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 patronized 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
patronized, 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 two 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 recognized 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 hymn, 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 mediæval 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 cognizance 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 scrutinizing 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 though 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 nearby. 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 realized 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 crystallizing 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 recognize 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 recognize 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 naïve,
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 satisfaction 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 yew-trees, 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.”