, dislodged for
ever. Indeed, it was true as they said, that a man wasn't born before
he was married. What a change indeed!

He surveyed the rind of the world: houses, factories, trams, the
discarded rind; people scurrying about, work going on, all on the
discarded surface. An earthquake had burst it all from inside. It was
as if the surface of the world had been broken away entire: Ilkeston,
streets, church, people, work, rule-of-the-day, all intact; and yet
peeled away into unreality, leaving here exposed the inside, the
reality: one's own being, strange feelings and passions and yearnings
and beliefs and aspirations, suddenly become present, revealed, the
permanent bedrock, knitted one rock with the woman one loved. It was
confounding. Things are not what they seem! When he was a child, he had
thought a woman was a woman merely by virtue of her skirts and
petticoats. And now, lo, the whole world could be divested of its
garment, the garment could lie there shed away intact, and one could
stand in a new world, a new earth, naked in a new, naked universe. It
was too astounding and miraculous.

This then was marriage! The old things didn't matter any more. One got
up at four o'clock, and had broth at tea-time and made toffee in the
middle of the night. One didn't put on one's clothes or one did put on
one's clothes. He still was not quite sure it was not criminal. But it
was a discovery to find one might be so supremely absolved. All that
mattered was that he should love her and she should love him and they
should live kindled to one another, like the Lord in two burning bushes
that were not consumed. And so they lived for the time.

She was less hampered than he, so she came more quickly to her fulness,
and was sooner ready to enjoy again a return to the outside world. She
was going to give a tea-party. His heart sank. He wanted to go on, to
go on as they were. He wanted to have done with the outside world, to
declare it finished for ever. He was anxious with a deep desire and
anxiety that she should stay with him where they were in the timeless
universe of free, perfect limbs and immortal breast, affirming that the
old outward order was finished. The new order was begun to last for
ever, the living life, palpitating from the gleaming core, to action,
without crust or cover or outward lie. But no, he could not keep her.
She wanted the dead world again-she wanted to walk on the outside once
more. She was going to give a tea-party. It made him frightened and
furious and miserable. He was afraid all would be lost that he had so
newly come into: like the youth in the fairy tale, who was king for one
day in the year, and for the rest a beaten herd: like Cinderella also,
at the feast. He was sullen. But she blithely began to make
preparations for her tea-party. His fear was too strong, he was
troubled, he hated her shallow anticipation and joy. Was she not
forfeiting the reality, the one reality, for all that was shallow and
worthless? Wasn't she carelessly taking off her crown to be an
artificial figure having other artificial women to tea: when she might
have been perfect with him, and kept him perfect, in the land of
intimate connection? Now he must be deposed, his joy must be destroyed,
he must put on the vulgar, shallow death of an outward existence.

He ground his soul in uneasiness and fear. But she rose to a real
outburst of house-work, turning him away as she shoved the furniture
aside to her broom. He stood hanging miserable near. He wanted her
back. Dread, and desire for her to stay with him, and shame at his own
dependence on her drove him to anger. He began to lose his head. The
wonder was going to pass away again. All the love, the magnificent new
order was going to be lost, she would forfeit it all for the outside
things. She would admit the outside world again, she would throw away
the living fruit for the ostensible rind. He began to hate this in her.
Driven by fear of her departure into a state of helplessness, almost of
imbecility, he wandered about the house.

And she, with her skirts kilted up, flew round at her work, absorbed.

"Shake the rug then, if you must hang round," she said.

And fretting with resentment, he went to shake the rug. She was
blithely unconscious of him. He came back, hanging near to her.

"Can't you do anything?" she said, as if to a child, impatiently.
"Can't you do your wood-work?"

"Where shall I do it?" he asked, harsh with pain.

"Anywhere."

How furious that made him.

"Or go for a walk," she continued. "Go down to the Marsh. Don't hang
about as if you were only half there."

He winced and hated it. He went away to read. Never had his soul felt
so flayed and uncreated.

And soon he must come down again to her. His hovering near her, wanting
her to be with him, the futility of him, the way his hands hung,
irritated her beyond bearing. She turned on him blindly and
destructively, he became a mad creature, black and electric with fury.
The dark storms rose in him, his eyes glowed black and evil, he was
fiendish in his thwarted soul.

There followed two black and ghastly days, when she was set in anguish
against him, and he felt as if he were in a black, violent underworld,
and his wrists quivered murderously. And she resisted him. He seemed a
dark, almost evil thing, pursuing her, hanging on to her, burdening
her. She would give anything to have him removed.

"You need some work to do," she said. "You ought to be at work. Can't
you do something?"

His soul only grew the blacker. His condition now became complete, the
darkness of his soul was thorough. Everything had gone: he remained
complete in his own tense, black will. He was now unaware of her. She
did not exist. His dark, passionate soul had recoiled upon itself, and
now, clinched and coiled round a centre of hatred, existed in its own
power. There was a curiously ugly pallor, an expressionlessness in his
face. She shuddered from him. She was afraid of him. His will seemed
grappled upon her.

She retreated before him. She went down to the Marsh, she entered again
the immunity of her parents' love for her. He remained at Yew Cottage,
black and clinched, his mind dead. He was unable to work at his
wood-carving. He went on working monotonously at the garden, blindly,
like a mole.

As she came home, up the hill, looking away at the town dim and blue on
the hill, her heart relaxed and became yearning. She did not want to
fight him any more. She wanted love-oh, love. Her feet began to hurry.
She wanted to get back to him. Her heart became tight with yearning for
him.

He had been making the garden in order, cutting the edges of the turf,
laying the path with stones. He was a good, capable workman.

"How nice you've made it," she said, approaching tentatively down the
path.

But he did not heed, he did not hear. His brain was solid and dead.

"Haven't you made it nice?" she repeated, rather plaintively.

He looked up at her, with that fixed, expressionless face and unseeing
eyes which shocked her, made her go dazed and blind. Then he turned
away. She saw his slender, stooping figure groping. A revulsion came
over her. She went indoors.

As she took off her hat in the bedroom, she found herself weeping
bitterly, with some of the old, anguished, childish desolation. She sat
still and cried on. She did not want him to know. She was afraid of his
hard, evil moments, the head dropped a little, rigidly, in a crouching,
cruel way. She was afraid of him. He seemed to lacerate her sensitive
femaleness. He seemed to hurt her womb, to take pleasure in torturing
her.

He came into the house. The sound of his footsteps in his heavy boots
filled her with horror: a hard, cruel, malignant sound. She was afraid
he would come upstairs. But he did not. She waited apprehensively. He
went out.

Where she was most vulnerable, he hurt her. Oh, where she was delivered
over to him, in her very soft femaleness, he seemed to lacerate her and
desecrate her. She pressed her hands over her womb in anguish, whilst
the tears ran down her face. And why, and why? Why was he like this?

Suddenly she dried her tears. She must get the tea ready. She went
downstairs and set the table. When the meal was ready, she called to
him.

"I've mashed the tea, Will, are you coming?"

She herself could hear the sound of tears in her own voice, and she
began to cry again. He did not answer, but went on with his work. She
waited a few minutes, in anguish. Fear came over her, she was
panic-stricken with terror, like a child; and she could not go home
again to her father; she was held by the power in this man who had
taken her.

She turned indoors so that he should not see her tears. She sat down to
table. Presently he came into the scullery. His movements jarred on
her, as she heard them. How horrible was the way he pumped,
exacerbating, so cruel! How she hated to hear him! How he hated her!
How his hatred was like blows upon her! The tears were coming again.

He came in, his face wooden and lifeless, fixed, persistent. He sat
down to tea, his head dropped over his cup, uglily. His hands were red
from the cold water, and there were rims of earth in his nails. He went
on with his tea.

It was his negative insensitiveness to her that she could not bear,
something clayey and ugly. His intelligence was self-absorbed. How
unnatural it was to sit with a self-absorbed creature, like something
negative ensconced opposite one. Nothing could touch him-he could only
absorb things into his own self.

The tears were running down her face. Something startled him, and he
was looking up at her with his hateful, hard, bright eyes, hard and
unchanging as a bird of prey.

"What are you crying for?" came the grating voice.

She winced through her womb. She could not stop crying.

"What are you crying for?" came the question again, in just the same
tone. And still there was silence, with only the sniff of her tears.

His eyes glittered, and as if with malignant desire. She shrank and
became blind. She was like a bird being beaten down. A sort of swoon of
helplessness came over her. She was of another order than he, she had
no defence against him. Against such an influence, she was only
vulnerable, she was given up.

He rose and went out of the house, possessed by the evil spirit. It
tortured him and wracked him, and fought in him. And whilst he worked,
in the deepening twilight, it left him. Suddenly he saw that she was
hurt. He had only seen her triumphant before. Suddenly his heart was
torn with compassion for her. He became alive again, in an anguish of
compassion. He could not bear to think of her tears-he could not bear
it. He wanted to go to her and pour out his heart's blood to her. He
wanted to give everything to her, all his blood, his life, to the last
dregs, pour everything away to her. He yearned with passionate desire
to offer himself to her, utterly.

The evening star came, and the night. She had not lighted the lamp. His
heart burned with pain and with grief. He trembled to go to her.

And at last he went, hesitating, burdened with a great offering. The
hardness had gone out of him, his body was sensitive, slightly
trembling. His hand was curiously sensitive, shrinking, as he shut the
door. He fixed the latch almost tenderly.

In the kitchen was only the fireglow, he could not see her. He quivered
with dread lest she had gone-he knew not where. In shrinking dread, he
went through to the parlour, to the foot of the stairs.

"Anna," he called.

There was no answer. He went up the stairs, in dread of the empty
house-the horrible emptiness that made his heart ring with insanity. He
opened the bedroom door, and his heart flashed with certainty that she
had gone, that he was alone.

But he saw her on the bed, lying very still and scarcely noticeable,
with her back to him. He went and put his hand on her shoulder, very
gently, hesitating, in a great fear and self-offering. She did not
move.

He waited. The hand that touched her shoulder hurt him, as if she were
sending it away. He stood dim with pain.

"Anna," he said.

But still she was motionless, like a curled up, oblivious creature. His
heart beat with strange throes of pain. Then, by a motion under his
hand, he knew she was crying, holding herself hard so that her tears
should not be known. He waited. The tension continued-perhaps she was
not crying-then suddenly relapsed with a sharp catch of a sob. His
heart flamed with love and suffering for her. Kneeling carefully on the
bed, so that his earthy boots should not touch it, he took her in his
arms to comfort her. The sobs gathered in her, she was sobbing
bitterly. But not to him. She was still away from him.

He held her against his breast, whilst she sobbed, withheld from him,
and all his body vibrated against her.

"Don't cry-don't cry," he said, with an odd simplicity. His heart was
calm and numb with a sort of innocence of love, now.

She still sobbed, ignoring him, ignoring that he held her. His lips
were dry.

"Don't cry, my love," he said, in the same abstract way. In his breast
his heart burned like a torch, with suffering. He could not bear the
desolateness of her crying. He would have soothed her with his blood.
He heard the church clock chime, as if it touched him, and he waited in
suspense for it to have gone by. It was quiet again.

"My love," he said to her, bending to touch her wet face with his
mouth. He was afraid to touch her. How wet her face was! His body
trembled as he held her. He loved her till he felt his heart and all
his veins would burst and flood her with his hot, healing blood. He
knew his blood would heal and restore her.

She was becoming quieter. He thanked the God of mercy that at last she
was becoming quieter. His head felt so strange and blazed. Still he
held her close, with trembling arms. His blood seemed very strong,
enveloping her.

And at last she began to draw near to him, she nestled to him. His
limbs, his body, took fire and beat up in flames. She clung to him, she
cleaved to his body. The flames swept him, he held her in sinews of
fire. If she would kiss him! He bent his mouth down. And her mouth,
soft and moist, received him. He felt his veins would burst with
anguish of thankfulness, his heart was mad with gratefulness, he could
pour himself out upon her for ever.

When they came to themselves, the night was very dark. Two hours had
gone by. They lay still and warm and weak, like the new-born, together.
And there was a silence almost of the unborn. Only his heart was
weeping happily, after the pain. He did not understand, he had yielded,
given way. There was no understanding. There could be only acquiescence
and submission, and tremulous wonder of consummation.

The next morning, when they woke up, it had snowed. He wondered what
was the strange pallor in the air, and the unusual tang. Snow was on
the grass and the window-sill, it weighed down the black, ragged
branches of the yews, and smoothed the graves in the churchyard.

Soon, it began to snow again, and they were shut in. He was glad, for
then they were immune in a shadowy silence, there was no world, no
time.

The snow lasted for some days. On the Sunday they went to church. They
made a line of footprints across the garden, he left a flat snowprint
of his hand on the wall as he vaulted over, they traced the snow across
the churchyard. For three days they had been immune in a perfect love.

There were very few people in church, and she was glad. She did not
care much for church. She had never questioned any beliefs, and she
was, from habit and custom, a regular attendant at morning service. But
she had ceased to come with any anticipation. To-day, however, in the
strangeness of snow, after such consummation of love, she felt
expectant again, and delighted. She was still in the eternal world.

She used, after she went to the High School, and wanted to be a lady,
wanted to fulfil some mysterious ideal, always to listen to the sermon
and to try to gather suggestions. That was all very well for a while.
The vicar told her to be good in this way and in that. She went away
feeling it was her highest aim to fulfil these injunctions.

But quickly this palled. After a short time, she was not very much
interested in being good. Her soul was in quest of something, which was
not just being good, and doing one's best. No, she wanted something
else: something that was not her ready-made duty. Everything seemed to
be merely a matter of social duty, and never of her self. They talked
about her soul, but somehow never managed to rouse or to implicate her
soul. As yet her soul was not brought in at all.

So that whilst she had an affection for Mr. Loverseed, the vicar, and a
protective sort of feeling for Cossethay church, wanting always to help
it and defend it, it counted very small in her life.

Not but that she was conscious of some unsatisfaction. When her husband
was roused by the thought of the churches, then she became hostile to
the ostensible church, she hated it for not fulfilling anything in her.
The Church told her to be good: very well, she had no idea of
contradicting what it said. The Church talked about her soul, about the
welfare of mankind, as if the saving of her soul lay in her performing
certain acts conducive to the welfare of mankind. Well and good-it was
so, then.

Nevertheless, as she sat in church her face had a pathos and poignancy.
Was this what she had come to hear: how by doing this thing and by not
doing that, she could save her soul? She did not contradict it. But the
pathos of her face gave the lie. There was something else she wanted to
hear, it was something else she asked for from the Church.

But who was she to affirm it? And what was she doing with unsatisfied
desires? She was ashamed. She ignored them and left them out of count
as much as possible, her underneath yearnings. They angered her. She
wanted to be like other people, decently satisfied.

He angered her more than ever. Church had an irresistible attraction
for him. And he paid no more attention to that part of the service
which was Church to her, than if he had been an angel or a fabulous
beast sitting there. He simply paid no heed to the sermon or to the
meaning of the service. There was something thick, dark, dense,
powerful about him that irritated her too deeply for her to speak of
it. The Church teaching in itself meant nothing to him. "And forgive us
our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us"-it simply
did not touch him. It might have been more sounds, and it would have
acted upon him in the same way. He did not want things to be
intelligible. And he did not care about his trespasses, neither about
the trespasses of his neighbour, when he was in church. Leave that care
for weekdays. When he was in church, he took no more notice of his
daily life. It was weekday stuff. As for the welfare of mankind-he
merely did not realise that there was any such thing: except on
weekdays, when he was good-natured enough. In church, he wanted a dark,
nameless emotion, the emotion of all the great mysteries of passion.

He was not interested in the thought of himself or of her: oh, and how
that irritated her! He ignored the sermon, he ignored the greatness of
mankind, he did not admit the immediate importance of mankind. He did
not care about himself as a human being. He did not attach any vital
importance to his life in the drafting office, or his life among men.
That was just merely the margin to the text. The verity was his
connection with Anna and his connection with the Church, his real being
lay in his dark emotional experience of the Infinite, of the Absolute.
And the great mysterious, illuminated capitals to the text, were his
feelings with the Church.

It exasperated her beyond measure. She could not get out of the Church
the satisfaction he got. The thought of her soul was intimately mixed
up with the thought of her own self. Indeed, her soul and her own self
were one and the same in her. Whereas he seemed simply to ignore the
fact of his own self, almost to refute it. He had a soul-a dark,
inhuman thing caring nothing for humanity. So she conceived it. And in
the gloom and the mystery of the Church his soul lived and ran free,
like some strange, underground thing, abstract.

He was very strange to her, and, in this church spirit, in conceiving
himself as a soul, he seemed to escape and run free of her. In a way,
she envied it him, this dark freedom and jubilation of the soul, some
strange entity in him. It fascinated her. Again she hated it. And
again, she despised him, wanted to destroy it in him.

This snowy morning, he sat with a dark-bright face beside her, not
aware of her, and somehow, she felt he was conveying to strange, secret
places the love that sprang in him for her. He sat with a dark-rapt,
half-delighted face, looking at a little stained window. She saw the
ruby-coloured glass, with the shadow heaped along the bottom from the
snow outside, and the familiar yellow figure of the lamb holding the
banner, a little darkened now, but in the murky interior strangely
luminous, pregnant.

She had always liked the little red and yellow window. The lamb,
looking very silly and self-conscious, was holding up a forepaw, in the
cleft of which was dangerously perched a little flag with a red cross.
Very pale yellow, the lamb, with greenish shadows. Since she was a
child she had liked this creature, with the same feeling she felt for
the little woolly lambs on green legs that children carried home from
the fair every year. She had always liked these toys, and she had the
same amused, childish liking for this church lamb. Yet she had always
been uneasy about it. She was never sure that this lamb with a flag did
not want to be more than it appeared. So she half mistrusted it, there
was a mixture of dislike in her attitude to it.

Now, by a curious gathering, knitting of his eyes, the faintest tension
of ecstasy on his face, he gave her the uncomfortable feeling that he
was in correspondence with the creature, the lamb in the window. A cold
wonder came over her-her soul was perplexed. There he sat, motionless,
timeless, with the faint, bright tension on his face. What was he
doing? What connection was there between him and the lamb in the glass?

Suddenly it gleamed to her dominant, this lamb with the flag. Suddenly
she had a powerful mystic experience, the power of the tradition seized
on her, she was transported to another world. And she hated it,
resisted it.

Instantly, it was only a silly lamb in the glass again. And dark,
violent hatred of her husband swept up in her. What was he doing,
sitting there gleaming, carried away, soulful?

She shifted sharply, she knocked him as she pretended to pick up her
glove, she groped among his feet.

He came to, rather bewildered, exposed. Anybody but her would have
pitied him. She wanted to rend him. He did not know what was amiss,
what he had been doing.

As they sat at dinner, in their cottage, he was dazed by the chill of
antagonism from her. She did not know why she was so angry. But she was
incensed.

"Why do you never listen to the sermon?" she asked, seething with
hostility and violation.

"I do," he said.

"You don't-you don't hear a single word."

He retired into himself, to enjoy his own sensation. There was
something subterranean about him, as if he had an underworld refuge.
The young girl hated to be in the house with him when he was like this.

After dinner, he retired into the parlour, continuing in the same state
of abstraction, which was a burden intolerable to her. Then he went to
the book-shelf and took down books to look at, that she had scarcely
glanced over.

He sat absorbed over a book on the illuminations in old missals, and
then over a book on paintings in churches: Italian, English, French and
German. He had, when he was sixteen, discovered a Roman Catholic
bookshop where he could find such things.

He turned the leaves in absorption, absorbed in looking, not thinking.
He was like a man whose eyes were in his chest, she said of him later.

She came to look at the things with him. Half they fascinated her. She
was puzzled, interested, and antagonistic.

It was when she came to pictures of the Pieta that she burst out.

"I do think they're loathsome," she cried.

"What?" he said, surprised, abstracted.

"Those bodies with slits in them, posing to be worshipped."

"You see, it means the Sacraments, the Bread," he said slowly.

"Does it," she cried. "Then it's worse. I don't want to see your chest
slit, nor to eat your dead body, even if you offer it to me. Can't you
see it's horrible?"

"It isn't me, it's Christ."

"What if it is, it's you! And it's horrible, you wallowing in your own
dead body, and thinking of eating it in the Sacrament."

"You've to take it for what it means."

"It means your human body put up to be slit and killed and then
worshipped-what else?"

They lapsed into silence. His soul grew angry and aloof.

"And I think that lamb in Church," she said, "is the biggest joke in
the parish----"

She burst into a "Pouf" of ridiculing laughter.

"It might be, to those that see nothing in it," he said. "You know it's
the symbol of Christ, of His innocence and sacrifice."

"Whatever it means, it's a lamb," she said. "And I like lambs too much
to treat them as if they had to mean something. As for the
Christmas-tree flag-no----"

And again she poufed with mockery.

"It's because you don't know anything," he said violently, harshly.
"Laugh at what you know, not at what you don't know."

"What don't I know?"

"What things mean."

"And what does it mean?"

He was reluctant to answer her. He found it difficult.

"What does it mean?" she insisted.

"It means the triumph of the Resurrection."

She hesitated, baffled, a fear came upon her. What were these things?
Something dark and powerful seemed to extend before her. Was it
wonderful after all?

But no-she refused it.

"Whatever it may pretend to mean, what it is is a silly absurd toy-lamb
with a Christmas-tree flag ledged on its paw--and if it wants to mean
anything else, it must look different from that."

He was in a state of violent irritation against her. Partly he was
ashamed of his love for these things; he hid his passion for them. He
was ashamed of the ecstasy into which he could throw himself with these
symbols. And for a few moments he hated the lamb and the mystic
pictures of the Eucharist, with a violent, ashy hatred. His fire was
put out, she had thrown cold water on it. The whole thing was
distasteful to him, his mouth was full of ashes. He went out cold with
corpse-like anger, leaving her alone. He hated her. He walked through
the white snow, under a sky of lead.

And she wept again, in bitter recurrence of the previous gloom. But her
heart was easy-oh, much more easy.

She was quite willing to make it up with him when he came home again.
He was black and surly, but abated. She had broken a little of
something in him. And at length he was glad to forfeit from his soul
all his symbols, to have her making love to him. He loved it when she
put her head on his knee, and he had not asked her to or wanted her to,
he loved her when she put her arms round him and made bold love to him,
and he did not make love to her. He felt a strong blood in his limbs
again.

And she loved the intent, far look of his eyes when they rested on her:
intent, yet far, not near, not with her. And she wanted to bring them
near. She wanted his eyes to come to hers, to know her. And they would
not. They remained intent, and far, and proud, like a hawk's naive and
inhuman as a hawk's. So she loved him and caressed him and roused him
like a hawk, till he was keen and instant, but without tenderness. He
came to her fierce and hard, like a hawk striking and taking her. He
was no mystic any more, she was his aim and object, his prey. And she
was carried off, and he was satisfied, or satiated at last.

Then immediately she began to retaliate on him. She too was a hawk. If
she imitated the pathetic plover running plaintive to him, that was
part of the game. When he, satisfied, moved with a proud, insolent
slouch of the body and a half-contemptuous drop of the head, unaware of
her, ignoring her very existence, after taking his fill of her and
getting his satisfaction of her, her soul roused, its pinions became
like steel, and she struck at him. When he sat on his perch glancing
sharply round with solitary pride, pride eminent and fierce, she dashed
at him and threw him from his station savagely, she goaded him from his
keen dignity of a male, she harassed him from his unperturbed pride,
till he was mad with rage, his light brown eyes burned with fury, they
saw her now, like flames of anger they flared at her and recognised her
as the enemy.

Very good, she was the enemy, very good. As he prowled round her, she
watched him. As he struck at her, she struck back.

He was angry because she had carelessly pushed away his tools so that
they got rusty.

"Don't leave them littering in my way, then," she said.

"I shall leave them where I like," he cried.

"Then I shall throw them where I like."

They glowered at each other, he with rage in his hands, she with her
soul fierce with victory. They were very well matched. They would fight
it out.

She turned to her sewing. Immediately the tea-things were cleared away,
she fetched out the stuff, and his soul rose in rage. He hated beyond
measure to hear the shriek of calico as she tore the web sharply, as if
with pleasure. And the run of the sewing-machine gathered a frenzy in
him at last.

"Aren't you going to stop that row?" he shouted. "Can't you do it in
the daytime?"

She looked up sharply, hostile from her work.

"No, I can't do it in the daytime. I have other things to do. Besides,
I like sewing, and you're not going to stop me doing it."

Whereupon she turned back to her arranging, fixing, stitching, his
nerves jumped with anger as the sewing-machine started and stuttered
and buzzed.

But she was enjoying herself, she was triumphant and happy as the
darting needle danced ecstatically down a hem, drawing the stuff along
under its vivid stabbing, irresistibly. She made the machine hum. She
stopped it imperiously, her fingers were deft and swift and mistress.

If he sat behind her stiff with impotent rage it only made a trembling
vividness come into her energy. On she worked. At last he went to bed
in a rage, and lay stiff, away from her. And she turned her back on
him. And in the morning they did not speak, except in mere cold
civilities.

And when he came home at night, his heart relenting and growing hot for
love of her, when he was just ready to feel he had been wrong, and when
he was expecting her to feel the same, there she sat at the
sewing-machine, the whole house was covered with clipped calico, the
kettle was not even on the fire.

She started up, affecting concern.

"Is it so late?" she cried.

But his face had gone stiff with rage. He walked through to the
parlour, then he walked back and out of the house again. Her heart
sank. Very swiftly she began to make his tea.

He went black-hearted down the road to Ilkeston. When he was in this
state he never thought. A bolt shot across the doors of his mind and
shut him in, a prisoner. He went back to Ilkeston, and drank a glass of
beer. What was he going to do? He did not want to see anybody.

He would go to Nottingham, to his own town. He went to the station and
took a train. When he got to Nottingham, still he had nowhere to go.
However, it was more agreeable to walk familiar streets. He paced them
with a mad restlessness, as if he were running amok. Then he turned to
a book-shop and found a book on Bamberg Cathedral. Here was a
discovery! here was something for him! He went into a quiet restaurant
to look at his treasure. He lit up with thrills of bliss as he turned
from picture to picture. He had found something at last, in these
carvings. His soul had great satisfaction. Had he not come out to seek,
and had he not found! He was in a passion of fulfilment. These were the
finest carvings, statues, he had ever seen. The book lay in his hands
like a doorway. The world around was only an enclosure, a room. But he
was going away. He lingered over the lovely statues of women. A
marvellous, finely-wrought universe crystallised out around him as he
looked again, at the crowns, the twining hair, the woman-faces. He
liked all the better the unintelligible text of the German. He
preferred things he could not understand with the mind. He loved the
undiscovered and the undiscoverable. He pored over the pictures
intensely. And these were wooden statues, "Holz"-he believed that meant
wood. Wooden statues so shapen to his soul! He was a million times
gladdened. How undiscovered the world was, how it revealed itself to
his soul! What a fine, exciting thing his life was, at his hand! Did
not Bamberg Cathedral make the world his own? He celebrated his
triumphant strength and life and verity, and embraced the vast riches
he was inheriting.

But it was about time to go home. He had better catch a train. All the
time there was a steady bruise at the bottom of his soul, but so steady
as to be forgettable. He caught a train for Ilkeston.

It was ten o'clock as he was mounting the hill to Cossethay, carrying
his limp book on Bamberg Cathedral. He had not yet thought of Anna, not
definitely. The dark finger pressing a bruise controlled him
thoughtlessly.

Anna had started guiltily when he left the house. She had hastened
preparing the tea, hoping he would come back. She had made some toast,
and got all ready. Then he didn't come. She cried with vexation and
disappointment. Why had he gone? Why couldn't he come back now? Why was
it such a battle between them? She loved him-she did love him-why
couldn't he be kinder to her, nicer to her?

She waited in distress-then her mood grew harder. He passed out of her
thoughts. She had considered indignantly, what right he had to
interfere with her sewing? She had indignantly refuted his right to
interfere with her at all. She was not to be interfered with. Was she
not herself, and he the outsider.

Yet a quiver of fear went through her. If he should leave her? She sat
conjuring fears and sufferings, till she wept with very self-pity. She
did not know what she would do if he left her, or if he turned against
her. The thought of it chilled her, made her desolate and hard. And
against him, the stranger, the outsider, the being who wanted to
arrogate authority, she remained steadily fortified. Was she not
herself? How could one who was not of her own kind presume with
authority? She knew she was immutable, unchangeable, she was not afraid
for her own being. She was only afraid of all that was not herself. It
pressed round her, it came to her and took part in her, in form of her
man, this vast, resounding, alien world which was not herself. And he
had so many weapons, he might strike from so many sides.

When he came in at the door, his heart was blazed with pity and
tenderness, she looked so lost and forlorn and young. She glanced up,
afraid. And she was surprised to see him, shining-faced, clear and
beautiful in his movements, as if he were clarified. And a startled
pang of fear, and shame of herself went through her.

They waited for each other to speak.

"Do you want to eat anything?" she said.

"I'll get it myself," he answered, not wanting her to serve him. But
she brought out food. And it pleased him she did it for him. He was
again a bright lord.

"I went to Nottingham," he said mildly.

"To your mother?" she asked, in a flash of contempt.

"No-I didn't go home."

"Who did you go to see?"

"I went to see nobody."

"Then why did you go to Nottingham?"

"I went because I wanted to go."

He was getting angry that she again rebuffed him when he was so clear
and shining.

"And who did you see?"

"I saw nobody."

"Nobody?"

"No-who should I see?"

"You saw nobody you knew?"

"No, I didn't," he replied irritably.

She believed him, and her mood became cold.

"I bought a book," he said, handing her the propitiatory volume.

She idly looked at the pictures. Beautiful, the pure women, with their
clear-dropping gowns. Her heart became colder. What did they mean to
him?

He sat and waited for her. She bent over the book.

"Aren't they nice?" he said, his voice roused and glad. Her blood
flushed, but she did not lift her head.

"Yes," she said. In spite of herself, she was compelled by him. He was
strange, attractive, exerting some power over her.

He came over to her, and touched her delicately. Her heart beat with
wild passion, wild raging passion. But she resisted as yet. It was
always the unknown, always the unknown, and she clung fiercely to her
known self. But the rising flood carried her away.

They loved each other to transport again, passionately and fully.

"Isn't it more wonderful than ever?" she asked him, radiant like a
newly opened flower, with tears like dew.

He held her closer. He was strange and abstracted.

"It is always more wonderful," she asseverated, in a glad, child's
voice, remembering her fear, and not quite cleared of it yet.

So it went on continually, the recurrence of love and conflict between
them. One day it seemed as if everything was shattered, all life
spoiled, ruined, desolate and laid waste. The next day it was all
marvellous again, just marvellous. One day she thought she would go mad
from his very presence, the sound of his drinking was detestable to
her. The next day she loved and rejoiced in the way he crossed the
floor, he was sun, moon and stars in one.

She fretted, however, at last, over the lack of stability. When the
perfect hours came back, her heart did not forget that they would pass
away again. She was uneasy. The surety, the surety, the inner surety,
the confidence in the abidingness of love: that was what she wanted.
And that she did not get. She knew also that he had not got it.

Nevertheless it was a marvellous world, she was for the most part lost
in the marvellousness of it. Even her great woes were marvellous to
her.

She could be very happy. And she wanted to be happy. She resented it
when he made her unhappy. Then she could kill him, cast him out. Many
days, she waited for the hour when he would be gone to work. Then the
flow of her life, which he seemed to damn up, was let loose, and she
was free. She was free, she was full of delight. Everything delighted
her. She took up the rug and went to shake it in the garden. Patches of
snow were on the fields, the air was light. She heard the ducks
shouting on the pond, she saw them charge and sail across the water as
if they were setting off on an invasion of the world. She watched the
rough horses, one of which was clipped smooth on the belly, so that he
wore a jacket and long stockings of brown fur, stand kissing each other
in the wintry morning by the church-yard wall. Everything delighted
her, now he was gone, the insulator, the obstruction removed, the world
was all hers, in connection with her.

She was joyfully active. Nothing pleased her more than to hang out the
washing in a high wind that came full-butt over the round of the hill,
tearing the wet garments out of her hands, making flap-flap-flap of the
waving stuff. She laughed and struggled and grew angry. But she loved
her solitary days.

Then he came home at night, and she knitted her brows because of some
endless contest between them. As he stood in the doorway her heart
changed. It steeled itself. The laughter and zest of the day
disappeared from her. She was stiffened.

They fought an unknown battle, unconsciously. Still they were in love
with each other, the passion was there. But the passion was consumed in
a battle. And the deep, fierce unnamed battle went on. Everything
glowed intensely about them, the world had put off its clothes and was
awful, with new, primal nakedness.

Sunday came when the strange spell was cast over her by him. Half she
loved it. She was becoming more like him. All the week-days, there was
a glint of sky and fields, the little church seemed to babble away to
the cottages the morning through. But on Sundays, when he stayed at
home, a deeply-coloured, intense gloom seemed to gather on the face of
the earth, the church seemed to fill itself with shadow, to become big,
a universe to her, there was a burning of blue and ruby, a sound of
worship about her. And when the doors were opened, and she came out
into the world, it was a world new-created, she stepped into the
resurrection of the world, her heart beating to the memory of the
darkness and the Passion.

If, as very often, they went to the Marsh for tea on Sundays, then she
regained another, lighter world, that had never known the gloom and the
stained glass and the ecstasy of chanting. Her husband was obliterated,
she was with her father again, who was so fresh and free and all
daylight. Her husband, with his intensity and his darkness, was
obliterated. She left him, she forgot him, she accepted her father.

Yet, as she went home again with the young man, she put her hand on his
arm tentatively, a little bit ashamed, her hand pleaded that he would
not hold it against her, her recusancy. But he was obscured. He seemed
to become blind, as if he were not there with her.

Then she was afraid. She wanted him. When he was oblivious of her, she
almost went mad with fear. For she had become so vulnerable, so
exposed. She was in touch so intimately. All things about her had
become intimate, she had known them near and lovely, like presences
hovering upon her. What if they should all go hard and separate again,
standing back from her terrible and distinct, and she, having known
them, should be at their mercy?

This frightened her. Always, her husband was to her the unknown to
which she was delivered up. She was a flower that has been tempted
forth into blossom, and has no retreat. He had her nakedness in his
power. And who was he, what was he? A blind thing, a dark force,
without knowledge. She wanted to preserve herself.

Then she gathered him to herself again and was satisfied for a moment.
But as time went on, she began to realise more and more that he did not
alter, that he was something dark, alien to herself. She had thought
him just the bright reflex of herself. As the weeks and months went by
she realised that he was a dark opposite to her, that they were
opposites, not complements.

He did not alter, he remained separately himself, and he seemed to
expect her to be part of himself, the extension of his will. She felt
him trying to gain power over her, without knowing her. What did he
want? Was he going to bully her?

What did she want herself? She answered herself, that she wanted to be
happy, to be natural, like the sunlight and the busy daytime. And, at
the bottom of her soul, she felt he wanted her to be dark, unnatural.
Sometimes, when he seemed like the darkness covering and smothering
her, she revolted almost in horror, and struck at him. She struck at
him, and made him bleed, and he became wicked. Because she dreaded him
and held him in horror, he became wicked, he wanted to destroy. And
then the fight between them was cruel.

She began to tremble. He wanted to impose himself on her. And he began
to shudder. She wanted to desert him, to leave him a prey to the open,
with the unclean dogs of the darkness setting on to devour him. He must
beat her, and make her stay with him. Whereas she fought to keep
herself free of him.

They went their ways now shadowed and stained with blood, feeling the
world far off, unable to give help. Till she began to get tired. After
a certain point, she became impassive, detached utterly from him. He
was always ready to burst out murderously against her. Her soul got up
and left him, she went her way. Nevertheless in her apparent
blitheness, that made his soul black with opposition, she trembled as
if she bled.

And ever and again, the pure love came in sunbeams between them, when
she was like a flower in the sun to him, so beautiful, so shining, so
intensely dear that he could scarcely bear it. Then as if his soul had
six wings of bliss he stood absorbed in praise, feeling the radiance
from the Almighty beat through him like a pulse, as he stood in the
upright flame of praise, transmitting the pulse of Creation.

And ever and again he appeared to her as the dread flame of power.
Sometimes, when he stood in the doorway, his face lit up, he seemed
like an Annunciation to her, her heart beat fast. And she watched him,
suspended. He had a dark, burning being that she dreaded and resisted.
She was subject to him as to the Angel of the Presence. She waited upon
him and heard his will, and she trembled in his service.

Then all this passed away. Then he loved her for her childishness and
for her strangeness to him, for the wonder of her soul which was
different from his soul, and which made him genuine when he would be
false. And she loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair, or for
the way he came through a door with his face open and eager. She loved
his ringing, eager voice, and the touch of the unknown about him, his
absolute simplicity.

Yet neither of them was quite satisfied. He felt, somewhere, that she
did not respect him. She only respected him as far as he was related to
herself. For what he was, beyond her, she had no care. She did not care
for what he represented in himself. It is true, he did not know himself
what he represented. But whatever it was she did not really honour it.
She did no service to his work as a lace-designer, nor to himself as
bread-winner. Because he went down to the office and worked every
day-that entitled him to no respect or regard from her, he knew. Rather
she despised him for it. And he almost loved her for this, though at
first it maddened him like an insult.

What was much deeper, she soon came to combat his deepest feelings.
What he thought about life and about society and mankind did not matter
very much to her: he was right enough to be insignificant. This was
again galling to him. She would judge beyond him on these things. But
at length he came to accept her judgments, discovering them as if they
were his own. It was not here the deep trouble lay. The deep root of
his enmity lay in the fact that she jeered at his soul. He was
inarticulate and stupid in thought. But to some things he clung
passionately. He loved the Church. If she tried to get out of him, what
he believed, then they were both soon in a white rage.

Did he believe the water turned to wine at Cana? She would drive him to
the thing as a historical fact: so much rain-water-look at it-can it
become grape-juice, wine? For an instant, he saw with the clear eyes of
the mind and said no, his clear mind, answering her for a moment,
rejected the idea. And immediately his whole soul was crying in a mad,
inchoate hatred against this violation of himself. It was true for him.
His mind was extinguished again at once, his blood was up. In his blood
and bones, he wanted the scene, the wedding, the water brought forward
from the firkins as red wine: and Christ saying to His mother: "Woman,
what have I to do with thee?-mine hour is not yet come."

And then:

"His mother saith unto the servants, 'Whatsoever he saith unto you,
do it.'"

Brangwen loved it, with his bones and blood he loved it, he could not
let it go. Yet she forced him to let it go. She hated his blind
attachments.

Water, natural water, could it suddenly and unnaturally turn into wine,
depart from its being and at haphazard take on another being? Ah no, he
knew it was wrong.

She became again the palpitating, hostile child, hateful, putting
things to destruction. He became mute and dead. His own being gave him
the lie. He knew it was so: wine was wine, water was water, for ever:
the water had not become wine. The miracle was not a real fact. She
seemed to be destroying him. He went out, dark and destroyed, his soul
running its blood. And he tasted of death. Because his life was formed
in these unquestioned concepts.

She, desolate again as she had been when she was a child, went away and
sobbed. She did not care, she did not care whether the water had turned
to wine or not. Let him believe it if he wanted to. But she knew she
had won. And an ashy desolation came over her.

They were ashenly miserable for some time. Then the life began to come
back. He was nothing if not dogged. He thought again of the chapter of
St. John. There was a great biting pang. "But thou hast kept the good
wine until now." "The best wine!" The young man's heart responded in a
craving, in a triumph, although the knowledge that it was not true in
fact bit at him like a weasel in his heart. Which was stronger, the
pain of the denial, or the desire for affirmation? He was stubborn in
spirit, and abode by his desire. But he would not any more affirm the
miracles as true.

Very well, it was not true, the water had not turned into wine. The
water had not turned into wine. But for all that he would live in his
soul as if the water had turned into wine. For truth of fact, it had
not. But for his soul, it had.

"Whether it turned into wine or whether it didn't," he said, "it
doesn't bother me. I take it for what it is."

"And what is it?" she asked, quickly, hopefully.

"It's the Bible," he said.

That answer enraged her, and she despised him. She did not actively
question the Bible herself. But he drove her to contempt.

And yet he did not care about the Bible, the written letter. Although
he could not satisfy her, yet she knew of herself that he had something
real. He was not a dogmatist. He did not believe in fact that the water
turned into wine. He did not want to make a fact out of it. Indeed, his
attitude was without criticism. It was purely individual. He took that
which was of value to him from the Written Word, he added to his
spirit. His mind he let sleep.

And she was bitter against him, that he let his mind sleep. That which
was human, belonged to mankind, he would not exert. He cared only for
himself. He was no Christian. Above all, Christ had asserted the
brotherhood of man.

She, almost against herself, clung to the worship of the human
knowledge. Man must die in the body, but in his knowledge he was
immortal. Such, somewhere, was her belief, quite obscure and
unformulated. She believed in the omnipotence of the human mind.

He, on the other hand, blind as a subterranean thing, just ignored the
human mind and ran after his own dark-souled desires, following his own
tunnelling nose. She felt often she must suffocate. And she fought him
off.

Then he, knowing he was blind, fought madly back again, frantic in
sensual fear. He did foolish things. He asserted himself on his rights,
he arrogated the old position of master of the house.

"You've a right to do as I want," he cried.

"Fool!" she answered. "Fool!"

"I'll let you know who's master," he cried.

"Fool!" she answered. "Fool! I've known my own father, who could put a
dozen of you in his pipe and push them down with his finger-end. Don't
I know what a fool you are!"

He knew himself what a fool he was, and was flayed by the knowledge.
Yet he went on trying to steer the ship of their dual life. He asserted
his position as the captain of the ship. And captain and ship bored
her. He wanted to loom important as master of one of the innumerable
domestic craft that make up the great fleet of society. It seemed to
her a ridiculous armada of tubs jostling in futility. She felt no
belief in it. She jeered at him as master of the house, master of their
dual life. And he was black with shame and rage. He knew, with shame,
how her father had been a man without arrogating any authority.

He had gone on the wrong tack, and he felt it hard to give up the
expedition. There was great surging and shame. Then he yielded. He had
given up the master-of-the-house idea.

There was something he wanted, nevertheless, some from of mastery. Ever
and anon, after his collapses into the petty and the shameful, he rose
up again, and, stubborn in spirit, strong in his power to start afresh,
set out once more in his male pride of being to fulfil the hidden
passion of his spirit.

It began well, but it ended always in war between them, till they were
both driven almost to madness. He said, she did not respect him. She
laughed in hollow scorn of this. For her it was enough that she loved
him.

"Respect what?" she asked.

But he always answered the wrong thing. And though she cudgelled her
brains, she could not come at it.

"Why don't you go on with your wood-carving?" she said. "Why don't you
finish your Adam and Eve?"

But she did not care for the Adam and Eve, and he never put another
stroke to it. She jeered at the Eve, saying, "She is like a little
marionette. Why is she so small? You've made Adam as big as God, and
Eve like a doll."

"It is impudence to say that Woman was made out of Man's body," she
continued, "when every man is born of woman. What impudence men have,
what arrogance!"

In a rage one day, after trying to work on the board, and failing, so
that his belly was a flame of nausea, he chopped up the whole panel and
put it on the fire. She did not know. He went about for some days very
quiet and subdued after it.

"Where is the Adam and Eve board?" she asked him.

"Burnt."

She looked at him.

"But your carving?"

"I burned it."

"When?"

She did not believe him.

"On Friday night."

"When I was at the Marsh?"

"Yes."

She said no more.

Then, when he had gone to work, she wept for a whole day, and was much
chastened in spirit. So that a new, fragile flame of love came out of
the ashes of this last pain.

Directly, it occurred to her that she was with child. There was a great
trembling of wonder and anticipation through her soul. She wanted a
child. Not that she loved babies so much, though she was touched by all
young things. But she wanted to bear children. And a certain hunger in
her heart wanted to unite her husband with herself, in a child.

She wanted a son. She felt, a son would be everything. She wanted to
tell her husband. But it was such a trembling, intimate thing to tell
him, and he was at this time hard and unresponsive. So that she went
away and wept. It was such a waste of a beautiful opportunity, such a
frost that nipped in the bud one of the beautiful moments of her life.
She went about heavy and tremulous with her secret, wanting to touch
him, oh, most delicately, and see his face, dark and sensitive, attend
to her news. She waited and waited for him to become gentle and still
towards her. But he was always harsh and he bullied her.

So that the buds shrivelled from her confidence, she was chilled. She
went down to the Marsh.

"Well," said her father, looking at her and seeing her at the first
glance, "what's amiss wi' you now?"

The tears came at the touch of his careful love.

"Nothing," she said.

"Can't you hit it off, you two?" he said.

"He's so obstinate," she quivered; but her soul was obdurate itself.

"Ay, an' I know another who's all that," said her father.

She was silent.

"You don't want to make yourselves miserable," said her father; "all
about nowt."

"He isn't miserable," she said.

"I'll back my life, if you can do nowt else, you can make him as
miserable as a dog. You'd be a dab hand at that, my lass."

"I do nothing to make him miserable," she retorted.

"Oh no-oh no! A packet o' butterscotch, you are."

She laughed a little.

"You mustn't think I want him to be miserable," she cried. "I don't."

"We quite readily believe it," retorted Brangwen. "Neither do you
intend him to be hopping for joy like a fish in a pond."

This made her think. She was rather surprised to find that she did not
intend her husband to be hopping for joy like a fish in a pond.

Her mother came, and they all sat down to tea, talking casually.

"Remember, child," said her mother, "that everything is not waiting for
your hand just to take or leave. You mustn't expect it. Between two
people, the love itself is the important thing, and that is neither you
nor him. It is a third thing you must create. You mustn't expect it to
be just your way."

"Ha-nor do I. If I did I should soon find my mistake out. If I put my
hand out to take anything, my hand is very soon bitten, I can tell
you."

"Then you must mind where you put your hand," said her father.

Anna was rather indignant that they took the tragedy of her young
married life with such equanimity.

"You love the man right enough," said her father, wrinkling his
forehead in distress. "That's all as counts."

"I do love him, more shame to him," she cried. "I want to tell him-I've
been waiting for four days now to tell him----" her face began to
quiver, the tears came. Her parents watched her in silence. She did not
go on.

"Tell him what?" said her father.

"That we're going to have an infant," she sobbed, "and he's never,
never let me, not once, every time I've come to him, he's been horrid
to me, and I wanted to tell him, I did. And he won't let me-he's cruel
to me."

She sobbed as if her heart would break. Her mother went and comforted
her, put her arms round her, and held her close. Her father sat with a
queer, wrinkled brow, and was rather paler than usual. His heart went
tense with hatred of his son-in-law.

So that, when the tale was sobbed out, and comfort administered and tea
sipped, and something like calm restored to the little circle, the
thought of Will Brangwen's entry was not pleasantly entertained.

Tilly was set to watch out for him as he passed by on his way home. The
little party at table heard the woman's servant's shrill call:

"You've got to come in, Will. Anna's here."

After a few moments, the youth entered.

"Are you stopping?" he asked in his hard, harsh voice.

He seemed like a blade of destruction standing there. She quivered to
tears.

"Sit you down," said Tom Brangwen, "an' take a bit off your length."

Will Brangwen sat down. He felt something strange in the atmosphere. He
was dark browed, but his eyes had the keen, intent, sharp look, as if
he could only see in the distance; which was a beauty in him, and which
made Anna so angry.

"Why does he always deny me?" she said to herself. "Why is it nothing
to him, what I am?"

And Tom Brangwen, blue-eyed and warm, sat in opposition to the youth.

"How long are you stopping?" the young husband asked his wife.

"Not very long," she said.

"Get your tea, lad," said Tom Brangwen. "Are you itchin' to be off the
moment you enter?"

They talked of trivial things. Through the open door the level rays of
sunset poured in, shining on the floor. A grey hen appeared stepping
swiftly in the doorway, pecking, and the light through her comb and her
wattles made an oriflamme tossed here and there, as she went, her grey
body was like a ghost.

Anna, watching, threw scraps of bread, and she felt the child flame
within her. She seemed to remember again forgotten, burning, far-off
things.

"Where was I born, mother?" she asked.

"In London."

"And was my father"-she spoke of him as if he were merely a strange
name: she could never connect herself with him-"was he dark?"

"He had dark-brown hair and dark eyes and a fresh colouring. He went
bald, rather bald, when he was quite young," replied her mother, also
as if telling a tale which was just old imagination.

"Was he good-looking?"

"Yes-he was very good-looking-rather small. I have never seen an
Englishman who looked like him."

"Why?"

"He was"-the mother made a quick, running movement with her hands-"his
figure was alive and changing-it was never fixed. He was not in the
least steady-like a running stream."

It flashed over the youth-Anna too was like a running stream. Instantly
he was in love with her again.

Tom Brangwen was frightened. His heart always filled with fear, fear of
the unknown, when he heard his women speak of their bygone men as of
strangers they had known in passing and had taken leave of again.

In the room, there came a silence and a singleness over all their
hearts. They were separate people with separate destinies. Why should
they seek each to lay violent hands of claim on the other?

The young people went home as a sharp little moon was setting in the
dusk of spring. Tufts of trees hovered in the upper air, the little
church pricked up shadowily at the top of the hill, the earth was a
dark blue shadow.

She put her hand lightly on his arm, out of her far distance. And out
of the distance, he felt her touch him. They walked on, hand in hand,
along opposite horizons, touching across the dusk. There was a sound of
thrushes calling in the dark blue twilight.

"I think we are going to have an infant, Bill," she said, from far off.

He trembled, and his fingers tightened on hers.

"Why?" he asked, his heart beating. "You don't know?"

"I do," she said.

They continued without saying any more, walking along opposite
horizons, hand in hand across the intervening space, two separate
people. And he trembled as if a wind blew on to him in strong gusts,
out of the unseen. He was afraid. He was afraid to know he was alone.
For she seemed fulfilled and separate and sufficient in her half of the
world. He could not bear to know that he was cut off. Why could he not
be always one with her? It was he who had given her the child. Why
could she not be with him, one with him? Why must he be set in this
separateness, why could she not be with him, close, close, as one with
him? She must be one with him.

He held her fingers tightly in his own. She did not know what he was
thinking. The blaze of light on her heart was too beautiful and
dazzling, from the conception in her womb. She walked glorified, and
the sound of the thrushes, of the trains in the valley, of the far-off,
faint noises of the town, were her "Magnificat".

But he was struggling in silence. It seemed as though there were before
him a solid wall of darkness that impeded him and suffocated him and
made him mad. He wanted her to come to him, to complete him, to stand
before him so that his eyes did not, should not meet the naked
darkness. Nothing mattered to him but that she should come and complete
him. For he was ridden by the awful sense of his own limitation. It was
as if he ended uncompleted, as yet uncreated on the darkness, and he
wanted her to come and liberate him into the whole.

But she was complete in herself, and he was ashamed of his need, his
helpless need of her. His need, and his shame of need, weighed on him
like a madness. Yet still he was quiet and gentle, in reverence of her
conception, and because she was with child by him.

And she was happy in showers of sunshine. She loved her husband, as a
presence, as a grateful condition. But for the moment her need was
fulfilled, and now she wanted only to hold her husband by the hand in
sheer happiness, without taking thought, only being glad.

He had various folios of reproductions, and among them a cheap print
from Fra Angelico's "Entry of the Blessed into Paradise". This filled
Anna with bliss. The beautiful, innocent way in which the Blessed held
each other by the hand as they moved towards the radiance, the real,
real, angelic melody, made her weep with happiness. The floweriness,
the beams of light, the linking of hands, was almost too much for her,
too innocent.

Day after day came shining through the door of Paradise, day after day
she entered into the brightness. The child in her shone till she
herself was a beam of sunshine; and how lovely was the sunshine that
loitered and wandered out of doors, where the catkins on the big hazel
bushes at the end of the garden hung in their shaken, floating aureole,
where little fumes like fire burst out from the black yew trees as a
bird settled clinging to the branches. One day bluebells were along the
hedge-bottoms, then cowslips twinkled like manna, golden and evanescent
on the meadows. She was full of a rich drowsiness and loneliness. How
happy she was, how gorgeous it was to live: to have known herself, her
husband, the passion of love and begetting; and to know that all this
lived and waited and burned on around her, a terrible purifying fire,
through which she had passed for once to come to this peace of golden
radiance, when she was with child, and innocent, and in love with her
husband and with all the many angels hand in hand. She lifted her
throat to the breeze that came across the fields, and she felt it
handling her like sisters fondling her, she drank it in perfume of
cowslips and of apple-blossoms.

And in all the happiness a black shadow, shy, wild, a beast of prey,
roamed and vanished from sight, and like strands of gossamer blown
across her eyes, there was a dread for her.

She was afraid when he came home at night. As yet, her fear never
spoke, the shadow never rushed upon her. He was gentle, humble, he kept
himself withheld. His hands were delicate upon her, and she loved them.
But there ran through her the thrill, crisp as pain, for she felt the
darkness and other-world still in his soft, sheathed hands.

But the summer drifted in with the silence of a miracle, she was almost
always alone. All the while, went on the long, lovely drowsiness, the
maidenblush roses in the garden were all shed, washed away in a pouring
rain, summer drifted into autumn, and the long, vague, golden days
began to close. Crimson clouds fumed about the west, and as night came
on, all the sky was fuming and steaming, and the moon, far above the
swiftness of vapours, was white, bleared, the night was uneasy.
Suddenly the moon would appear at a clear window in the sky, looking
down from far above, like a captive. And Anna did not sleep. There was
a strange, dark tension about her husband.

She became aware that he was trying to force his will upon her,
something, there was something he wanted, as he lay there dark and
tense. And her soul sighed in weariness.

Everything was so vague and lovely, and he wanted to wake her up to the
hard, hostile reality. She drew back in resistance. Still he said
nothing. But she felt his power persisting on her, till she became
aware of the strain, she cried out against the exhaustion. He was
forcing her, he was forcing her. And she wanted so much the joy and the
vagueness and the innocence of her pregnancy. She did not want his
bitter-corrosive love, she did not want it poured into her, to burn
her. Why must she have it? Why, oh, why was he not content, contained?

She sat many hours by the window, in those days when he drove her most
with the black constraint of his will, and she watched the rain falling
on the yew trees. She was not sad, only wistful, blanched. The child
under her heart was a perpetual warmth. And she was sure. The pressure
was only upon her from the outside, her soul had no stripes.

Yet in her heart itself was always this same strain, tense, anxious.
She was not safe, she was always exposed, she was always attacked.
There was a yearning in her for a fulness of peace and blessedness.
What a heavy yearning it was-so heavy.

She knew, vaguely, that all the time he was not satisfied, all the time
he was trying to force something from her. Ah, how she wished she could
succeed with him, in her own way! He was there, so inevitable. She
lived in him also. And how she wanted to be at peace with him, at
peace. She loved him. She would give him love, pure love. With a
strange, rapt look in her face, she awaited his homecoming that night.

Then, when he came, she rose with her hands full of love, as of
flowers, radiant, innocent. A dark spasm crossed his face. As she
watched, her face shining and flower-like with innocent love, his face
grew dark and tense, the cruelty gathered in his brows, his eyes turned
aside, she saw the whites of his eyes as he looked aside from her. She
waited, touching him with her hands. But from his body through her
hands came the bitter-corrosive shock of his passion upon her,
destroying her in blossom. She shrank. She rose from her knees and went
away from him, to preserve herself. And it was great pain to her.

To him also it was agony. He saw the glistening, flower-like love in
her face, and his heart was black because he did not want it. Not
this-not this. He did not want flowery innocence. He was unsatisfied.
The rage and storm of unsatisfaction tormented him ceaselessly. Why had
she not satisfied him? He had satisfied her. She was satisfied, at
peace, innocent round the doors of her own paradise.

And he was unsatisfied, unfulfilled, he raged in torment, wanting,
wanting. It was for her to satisfy him: then let her do it. Let her not
come with flowery handfuls of innocent love. He would throw these aside
and trample the flowers to nothing. He would destroy her flowery,
innocent bliss. Was he not entitled to satisfaction from her, and was
not his heart all raging desire, his soul a black torment of
unfulfilment. Let it be fulfilled in him, then, as it was fulfilled in
her. He had given her her fulfilment. Let her rise up and do her part.

He was cruel to her. But all the time he was ashamed. And being
ashamed, he was more cruel. For he was ashamed that he could not come
to fulfilment without her. And he could not. And she would not heed
him. He was shackled and in darkness of torment.

She beseeched him to work again, to do his wood-carving. But his soul
was too black. He had destroyed his panel of Adam and Eve. He could not
begin again, least of all now, whilst he was in this condition.

For her there was no final release, since he could not be liberated
from himself. Strange and amorphous, she must go yearning on through
the trouble, like a warm, glowing cloud blown in the middle of a storm.
She felt so rich, in her warm vagueness, that her soul cried out on
him, because he harried her and wanted to destroy her.

She had her moments of exaltation still, re-births of old exaltations.
As she sat by her bedroom window, watching the steady rain, her spirit
was somewhere far off.

She sat in pride and curious pleasure. When there was no one to exult
with, and the unsatisfied soul must dance and play, then one danced
before the Unknown.

Suddenly she realised that this was what she wanted to do. Big with
child as she was, she danced there in the bedroom by herself, lifting
her hands and her body to the Unseen, to the unseen Creator who had
chosen her, to Whom she belonged.

She would not have had anyone know. She danced in secret, and her soul
rose in bliss. She danced in secret before the Creator, she took off
her clothes and danced in the pride of her bigness.

It surprised her, when it was over. She was shrinking and afraid. To
what was she now exposed? She half wanted to tell her husband. Yet she
shrank from him.

All the time she ran on by herself. She liked the story of David, who
danced before the Lord, and uncovered himself exultingly. Why should he
uncover himself to Michal, a common woman? He uncovered himself to the
Lord.

"Thou comest to me with a sword and a spear and a shield, but I come to
thee in the name of the Lord:-for the battle is the Lord's, and he will
give you into our hands."

Her heart rang to the words. She walked in her pride. And her battle
was her own Lord's, her husband was delivered over.

In these days she was oblivious of him. Who was he, to come against
her? No, he was not even the Philistine, the Giant. He was like Saul
proclaiming his own kingship. She laughed in her heart. Who was he,
proclaiming his kingship? She laughed in her heart with pride.

And she had to dance in exultation beyond him. Because he was in the
house, she had to dance before her Creator in exemption from the man.
On a Saturday afternoon, when she had a fire in the bedroom, again she
took off her things and danced, lifting her knees and her hands in a
slow, rhythmic exulting. He was in the house, so her pride was fiercer.
She would dance his nullification, she would dance to her unseen Lord.
She was exalted over him, before the Lord.

She heard him coming up the stairs, and she flinched. She stood with
the firelight on her ankles and feet, naked in the shadowy, late
afternoon, fastening up her hair. He was startled. He stood in the
doorway, his brows black and lowering.

"What are you doing?" he said, gratingly. "You'll catch a cold."

And she lifted her hands and danced again, to annul him, the light
glanced on her knees as she made her slow, fine movements down the far
side of the room, across the firelight. He stood away near the door in
blackness of shadow, watching, transfixed. And with slow, heavy
movements she swayed backwards and forwards, like a full ear of corn,
pale in the dusky afternoon, threading before the firelight, dancing
his non-existence, dancing herself to the Lord, to exultation.

He watched, and his soul burned in him. He turned aside, he could not
look, it hurt his eyes. Her fine limbs lifted and lifted, her hair was
sticking out all fierce, and her belly, big, strange, terrifying,
uplifted to the Lord. Her face was rapt and beautiful, she danced
exulting before her Lord, and knew no man.

It hurt him as he watched as if he were at the stake. He felt he was
being burned alive. The strangeness, the power of her in her dancing
consumed him, he was burned, he could not grasp, he could not
understand. He waited obliterated. Then his eyes became blind to her,
he saw her no more. And through the unseeing veil between them he
called to her, in his jarring voice:

"What are you doing that for?"

"Go away," she said. "Let me dance by myself."

"That isn't dancing," he said harshly. "What do you want to do that
for?"

"I don't do it for you," she said. "You go away."

Her strange, lifted belly, big with his child! Had he no right to be
there? He felt his presence a violation. Yet he had his right to be
there. He went and sat on the bed.

She stopped dancing, and confronted him, again lifting her slim arms
and twisting at her hair. Her nakedness hurt her, opposed to him.

"I can do as I like in my bedroom," she cried. "Why do you interfere
with me?"

And she slipped on a dressing-gown and crouched before the fire. He was
more at ease now she was covered up. The vision of her tormented him
all the days of his life, as she had been then, a strange, exalted
thing having no relation to himself.

After this day, the door seemed to shut on his mind. His brow shut and
became impervious. His eyes ceased to see, his hands were suspended.
Within himself his will was coiled like a beast, hidden under the
darkness, but always potent, working.

At first she went on blithely enough with him shut down beside her. But
then his spell began to take hold of her. The dark, seething potency of
him, the power of a creature that lies hidden and exerts its will to
the destruction of the free-running creature, as the tiger lying in the
darkness of the leaves steadily enforces the fall and death of the
light creatures that drink by the waterside in the morning, gradually
began to take effect on her. Though he lay there in his darkness and
did not move, yet she knew he lay waiting for her. She felt his will
fastening on her and pulling her down, even whilst he was silent and
obscure.

She found that, in all her outgoings and her incomings, he prevented
her. Gradually she realised that she was being borne down by him, borne
down by the clinging, heavy weight of him, that he was pulling her down
as a leopard clings to a wild cow and exhausts her and pulls her down.

Gradually she realised that her life, her freedom, was sinking under
the silent grip of his physical will. He wanted her in his power. He
wanted to devour her at leisure, to have her. At length she realised
that her sleep was a long ache and a weariness and exhaustion, because
of his will fastened upon her, as he lay there beside her, during the
night.

She realised it all, and there came a momentous pause, a pause in her
swift running, a moment's suspension in her life, when she was lost.

Then she turned fiercely on him, and fought him. He was not to do this
to her, it was monstrous. What horrible hold did he want to have over
her body? Why did he want to drag her down, and kill her spirit? Why
did he want to deny her spirit? Why did he deny her spirituality, hold
her for a body only? And was he to claim her carcase?

Some vast, hideous darkness he seemed to represent to her.

"What do you do to me?" she cried. "What beastly thing do you do to me?
You put a horrible pressure on my head, you don't let me sleep, you
don't let me live. Every moment of your life you are doing something to
me, something horrible, that destroys me. There is something horrible
in you, something dark and beastly in your will. What do you want of
me? What do you want to do to me?"

All the blood in his body went black and powerful and corrosive as he
heard her. Black and blind with hatred of her he was. He was in a very
black hell, and could not escape.

He hated her for what she said. Did he not give her everything, was she
not everything to him? And the shame was a bitter fire in him, that she
was everything to him, that he had nothing but her. And then that she
should taunt him with it, that he could not escape! The fire went black
in his veins. For try as he might, he could not escape. She was
everything to him, she was his life and his derivation. He depended on
her. If she were taken away, he would collapse as a house from which
the central pillar is removed.

And she hated him, because he depended on her so utterly. He was
horrible to her. She wanted to thrust him off, to set him apart. It was
horrible that he should cleave to her, so close, so close, like leopard
that had leapt on her, and fastened.

He went on from day to day in a blackness of rage and shame and
frustration. How he tortured himself, to be able to get away from her.
But he could not. She was as the rock on which he stood, with deep,
heaving water all round, and he was unable to swim. He must take his
stand on her, he must depend on her.

What had he in life, save her? Nothing. The rest was a great heaving
flood. The terror of the night of heaving, overwhelming flood, which
was his vision of life without her, was too much for him. He clung to
her fiercely and abjectly.

And she beat him off, she beat him off. Where could he turn, like a
swimmer in a dark sea, beaten off from his hold, whither could he turn?
He wanted to leave her, he wanted to be able to leave her. For his
soul's sake, for his manhood's sake, he must be able to leave her.

But for what? She was the ark, and the rest of the world was flood. The
only tangible, secure thing was the woman. He could leave her only for
another woman. And where was the other woman, and who was the other
woman? Besides, he would be just in the same state. Another woman would
be woman, the case would be the same.

Why was she the all, the everything, why must he live only through her,
why must he sink if he were detached from her? Why must he cleave to
her in a frenzy as for his very life?

The only other way to leave her was to die. The only straight way to
leave her was to die. His dark, raging soul knew that. But he had no
desire for death.

Why could he not leave her? Why could he not throw himself into the
hidden water to live or die, as might be? He could not, he could not.
But supposing he went away, right away, and found work, and had a
lodging again. He could be again as he had been before.

But he knew he could not. A woman, he must have a woman. And having a
woman, he must be free of her. It would be the same position. For he
could not be free of her.

For how can a man stand, unless he have something sure under his feet.
Can a man tread the unstable water all his life, and call that
standing? Better give in and drown at once.

And upon what could he stand, save upon a woman? Was he then like the
old man of the seas, impotent to move save upon the back of another
life? Was he impotent, or a cripple, or a defective, or a fragment?

It was black, mad, shameful torture, the frenzy of fear, the frenzy of
desire, and the horrible, grasping back-wash of shame.

What was he afraid of? Why did life, without Anna, seem to him just a
horrible welter, everything jostling in a meaningless, dark, fathomless
flood? Why, if Anna left him even for a week, did he seem to be
clinging like a madman to the edge of reality, and slipping surely,
surely into the flood of unreality that would drown him. This horrible
slipping into unreality drove him mad, his soul screamed with fear and
agony.

Yet she was pushing him off from her, pushing him away, breaking his
fingers from their hold on her, persistently, ruthlessly. He wanted her
to have pity. And sometimes for a moment she had pity. But she always
began again, thrusting him off, into the deep water, into the frenzy
and agony of uncertainty.

She became like a fury to him, without any sense of him. Her eyes were
bright with a cold, unmoving hatred. Then his heart seemed to die in
its last fear. She might push him off into the deeps.

She would not sleep with him any more. She said he destroyed her sleep.
Up started all his frenzy and madness of fear and suffering. She drove
him away. Like a cowed, lurking devil he was driven off, his mind
working cunningly against her, devising evil for her. But she drove him
off. In his moments of intense suffering, she seemed to him
inconceivable, a monster, the principle of cruelty.

However her pity might give way for moments, she was hard and cold as a
jewel. He must be put off from her, she must sleep alone. She made him
a bed in the small room.

And he lay there whipped, his soul whipped almost to death, yet
unchanged. He lay in agony of suffering, thrown back into unreality,
like a man thrown overboard into a sea, to swim till he sinks, because
there is no hold, only a wide, weltering sea.

He did not sleep, save for the white sleep when a thin veil is drawn
over the mind. It was not sleep. He was awake, and he was not awake. He
could not be alone. He needed to be able to put his arms round her. He
could not bear the empty space against his breast, where she used to
be. He could not bear it. He felt as if he were suspended in space,
held there by the grip of his will. If he relaxed his will would fall,
fall through endless space, into the bottomless pit, always falling,
will-less, helpless, non-existent, just dropping to extinction, falling
till the fire of friction had burned out, like a falling star, then
nothing, nothing, complete nothing.

He rose in the morning grey and unreal. And she seemed fond of him
again, she seemed to make up to him a little.

"I slept well," she said, with her slightly false brightness. "Did
you?"

"All right," he answered.

He would never tell her.

For three or four nights he lay alone through the white sleep, his will
unchanged, unchanged, still tense, fixed in its grip. Then, as if she
were revived and free to be fond of him again, deluded by his silence
and seeming acquiescence, moved also by pity, she took him back again.

Each night, in spite of all the shame, he had waited with agony for
bedtime, to see if she would shut him out. And each night, as, in her
false brightness, she said Good night, he felt he must kill her or
himself. But she asked for her kiss, so pathetically, so prettily. So
he kissed her, whilst his heart was ice.

And sometimes he went out. Once he sat for a long time in the church
porch, before going in to bed. It was dark with a wind blowing. He sat
in the church porch and felt some shelter, some security. But it grew
cold, and he must go in to bed.

Then came the night when she said, putting her arms round him and
kissing him fondly:

"Stay with me to-night, will you?"

And he had stayed without demur. But his will had not altered. He would
have her fixed to him.

So that soon she told him again she must be alone.

"I don't want to send you away. I want to sleep with you. But I can't
sleep, you don't let me sleep."

His blood turned black in his veins.

"What do you mean by such a thing? It's an arrant lie. I don't let you
sleep----"

"But you don't. I sleep so well when I'm alone. And I can't sleep when
you're there. You do something to me, you put a pressure on my head.
And I must sleep, now the child is coming."

"It's something in yourself," he replied, "something wrong in you."

Horrible in the extreme were these nocturnal combats, when all the
world was asleep, and they two were alone, alone in the world, and
repelling each other. It was hardly to be borne.

He went and lay down alone. And at length, after a grey and livid and
ghastly period, he relaxed, something gave way in him. He let go, he
did not care what became of him. Strange and dim he became to himself,
to her, to everybody. A vagueness had come over everything, like a
drowning. And it was an infinite relief to drown, a relief, a great,
great relief.

He would insist no more, he would force her no more. He would force
himself upon her no more. He would let go, relax, lapse, and what would
be, should be.

Yet he wanted her still, he always, always wanted her. In his soul, he
was desolate as a child, he was so helpless. Like a child on its
mother, he depended on her for his living. He knew it, and he knew he
could hardly help it.

Yet he must be able to be alone. He must be able to lie down alongside
the empty space, and let be. He must be able to leave himself to the
flood, to sink or live as might be. For he recognised at length his own
limitation, and the limitation of his power. He had to give in.

There was a stillness, a wanness between them. Half at least of the
battle was over. Sometimes she wept as she went about, her heart was
very heavy. But the child was always warm in her womb.

They were friends again, new, subdued friends. But there was a wanness
between them. They slept together once more, very quietly, and
distinct, not one together as before. And she was intimate with him as
at first. But he was very quiet, and not intimate. He was glad in his
soul, but for the time being he was not alive.

He could sleep with her, and let her be. He could be alone now. He had
just learned what it was to be able to be alone. It was right and
peaceful. She had given him a new, deeper freedom. The world might be a
welter of uncertainty, but he was himself now. He had come into his own
existence. He was born for a second time, born at last unto himself,
out of the vast body of humanity. Now at last he had a separate
identity, he existed alone, even if he were not quite alone. Before he
had only existed in so far as he had relations with another being. Now
he had an absolute self-as well as a relative self.

But it was a very dumb, weak, helpless self, a crawling nursling. He
went about very quiet, and in a way, submissive. He had an unalterable
self at last, free, separate, independent.

She was relieved, she was free of him. She had given him to himself.
She wept sometimes with tiredness and helplessness. But he was a
husband. And she seemed, in the child that was coming, to forget. It
seemed to make her warm and drowsy. She lapsed into a long muse,
indistinct, warm, vague, unwilling to be taken out of her vagueness.
And she rested on him also.

Sometimes she came to him with a strange light in her eyes, poignant,
pathetic, as if she were asking for something. He looked and he could
not understand. She was so beautiful, so visionary, the rays seemed to
go out of his breast to her, like a shining. He was there for her, all
for her. And she would hold his breast, and kiss it, and kiss it,
kneeling beside him, she who was waiting for the hour of her delivery.
And he would lie looking down at his breast, till it seemed that his
breast was not himself, that he had left it lying there. Yet it was
himself also, and beautiful and bright with her kisses. He was glad
with a strange, radiant pain. Whilst she kneeled beside him, and kissed
his breast with a slow, rapt, half-devotional movement.

He knew she wanted something, his heart yearned to give it her. His
heart yearned over her. And as she lifted her face, that was radiant
and rosy as a little cloud, his heart still yearned over her, and, now
from the distance, adored her. She had a flower-like presence which he
adored as he stood far off, a stranger.

The weeks passed on, the time drew near, they were very gentle, and
delicately happy. The insistent, passionate, dark soul, the powerful
unsatisfaction in him seemed stilled and tamed, the lion lay down with
the lamb in him.

She loved him very much indeed, and he waited near her. She was a
precious, remote thing to him at this time, as she waited for her
child. Her soul was glad with an ecstasy because of the coming infant.
She wanted a boy: oh, very much she wanted a boy.

But she seemed so young and so frail. She was indeed only a girl. As
she stood by the fire washing herself-she was proud to wash herself at
this time-and he looked at her, his heart was full of extreme
tenderness for her. Such fine, fine limbs, her slim, round arms like
chasing lights, and her legs so simple and childish, yet so very proud.
Oh, she stood on proud legs, with a lovely reckless balance of her full
belly, and the adorable little roundnesses, and the breasts becoming
important. Above it all, her face was like a rosy cloud shining.

How proud she was, what a lovely proud thing her young body! And she
loved him to put his hand on her ripe fullness, so that he should
thrill also with the stir and the quickening there. He was afraid and
silent, but she flung her arms round his neck with proud, impudent joy.

The pains came on, and Oh-how she cried! She would have him stay with
her. And after her long cries she would look at him, with tears in her
eyes and a sobbing laugh on her face, saying:

"I don't mind it really."

It was bad enough. But to her it was never deathly. Even the fierce,
tearing pain was exhilarating. She screamed and suffered, but was all
the time curiously alive and vital. She felt so powerfully alive and in
the hands of such a masterly force of life, that her bottom-most
feeling was one of exhilaration. She knew she was winning, winning, she
was always winning, with each onset of pain she was nearer to victory.

Probably he suffered more than she did. He was not shocked or
horrified. But he was screwed very tight in the vise of suffering.

It was a girl. The second of silence on her face when they said so
showed him she was disappointed. And a great blazing passion of
resentment and protest sprang up in his heart. In that moment he
claimed the child.

But when the milk came, and the infant sucked her breast, she seemed to
be leaping with extravagant bliss.

"It sucks me, it sucks me, it likes me-oh, it loves it!" she cried,
holding the child to her breast with her two hands covering it,
passionately.

And in a few moments, as she became used to her bliss, she looked at
the youth with glowing, unseeing eyes, and said:

"Anna Victrix."

He went away, trembling, and slept. To her, her pains were the
wound-smart of a victor, she was the prouder.

When she was well again she was very happy. She called the baby Ursula.
Both Anna and her husband felt they must have a name that gave them
private satisfaction. The baby was tawny skinned, it had a curious
downy skin, and wisps of bronze hair, and the yellow grey eyes that
wavered, and then became golden-brown like the father's. So they called
her Ursula because of the picture of the saint.

It was a rather delicate baby at first, but soon it became stronger,
and was restless as a young eel. Anna was worn out with the day-long
wrestling with its young vigour.

As a little animal, she loved and adored it and was happy. She loved
her husband, she kissed his eyes and nose and mouth, and made much of
him, she said his limbs were beautiful, she was fascinated by the
physical form of him.

And she was indeed Anna Victrix. He could not combat her any more. He
was out in the wilderness, alone with her. Having occasion to go to
London, he marvelled, as he returned, thinking of naked, lurking
savages on an island, how these had built up and created the great mass
of Oxford Street or Piccadilly. How had helpless savages, running with
their spears on the riverside, after fish, how had they come to rear up
this great London, the ponderous, massive, ugly superstructure of a
world of man upon a world of nature! It frightened and awed him. Man
was terrible, awful in his works. The works of man were more terrible
than man himself, almost monstrous.

And yet, for his own part, for his private being, Brangwen felt that
the whole of the man's world was exterior and extraneous to his own
real life with Anna. Sweep away the whole monstrous superstructure of
the world of to-day, cities and industries and civilisation, leave only
the bare earth with plants growing and waters running, and he would not
mind, so long as he were whole, had Anna and the child and the new,
strange certainty in his soul. Then, if he were naked, he would find
clothing somewhere, he would make a shelter and bring food to his wife.

And what more? What more would be necessary? The great mass of activity
in which mankind was engaged meant nothing to him. By nature, he had no
part in it. What did he live for, then? For Anna only, and for the sake
of living? What did he want on this earth? Anna only, and his children,
and his life with his children and her? Was there no more?

He was attended by a sense of something more, something further, which
gave him absolute being. It was as if now he existed in Eternity, let
Time be what it might. What was there outside? The fabricated world,
that he did not believe in? What should he bring to her, from outside?
Nothing? Was it enough, as it was? He was troubled in his acquiescence.
She was not with him. Yet he scarcely believed in himself, apart from
her, though the whole Infinite was with him. Let the whole world slide
down and over the edge of oblivion, he would stand alone. But he was
unsure of her. And he existed also in her. So he was unsure.

He hovered near to her, never quite able to forget the vague, haunting
uncertainty, that seemed to challenge him, and which he would not hear.
A pang of dread, almost guilt, as of insufficiency, would go over him
as he heard her talking to the baby. She stood before the window, with
the month-old child in her arms, talking in a musical, young sing-song
that he had not heard before, and which rang on his heart like a claim
from the distance, or the voice of another world sounding its claim on
him. He stood near, listening, and his heart surged, surged to rise and
submit. Then it shrank back and stayed aloof. He could not move, a
denial was upon him, as if he could not deny himself. He must, he must
be himself.

"Look at the silly blue-caps, my beauty," she crooned, holding up the
infant to the window, where shone the white garden, and the blue-tits
scuffling in the snow: "Look at the silly blue-caps, my darling, having
a fight in the snow! Look at them, my bird-beating the snow about with
their wings, and shaking their heads. Oh, aren't they wicked things,
wicked things! Look at their yellow feathers on the snow there! They'll
miss them, won't they, when they're cold later on.

"Must we tell them to stop, must we say 'stop it' to them, my bird? But
they are naughty, naughty! Look at them!" Suddenly her voice broke loud
and fierce, she rapped the pane sharply.

"Stop it," she cried, "stop it, you little nuisances. Stop it!" She
called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. Her voice was fierce
and imperative.

"Have more sense," she cried.

"There, now they're gone. Where have they gone, the silly things? What
will they say to each other? What will they say, my lambkin? They'll
forget, won't they, they'll forget all about it, out of their silly
little heads, and their blue caps."

After a moment, she turned her bright face to her husband.

"They were really fighting, they were really fierce with each other!"
she said, her voice keen with excitement and wonder, as if she belonged
to the birds' world, were identified with the race of birds.

"Ay, they'll fight, will blue-caps," he said, glad when she turned to
him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and stood beside her and
looked out at the marks on the snow where the birds had scuffled, and
at the yew trees' burdened, white and black branches. What was the
appeal it made to him, what was the question of her bright face, what
was the challenge he was called to answer? He did not know. But as he
stood there he felt some responsibility which made him glad, but
uneasy, as if he must put out his own light. And he could not move as
yet.

Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still she was not
quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feeling, as of a door half
opened. Here she was, safe and still in Cossethay. But she felt as if
she were not in Cossethay at all. She was straining her eyes to
something beyond. And from her Pisgah mount, which she had attained,
what could she see? A faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a
rainbow like an archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured coping
above it. Must she be moving thither?

Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could not arrive
at. There was something beyond her. But why must she start on the
journey? She stood so safely on the Pisgah mountain.

In the winter, when she rose with the sunrise, and out of the back
windows saw the east flaming yellow and orange above the green, glowing
grass, while the great pear tree in between stood dark and magnificent
as an idol, and under the dark pear tree, the little sheet of water
spread smooth in burnished, yellow light, she said, "It is here". And
when, at evening, the sunset came in a red glare through the big
opening in the clouds, she said again, "It is beyond".

Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned the day, and
she saw the hope, the promise. Why should she travel any further?

Yet she always asked the question. As the sun went down in his fiery
winter haste, she faced the blazing close of the affair, in which she
had not played her fullest part, and she made her demand still: "What
are you doing, making this big shining commotion? What is it that you
keep so busy about, that you will not let us alone?"

She did not turn to her husband, for him to lead her. He was apart from
her, with her, according to her different conceptions of him. The child
she might hold up, she might toss the child forward into the furnace,
the child might walk there, amid the burning coals and the incandescent
roar of heat, as the three witnesses walked with the angel in the fire.

Soon, she felt sure of her husband. She knew his dark face and the
extent of its passion. She knew his slim, vigorous body, she said it
was hers. Then there was no denying her. She was a rich woman enjoying
her riches.

And soon again she was with child. Which made her satisfied and took
away her discontent. She forgot that she had watched the sun climb up
and pass his way, a magnificent traveller surging forward. She forgot
that the moon had looked through a window of the high, dark night, and
nodded like a magic recognition, signalled to her to follow. Sun and
moon travelled on, and left her, passed her by, a rich woman enjoying
her riches. She should go also. But she could not go, when they called,
because she must stay at home now. With satisfaction she relinquished
the adventure to the unknown. She was bearing her children.

There was another child coming, and Anna lapsed into vague content. If
she were not the wayfarer to the unknown, if she were arrived now,
settled in her builded house, a rich woman, still her doors opened
under the arch of the rainbow, her threshold reflected the passing of
the sun and moon, the great travellers, her house was full of the echo
of journeying.

She was a door and a threshold, she herself. Through her another soul
was coming, to stand upon her as upon the threshold, looking out,
shading its eyes for the direction to take.




Chapter 7



The Cathedral


During the first year of her marriage, before Ursula was born, Anna
Brangwen and her husband went to visit her mother's friend, the Baron
Skrebensky. The latter had kept a slight connection with Anna's mother,
and had always preserved some officious interest in the young girl,
because she was a pure Pole.

When Baron Skrebensky was about forty years old, his wife died, and
left him raving, disconsolate. Lydia had visited him then, taking Anna
with her. It was when the girl was fourteen years old. Since then she
had not seen him. She remembered him as a small sharp clergyman who
cried and talked and terrified her, whilst her mother was most
strangely consoling, in a foreign language.

The little Baron never quite approved of Anna, because she spoke no
Polish. Still, he considered himself in some way her guardian, on
Lensky's behalf, and he presented her with some old, heavy Russian
jewellery, the least valuable of his wife's relics. Then he lapsed out
of the Brangwen's life again, though he lived only about thirty miles
away.

Three years later came the startling news that he had married a young
English girl of good family. Everybody marvelled. Then came a copy of
"The History of the Parish of Briswell, by Rudolph, Baron Skrebensky,
Vicar of Briswell." It was a curious book, incoherent, full of
interesting exhumations. It was dedicated: "To my wife, Millicent Maud
Pearse, in whom I embrace the generous spirit of England."

"If he embraces no more than the spirit of England," said Tom Brangwen,
"it's a bad look-out for him."

But paying a formal visit with his wife, he found the new Baroness a
little, creamy-skinned, insidious thing with red-brown hair and a mouth
that one must always watch, because it curved back continually in an
incomprehensible, strange laugh that exposed her rather prominent
teeth. She was not beautiful, yet Tom Brangwen was immediately under
her spell. She seemed to snuggle like a kitten within his warmth,
whilst she was at the same time elusive and ironical, suggesting the
fine steel of her claws.

The Baron was almost dotingly courteous and attentive to her. She,
almost mockingly, yet quite happy, let him dote. Curious little thing
she was, she had the soft, creamy, elusive beauty of a ferret. Tom
Brangwen was quite at a loss, at her mercy, and she laughed, a little
breathlessly, as if tempted to cruelty. She did put fine torments on
the elderly Baron.

When some months later she bore a son, the Baron Skrebensky was loud
with delight.

Gradually she gathered a circle of acquaintances in the county. For she
was of good family, half Venetian, educated in Dresden. The little
foreign vicar attained to a social status which almost satisfied his
maddened pride.

Therefore the Brangwens were surprised when the invitation came for
Anna and her young husband to pay a visit to Briswell vicarage. For the
Skrebenskys were now moderately well off, Millicent Skrebensky having
some fortune of her own.

Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school manner, and
arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, ruddy, bright, with long limbs
and a small head, like some uncouth bird, was not changed in the least.
The little Baroness was smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real
charm, a kind of joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like some
weasel. Anna at once respected her, and was on her guard before her,
instinctively attracted by the strange, childlike surety of the
Baroness, yet mistrusting it, fascinated. The little baron was now
quite white-haired, very brittle. He was wizened and wrinkled, yet
fiery, unsubdued. Anna looked at his lean body, at his small, fine lean
legs and lean hands as he sat talking, and she flushed. She recognised
the quality of the male in him, his lean, concentrated age, his
informed fire, his faculty for sharp, deliberate response. He was so
detached, so purely objective. A woman was thoroughly outside him.
There was no confusion. So he could give that fine, deliberate
response.

He was something separate and interesting; his hard, intrinsic being,
whittled down by age to an essentiality and a directness almost
death-like, cruel, was yet so unswervingly sure in its action, so
distinct in its surety, that she was attracted to him. She watched his
cool, hard, separate fire, fascinated by it. Would she rather have it
than her husband's diffuse heat, than his blind, hot youth?

She seemed to be breathing high, sharp air, as if she had just come out
of a hot room. These strange Skrebenskys made her aware of another,
freer element, in which each person was detached and isolated. Was not
this her natural element? Was not the close Brangwen life stifling her?

Meanwhile the little baroness, with always a subtle light stirring of
her full, lustrous, hazel eyes, was playing with Will Brangwen. He was
not quick enough to see all her movements. Yet he watched her steadily,
with unchanging, lit-up eyes. She was a strange creature to him. But
she had no power over him. She flushed, and was irritated. Yet she
glanced again and again at his dark, living face, curiously, as if she
despised him. She despised his uncritical, unironical nature, it had
nothing for her. Yet it angered her as if she were jealous. He watched
her with deferential interest as he would watch a stoat playing. But he
himself was not implicated. He was different in kind. She was all
lambent, biting flames, he was a red fire glowing steadily. She could
get nothing out of him. So she made him flush darkly by assuming a
biting, subtle class-superiority. He flushed, but still he did not
object. He was too different.

Her little boy came in with the nurse. He was a quick, slight child,
with fine preceptiveness, and a cool transitoriness in his interest. At
once he treated Will Brangwen as an outsider. He stayed by Anna for a
moment, acknowledged her, then was gone again, quick, observant,
restless, with a glance of interest at everything.

The father adored him, and spoke to him in Polish. It was queer, the
stiff, aristocratic manner of the father with the child, the distance
in the relationship, the classic fatherhood on the one hand, the filial
subordination on the other. They played together, in their different
degrees very separate, two different beings, differing as it were in
rank rather than in relationship. And the baroness smiled, smiled,
smiled, always smiled, showing her rather protruding teeth, having
always a mysterious attraction and charm.

Anna realised how different her own life might have been, how different
her own living. Her soul stirred, she became as another person. Her
intimacy with her husband passed away, the curious enveloping Brangwen
intimacy, so warm, so close, so stifling, when one seemed always to be
in contact with the other person, like a blood-relation, was annulled.
She denied it, this close relationship with her young husband. He and
she were not one. His heat was not always to suffuse her, suffuse her,
through her mind and her individuality, till she was of one heat with
him, till she had not her own self apart. She wanted her own life. He
seemed to lap her and suffuse her with his being, his hot life, till
she did not know whether she were herself, or whether she were another
creature, united with him in a world of close blood-intimacy that
closed over her and excluded her from all the cool outside.

She wanted her own, old, sharp self, detached, detached, active but not
absorbed, active for her own part, taking and giving, but never
absorbed. Whereas he wanted this strange absorption with her, which
still she resisted. But she was partly helpless against it. She had
lived so long in Tom Brangwen's love, beforehand.

From the Skrebensky's, they went to Will Brangwen's beloved Lincoln
Cathedral, because it was not far off. He had promised her, that one by
one, they should visit all the cathedrals of England. They began with
Lincoln, which he knew well.

He began to get excited as the time drew near to set off. What was it
that changed him so much? She was almost angry, coming as she did from
the Skrebensky's. But now he ran on alone. His very breast seemed to
open its doors to watch for the great church brooding over the town.
His soul ran ahead.

When he saw the cathedral in the distance, dark blue lifted watchful in
the sky, his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven, it was the Spirit
hovering like a dove, like an eagle over the earth. He turned his
glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth opened with a strange,
ecstatic grin.

"There she is," he said.

The "she" irritated her. Why "she"? It was "it". What was the
cathedral, a big building, a thing of the past, obsolete, to excite him
to such a pitch? She began to stir herself to readiness.

They passed up the steep hill, he eager as a pilgrim arriving at the
shrine. As they came near the precincts, with castle on one side and
cathedral on the other, his veins seemed to break into fiery blossom,
he was transported.

They had passed through the gate, and the great west front was before
them, with all its breadth and ornament.

"It is a false front," he said, looking at the golden stone and the
twin towers, and loving them just the same. In a little ecstasy he
found himself in the porch, on the brink of the unrevealed. He looked
up to the lovely unfolding of the stone. He was to pass within to the
perfect womb.

Then he pushed open the door, and the great, pillared gloom was before
him, in which his soul shuddered and rose from her nest. His soul
leapt, soared up into the great church. His body stood still, absorbed
by the height. His soul leapt up into the gloom, into possession, it
reeled, it swooned with a great escape, it quivered in the womb, in the
hush and the gloom of fecundity, like seed of procreation in ecstasy.

She too was overcome with wonder and awe. She followed him in his
progress. Here, the twilight was the very essence of life, the coloured
darkness was the embryo of all light, and the day. Here, the very first
dawn was breaking, the very last sunset sinking, and the immemorial
darkness, whereof life's day would blossom and fall away again,
re-echoed peace and profound immemorial silence.

Away from time, always outside of time! Between east and west, between
dawn and sunset, the church lay like a seed in silence, dark before
germination, silenced after death. Containing birth and death,
potential with all the noise and transition of life, the cathedral
remained hushed, a great, involved seed, whereof the flower would be
radiant life inconceivable, but whose beginning and whose end were the
circle of silence. Spanned round with the rainbow, the jewelled gloom
folded music upon silence, light upon darkness, fecundity upon death,
as a seed folds leaf upon leaf and silence upon the root and the
flower, hushing up the secret of all between its parts, the death out
of which it fell, the life into which it has dropped, the immortality
it involves, and the death it will embrace again.

Here in the church, "before" and "after" were folded together, all was
contained in oneness. Brangwen came to his consummation. Out of the
doors of the womb he had come, putting aside the wings of the womb, and
proceeding into the light. Through daylight and day-after-day he had
come, knowledge after knowledge, and experience after experience,
remembering the darkness of the womb, having prescience of the darkness
after death. Then between-while he had pushed open the doors of the
cathedral, and entered the twilight of both darkness, the hush of the
two-fold silence where dawn was sunset, and the beginning and the end
were one.

Here the stone leapt up from the plain of earth, leapt up in a
manifold, clustered desire each time, up, away from the horizontal
earth, through twilight and dusk and the whole range of desire, through
the swerving, the declination, ah, to the ecstasy, the touch, to the
meeting and the consummation, the meeting, the clasp, the close
embrace, the neutrality, the perfect, swooning consummation, the
timeless ecstasy. There his soul remained, at the apex of the arch,
clinched in the timeless ecstasy, consummated.

And there was no time nor life nor death, but only this, this timeless
consummation, where the thrust from earth met the thrust from earth and
the arch was locked on the keystone of ecstasy. This was all, this was
everything. Till he came to himself in the world below. Then again he
gathered himself together, in transit, every jet of him strained and
leaped, leaped clear into the darkness above, to the fecundity and the
unique mystery, to the touch, the clasp, the consummation, the climax
of eternity, the apex of the arch.

She too was overcome, but silenced rather than tuned to the place. She
loved it as a world not quite her own, she resented his transports and
ecstasies. His passion in the cathedral at first awed her, then made
her angry. After all, there was the sky outside, and in here, in this
mysterious half-night, when his soul leapt with the pillars upwards, it
was not to the stars and the crystalline dark space, but to meet and
clasp with the answering impulse of leaping stone, there in the dusk
and secrecy of the roof. The far-off clinching and mating of the
arches, the leap and thrust of the stone, carrying a great roof
overhead, awed and silenced her.

But yet-yet she remembered that the open sky was no blue vault, no dark
dome hung with many twinkling lamps, but a space where stars were
wheeling in freedom, with freedom above them always higher.

The cathedral roused her too. But she would never consent to the
knitting of all the leaping stone in a great roof that closed her in,
and beyond which was nothing, nothing, it was the ultimate confine. His
soul would have liked it to be so: here, here is all, complete,
eternal: motion, meeting, ecstasy, and no illusion of time, of night
and day passing by, but only perfectly proportioned space and movement
clinching and renewing, and passion surging its way into great waves to
the altar, recurrence of ecstasy.

Her soul too was carried forward to the altar, to the threshold of
Eternity, in reverence and fear and joy. But ever she hung back in the
transit, mistrusting the culmination of the altar. She was not to be
flung forward on the lift and lift of passionate flights, to be cast at
last upon the altar steps as upon the shore of the unknown. There was a
great joy and a verity in it. But even in the dazed swoon of the
cathedral, she claimed another right. The altar was barren, its lights
gone out. God burned no more in that bush. It was dead matter lying
there. She claimed the right to freedom above her, higher than the
roof. She had always a sense of being roofed in.

So that she caught at little things, which saved her from being swept
forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite
in a great mass, triumphant and flinging its own course. She wanted to
get out of this fixed, leaping, forward-travelling movement, to rise
from it as a bird rises with wet, limp feet from the sea, to lift
herself as a bird lifts its breast and thrusts its body from the pulse
and heave of a sea that bears it forward to an unwilling conclusion,
tear herself away like a bird on wings, and in open space where there
is clarity, rise up above the fixed, surcharged motion, a separate
speck that hangs suspended, moves this way and that, seeing and
answering before it sinks again, having chosen or found the direction
in which it shall be carried forward.

And it was as if she must grasp at something, as if her wings were too
weak to lift her straight off the heaving motion. So she caught sight
of the wicked, odd little faces carved in stone, and she stood before
them arrested.

These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the cathedral
like something that knew better. They knew quite well, these little
imps that retorted on man's own illusion, that the cathedral was not
absolute. They winked and leered, giving suggestion of the many things
that had been left out of the great concept of the church. "However
much there is inside here, there's a good deal they haven't got in,"
the little faces mocked.

Apart from the lift and spring of the great impulse towards the altar,
these little faces had separate wills, separate motions, separate
knowledge, which rippled back in defiance of the tide, and laughed in
triumph of their own very littleness.

"Oh, look!" cried Anna. "Oh, look how adorable, the faces! Look at
her."

Brangwen looked unwillingly. This was the voice of the serpent in his
Eden. She pointed him to a plump, sly, malicious little face carved in
stone.

"He knew her, the man who carved her," said Anna. "I'm sure she was his
wife."

"It isn't a woman at all, it's a man," said Brangwen curtly.

"Do you think so?-No! That isn't a man. That is no man's face."

Her voice sounded rather jeering. He laughed shortly, and went on. But
she would not go forward with him. She loitered about the carvings. And
he could not go forward without her. He waited impatient of this
counteraction. She was spoiling his passionate intercourse with the
cathedral. His brows began to gather.

"Oh, this is good!" she cried again. "Here is the same woman-look!-only
he's made her cross! Isn't it lovely! Hasn't he made her hideous to a
degree?" She laughed with pleasure. "Didn't he hate her? He must have
been a nice man! Look at her-isn't it awfully good-just like a shrewish
woman. He must have enjoyed putting her in like that. He got his own
back on her, didn't he?"

"It's a man's face, no woman's at all-a monk's-clean shaven," he said.

She laughed with a pouf! of laughter.

"You hate to think he put his wife in your cathedral, don't you?" she
mocked, with a tinkle of profane laughter. And she laughed with
malicious triumph.

She had got free from the cathedral, she had even destroyed the passion
he had. She was glad. He was bitterly angry. Strive as he would, he
could not keep the cathedral wonderful to him. He was disillusioned.
That which had been his absolute, containing all heaven and earth, was
become to him as to her, a shapely heap of dead matter-but dead, dead.

His mouth was full of ash, his soul was furious. He hated her for
having destroyed another of his vital illusions. Soon he would be
stark, stark, without one place wherein to stand, without one belief in
which to rest.

Yet somewhere in him he responded more deeply to the sly little face
that knew better, than he had done before to the perfect surge of his
cathedral.

Nevertheless for the time being his soul was wretched and homeless, and
he could not bear to think of Anna's ousting him from his beloved
realities. He wanted his cathedral; he wanted to satisfy his blind
passion. And he could not any more. Something intervened.

They went home again, both of them altered. She had some new reverence
for that which he wanted, he felt that his cathedrals would never again
be to him as they had been. Before, he had thought them absolute. But
now he saw them crouching under the sky, with still the dark,
mysterious world of reality inside, but as a world within a world, a
sort of side show, whereas before they had been as a world to him
within a chaos: a reality, an order, an absolute, within a meaningless
confusion.

He had felt, before, that could he but go through the great door and
look down the gloom towards the far-off, concluding wonder of the
altar, that then, with the windows suspended around like tablets of
jewels, emanating their own glory, then he had arrived. Here the
satisfaction he had yearned after came near, towards this, the porch of
the great Unknown, all reality gathered, and there, the altar was the
mystic door, through which all and everything must move on to eternity.

But now, somehow, sadly and disillusioned, he realised that the doorway
was no doorway. It was too narrow, it was false. Outside the cathedral
were many flying spirits that could never be sifted through the
jewelled gloom. He had lost his absolute.

He listened to the thrushes in the gardens and heard a note which the
cathedrals did not include: something free and careless and joyous. He
crossed a field that was all yellow with dandelions, on his way to
work, and the bath of yellow glowing was something at once so sumptuous
and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral.

There was life outside the Church. There was much that the Church did
not include. He thought of God, and of the whole blue rotunda of the
day. That was something great and free. He thought of the ruins of the
Grecian worship, and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple,
till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the
herbs.

Still he loved the Church. As a symbol, he loved it. He tended it for
what it tried to represent, rather than for that which it did
represent. Still he loved it. The little church across his garden-wall
drew him, he gave it loving attention. But he went to take charge of
it, to preserve it. It was as an old, sacred thing to him. He looked
after the stone and woodwork, mending the organ and restoring a piece
of broken carving, repairing the church furniture. Later, he became
choir-master also.

His life was shifting its centre, becoming more superficial. He had
failed to become really articulate, failed to find real expression. He
had to continue in the old form. But in spirit, he was uncreated.

Anna was absorbed in the child now, she left her husband to take his
own way. She was willing now to postpone all adventure into unknown
realities. She had the child, her palpable and immediate future was the
child. If her soul had found no utterance, her womb had.

The church that neighboured with his house became very intimate and
dear to him. He cherished it, he had it entirely in his charge. If he
could find no new activity, he would be happy cherishing the old, dear
form of worship. He knew this little, whitewashed church. In its
shadowy atmosphere he sank back into being. He liked to sink himself in
its hush as a stone sinks into water.

He went across his garden, mounted the wall by the little steps, and
entered the hush and peace of the church. As the heavy door clanged to
behind him, his feet re-echoed in the aisle, his heart re-echoed with a
little passion of tenderness and mystic peace. He was also slightly
ashamed, like a man who has failed, who lapses back for his fulfilment.

He loved to light the candles at the organ, and sitting there alone in
the little glow, practise the hymns and chants for the service. The
whitewashed arches retreated into darkness, the sound of the organ and
the organ-pedals died away upon the unalterable stillness of the
church, there were faint, ghostly noises in the tower, and then the
music swelled out again, loudly, triumphantly.

He ceased to fret about his life. He relaxed his will, and let
everything go. What was between him and his wife was a great thing, if
it was not everything. She had conquered, really. Let him wait, and
abide, wait and abide. She and the baby and himself, they were one. The
organ rang out his protestation. His soul lay in the darkness as he
pressed the keys of the organ.

To Anna, the baby was a complete bliss and fulfilment. Her desires sank
into abeyance, her soul was in bliss over the baby. It was rather a
delicate child, she had trouble to rear it. She never for a moment
thought it would die. It was a delicate infant, therefore it behoved
her to make it strong. She threw herself into the labour, the child was
everything. Her imagination was all occupied here. She was a mother. It
was enough to handle the new little limbs, the new little body, hear
the new little voice crying in the stillness. All the future rang to
her out of the sound of the baby's crying and cooing, she balanced the
coming years of life in her hands, as she nursed the child. The
passionate sense of fulfilment, of the future germinated in her, made
her vivid and powerful. All the future was in her hands, in the hands
of the woman. And before this baby was ten months old, she was again with
child. She seemed to be in the fecund of storm life, every moment was
full and busy with productiveness to her. She felt like the earth, the
mother of everything.

Brangwen occupied himself with the church, he played the organ, he
trained the choir-boys, he taught a Sunday-school class of youths. He
was happy enough. There was an eager, yearning kind of happiness in him
as he taught the boys on Sundays. He was all the time exciting himself
with the proximity of some secret that he had not yet fathomed.

In the house, he served his wife and the little matriarchy. She loved
him because he was the father of her children. And she always had a
physical passion for him. So he gave up trying to have the spiritual
superiority and control, or even her respect for his conscious or
public life. He lived simply by her physical love for him. And he
served the little matriarchy, nursing the child and helping with the
housework, indifferent any more of his own dignity and importance. But
his abandoning of claims, his living isolated upon his own interest,
made him seem unreal, unimportant.

Anna was not publicly proud of him. But very soon she learned to be
indifferent to public life. He was not what is called a manly man: he
did not drink or smoke or arrogate importance. But he was her man, and
his very indifference to all claims of manliness set her supreme in her
own world with him. Physically, she loved him and he satisfied her. He
went alone and subsidiary always. At first it had irritated her, the
outer world existed so little to him. Looking at him with outside eyes,
she was inclined to sneer at him. But her sneer changed to a sort of
respect. She respected him, that he could serve her so simply and
completely. Above all, she loved to bear his children. She loved to be
the source of children.

She could not understand him, his strange, dark rages and his devotion
to the church. It was the church building he cared for; and yet his
soul was passionate for something. He laboured cleaning the stonework,
repairing the woodwork, restoring the organ, and making the singing as
perfect as possible. To keep the church fabric and the church-ritual
intact was his business; to have the intimate sacred building utterly
in his own hands, and to make the form of service complete. There was a
little bright anguish and tension on his face, and in his intent
movements. He was like a lover who knows he is betrayed, but who still
loves, whose love is only the more intense. The church was false, but
he served it the more attentively.

During the day, at his work in the office, he kept himself suspended.
He did not exist. He worked automatically till it was time to go home.

He loved with a hot heart the dark-haired little Ursula, and he waited
for the child to come to consciousness. Now the mother monopolised the
baby. But his heart waited in its darkness. His hour would come.

In the long run, he learned to submit to Anna. She forced him to the
spirit of her laws, whilst leaving him the letter of his own. She
combated in him his devils. She suffered very much from his
inexplicable and incalculable dark rages, when a blackness filled him,
and a black wind seemed to sweep out of existence everything that had
to do with him. She could feel herself, everything, being annihilated
by him.

At first she fought him. At night, in this state, he would kneel down
to say his prayers. She looked at his crouching figure.

"Why are you kneeling there, pretending to pray?" she said, harshly.
"Do you think anybody can pray, when they are in the vile temper you
are in?"

He remained crouching by the beside, motionless.

"It's horrible," she continued, "and such a pretence! What do you
pretend you are saying? Who do you pretend you are praying to?"

He still remained motionless, seething with inchoate rage, when his
whole nature seemed to disintegrate. He seemed to live with a strain
upon himself, and occasionally came these dark, chaotic rages, the lust
for destruction. She then fought with him, and their fights were
horrible, murderous. And then the passion between them came just as
black and awful.

But little by little, as she learned to love him better, she would put
herself aside, and when she felt one of his fits upon him, would ignore
him, successfully leave him in his world, whilst she remained in her
own. He had a black struggle with himself, to come back to her. For at
last he learned that he would be in hell until he came back to her. So
he struggled to submit to her, and she was afraid of the ugly strain in
his eyes. She made love to him, and took him. Then he was grateful to
her love, humble.

He made himself a woodwork shed, in which to restore things which were
destroyed in the church. So he had plenty to do: his wife, his child,
the church, the woodwork, and his wage-earning, all occupying him. If
only there were not some limit to him, some darkness across his eyes!
He had to give in to it at last himself. He must submit to his own
inadequacy, aware of some limit to himself, of something unformed in
his own black, violent temper, and to reckon with it. But as she was
more gentle with him, it became quieter.

As he sat sometimes very still, with a bright, vacant face, Anna could
see the suffering among the brightness. He was aware of some limit to
himself, of something unformed in his very being, of some buds which
were not ripe in him, some folded centres of darkness which would never
develop and unfold whilst he was alive in the body. He was unready for
fulfilment. Something undeveloped in him limited him, there was a
darkness in him which he could not unfold, which would never unfold in
him.




Chapter 8



The Child


From the first, the baby stirred in the young father a deep, strong
emotion he dared scarcely acknowledge, it was so strong and came out of
the dark of him. When he heard the child cry, a terror possessed him,
because of the answering echo from the unfathomed distances in himself.
Must he know in himself such distances, perilous and imminent?

He had the infant in his arms, he walked backwards and forwards
troubled by the crying of his own flesh and blood. This was his own
flesh and blood crying! His soul rose against the voice suddenly
breaking out from him, from the distances in him.

Sometimes in the night, the child cried and cried, when the night was
heavy and sleep oppressed him. And half asleep, he stretched out his
hand to put it over the baby's face to stop the crying. But something
arrested his hand: the very inhumanness of the intolerable, continuous
crying arrested him. It was so impersonal, without cause or object. Yet
he echoed to it directly, his soul answered its madness. It filled him
with terror, almost with frenzy.

He learned to acquiesce to this, to submit to the awful, obliterated
sources which were the origin of his living tissue. He was not what he
conceived himself to be! Then he was what he was, unknown, potent,
dark.

He became accustomed to the child, he knew how to lift and balance the
little body. The baby had a beautiful, rounded head that moved him
passionately. He would have fought to the last drop to defend that
exquisite, perfect round head.

He learned to know the little hands and feet, the strange, unseeing,
golden-brown eyes, the mouth that opened only to cry, or to suck, or to
show a queer, toothless laugh. He could almost understand even the
dangling legs, which at first had created in him a feeling of aversion.
They could kick in their queer little way, they had their own softness.

One evening, suddenly, he saw the tiny, living thing rolling naked in
the mother's lap, and he was sick, it was so utterly helpless and
vulnerable and extraneous; in a world of hard surfaces and varying
altitudes, it lay vulnerable and naked at every point. Yet it was quite
blithe. And yet, in its blind, awful crying, was there not the blind,
far-off terror of its own vulnerable nakedness, the terror of being so
utterly delivered over, helpless at every point. He could not bear to
hear it crying. His heart strained and stood on guard against the whole
universe.

But he waited for the dread of these days to pass; he saw the joy
coming. He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear of the baby, a bit
of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like bronze-dust. And he waited,
for the child to become his, to look at him and answer him.

It had a separate being, but it was his own child. His flesh and blood
vibrated to it. He caught the baby to his breast with his passionate,
clapping laugh. And the infant knew him.

As the newly-opened, newly-dawned eyes looked at him, he wanted them to
perceive him, to recognise him. Then he was verified. The child knew
him, a queer contortion of laughter came on its face for him. He caught
it to his breast, clapping with a triumphant laugh.

The golden-brown eyes of the child gradually lit up and dilated at the
sight of the dark-glowing face of the youth. It knew its mother better,
it wanted its mother more. But the brightest, sharpest little ecstasy
was for the father.

It began to be strong, to move vigorously and freely, to make sounds
like words. It was a baby girl now. Already it knew his strong hands,
it exulted in his strong clasp, it laughed and crowed when he played
with it.

And his heart grew red-hot with passionate feeling for the child. She
was not much more than a year old when the second baby was born. Then
he took Ursula for his own. She his first little girl. He had set his
heart on her.

The second had dark blue eyes and a fair skin: it was more a Brangwen,
people said. The hair was fair. But they forgot Anna's stiff blonde
fleece of childhood. They called the newcomer Gudrun.

This time, Anna was stronger, and not so eager. She did not mind that
the baby was not a boy. It was enough that she had milk and could
suckle her child: Oh, oh, the bliss of the little life sucking the milk
of her body! Oh, oh, oh the bliss, as the infant grew stronger, of the
two tiny hands clutching, catching blindly yet passionately at her
breast, of the tiny mouth seeking her in blind, sure, vital knowledge,
of the sudden consummate peace as the little body sank, the mouth and
throat sucking, sucking, sucking, drinking life from her to make a new
life, almost sobbing with passionate joy of receiving its own
existence, the tiny hands clutching frantically as the nipple was drawn
back, not to be gainsaid. This was enough for Anna. She seemed to pass
off into a kind of rapture of motherhood, her rapture of motherhood was
everything.

So that the father had the elder baby, the weaned child, the
golden-brown, wondering vivid eyes of the little Ursula were for him,
who had waited behind the mother till the need was for him. The mother
felt a sharp stab of jealousy. But she was still more absorbed in the
tiny baby. It was entirely hers, its need was direct upon her.

So Ursula became the child of her father's heart. She was the little
blossom, he was the sun. He was patient, energetic, inventive for her.
He taught her all the funny little things, he filled her and roused her
to her fullest tiny measure. She answered him with her extravagant
infant's laughter and her call of delight.

Now there were two babies, a woman came in to do the housework. Anna
was wholly nurse. Two babies were not too much for her. But she hated
any form of work, now her children had come, except the charge of them.

When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy child, always
amusing herself, needing not much attention from other people. At
evening, towards six o'clock, Anna very often went across the lane to
the stile, lifted Ursula over into the field, with a: "Go and meet
Daddy." Then Brangwen, coming up the steep round of the hill, would see
before him on the brow of the path a tiny, tottering, windblown little
mite with a dark head, who, as soon as she saw him, would come running
in tiny, wild, windmill fashion, lifting her arms up and down to him,
down the steep hill. His heart leapt up, he ran his fastest to her, to
catch her, because he knew she would fall. She came fluttering on,
wildly, with her little limbs flying. And he was glad when he caught
her up in his arms. Once she fell as she came flying to him, he saw her
pitch forward suddenly as she was running with her hands lifted to him;
and when he picked her up, her mouth was bleeding. He could never bear
to think of it, he always wanted to cry, even when he was an old man
and she had become a stranger to him. How he loved that little
Ursula!-his heart had been sharply seared for her, when he was a youth,
first married.

When she was a little older, he would see her recklessly climbing over
the bars of the stile, in her red pinafore, swinging in peril and
tumbling over, picking herself up and flitting towards him. Sometimes
she liked to ride on his shoulder, sometimes she preferred to walk with
his hand, sometimes she would fling her arms round his legs for a
moment, then race free again, whilst he went shouting and calling to
her, a child along with her. He was still only a tall, thin, unsettled
lad of twenty-two.

It was he who had made her her cradle, her little chair, her little
stool, her high chair. It was he who would swing her up to table or who
would make for her a doll out of an old table-leg, whilst she watched
him, saying:

"Make her eyes, Daddy, make her eyes!"

And he made her eyes with his knife.

She was very fond of adorning herself, so he would tie a piece of
cotton round her ear, and hang a blue bead on it underneath for an
ear-ring. The ear-rings varied with a red bead, and a golden bead, and
a little pearl bead. And as he came home at night, seeing her bridling
and looking very self-conscious, he took notice and said:

"So you're wearing your best golden and pearl ear-rings, to-day?"

"Yes."

"I suppose you've been to see the queen?"

"Yes, I have."

"Oh, and what had she to say?"

"She said-she said-'You won't dirty your nice white frock."'

He gave her the nicest bits from his plate, putting them into her red,
moist mouth. And he would make on a piece of bread-and-butter a bird,
out of jam: which she ate with extraordinary relish.

After the tea-things were washed up, the woman went away, leaving the
family free. Usually Brangwen helped in the bathing of the children. He
held long discussions with his child as she sat on his knee and he
unfastened her clothes. And he seemed to be talking really of momentous
things, deep moralities. Then suddenly she ceased to hear, having
caught sight of a glassie rolled into a corner. She slipped away, and
was in no hurry to return.

"Come back here," he said, waiting. She became absorbed, taking no
notice.

"Come on," he repeated, with a touch of command.

An excited little chuckle came from her, but she pretended to be
absorbed.

"Do you hear, Milady?"

She turned with a fleeting, exulting laugh. He rushed on her, and swept
her up.

"Who was it that didn't come!" he said, rolling her between his strong
hands, tickling her. And she laughed heartily, heartily. She loved him
that he compelled her with his strength and decision. He was
all-powerful, the tower of strength which rose out of her sight.

When the children were in bed, sometimes Anna and he sat and talked,
desultorily, both of them idle. He read very little. Anything he was
drawn to read became a burning reality to him, another scene outside
his window. Whereas Anna skimmed through a book to see what happened,
then she had enough.

Therefore they would often sit together, talking desultorily. What was
really between them they could not utter. Their words were only
accidents in the mutual silence. When they talked, they gossiped. She
did not care for sewing.

She had a beautiful way of sitting musing, gratefully, as if her heart
were lit up. Sometimes she would turn to him, laughing, to tell him
some little thing that had happened during the day. Then he would
laugh, they would talk awhile, before the vital, physical silence was
between them again.

She was thin but full of colour and life. She was perfectly happy to do
just nothing, only to sit with a curious, languid dignity, so careless
as to be almost regal, so utterly indifferent, so confident. The bond
between them was undefinable, but very strong. It kept everyone else at
a distance.

His face never changed whilst she knew him, it only became more
intense. It was ruddy and dark in its abstraction, not very human, it
had a strong, intent brightness. Sometimes, when his eyes met hers, a
yellow flash from them caused a darkness to swoon over her
consciousness, electric, and a slight strange laugh came on his face.
Her eyes would turn languidly, then close, as if hypnotised. And they
lapsed into the same potent darkness. He had the quality of a young
black cat, intent, unnoticeable, and yet his presence gradually made
itself felt, stealthily and powerfully took hold of her. He called, not
to her, but to something in her, which responded subtly, out of her
unconscious darkness.

So they were together in a darkness, passionate, electric, for ever
haunting the back of the common day, never in the light. In the light,
he seemed to sleep, unknowing. Only she knew him when the darkness set
him free, and he could see with his gold-glowing eyes his intention and
his desires in the dark. Then she was in a spell, then she answered his
harsh, penetrating call with a soft leap of her soul, the darkness woke
up, electric, bristling with an unknown, overwhelming insinuation.

By now they knew each other; she was the daytime, the daylight, he was
the shadow, put aside, but in the darkness potent with an overwhelming
voluptuousness.

She learned not to dread and to hate him, but to fill herself with him,
to give herself to his black, sensual power, that was hidden all the
daytime. And the curious rolling of the eyes, as if she were lapsing in
a trance away from her ordinary consciousness became habitual with her,
when something threatened and opposed her in life, the conscious life.

So they remained as separate in the light, and in the thick darkness,
married. He supported her daytime authority, kept it inviolable at
last. And she, in all the darkness, belonged to him, to his close,
insinuating, hypnotic familiarity.

All his daytime activity, all his public life, was a kind of sleep. She
wanted to be free, to belong to the day. And he ran avoiding the day in
work. After tea, he went to the shed to his carpentry or his wood-
carving. He was restoring the patched, degraded pulpit to its original
form.

But he loved to have the child near him, playing by his feet. She was a
piece of light that really belonged to him, that played within his
darkness. He left the shed door on the latch. And when, with his second
sense of another presence, he knew she was coming, he was satisfied, he
was at rest. When he was alone with her, he did not want to take
notice, to talk. He wanted to live unthinking, with her presence
flickering upon him.

He always went in silence. The child would push open the shed door, and
see him working by lamplight, his sleeves rolled back. His clothes hung
about him, carelessly, like mere wrapping. Inside, his body was
concentrated with a flexible, charged power all of its own, isolated.
From when she was a tiny child Ursula could remember his forearm, with
its fine black hairs and its electric flexibility, working at the bench
through swift, unnoticeable movements, always ambushed in a sort of
silence.

She hung a moment in the door of the shed, waiting for him to notice
her. He turned, his black, curved eyebrows arching slightly.

"Hullo, Twittermiss!"

And he closed the door behind her. Then the child was happy in the shed
that smelled of sweet wood and resounded to the noise of the plane or
the hammer or the saw, yet was charged with the silence of the worker.
She played on, intent and absorbed, among the shavings and the little
nogs of wood. She never touched him: his feet and legs were near, she
did not approach them.

She liked to flit out after him when he was going to church at night.
If he were going to be alone, he swung her over the wall, and let her
come.

Again she was transported when the door was shut behind them, and they
two inherited the big, pale, void place. She would watch him as he lit
the organ candles, wait whilst he began his practising his tunes, then
she ran foraging here and there, like a kitten playing by herself in
the darkness with eyes dilated. The ropes hung vaguely, twining on the
floor, from the bells in the tower, and Ursula always wanted the
fluffy, red-and-white, or blue-and-white rope-grips. But they were
above her.

Sometimes her mother came to claim her. Then the child was seized with
resentment. She passionately resented her mother's superficial
authority. She wanted to assert her own detachment.

He, however, also gave her occasional cruel shocks. He let her play
about in the church, she rifled foot-stools and hymn-books and
cushions, like a bee among flowers, whilst the organ echoed away. This
continued for some weeks. Then the charwoman worked herself up into a
frenzy of rage, to dare to attack Brangwen, and one day descended on
him like a harpy. He wilted away, and wanted to break the old beast's
neck.

Instead he came glowering in fury to the house, and turned on Ursula.

"Why, you tiresome little monkey, can't you even come to church without
pulling the place to bits?"

His voice was harsh and cat-like, he was blind to the child. She shrank
away in childish anguish and dread. What was it, what awful thing was
it?

The mother turned with her calm, almost superb manner.

"What has she done, then?"

"Done? She shall go in the church no more, pulling and littering and
destroying."

The wife slowly rolled her eyes and lowered her eyelids.

"What has she destroyed, then?"

He did not know.

"I've just had Mrs. Wilkinson at me," he cried, "with a list of things
she's done."

Ursula withered under the contempt and anger of the "she", as he spoke
of her.

"Send Mrs. Wilkinson here to me with a list of the things she's done,"
said Anna. "I am the one to hear that."

"It's not the things the child has done," continued the mother, "that
have put you out so much, it's because you can't bear being spoken to
by that old woman. But you haven't the courage to turn on her when she
attacks you, you bring your rage here."

He relapsed into silence. Ursula knew that he was wrong. In the
outside, upper world, he was wrong. Already came over the child the
cold sense of the impersonal world. There she knew her mother was
right. But still her heart clamoured after her father, for him to be
right, in his dark, sensuous underworld. But he was angry, and went his
way in blackness and brutal silence again.

The child ran about absorbed in life, quiet, full of amusement. She did
not notice things, nor changes nor alterations. One day she would find
daisies in the grass, another day, apple-blossoms would be sprinkled
white on the ground, and she would run among it, for pleasure because
it was there. Yet again birds would be pecking at the cherries, her
father would throw cherries down from the tree all round her on the
garden. Then the fields were full of hay.

She did not remember what had been nor what would be, the outside
things were there each day. She was always herself, the world outside
was accidental. Even her mother was accidental to her: a condition that
happened to endure.

Only her father occupied any permanent position in the childish
consciousness. When he came back she remembered vaguely how he had gone
away, when he went away she knew vaguely that she must wait for his
coming back. Whereas her mother, returning from an outing, merely
became present, there was no reason for connecting her with some
previous departure.

The return or the departure of the father was the one event which the
child remembered. When he came, something woke up in her, some
yearning. She knew when he was out of joint or irritable or tired: then
she was uneasy, she could not rest.

When he was in the house, the child felt full and warm, rich like a
creature in the sunshine. When he was gone, she was vague, forgetful.
When he scolded her even, she was often more aware of him than of
herself. He was her strength and her greater self.

Ursula was three years old when another baby girl was born. Then the
two small sisters were much together, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun was a
quiet child who played for hours alone, absorbed in her fancies. She
was brown-haired, fair-skinned, strangely placid, almost passive. Yet
her will was indomitable, once set. From the first she followed
Ursula's lead. Yet she was a thing to herself, so that to watch the two
together was strange. They were like two young animals playing together
but not taking real notice of each other. Gudrun was the mother's
favourite-except that Anna always lived in her latest baby.

The burden of so many lives depending on him wore the youth down. He
had his work in the office, which was done purely by effort of will: he
had his barren passion for the church; he had three young children.
Also at this time his health was not good. So he was haggard and
irritable, often a pest in the house. Then he was told to go to his
woodwork, or to the church.

Between him and the little Ursula there came into being a strange
alliance. They were aware of each other. He knew the child was always
on his side. But in his consciousness he counted it for nothing. She
was always for him. He took it for granted. Yet his life was based on
her, even whilst she was a tiny child, on her support and her accord.

Anna continued in her violent trance of motherhood, always busy, often
harassed, but always contained in her trance of motherhood. She seemed
to exist in her own violent fruitfulness, and it was as if the sun
shone tropically on her. Her colour was bright, her eyes full of a
fecund gloom, her brown hair tumbled loosely over her ears. She had a
look of richness. No responsibility, no sense of duty troubled her. The
outside, public life was less than nothing to her, really.

Whereas when, at twenty-six, he found himself father of four children,
with a wife who lived intrinsically like the ruddiest lilies of the
field, he let the weight of responsibility press on him and drag him.
It was then that his child Ursula strove to be with him. She was with
him, even as a baby of four, when he was irritable and shouted and made
the household unhappy. She suffered from his shouting, but somehow it
was not really him. She wanted it to be over, she wanted to resume her
normal connection with him. When he was disagreeable, the child echoed
to the crying of some need in him, and she responded blindly. Her heart
followed him as if he had some tie with her, and some love which he
could not deliver. Her heart followed him persistently, in its love.

But there was the dim, childish sense of her own smallness and
inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not do anything,
she was not enough. She could not be important to him. This knowledge
deadened her from the first.

Still she set towards him like a quivering needle. All her life was
directed by her awareness of him, her wakefulness to his being. And she
was against her mother.

Her father was the dawn wherein her consciousness woke up. But for him,
she might have gone on like the other children, Gudrun and Theresa and
Catherine, one with the flowers and insects and playthings, having no
existence apart from the concrete object of her attention. But her
father came too near to her. The clasp of his hands and the power of
his breast woke her up almost in pain from the transient
unconsciousness of childhood. Wide-eyed, unseeing, she was awake before
she knew how to see. She was wakened too soon. Too soon the call had
come to her, when she was a small baby, and her father held her close
to his breast, her sleep-living heart was beaten into wakefulness by
the striving of his bigger heart, by his clasping her to his body for
love and for fulfilment, asking as a magnet must always ask. From her
the response had struggled dimly, vaguely into being.

The children were dressed roughly for the country. When she was little,
Ursula pattered about in little wooden clogs, a blue overall over her
thick red dress, a red shawl crossed on her breast and tied behind
again. So she ran with her father to the garden.

The household rose early. He was out digging by six o'clock in the
morning, he went to his work at half-past eight. And Ursula was
usually in the garden with him, though not near at hand.

At Eastertime one year, she helped him to set potatoes. It was the
first time she had ever helped him. The occasion remained as a picture,
one of her earliest memories. They had gone out soon after dawn. A cold
wind was blowing. He had his old trousers tucked into his boots, he
wore no coat nor waistcoat, his shirt-sleeves fluttered in the wind,
his face was ruddy and intent, in a kind of sleep. When he was at work
he neither heard nor saw. A long, thin man, looking still a youth, with
a line of black moustache above his thick mouth, and his fine hair
blown on his forehead, he worked away at the earth in the grey first
light, alone. His solitariness drew the child like a spell.

The wind came chill over the dark-green fields. Ursula ran up and
watched him push the setting-peg in at one side of his ready earth,
stride across, and push it in the other side, pulling the line taut and
clear upon the clods intervening. Then with a sharp cutting noise the
bright spade came towards her, cutting a grip into the new, soft earth.

He struck his spade upright and straightened himself.

"Do you want to help me?" he said.

She looked up at him from out of her little woollen bonnet.

"Ay," he said, "you can put some taters in for me. Look-like that-these
little sprits standing up-so much apart, you see."

And stooping down he quickly, surely placed the spritted potatoes in
the soft grip, where they rested separate and pathetic on the heavy
cold earth.

He gave her a little basket of potatoes, and strode himself to the
other end of the line. She saw him stooping, working towards her. She
was excited, and unused. She put in one potato, then rearranged it, to
make it sit nicely. Some of the sprits were broken, and she was afraid.
The responsibility excited her like a string tying her up. She could
not help looking with dread at the string buried under the heaped-back
soil. Her father was working nearer, stooping, working nearer. She was
overcome by her responsibility. She put potatoes quickly into the cold
earth.

He came near.

"Not so close," he said, stooping over her potatoes, taking some out
and rearranging the others. She stood by with the painful terrified
helplessness of childhood. He was so unseeing and confident, she wanted
to do the thing and yet she could not. She stood by looking on, her
little blue overall fluttering in the wind, the red woollen ends of her
shawl blowing gustily. Then he went down the row, relentlessly, turning
the potatoes in with his sharp spade-cuts. He took no notice of her,
only worked on. He had another world from hers.

She stood helplessly stranded on his world. He continued his work. She
knew she could not help him. A little bit forlorn, at last she turned
away, and ran down the garden, away from him, as fast as she could go
away from him, to forget him and his work.

He missed her presence, her face in her red woollen bonnet, her blue
overall fluttering. She ran to where a little water ran trickling
between grass and stones. That she loved.

When he came by he said to her:

"You didn't help me much."

The child looked at him dumbly. Already her heart was heavy because of
her own disappointment. Her mouth was dumb and pathetic. But he did not
notice, he went his way.

And she played on, because of her disappointment persisting even the
more in her play. She dreaded work, because she could not do it as he
did it. She was conscious of the great breach between them. She knew
she had no power. The grown-up power to work deliberately was a mystery
to her.

He would smash into her sensitive child's world destructively. Her
mother was lenient, careless The children played about as they would
all day. Ursula was thoughtless-why should she remember things? If
across the garden she saw the hedge had budded, and if she wanted these
greeny-pink, tiny buds for bread-and-cheese, to play at teaparty with,
over she went for them.

Then suddenly, perhaps the next day, her soul would almost start out of
her body as her father turned on her, shouting:

"Who's been tramplin' an' dancin' across where I've just sowed seed? I
know it's you, nuisance! Can you find nowhere else to walk, but just
over my seed beds? But it's like you, that is-no heed but to follow
your own greedy nose."

It had shocked him in his intent world to see the zigzagging lines of
deep little footprints across his work. The child was infinitely more
shocked. Her vulnerable little soul was flayed and trampled. Why were
the footprints there? She had not wanted to make them. She stood
dazzled with pain and shame and unreality.

Her soul, her consciousness seemed to die away. She became shut off and
senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul had gone hard and
unresponsive. The sense of her own unreality hardened her like a frost.
She cared no longer.

And the sight of her face, shut and superior with self-asserting
indifference, made a flame of rage go over him. He wanted to break her.

"I'll break your obstinate little face," he said, through shut teeth,
lifting his hand.

The child did not alter in the least. The look of indifference,
complete glancing indifference, as if nothing but herself existed to
her, remained fixed.

Yet far away in her, the sobs were tearing her soul. And when he had
gone, she would go and creep under the parlour sofa, and lie clinched
in the silent, hidden misery of childhood.

When she crawled out, after an hour or so, she went rather stiffly to
play. She willed to forget. She cut off her childish soul from memory,
so that the pain, and the insult should not be real. She asserted
herself only. There was not nothing in the world but her own self. So
very soon, she came to believe in the outward malevolence that was
against her. And very early, she learned that even her adored father
was part of this malevolence. And very early she learned to harden her
soul in resistance and denial of all that was outside her, harden
herself upon her own being.

She never felt sorry for what she had done, she never forgave those who
had made her guilty. If he had said to her, "Why, Ursula, did you
trample my carefully-made bed?" that would have hurt her to the quick,
and she would have done anything for him. But she was always tormented
by the unreality of outside things. The earth was to walk on. Why must
she avoid a certain patch, just because it was called a seed-bed? It
was the earth to walk on. This was her instinctive assumption. And when
he bullied her, she became hard, cut herself off from all connection,
lived in the little separate world of her own violent will.

As she grew older, five, six, seven, the connection between her and her
father was even stronger. Yet it was always straining to break. She was
always relapsing on her own violent will into her own separate world of
herself. This made him grind his teeth with bitterness, for he still
wanted her. But she could harden herself into her own self's universe,
impregnable.

He was very fond of swimming, and in warm weather would take her down
to the canal, to a silent place, or to a big pond or reservoir, to
bathe. He would take her on his back as he went swimming, and she clung
close, feeling his strong movement under her, so strong, as if it would
uphold all the world. Then he taught her to swim.

She was a fearless little thing, when he dared her. And he had a
curious craving to frighten her, to see what she would do with him. He
said, would she ride on his back whilst he jumped off the canal bridge
down into the water beneath.

She would. He loved to feel the naked child clinging on to his
shoulders. There was a curious fight between their two wills. He
mounted the parapet of the canal bridge. The water was a long way down.
But the child had a deliberate will set upon his. She held herself
fixed to him.

He leapt, and down they went. The crash of the water as they went under
struck through the child's small body, with a sort of unconsciousness.
But she remained fixed. And when they came up again, and when they went
to the bank, and when they sat on the grass side by side, he laughed,
and said it was fine. And the dark-dilated eyes of the child looked at
him wonderingly, darkly, wondering from the shock, yet reserved and
unfathomable, so he laughed almost with a sob.

In a moment she was clinging safely on his back again, and he was
swimming in deep water. She was used to his nakedness, and to her
mother's nakedness, ever since she was born. They were clinging to each
other, and making up to each other for the strange blow that had been
struck at them. Yet still, on other days, he would leap again with her
from the bridge, daringly, almost wickedly. Till at length, as he
leapt, once, she dropped forward on to his head, and nearly broke his
neck, so that they fell into the water in a heap, and fought for a few
moments with death. He saved her, and sat on the bank, quivering. But
his eyes were full of the blackness of death. It was as if death had
cut between their two lives, and separated them.

Still they were not separate. There was this curious taunting intimacy
between them. When the fair came, she wanted to go in the swing-boats.
He took her, and, standing up in the boat, holding on to the irons,
began to drive higher, perilously higher. The child clung fast on her
seat.

"Do you want to go any higher?" he said to her, and she laughed with
her mouth, her eyes wide and dilated. They were rushing through the
air.

"Yes," she said, feeling as if she would turn into vapour, lose hold of
everything, and melt away. The boat swung far up, then down like a
stone, only to be caught sickeningly up again.

"Any higher?" he called, looking at her over his shoulder, his face
evil and beautiful to her.

She laughed with white lips.

He sent the swingboat sweeping through the air in a great semi-circle,
till it jerked and swayed at the high horizontal. The child clung on,
pale, her eyes fixed on him. People below were calling. The jerk at the
top had almost shaken them both out. He had done what he could-and he
was attracting censure. He sat down, and let the swingboat swing itself
out.

People in the crowd cried shame on him as he came out of the swingboat.
He laughed. The child clung to his hand, pale and mute. In a while she
was violently sick. He gave her lemonade, and she gulped a little.

"Don't tell your mother you've been sick," he said. There was no need
to ask that. When she got home, the child crept away under the parlour
sofa, like a sick little animal, and was a long time before she crawled
out.

But Anna got to know of this escapade, and was passionately angry and
contemptuous of him. His golden-brown eyes glittered, he had a strange,
cruel little smile. And as the child watched him, for the first time in
her life a disillusion came over her, something cold and isolating. She
went over to her mother. Her soul was dead towards him. It made her
sick.

Still she forgot and continued to love him, but ever more coldly. He
was at this time, when he was about twenty-eight years old, strange and
violent in his being, sensual. He acquired some power over Anna, over
everybody he came into contact with.

After a long bout of hostility, Anna at last closed with him. She had
now four children, all girls. For seven years she had been absorbed in
wifehood and motherhood. For years he had gone on beside her, never
really encroaching upon her. Then gradually another self seemed to
assert its being within him. He was still silent and separate. But she
could feel him all the while coming near upon her, as if his breast and
his body were threatening her, and he was always coming closer.
Gradually he became indifferent of responsibility. He would do what
pleased him, and no more.

He began to go away from home. He went to Nottingham on Saturdays,
always alone, to the football match and to the music-hall, and all the
time he was watching, in readiness. He never cared to drink. But with
his hard, golden-brown eyes, so keen seeing with their tiny black
pupils, he watched all the people, everything that happened, and he
waited.

In the Empire one evening he sat next to two girls. He was aware of the
one beside him. She was rather small, common, with a fresh complexion
and an upper lip that lifted from her teeth, so that, when she was not
conscious, her mouth was slightly open and her lips pressed outwards in
a kind of blind appeal. She was strongly aware of the man next to her,
so that all her body was still, very still. Her face watched the stage.
Her arms went down into her lap, very self-conscious and still.

A gleam lit up in him: should he begin with her? Should he begin with
her to live the other, the unadmitted life of his desire? Why not? He
had always been so good. Save for his wife, he was a virgin. And why,
when all women were different? Why, when he would only live once? He
wanted the other life. His own life was barren, not enough. He wanted
the other.

Her open mouth, showing the small, irregular, white teeth, appealed to
him. It was open and ready. It was so vulnerable. Why should he not go
in and enjoy what was there? The slim arm that went down so still and
motionless to the lap, it was pretty. She would be small, he would be
able almost to hold her in his two hands. She would be small, almost
like a child, and pretty. Her childishness whetted him keenly. She
would he helpless between his hands.

"That was the best turn we've had," he said to her, leaning over as he
clapped his hands. He felt strong and unshakeable in himself, set over
against all the world. His soul was keen and watchful, glittering with
a kind of amusement. He was perfectly self-contained. He was himself,
the absolute, the rest of the world was the object that should
contribute to his being.

The girl started, turned round, her eyes lit up with an almost painful
flash of a smile, the colour came deeply in her cheeks.

"Yes, it was," she said, quite meaninglessly, and she covered her
rather prominent teeth with her lips. Then she sat looking straight
before her, seeing nothing, only conscious of the colour burning in her
cheeks.

It pricked him with a pleasant sensation. His veins and his nerves
attended to her, she was so young and palpitating.

"It's not such a good programme as last week's," he said.

Again she half turned her face to him, and her clear, bright eyes,
bright like shallow water, filled with light, frightened, yet
involuntarily lighting and shaking with response.

"Oh, isn't it! I wasn't able to come last week."

He noted the common accent. It pleased him. He knew what class she came
of. Probably she was a warehouse-lass. He was glad she was a common
girl.

He proceeded to tell her about the last week's programme. She answered
at random, very confusedly. The colour burned in her cheek. Yet she
always answered him. The girl on the other side sat remotely, obviously
silent. He ignored her. All his address was for his own girl, with her
bright, shallow eyes and her vulnerably opened mouth.

The talk went on, meaningless and random on her part, quite deliberate
and purposive on his. It was a pleasure to him to make this
conversation, an activity pleasant as a fine game of chance and skill.
He was very quiet and pleasant-humoured, but so full of strength. She
fluttered beside his steady pressure of warmth and his surety.

He saw the performance drawing to a close. His senses were alert and
wilful. He would press his advantages. He followed her and her plain
friend down the stairs to the street. It was raining.

"It's a nasty night," he said. "Shall you come and have a drink of
something-a cup of coffee-it's early yet."

"Oh, I don't think so," she said, looking away into the night.

"I wish you would," he said, putting himself as it were at her mercy.
There was a moment's pause.

"Come to Rollins?" he said.

"No-not there."

"To Carson's, then?"

There was a silence. The other girl hung on. The man was the centre of
positive force.

"Will your friend come as well?"

There was another moment of silence, while the other girl felt her
ground.

"No, thanks," she said. "I've promised to meet a friend."

"Another time, then?" he said.

"Oh, thanks," she replied, very awkward.

"Good night," he said.

"See you later," said his girl to her friend.

"Where?" said the friend.

"You know, Gertie," replied his girl.

"All right, Jennie."

The friend was gone into the darkness. He turned with his girl to the
tea-shop. They talked all the time. He made his sentences in sheer,
almost muscular pleasure of exercising himself with her. He was looking
at her all the time, perceiving her, appreciating her, finding her out,
gratifying himself with her. He could see distinct attractions in her;
her eyebrows, with their particular curve, gave him keen aesthetic
pleasure. Later on he would see her bright, pellucid eyes, like shallow
water, and know those. And there remained the open, exposed mouth, red
and vulnerable. That he reserved as yet. And all the while his eyes
were on the girl, estimating and handling with pleasure her young
softness. About the girl herself, who or what she was, he cared
nothing, he was quite unaware that she was anybody. She was just the
sensual object of his attention.

"Shall we go, then?" he said.

She rose in silence, as if acting without a mind, merely physically. He
seemed to hold her in his will. Outside it was still raining.

"Let's have a walk," he said. "I don't mind the rain, do you?"

"No, I don't mind it," she said.

He was alert in every sense and fibre, and yet quite sure and steady,
and lit up, as if transfused. He had a free sensation of walking in his
own darkness, not in anybody else's world at all. He was purely a world
to himself, he had nothing to do with any general consciousness. Just
his own senses were supreme. All the rest was external, insignificant,
leaving him alone with this girl whom he wanted to absorb, whose
properties he wanted to absorb into his own senses. He did not care
about her, except that he wanted to overcome her resistance, to have
her in his power, fully and exhaustively to enjoy her.

They turned into the dark streets. He held her umbrella over her, and
put his arm round her. She walked as if she were unaware. But
gradually, as he walked, he drew her a little closer, into the movement
of his side and hip. She fitted in there very well. It was a real good
fit, to walk with her like this. It made him exquisitely aware of his
own muscular self. And his hand that grasped her side felt one curve of
her, and it seemed like a new creation to him, a reality, an absolute,
an existing tangible beauty of the absolute. It was like a star.
Everything in him was absorbed in the sensual delight of this one
small, firm curve in her body, that his hand, and his whole being, had
lighted upon.

He led her into the Park, where it was almost dark. He noticed a corner
between two walls, under a great overhanging bush of ivy.

"Let us stand here a minute," he said.

He put down the umbrella, and followed her into the corner, retreating
out of the rain. He needed no eyes to see. All he wanted was to know
through touch. She was like a piece of palpable darkness. He found her
in the darkness, put his arms round her and his hands upon her. She was
silent and inscrutable. But he did not want to know anything about her,
he only wanted to discover her. And through her clothing, what absolute
beauty he touched.

"Take your hat off," he said.

Silently, obediently, she shook off her hat and gave herself to his
arms again. He liked her-he liked the feel of her-he wanted to know her
more closely. He let his fingers subtly seek out her cheek and neck.
What amazing beauty and pleasure, in the dark! His fingers had often
touched Anna on the face and neck like that. What matter! It was one
man who touched Anna, another who now touched this girl. He liked best
his new self. He was given over altogether to the sensuous knowledge of
this woman, and every moment he seemed to be touching absolute beauty,
something beyond knowledge.

Very close, marvelling and exceedingly joyful in their discoveries, his
hands pressed upon her, so subtly, so seekingly, so finely and
desirously searching her out, that she too was almost swooning in the
absolute of sensual knowledge. In utter sensual delight she clenched
her knees, her thighs, her loins together! It was an added beauty to
him.

But he was patiently working for her relaxation, patiently, his whole
being fixed in the smile of latent gratification, his whole body
electric with a subtle, powerful, reducing force upon her. So he came
at length to kiss her, and she was almost betrayed by his insidious
kiss. Her open mouth was too helpless and unguarded. He knew this, and
his first kiss was very gentle, and soft, and assuring, so assuring. So
that her soft, defenceless mouth became assured, even bold, seeking
upon his mouth. And he answered her gradually, gradually, his soft kiss
sinking in softly, softly, but ever more heavily, more heavily yet,
till it was too heavy for her to meet, and she began to sink under it.
She was sinking, sinking, his smile of latent gratification was
becoming more tense, he was sure of her. He let the whole force of his
will sink upon her to sweep her away. But it was too great a shock for
her. With a sudden horrible movement she ruptured the state that
contained them both.

"Don't-don't!"

It was a rather horrible cry that seemed to come out of her, not to
belong to her. It was some strange agony of terror crying out the
words. There was something vibrating and beside herself in the noise.
His nerves ripped like silk.

"What's the matter?" he said, as if calmly. "What's the matter?"

She came back to him, but trembling, reservedly this time.

Her cry had given him gratification. But he knew he had been too sudden
for her. He was now careful. For a while he merely sheltered her. Also
there had broken a flaw into his perfect will. He wanted to persist, to
begin again, to lead up to the point where he had let himself go on
her, and then manage more carefully, successfully. So far she had won.
And the battle was not over yet. But another voice woke in him and
prompted him to let her go-let her go in contempt.

He sheltered her, and soothed her, and caressed her, and kissed her,
and again began to come nearer, nearer. He gathered himself together.
Even if he did not take her, he would make her relax, he would fuse
away her resistance. So softly, softly, with infinite caressiveness he
kissed her, and the whole of his being seemed to fondle her. Till, at
the verge, swooning at the breaking point, there came from her a
beaten, inarticulate, moaning cry:

"Don't-oh, don't!"

His veins fused with extreme voluptuousness. For a moment he almost
lost control of himself, and continued automatically. But there was a
moment of inaction, of cold suspension. He was not going to take her.
He drew her to him and soothed her, and caressed her. But the pure zest
had gone. She struggled to herself and realised he was not going to
take her. And then, at the very last moment, when his fondling had come
near again, his hot living desire despising her, against his cold
sensual desire, she broke violently away from him.

"Don't," she cried, harsh now with hatred, and she flung her hand
across and hit him violently. "Keep off of me."

His blood stood still for a moment. Then the smile came again within
him, steady, cruel.

"Why, what's the matter?" he said, with suave irony. "Nobody's going to
hurt you."

"I know what you want," she said.

"I know what I want," he said. "What's the odds?"

"Well, you're not going to have it off me."

"Aren't I? Well, then I'm not. It's no use crying about it, is it?"

"No, it isn't," said the girl, rather disconcerted by his irony.

"But there's no need to have a row about it. We can kiss good night
just the same, can't we?"

She was silent in the darkness.

"Or do you want your hat and umbrella to go home this minute?"

Still she was silent. He watched her dark figure as she stood there on
the edge of the faint darkness, and he waited.

"Come and say good night nicely, if we're going to say it," he said.

Still she did not stir. He put his hand out and drew her into the
darkness again.

"It's warmer in here," he said; "a lot cosier."

His will had not yet relaxed from her. The moment of hatred exhilarated
him.

"I'm going now," she muttered, as he closed his hand over her.

"See how well you fit your place," he said, as he drew her to her
previous position, close upon him. "What do you want to leave it for?"

And gradually the intoxication invaded him again, the zest came back.
After all, why should he not take her?

But she did not yield to him entirely.

"Are you a married man?" she asked at length.

"What if I am?" he said.

She did not answer.

"I don't ask you whether you're married or not," he said.

"You know jolly well I'm not," she answered hotly. Oh, if she could
only break away from him, if only she need not yield to him.

At length her will became cold against him. She had escaped. But she
hated him for her escape more than for her danger. Did he despise her
so coldly? And she was in torture of adherence to him still.

"Shall I see you next week-next Saturday?" he said, as they returned to
the town. She did not answer.

"Come to the Empire with me-you and Gertie," he said.

"I should look well, going with a married man," she said.

"I'm no less of a man for being married, am I?" he said.

"Oh, it's a different matter altogether with a married man," she said,
in a ready-made speech that showed her chagrin.

"How's that?" he asked.

But she would not enlighten him. Yet she promised, without promising,
to be at the meeting-place next Saturday evening.

So he left her. He did not know her name. He caught a train and went
home.

It was the last train, he was very late. He was not home till midnight.
But he was quite indifferent. He had no real relation with his home,
not this man which he now was. Anna was sitting up for him. She saw the
queer, absolved look on his face, a sort of latent, almost sinister
smile, as if he were absolved from his "good" ties.

"Where have you been?" she asked, puzzled, interested.

"To the Empire."

"Who with?"

"By myself. I came home with Tom Cooper."

She looked at him, and wondered what he had been doing She was
indifferent as to whether he lied or not.

"You have come home very strange," she said. And there was an
appreciative inflexion in the speech.

He was not affected. As for his humble, good self, he was absolved from
it. He sat down and ate heartily. He was not tired. He seemed to take
no notice of her.

For Anna the moment was critical. She kept herself aloof, and watched
him. He talked to her, but with a little indifference, since he was
scarcely aware of her. So, then she did not affect him. Here was a new
turn of affairs! He was rather attractive, nevertheless. She liked him
better than the ordinary mute, half-effaced, half-subdued man she
usually knew him to be. So, he was blossoming out into his real self!
It piqued her. Very good, let him blossom! She liked a new turn of
affairs. He was a strange man come home to her. Glancing at him, she
saw she could not reduce him to what he had been before. In an instant
she gave it up. Yet not without a pang of rage, which would insist on
their old, beloved love, their old, accustomed intimacy and her old,
established supremacy. She almost rose up to fight for them. And
looking at him, and remembering his father, she was wary. This was the
new turn of affairs!

Very good, if she could not influence him in the old way, she would be
level with him in the new. Her old defiant hostility came up. Very
good, she too was out on her own adventure. Her voice, her manner
changed, she was ready for the game. Something was liberated in her.
She liked him. She liked this strange man come home to her. He was very
welcome, indeed! She was very glad to welcome a stranger. She had been
bored by the old husband. To his latent, cruel smile she replied with
brilliant challenge. He expected her to keep the moral fortress. Not
she! It was much too dull a part. She challenged him back with a sort
of radiance, very bright and free, opposite to him. He looked at her,
and his eyes glinted. She too was out in the field.

His senses pricked up and keenly attended to her. She laughed,
perfectly indifferent and loose as he was. He came towards her. She
neither rejected him nor responded to him. In a kind of radiance,
superb in her inscrutability, she laughed before him. She too could
throw everything overboard, love, intimacy, responsibility. What were
her four children to her now? What did it matter that this man was the
father of her four children?

He was the sensual male seeking his pleasure, she was the female ready
to take hers: but in her own way. A man could turn into a free lance:
so then could a woman. She adhered as little as he to the moral world.
All that had gone before was nothing to her. She was another woman,
under the instance of a strange man. He was a stranger to her, seeking
his own ends. Very good. She wanted to see what this stranger would do
now, what he was.

She laughed, and kept him at arm's length, whilst apparently ignoring
him. She watched him undress as if he were a stranger. Indeed he was a
stranger to her.

And she roused him profoundly, violently, even before he touched her.
The little creature in Nottingham had but been leading up to this. They
abandoned in one motion the moral position, each was seeking
gratification pure and simple.

Strange his wife was to him. It was as if he were a perfect stranger,
as if she were infinitely and essentially strange to him, the other
half of the world, the dark half of the moon. She waited for his touch
as if he were a marauder who had come in, infinitely unknown and
desirable to her. And he began to discover her. He had an inkling of
the vastness of the unknown sensual store of delights she was. With a
passion of voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny beauty, in a
kind of frenzy of enjoyment, he lit upon her: her beauty, the beauties,
the separate, several beauties of her body.

He was quite ousted from himself, and sensually transported by that
which he discovered in her. He was another man revelling over her.
There was no tenderness, no love between them any more, only the
maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant
gratification in the sensual beauties of her body. And she was a store,
a store of absolute beauties that it drove him to contemplate. There
was such a feast to enjoy, and he with only one man's capacity.

He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some time-it
was a duel: no love, no words, no kisses even, only the maddening
perception of beauty consummate, absolute through touch. He wanted to
touch her, to discover her, maddeningly he wanted to know her. Yet he
must not hurry, or he missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a
time. And the multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little
rapturous places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire to be able
to know more, to have strength to know more. For all was there.

He would say during the daytime:

"To-night I shall know the little hollow under her ankle, where the
blue vein crosses." And the thought of it, and the desire for it, made
a thick darkness of anticipation.

He would go all the day waiting for the night to come, when he could
give himself to the enjoyment of some luxurious absolute of beauty in
her. The thought of the hidden resources of her, the undiscovered
beauties and ecstatic places of delight in her body, waiting, only
waiting for him to discover them, sent him slightly insane. He was
obsessed. If he did not discover and make known to himself these
delights, they might be lost for ever. He wished he had a hundred men's
energies, with which to enjoy her. He wished he were a cat, to lick her
with a rough, grating, lascivious tongue. He wanted to wallow in her,
bury himself in her flesh, cover himself over with her flesh.

And she, separate, with a strange, dangerous, glistening look in her
eyes received all his activities upon her as if they were expected by
her, and provoked him when he was quiet to more, till sometimes he was
ready to perish for sheer inability to be satisfied of her, inability
to have had enough of her.

Their children became mere offspring to them, they lived in the
darkness and death of their own sensual activities. Sometimes he felt
he was going mad with a sense of Absolute Beauty, perceived by him in
her through his senses. It was something too much for him. And in
everything, was this same, almost sinister, terrifying beauty. But in
the revelations of her body through contact with his body, was the
ultimate beauty, to know which was almost death in itself, and yet for
the knowledge of which he would have undergone endless torture. He
would have forfeited anything, anything, rather than forego his right
even to the instep of her foot, and the place from which the toes
radiated out, the little, miraculous white plain from which ran the
little hillocks of the toes, and the folded, dimpling hollows between
the toes. He felt he would have died rather than forfeit this.

This was what their love had become, a sensuality violent and extreme
as death. They had no conscious intimacy, no tenderness of love. It was
all the lust and the infinite, maddening intoxication of the sense, a
passion of death.

He had always, all his life, had a secret dread of Absolute Beauty. It
had always been like a fetish to him, something to fear, really. For it
was immoral and against mankind. So he had turned to the Gothic form,
which always asserted the broken desire of mankind in its pointed
arches, escaping the rolling, absolute beauty of the round arch.

But now he had given way, and with infinite sensual violence gave
himself to the realisation of this supreme, immoral, Absolute Beauty,
in the body of woman. It seemed to him, that it came to being in the
body of woman, under his touch. Under his touch, even under his sight,
it was there. But when he neither saw nor touched the perfect place, it
was not perfect, it was not there. And he must make it exist.

But still the thing terrified him. Awful and threatening it was,
dangerous to a degree, even whilst he gave himself to it. It was pure
darkness, also. All the shameful things of the body revealed themselves
to him now with a sort of sinister, tropical beauty. All the shameful,
natural and unnatural acts of sensual voluptuousness which he and the
woman partook of together, created together, they had their heavy
beauty and their delight. Shame, what was it? It was part of extreme
delight. It was that part of delight of which man is usually afraid.
Why afraid? The secret, shameful things are most terribly beautiful.

They accepted shame, and were one with it in their most unlicensed
pleasures. It was incorporated. It was a bud that blossomed into beauty
and heavy, fundamental gratification.

Their outward life went on much the same, but the inward life was
revolutionised. The children became less important, the parents were
absorbed in their own living.

And gradually, Brangwen began to find himself free to attend to the
outside life as well. His intimate life was so violently active, that
it set another man in him free. And this new man turned with interest
to public life, to see what part he could take in it. This would give
him scope for new activity, activity of a kind for which he was now
created and released. He wanted to be unanimous with the whole of
purposive mankind.

At this time Education was in the forefront as a subject of interest.
There was the talk of new Swedish methods, of handwork instruction, and
so on. Brangwen embraced sincerely the idea of handwork in schools. For
the first time, he began to take real interest in a public affair. He
had at length, from his profound sensual activity, developed a real
purposive self.

There was talk of night-schools, and of handicraft classes. He wanted
to start a woodwork class in Cossethay, to teach carpentry and joinery
and wood-carving to the village boys, two nights a week. This seemed to
him a supremely desirable thing to be doing. His pay would be very
little-and when he had it, he spent it all on extra wood and tools. But
he was very happy and keen in his new public spirit.

He started his night-classes in woodwork when he was thirty years old.
By this time he had five children, the last a boy. But boy or girl
mattered very little to him. He had a natural blood-affection for his
children, and he liked them as they turned up: boys or girls. Only he
was fondest of Ursula. Somehow, she seemed to be at the back of his new
night-school venture.

The house by the yew trees was in connection with the great human
endeavour at last. It gained a new vigour thereby.

To Ursula, a child of eight, the increase in magic was considerable.
She heard all the talk, she saw the parish room fitted up as a
workshop. The parish room was a high, stone, barn-like, ecclesiastical
building standing away by itself in the Brangwens' second garden,
across the lane. She was always attracted by its age and its stranded
obsoleteness. Now she watched preparations made, she sat on the flight
of stone steps that came down from the porch to the garden, and heard
her father and the vicar talking and planning and working. Then an
inspector came, a very strange man, and stayed talking with her father
all one evening. Everything was settled, and twelve boys enrolled their
names. It was very exciting.

But to Ursula, everything her father did was magic. Whether he came
from Ilkeston with news of the town, whether he went across to the
church with his music or his tools on a sunny evening, whether he sat
in his white surplice at the organ on Sundays, leading the singing with
his strong tenor voice, or whether he were in the workshop with the
boys, he was always a centre of magic and fascination to her, his
voice, sounding out in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a twang
in it that sent a thrill over her blood, and hypnotised her. She seemed
to run in the shadow of some dark, potent secret of which she would
not, of whose existence even she dared not become conscious, it cast
such a spell over her, and so darkened her mind.




Chapter 9



The Marsh and the Flood


There was always regular connection between the Yew Cottage and the
Marsh, yet the two households remained separate, distinct.

After Anna's marriage, the Marsh became the home of the two boys, Tom
and Fred. Tom was a rather short, good-looking youth, with crisp black
hair and long black eyelashes and soft, dark, possessed eyes. He had a
quick intelligence. From the High School he went to London to study. He
had an instinct for attracting people of character and energy. He gave
place entirely to the other person, and at the same time kept himself
independent. He scarcely existed except through other people. When he
was alone he was unresolved. When he was with another man, he seemed to
add himself to the other, make the other bigger than life size. So that
a few people loved him and attained a sort of fulfilment in him. He
carefully chose these few.

He had a subtle, quick, critical intelligence, a mind that was like a
scale or balance. There was something of a woman in all this.

In London he had been the favourite pupil of an engineer, a clever man,
who became well-known at the time when Tom Brangwen had just finished
his studies. Through this master the youth kept acquaintance with
various individual, outstanding characters. He never asserted himself.
He seemed to be there to estimate and establish the rest. He was like a
presence that makes us aware of our own being. So that he was while
still young connected with some of the most energetic scientific and
mathematical people in London. They took him as an equal. Quiet and
perceptive and impersonal as he was, he kept his place and learned how
to value others in just degree. He was there like a judgment. Besides,
he was very good-looking, of medium stature, but beautifully
proportioned, dark, with fine colouring, always perfectly healthy.

His father allowed him a liberal pocket-money, besides which he had a
sort of post as assistant to his chief. Then from time to time the
young man appeared at the Marsh, curiously attractive, well-dressed,
reserved, having by nature a subtle, refined manner. And he set the
change in the farm.

Fred, the younger brother, was a Brangwen, large-boned, blue-eyed,
English. He was his father's very son, the two men, father and son,
were supremely at ease with one another. Fred was succeeding to the
farm.

Between the elder brother and the younger existed an almost passionate
love. Tom watched over Fred with a woman's poignant attention and
self-less care. Fred looked up to Tom as to something miraculous, that
which he himself would aspire to be, were he great also.

So that after Anna's departure, the Marsh began to take on a new tone.
The boys were gentlemen; Tom had a rare nature and had risen high. Fred
was sensitive and fond of reading, he pondered Ruskin and then the
Agnostic writings. Like all the Brangwens, he was very much a thing to
himself, though fond of people, and indulgent to them, having an
exaggerated respect for them.

There was a rather uneasy friendship between him and one of the young
Hardys at the Hall. The two households were different, yet the young
men met on shy terms of equality.

It was young Tom Brangwen, with his dark lashes and beautiful
colouring, his soft, inscrutable nature, his strange repose and his
informed air, added to his position in London, who seemed to emphasise
the superior foreign element in the Marsh. When he appeared, perfectly
dressed, as if soft and affable, and yet quite removed from everybody,
he created an uneasiness in people, he was reserved in the minds of the
Cossethay and Ilkeston acquaintances to a different, remote world.

He and his mother had a kind of affinity. The affection between them
was of a mute, distant character, but radical. His father was always
uneasy and slightly deferential to his eldest son. Tom also formed the
link that kept the Marsh in real connection with the Skrebenskys, now
quite important people in their own district.

So a change in tone came over the Marsh. Tom Brangwen the father, as he
grew older, seemed to mature into a gentleman-farmer. His figure lent
itself: burly and handsome. His face remained fresh and his blue eyes
as full of light, his thick hair and beard had turned gradually to a
silky whiteness. It was his custom to laugh a great deal, in his
acquiescent, wilful manner. Things had puzzled him very much, so he had
taken the line of easy, good-humoured acceptance. He was not
responsible for the frame of things. Yet he was afraid of the unknown
in life.

He was fairly well-off. His wife was there with him, a different being
from himself, yet somewhere vitally connected with him:-who was he to
understand where and how? His two sons were gentlemen. They were men
distinct from himself, they had separate beings of their own, yet they
were connected with himself. It was all adventurous and puzzling. Yet
one remained vital within one's own existence, whatever the off-shoots.

So, handsome and puzzled, he laughed and stuck to himself as the only
thing he could stick to. His youngness and the wonder remained almost
the same in him. He became indolent, he developed a luxuriant ease.
Fred did most of the farm-work, the father saw to the more important
transactions. He drove a good mare, and sometimes he rode his cob. He
drank in the hotels and the inns with better-class farmers and
proprietors, he had well-to-do acquaintances among men. But one class
suited him no better than another.

His wife, as ever, had no acquaintances. Her hair was threaded now with
grey, her face grew older in form without changing in expression. She
seemed the same as when she had come to the Marsh twenty-five years
ago, save that her health was more fragile. She seemed always to haunt
the Marsh rather than to live there. She was never part of the life.
Something she represented was alien there, she remained a stranger
within the gates, in some ways fixed and impervious, in some ways
curiously refining. She caused the separateness and individuality of
all the Marsh inmates, the friability of the household.

When young Tom Brangwen was twenty-three years old there was some
breach between him and his chief which was never explained, and he went
away to Italy, then to America. He came home for a while, then went to
Germany; always the same good-looking, carefully-dressed, attractive
young man, in perfect health, yet somehow outside of everything. In his
dark eyes was a deep misery which he wore with the same ease and
pleasantness as he wore his close-sitting clothes.

To Ursula he was a romantic, alluring figure. He had a grace of
bringing beautiful presents: a box of expensive sweets, such as
Cossethay had never seen; or he gave her a hair-brush and a long slim
mirror of mother-of-pearl, all pale and glimmering and exquisite; or he
sent her a little necklace of rough stones, amethyst and opal and
brilliants and garnet. He spoke other languages easily and fluently,
his nature was curiously gracious and insinuating. With all that, he
was undefinably an outsider. He belonged to nowhere, to no society.

Anna Brangwen had left her intimacy with her father undeveloped since
the time of her marriage. At her marriage it had been abandoned. He and
she had drawn a reserve between them. Anna went more to her mother.

Then suddenly the father died.

It happened one springtime when Ursula was about eight years old, he,
Tom Brangwen, drove off on a Saturday morning to the market in
Nottingham, saying he might not be back till late, as there was a
special show and then a meeting he had to attend. His family understood
that he would enjoy himself.

The season had been rainy and dreary. In the evening it was pouring
with rain. Fred Brangwen, unsettled, uneasy, did not go out, as was his
wont. He smoked and read and fidgeted, hearing always the trickling of
water outside. This wet, black night seemed to cut him off and make him
unsettled, aware of himself, aware that he wanted something else, aware
that he was scarcely living. There seemed to him to be no root to his
life, no place for him to get satisfied in. He dreamed of going abroad.
But his instinct knew that change of place would not solve his problem.
He wanted change, deep, vital change of living. And he did not know how
to get it.

Tilly, an old woman now, came in saying that the labourers who had been
suppering up said the yard and everywhere was just a slew of water. He
heard in indifference. But he hated a desolate, raw wetness in the
world. He would leave the Marsh.

His mother was in bed. At last he shut his book, his mind was blank, he
walked upstairs intoxicated with depression and anger, and, intoxicated
with depression and anger, locked himself into sleep.

Tilly set slippers before the kitchen fire, and she also went to bed,
leaving the door unlocked. Then the farm was in darkness, in the rain.

At eleven o'clock it was still raining. Tom Brangwen stood in the yard
of the "Angel", Nottingham, and buttoned his coat.

"Oh, well," he said cheerfully, "it's rained on me before. Put 'er in,
Jack, my lad, put her in-Tha'rt a rare old cock, Jacky-boy, wi' a belly
on thee as does credit to thy drink, if not to thy corn. Co' up lass,
let's get off ter th' old homestead. Oh, my heart, what a wetness in
the night! There'll be no volcanoes after this. Hey, Jack, my beautiful
young slender feller, which of us is Noah? It seems as though the
water-works is bursted. Ducks and ayquatic fowl 'll be king o' the
castle at this rate-dove an' olive branch an' all. Stand up then, gel,
stand up, we're not stoppin' here all night, even if you thought we
was. I'm dashed if the jumping rain wouldn't make anybody think they
was drunk. Hey, Jack-does rain-water wash the sense in, or does it wash
it out?" And he laughed to himself at the joke.

He was always ashamed when he had to drive after he had been drinking,
always apologetic to the horse. His apologetic frame made him
facetious. He was aware of his inability to walk quite straight.
Nevertheless his will kept stiff and attentive, in all his fuddleness.

He mounted and bowled off through the gates of the innyard. The mare
went well, he sat fixed, the rain beating on his face. His heavy body
rode motionless in a kind of sleep, one centre of attention was kept
fitfully burning, the rest was dark. He concentrated his last attention
on the fact of driving along the road he knew so well. He knew it so
well, he watched for it attentively, with an effort of will.

He talked aloud to himself, sententious in his anxiety, as if he were
perfectly sober, whilst the mare bowled along and the rain beat on him.
He watched the rain before the gig-lamps, the faint gleaming of the
shadowy horse's body, the passing of the dark hedges.

"It's not a fit night to turn a dog out," he said to himself, aloud.
"It's high time as it did a bit of clearing up, I'll be damned if it
isn't. It was a lot of use putting those ten loads of cinders on th'
road. They'll be washed to kingdom-come if it doesn't alter. Well, it's
our Fred's look-out, if they are. He's top-sawyer as far as those
things go. I don't see why I should concern myself. They can wash to
kingdom-come and back again for what I care. I suppose they would be
washed back again some day. That's how things are. Th' rain tumbles
down just to mount up in clouds again. So they say. There's no more
water on the earth than there was in the year naught. That's the story,
my boy, if you understand it. There's no more to-day than there was a
thousand years ago-nor no less either. You can't wear water out. No, my
boy: it'll give you the go-by. Try to wear it out, and it takes its
hook into vapour, it has its fingers at its nose to you. It turns into
cloud and falleth as rain on the just and unjust. I wonder if I'm the
just or the unjust."

He started awake as the trap lurched deep into a rut. And he wakened to
the point in his journey. He had travelled some distance since he was
last conscious.

But at length he reached the gate, and stumbled heavily down, reeling,
gripping fast to the trap. He descended into several inches of water.

"Be damned!" he said angrily. "Be damned to the miserable slop."

And he led the horse washing through the gate. He was quite drunk now,
moving blindly, in habit. Everywhere there was water underfoot.

The raised causeway of the house and the farm-stead was dry, however.
But there was a curious roar in the night which seemed to be made in
the darkness of his own intoxication. Reeling, blinded, almost without
consciousness he carried his parcels and the rug and cushions into the
house, dropped them, and went out to put up the horse.

Now he was at home, he was a sleep-walker, waiting only for the moment
of activity to stop. Very deliberately and carefully, he led the horse
down the slope to the cart-shed. She shied and backed.

"Why, wha's amiss?" he hiccupped, plodding steadily on. And he was
again in a wash of water, the horse splashed up water as he went. It
was thickly dark, save for the gig-lamps, and they lit on a rippling
surface of water.

"Well, that's a knock-out," he said, as he came to the cart-shed, and
was wading in six inches of water. But everything seemed to him
amusing. He laughed to think of six inches of water being in the cart-
shed.

He backed in the mare. She was restive. He laughed at the fun of
untackling the mare with a lot of water washing round his feet. He
laughed because it upset her. "What's amiss, what's amiss, a drop o'
water won't hurt you!" As soon as he had undone the traces, she walked
quickly away.

He hung up the shafts and took the gig-lamp. As he came out of the
familiar jumble of shafts and wheels in the shed, the water, in little
waves, came washing strongly against his legs. He staggered and almost
fell.

"Well, what the deuce!" he said, staring round at the running water in
the black, watery night.

He went to meet the running flood, sinking deeper and deeper. His soul
was full of great astonishment. He had to go and look where it came
from, though the ground was going from under his feet. He went on, down
towards the pond, shakily. He rather enjoyed it. He was knee-deep, and
the water was pulling heavily. He stumbled, reeled sickeningly.

Fear took hold of him. Gripping tightly to the lamp, he reeled, and
looked round. The water was carrying his feet away, he was dizzy. He
did not know which way to turn. The water was whirling, whirling, the
whole black night was swooping in rings. He swayed uncertainly at the
centre of all the attack, reeling in dismay. In his soul, he knew he
would fall.

As he staggered something in the water struck his legs, and he fell.
Instantly he was in the turmoil of suffocation. He fought in a black
horror of suffocation, fighting, wrestling, but always borne down,
borne inevitably down. Still he wrestled and fought to get himself
free, in the unutterable struggle of suffocation, but he always fell
again deeper. Something struck his head, a great wonder of anguish went
over him, then the blackness covered him entirely.

In the utter darkness, the unconscious, drowning body was rolled along,
the waters pouring, washing, filling in the place. The cattle woke up
and rose to their feet, the dog began to yelp. And the unconscious,
drowning body was washed along in the black, swirling darkness,
passively.

Mrs. Brangwen woke up and listened. With preternaturally sharp senses
she heard the movement of all the darkness that swirled outside. For a
moment she lay still. Then she went to the window. She heard the sharp
rain, and the deep running of water. She knew her husband was outside.

"Fred," she called, "Fred!"

Away in the night was a hoarse, brutal roar of a mass of water rushing
downwards.

She went downstairs. She could not understand the multiplied running of
water. Stepping down the step into the kitchen, she put her foot into
water. The kitchen was flooded. Where did it come from? She could not
understand.

Water was running in out of the scullery. She paddled through barefoot,
to see. Water was bubbling fiercely under the outer door. She was
afraid. Then something washed against her, something twined under her
foot. It was the riding whip. On the table were the rug and the cushion
and the parcel from the gig.

He had come home.

"Tom!" she called, afraid of her own voice.

She opened the door. Water ran in with a horrid sound. Everywhere was
moving water, a sound of waters.

"Tom!" she cried, standing in her nightdress with the candle, calling
into the darkness and the flood out of the doorway.

"Tom! Tom!"

And she listened. Fred appeared behind her, in trousers and shirt.

"Where is he?" he asked.

He looked at the flood, then at his mother. She seemed small and
uncanny, elvish, in her nightdress.

"Go upstairs," he said. "He'll be in th' stable."

"To-om! To-om!" cried the elderly woman, with a long, unnatural,
penetrating call that chilled her son to the marrow. He quickly pulled
on his boots and his coat.

"Go upstairs, mother," he said; "I'll go an' see where he is."

"To-om! To-o-om!" rang out the shrill, unearthly cry of the small
woman. There was only the noise of water and the mooing of uneasy
cattle, and the long yelping of the dog, clamouring in the darkness.

Fred Brangwen splashed out into the flood with a lantern. His mother
stood on a chair in the doorway, watching him go. It was all water,
water, running, flashing under the lantern.

"Tom! Tom! To-o-om!" came her long, unnatural cry, ringing over the
night. It made her son feel cold in his soul.

And the unconscious, drowning body of the father rolled on below the
house, driven by the black water towards the high-road.

Tilly appeared, a skirt over her nightdress. She saw her mistress
clinging on the top of a chair in the open doorway, a candle burning on
the table.

"God's sake!" cried the old serving-woman. "The cut's burst. That
embankment's broke down. Whativer are we goin' to do!"

Mrs. Brangwen watched her son, and the lantern, go along the upper
causeway to the stable. Then she saw the dark figure of a horse: then
her son hung the lamp in the stable, and the light shone out faintly on
him as he untackled the mare. The mother saw the soft blazed face of
the horse thrust forward into the stable-door. The stables were still
above the flood. But the water flowed strongly into the house.

"It's getting higher," said Tilly. "Hasn't master come in?"

Mrs. Brangwen did not hear.

"Isn't he the-ere?" she called, in her far-reaching, terrifying voice.

"No," came the short answer out of the night.

"Go and loo-ok for him."

His mother's voice nearly drove the youth mad.

He put the halter on the horse and shut the stable door. He came
splashing back through the water, the lantern swinging.

The unconscious, drowning body was pushed past the house in the deepest
current. Fred Brangwen came to his mother.

"I'll go to th' cart-shed," he said.

"To-om, To-o-om!" rang out the strong, inhuman cry. Fred Brangwen's
blood froze, his heart was very angry. He gripped his veins in a
frenzy. Why was she yelling like this? He could not bear the sight of
her, perched on a chair in her white nightdress in the doorway, elvish
and horrible.

"He's taken the mare out of the trap, so he's all right," he said,
growling, pretending to be normal.

But as he descended to the cart-shed, he sank into a foot of water. He
heard the rushing in the distance, he knew the canal had broken down.
The water was running deeper.

The trap was there all right, but no signs of his father. The young man
waded down to the pond. The water rose above his knees, it swirled and
forced him. He drew back.

"Is he the-e-ere?" came the maddening cry of the mother.

"No," was the sharp answer.

"To-om-To-o-om!" came the piercing, free, unearthly call. It seemed
high and supernatural, almost pure. Fred Brangwen hated it. It nearly
drove him mad. So awfully it sang out, almost like a song.

The water was flowing fuller into the house.

"You'd better go up to Beeby's and bring him and Arthur down, and tell
Mrs. Beeby to fetch Wilkinson," said Fred to Tilly. He forced his
mother to go upstairs.

"I know your father is drowned," she said, in a curious dismay.

The flood rose through the night, till it washed the kettle off the hob
in the kitchen. Mrs. Brangwen sat alone at a window upstairs. She
called no more. The men were busy with the pigs and the cattle. They
were coming with a boat for her.

Towards morning the rain ceased, the stars came out over the noise and
the terrifying clucking and trickling of the water. Then there was a
pallor in the east, the light began to come. In the ruddy light of the
dawn she saw the waters spreading out, moving sluggishly, the buildings
rising out of a waste of water. Birds began to sing, drowsily, and as
if slightly hoarse with the dawn. It grew brighte