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 you’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 naïve manner that again was new and
strange to Brangwen, so suave, 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 realized 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 down.
“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.