THE CHILD
From the first, the baby stirred in the young father a deep, strong
emotion he dared scarcely acknowledge, it was so strong and came out of
the dark of him. When he heard the child cry, a terror possessed him,
because of the answering echo from the unfathomed distances in himself.
Must he know in himself such distances, perilous and imminent?
He had the infant in his arms, he walked backwards and forwards
troubled by the crying of his own flesh and blood. This was his own
flesh and blood crying! His soul rose against the voice suddenly
breaking out from him, from the distances in him.
Sometimes in the night, the child cried and cried, when the night was
heavy and sleep oppressed him. And half asleep, he stretched out his
hand to put it over the baby’s face to stop the crying. But something
arrested his hand: the very inhumanness of the intolerable, continuous
crying arrested him. It was so impersonal, without cause or object. Yet
he echoed to it directly, his soul answered its madness. It filled him
with terror, almost with frenzy.
He learned to acquiesce to this, to submit to the awful, obliterated
sources which were the origin of his living tissue. He was not what he
conceived himself to be! Then he was what he was, unknown, potent,
dark.
He became accustomed to the child, he knew how to lift and balance the
little body. The baby had a beautiful, rounded head that moved him
passionately. He would have fought to the last drop to defend that
exquisite, perfect round head.
He learned to know the little hands and feet, the strange, unseeing,
golden-brown eyes, the mouth that opened only to cry, or to suck, or to
show a queer, toothless laugh. He could almost understand even the
dangling legs, which at first had created in him a feeling of aversion.
They could kick in their queer little way, they had their own softness.
One evening, suddenly, he saw the tiny, living thing rolling naked in
the mother’s lap, and he was sick, it was so utterly helpless and
vulnerable and extraneous; in a world of hard surfaces and varying
altitudes, it lay vulnerable and naked at every point. Yet it was quite
blithe. And yet, in its blind, awful crying, was there not the blind,
far-off terror of its own vulnerable nakedness, the terror of being so
utterly delivered over, helpless at every point. He could not bear to
hear it crying. His heart strained and stood on guard against the whole
universe.
But he waited for the dread of these days to pass; he saw the joy
coming. He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear of the baby, a bit
of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like bronze-dust. And he waited,
for the child to become his, to look at him and answer him.
It had a separate being, but it was his own child. His flesh and blood
vibrated to it. He caught the baby to his breast with his passionate,
clapping laugh. And the infant knew him.
As the newly-opened, newly-dawned eyes looked at him, he wanted them to
perceive him, to recognize him. Then he was verified. The child knew
him, a queer contortion of laughter came on its face for him. He caught
it to his breast, clapping with a triumphant laugh.
The golden-brown eyes of the child gradually lit up and dilated at the
sight of the dark-glowing face of the youth. It knew its mother better,
it wanted its mother more. But the brightest, sharpest little ecstasy
was for the father.
It began to be strong, to move vigorously and freely, to make sounds
like words. It was a baby girl now. Already it knew his strong hands,
it exulted in his strong clasp, it laughed and crowed when he played
with it.
And his heart grew red-hot with passionate feeling for the child. She
was not much more than a year old when the second baby was born. Then
he took Ursula for his own. She his first little girl. He had set his
heart on her.
The second had dark blue eyes and a fair skin: it was more a Brangwen,
people said. The hair was fair. But they forgot Anna’s stiff blonde
fleece of childhood. They called the newcomer Gudrun.
This time, Anna was stronger, and not so eager. She did not mind that
the baby was not a boy. It was enough that she had milk and could
suckle her child: Oh, oh, the bliss of the little life sucking the milk
of her body! Oh, oh, oh the bliss, as the infant grew stronger, of the
two tiny hands clutching, catching blindly yet passionately at her
breast, of the tiny mouth seeking her in blind, sure, vital knowledge,
of the sudden consummate peace as the little body sank, the mouth and
throat sucking, sucking, sucking, drinking life from her to make a new
life, almost sobbing with passionate joy of receiving its own
existence, the tiny hands clutching frantically as the nipple was drawn
back, not to be gainsaid. This was enough for Anna. She seemed to pass
off into a kind of rapture of motherhood, her rapture of motherhood was
everything.
So that the father had the elder baby, the weaned child, the
golden-brown, wondering vivid eyes of the little Ursula were for him,
who had waited behind the mother till the need was for him. The mother
felt a sharp stab of jealousy. But she was still more absorbed in the
tiny baby. It was entirely hers, its need was direct upon her.
So Ursula became the child of her father’s heart. She was the little
blossom, he was the sun. He was patient, energetic, inventive for her.
He taught her all the funny little things, he filled her and roused her
to her fullest tiny measure. She answered him with her extravagant
infant’s laughter and her call of delight.
Now there were two babies, a woman came in to do the housework. Anna
was wholly nurse. Two babies were not too much for her. But she hated
any form of work, now her children had come, except the charge of them.
When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy child, always
amusing herself, needing not much attention from other people. At
evening, towards six o’clock, Anna very often went across the lane to
the stile, lifted Ursula over into the field, with a: “Go and meet
Daddy.” Then Brangwen, coming up the steep round of the hill, would see
before him on the brow of the path a tiny, tottering, windblown little
mite with a dark head, who, as soon as she saw him, would come running
in tiny, wild, windmill fashion, lifting her arms up and down to him,
down the steep hill. His heart leapt up, he ran his fastest to her, to
catch her, because he knew she would fall. She came fluttering on,
wildly, with her little limbs flying. And he was glad when he caught
her up in his arms. Once she fell as she came flying to him, he saw her
pitch forward suddenly as she was running with her hands lifted to him;
and when he picked her up, her mouth was bleeding. He could never bear
to think of it, he always wanted to cry, even when he was an old man
and she had become a stranger to him. How he loved that little
Ursula!—his heart had been sharply seared for her, when he was a youth,
first married.
When she was a little older, he would see her recklessly climbing over
the bars of the stile, in her red pinafore, swinging in peril and
tumbling over, picking herself up and flitting towards him. Sometimes
she liked to ride on his shoulder, sometimes she preferred to walk with
his hand, sometimes she would fling her arms round his legs for a
moment, then race free again, whilst he went shouting and calling to
her, a child along with her. He was still only a tall, thin, unsettled
lad of twenty-two.
It was he who had made her her cradle, her little chair, her little
stool, her high chair. It was he who would swing her up to table or who
would make for her a doll out of an old table-leg, whilst she watched
him, saying:
“Make her eyes, Daddy, make her eyes!”
And he made her eyes with his knife.
She was very fond of adorning herself, so he would tie a piece of
cotton round her ear, and hang a blue bead on it underneath for an
ear-ring. The ear-rings varied with a red bead, and a golden bead, and
a little pearl bead. And as he came home at night, seeing her bridling
and looking very self-conscious, he took notice and said:
“So you’re wearing your best golden and pearl ear-rings, to-day?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose you’ve been to see the queen?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Oh, and what had she to say?”
“She said—she said—‘You won’t dirty your nice white frock.’”
He gave her the nicest bits from his plate, putting them into her red,
moist mouth. And he would make on a piece of bread-and-butter a bird,
out of jam: which she ate with extraordinary relish.
After the tea-things were washed up, the woman went away, leaving the
family free. Usually Brangwen helped in the bathing of the children. He
held long discussions with his child as she sat on his knee and he
unfastened her clothes. And he seemed to be talking really of momentous
things, deep moralities. Then suddenly she ceased to hear, having
caught sight of a glassie rolled into a corner. She slipped away, and
was in no hurry to return.
“Come back here,” he said, waiting. She became absorbed, taking no
notice.
“Come on,” he repeated, with a touch of command.
An excited little chuckle came from her, but she pretended to be
absorbed.
“Do you hear, Milady?”
She turned with a fleeting, exulting laugh. He rushed on her, and swept
her up.
“Who was it that didn’t come!” he said, rolling her between his strong
hands, tickling her. And she laughed heartily, heartily. She loved him
that he compelled her with his strength and decision. He was
all-powerful, the tower of strength which rose out of her sight.
When the children were in bed, sometimes Anna and he sat and talked,
desultorily, both of them idle. He read very little. Anything he was
drawn to read became a burning reality to him, another scene outside
his window. Whereas Anna skimmed through a book to see what happened,
then she had enough.
Therefore they would often sit together, talking desultorily. What was
really between them they could not utter. Their words were only
accidents in the mutual silence. When they talked, they gossiped. She
did not care for sewing.
She had a beautiful way of sitting musing, gratefully, as if her heart
were lit up. Sometimes she would turn to him, laughing, to tell him
some little thing that had happened during the day. Then he would
laugh, they would talk awhile, before the vital, physical silence was
between them again.
She was thin but full of colour and life. She was perfectly happy to do
just nothing, only to sit with a curious, languid dignity, so careless
as to be almost regal, so utterly indifferent, so confident. The bond
between them was undefinable, but very strong. It kept everyone else at
a distance.
His face never changed whilst she knew him, it only became more
intense. It was ruddy and dark in its abstraction, not very human, it
had a strong, intent brightness. Sometimes, when his eyes met hers, a
yellow flash from them caused a darkness to swoon over her
consciousness, electric, and a slight strange laugh came on his face.
Her eyes would turn languidly, then close, as if hypnotized. And they
lapsed into the same potent darkness. He had the quality of a young
black cat, intent, unnoticeable, and yet his presence gradually made
itself felt, stealthily and powerfully took hold of her. He called, not
to her, but to something in her, which responded subtly, out of her
unconscious darkness.
So they were together in a darkness, passionate, electric, for ever
haunting the back of the common day, never in the light. In the light,
he seemed to sleep, unknowing. Only she knew him when the darkness set
him free, and he could see with his gold-glowing eyes his intention and
his desires in the dark. Then she was in a spell, then she answered his
harsh, penetrating call with a soft leap of her soul, the darkness woke
up, electric, bristling with an unknown, overwhelming insinuation.
By now they knew each other; she was the daytime, the daylight, he was
the shadow, put aside, but in the darkness potent with an overwhelming
voluptuousness.
She learned not to dread and to hate him, but to fill herself with him,
to give herself to his black, sensual power, that was hidden all the
daytime. And the curious rolling of the eyes, as if she were lapsing in
a trance away from her ordinary consciousness became habitual with her,
when something threatened and opposed her in life, the conscious life.
So they remained as separate in the light, and in the thick darkness,
married. He supported her daytime authority, kept it inviolable at
last. And she, in all the darkness, belonged to him, to his close,
insinuating, hypnotic familiarity.
All his daytime activity, all his public life, was a kind of sleep. She
wanted to be free, to belong to the day. And he ran avoiding the day in
work. After tea, he went to the shed to his carpentry or his
woodcarving. He was restoring the patched, degraded pulpit to its
original form.
But he loved to have the child near him, playing by his feet. She was a
piece of light that really belonged to him, that played within his
darkness. He left the shed door on the latch. And when, with his second
sense of another presence, he knew she was coming, he was satisfied, he
was at rest. When he was alone with her, he did not want to take
notice, to talk. He wanted to live unthinking, with her presence
flickering upon him.
He always went in silence. The child would push open the shed door, and
see him working by lamplight, his sleeves rolled back. His clothes hung
about him, carelessly, like mere wrapping. Inside, his body was
concentrated with a flexible, charged power all of its own, isolated.
From when she was a tiny child Ursula could remember his forearm, with
its fine black hairs and its electric flexibility, working at the bench
through swift, unnoticeable movements, always ambushed in a sort of
silence.
She hung a moment in the door of the shed, waiting for him to notice
her. He turned, his black, curved eyebrows arching slightly.
“Hullo, Twittermiss!”
And he closed the door behind her. Then the child was happy in the shed
that smelled of sweet wood and resounded to the noise of the plane or
the hammer or the saw, yet was charged with the silence of the worker.
She played on, intent and absorbed, among the shavings and the little
nogs of wood. She never touched him: his feet and legs were near, she
did not approach them.
She liked to flit out after him when he was going to church at night.
If he were going to be alone, he swung her over the wall, and let her
come.
Again she was transported when the door was shut behind them, and they
two inherited the big, pale, void place. She would watch him as he lit
the organ candles, wait whilst he began his practicing his tunes, then
she ran foraging here and there, like a kitten playing by herself in
the darkness with eyes dilated. The ropes hung vaguely, twining on the
floor, from the bells in the tower, and Ursula always wanted the
fluffy, red-and-white, or blue-and-white rope-grips. But they were
above her.
Sometimes her mother came to claim her. Then the child was seized with
resentment. She passionately resented her mother’s superficial
authority. She wanted to assert her own detachment.
He, however, also gave her occasional cruel shocks. He let her play
about in the church, she rifled foot-stools and hymn-books and
cushions, like a bee among flowers, whilst the organ echoed away. This
continued for some weeks. Then the charwoman worked herself up into a
frenzy of rage, to dare to attack Brangwen, and one day descended on
him like a harpy. He wilted away, and wanted to break the old beast’s
neck.
Instead he came glowering in fury to the house, and turned on Ursula.
“Why, you tiresome little monkey, can’t you even come to church without
pulling the place to bits?”
His voice was harsh and cat-like, he was blind to the child. She shrank
away in childish anguish and dread. What was it, what awful thing was
it?
The mother turned with her calm, almost superb manner.
“What has she done, then?”
“Done? She shall go in the church no more, pulling and littering and
destroying.”
The wife slowly rolled her eyes and lowered her eyelids.
“What has she destroyed, then?”
He did not know.
“I’ve just had Mrs. Wilkinson at me,” he cried, “with a list of things
she’s done.”
Ursula withered under the contempt and anger of the “she”, as he spoke
of her.
“Send Mrs. Wilkinson here to me with a list of the things she’s done,”
said Anna. “I am the one to hear that.”
“It’s not the things the child has done,” continued the mother, “that
have put you out so much, it’s because you can’t bear being spoken to
by that old woman. But you haven’t the courage to turn on her when she
attacks you, you bring your rage here.”
He relapsed into silence. Ursula knew that he was wrong. In the
outside, upper world, he was wrong. Already came over the child the
cold sense of the impersonal world. There she knew her mother was
right. But still her heart clamoured after her father, for him to be
right, in his dark, sensuous underworld. But he was angry, and went his
way in blackness and brutal silence again.
The child ran about absorbed in life, quiet, full of amusement. She did
not notice things, nor changes nor alterations. One day she would find
daisies in the grass, another day, apple-blossoms would be sprinkled
white on the ground, and she would run among it, for pleasure because
it was there. Yet again birds would be pecking at the cherries, her
father would throw cherries down from the tree all round her on the
garden. Then the fields were full of hay.
She did not remember what had been nor what would be, the outside
things were there each day. She was always herself, the world outside
was accidental. Even her mother was accidental to her: a condition that
happened to endure.
Only her father occupied any permanent position in the childish
consciousness. When he came back she remembered vaguely how he had gone
away, when he went away she knew vaguely that she must wait for his
coming back. Whereas her mother, returning from an outing, merely
became present, there was no reason for connecting her with some
previous departure.
The return or the departure of the father was the one event which the
child remembered. When he came, something woke up in her, some
yearning. She knew when he was out of joint or irritable or tired: then
she was uneasy, she could not rest.
When he was in the house, the child felt full and warm, rich like a
creature in the sunshine. When he was gone, she was vague, forgetful.
When he scolded her even, she was often more aware of him than of
herself. He was her strength and her greater self.
Ursula was three years old when another baby girl was born. Then the
two small sisters were much together, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun was a
quiet child who played for hours alone, absorbed in her fancies. She
was brown-haired, fair-skinned, strangely placid, almost passive. Yet
her will was indomitable, once set. From the first she followed
Ursula’s lead. Yet she was a thing to herself, so that to watch the two
together was strange. They were like two young animals playing together
but not taking real notice of each other. Gudrun was the mother’s
favourite—except that Anna always lived in her latest baby.
The burden of so many lives depending on him wore the youth down. He
had his work in the office, which was done purely by effort of will: he
had his barren passion for the church; he had three young children.
Also at this time his health was not good. So he was haggard and
irritable, often a pest in the house. Then he was told to go to his
woodwork, or to the church.
Between him and the little Ursula there came into being a strange
alliance. They were aware of each other. He knew the child was always
on his side. But in his consciousness he counted it for nothing. She
was always for him. He took it for granted. Yet his life was based on
her, even whilst she was a tiny child, on her support and her accord.
Anna continued in her violent trance of motherhood, always busy, often
harassed, but always contained in her trance of motherhood. She seemed
to exist in her own violent fruitfulness, and it was as if the sun
shone tropically on her. Her colour was bright, her eyes full of a
fecund gloom, her brown hair tumbled loosely over her ears. She had a
look of richness. No responsibility, no sense of duty troubled her. The
outside, public life was less than nothing to her, really.
Whereas when, at twenty-six, he found himself father of four children,
with a wife who lived intrinsically like the ruddiest lilies of the
field, he let the weight of responsibility press on him and drag him.
It was then that his child Ursula strove to be with him. She was with
him, even as a baby of four, when he was irritable and shouted and made
the household unhappy. She suffered from his shouting, but somehow it
was not really him. She wanted it to be over, she wanted to resume her
normal connection with him. When he was disagreeable, the child echoed
to the crying of some need in him, and she responded blindly. Her heart
followed him as if he had some tie with her, and some love which he
could not deliver. Her heart followed him persistently, in its love.
But there was the dim, childish sense of her own smallness and
inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not do anything,
she was not enough. She could not be important to him. This knowledge
deadened her from the first.
Still she set towards him like a quivering needle. All her life was
directed by her awareness of him, her wakefulness to his being. And she
was against her mother.
Her father was the dawn wherein her consciousness woke up. But for him,
she might have gone on like the other children, Gudrun and Theresa and
Catherine, one with the flowers and insects and playthings, having no
existence apart from the concrete object of her attention. But her
father came too near to her. The clasp of his hands and the power of
his breast woke her up almost in pain from the transient
unconsciousness of childhood. Wide-eyed, unseeing, she was awake before
she knew how to see. She was wakened too soon. Too soon the call had
come to her, when she was a small baby, and her father held her close
to his breast, her sleep-living heart was beaten into wakefulness by
the striving of his bigger heart, by his clasping her to his body for
love and for fulfilment, asking as a magnet must always ask. From her
the response had struggled dimly, vaguely into being.
The children were dressed roughly for the country. When she was little,
Ursula pattered about in little wooden clogs, a blue overall over her
thick red dress, a red shawl crossed on her breast and tied behind
again. So she ran with her father to the garden.
The household rose early. He was out digging by six o’clock in the
morning, he went to his work at half-past eight. And Ursula was usually
in the garden with him, though not near at hand.
At Eastertime one year, she helped him to set potatoes. It was the
first time she had ever helped him. The occasion remained as a picture,
one of her earliest memories. They had gone out soon after dawn. A cold
wind was blowing. He had his old trousers tucked into his boots, he
wore no coat nor waistcoat, his shirt-sleeves fluttered in the wind,
his face was ruddy and intent, in a kind of sleep. When he was at work
he neither heard nor saw. A long, thin man, looking still a youth, with
a line of black moustache above his thick mouth, and his fine hair
blown on his forehead, he worked away at the earth in the grey first
light, alone. His solitariness drew the child like a spell.
The wind came chill over the dark-green fields. Ursula ran up and
watched him push the setting-peg in at one side of his ready earth,
stride across, and push it in the other side, pulling the line taut and
clear upon the clods intervening. Then with a sharp cutting noise the
bright spade came towards her, cutting a grip into the new, soft earth.
He struck his spade upright and straightened himself.
“Do you want to help me?” he said.
She looked up at him from out of her little woollen bonnet.
“Ay,” he said, “you can put some taters in for me. Look—like that—these
little sprits standing up—so much apart, you see.”
And stooping down he quickly, surely placed the spritted potatoes in
the soft grip, where they rested separate and pathetic on the heavy
cold earth.
He gave her a little basket of potatoes, and strode himself to the
other end of the line. She saw him stooping, working towards her. She
was excited, and unused. She put in one potato, then rearranged it, to
make it sit nicely. Some of the sprits were broken, and she was afraid.
The responsibility excited her like a string tying her up. She could
not help looking with dread at the string buried under the heaped-back
soil. Her father was working nearer, stooping, working nearer. She was
overcome by her responsibility. She put potatoes quickly into the cold
earth.
He came near.
“Not so close,” he said, stooping over her potatoes, taking some out
and rearranging the others. She stood by with the painful terrified
helplessness of childhood. He was so unseeing and confident, she wanted
to do the thing and yet she could not. She stood by looking on, her
little blue overall fluttering in the wind, the red woollen ends of her
shawl blowing gustily. Then he went down the row, relentlessly, turning
the potatoes in with his sharp spade-cuts. He took no notice of her,
only worked on. He had another world from hers.
She stood helplessly stranded on his world. He continued his work. She
knew she could not help him. A little bit forlorn, at last she turned
away, and ran down the garden, away from him, as fast as she could go
away from him, to forget him and his work.
He missed her presence, her face in her red woollen bonnet, her blue
overall fluttering. She ran to where a little water ran trickling
between grass and stones. That she loved.
When he came by he said to her:
“You didn’t help me much.”
The child looked at him dumbly. Already her heart was heavy because of
her own disappointment. Her mouth was dumb and pathetic. But he did not
notice, he went his way.
And she played on, because of her disappointment persisting even the
more in her play. She dreaded work, because she could not do it as he
did it. She was conscious of the great breach between them. She knew
she had no power. The grown-up power to work deliberately was a mystery
to her.
He would smash into her sensitive child’s world destructively. Her
mother was lenient, careless. The children played about as they would
all day. Ursula was thoughtless—why should she remember things? If
across the garden she saw the hedge had budded, and if she wanted these
greeny-pink, tiny buds for bread-and-cheese, to play at teaparty with,
over she went for them.
Then suddenly, perhaps the next day, her soul would almost start out of
her body as her father turned on her, shouting:
“Who’s been tramplin’ an’ dancin’ across where I’ve just sowed seed? I
know it’s you, nuisance! Can you find nowhere else to walk, but just
over my seed beds? But it’s like you, that is—no heed but to follow
your own greedy nose.”
It had shocked him in his intent world to see the zigzagging lines of
deep little foot-prints across his work. The child was infinitely more
shocked. Her vulnerable little soul was flayed and trampled. _Why_ were
the foot-prints there? She had not wanted to make them. She stood
dazzled with pain and shame and unreality.
Her soul, her consciousness seemed to die away. She became shut off and
senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul had gone hard and
unresponsive. The sense of her own unreality hardened her like a frost.
She cared no longer.
And the sight of her face, shut and superior with self-asserting
indifference, made a flame of rage go over him. He wanted to break her.
“I’ll break your obstinate little face,” he said, through shut teeth,
lifting his hand.
The child did not alter in the least. The look of indifference,
complete glancing indifference, as if nothing but herself existed to
her, remained fixed.
Yet far away in her, the sobs were tearing her soul. And when he had
gone, she would go and creep under the parlour sofa, and lie clinched
in the silent, hidden misery of childhood.
When she crawled out, after an hour or so, she went rather stiffly to
play. She willed to forget. She cut off her childish soul from memory,
so that the pain, and the insult should not be real. She asserted
herself only. There was not nothing in the world but her own self. So
very soon, she came to believe in the outward malevolence that was
against her. And very early, she learned that even her adored father
was part of this malevolence. And very early she learned to harden her
soul in resistance and denial of all that was outside her, harden
herself upon her own being.
She never felt sorry for what she had done, she never forgave those who
had made her guilty. If he had said to her, “Why, Ursula, did you
trample my carefully-made bed?” that would have hurt her to the quick,
and she would have done anything for him. But she was always tormented
by the unreality of outside things. The earth was to walk on. Why must
she avoid a certain patch, just because it was called a seed-bed? It
was the earth to walk on. This was her instinctive assumption. And when
he bullied her, she became hard, cut herself off from all connection,
lived in the little separate world of her own violent will.
As she grew older, five, six, seven, the connection between her and her
father was even stronger. Yet it was always straining to break. She was
always relapsing on her own violent will into her own separate world of
herself. This made him grind his teeth with bitterness, for he still
wanted her. But she could harden herself into her own self’s universe,
impregnable.
He was very fond of swimming, and in warm weather would take her down
to the canal, to a silent place, or to a big pond or reservoir, to
bathe. He would take her on his back as he went swimming, and she clung
close, feeling his strong movement under her, so strong, as if it would
uphold all the world. Then he taught her to swim.
She was a fearless little thing, when he dared her. And he had a
curious craving to frighten her, to see what she would do with him. He
said, would she ride on his back whilst he jumped off the canal bridge
down into the water beneath.
She would. He loved to feel the naked child clinging on to his
shoulders. There was a curious fight between their two wills. He
mounted the parapet of the canal bridge. The water was a long way down.
But the child had a deliberate will set upon his. She held herself
fixed to him.
He leapt, and down they went. The crash of the water as they went under
struck through the child’s small body, with a sort of unconsciousness.
But she remained fixed. And when they came up again, and when they went
to the bank, and when they sat on the grass side by side, he laughed,
and said it was fine. And the dark-dilated eyes of the child looked at
him wonderingly, darkly, wondering from the shock, yet reserved and
unfathomable, so he laughed almost with a sob.
In a moment she was clinging safely on his back again, and he was
swimming in deep water. She was used to his nakedness, and to her
mother’s nakedness, ever since she was born. They were clinging to each
other, and making up to each other for the strange blow that had been
struck at them. Yet still, on other days, he would leap again with her
from the bridge, daringly, almost wickedly. Till at length, as he
leapt, once, she dropped forward on to his head, and nearly broke his
neck, so that they fell into the water in a heap, and fought for a few
moments with death. He saved her, and sat on the bank, quivering. But
his eyes were full of the blackness of death. It was as if death had
cut between their two lives, and separated them.
Still they were not separate. There was this curious taunting intimacy
between them. When the fair came, she wanted to go in the swingboats.
He took her, and, standing up in the boat, holding on to the irons,
began to drive higher, perilously higher. The child clung fast on her
seat.
“Do you want to go any higher?” he said to her, and she laughed with
her mouth, her eyes wide and dilated. They were rushing through the
air.
“Yes,” she said, feeling as if she would turn into vapour, lose hold of
everything, and melt away. The boat swung far up, then down like a
stone, only to be caught sickeningly up again.
“Any higher?” he called, looking at her over his shoulder, his face
evil and beautiful to her.
She laughed with white lips.
He sent the swingboat sweeping through the air in a great semi-circle,
till it jerked and swayed at the high horizontal. The child clung on,
pale, her eyes fixed on him. People below were calling. The jerk at the
top had almost shaken them both out. He had done what he could—and he
was attracting censure. He sat down, and let the swingboat swing itself
out.
People in the crowd cried shame on him as he came out of the swingboat.
He laughed. The child clung to his hand, pale and mute. In a while she
was violently sick. He gave her lemonade, and she gulped a little.
“Don’t tell your mother you’ve been sick,” he said. There was no need
to ask that. When she got home, the child crept away under the parlour
sofa, like a sick little animal, and was a long time before she crawled
out.
But Anna got to know of this escapade, and was passionately angry and
contemptuous of him. His golden-brown eyes glittered, he had a strange,
cruel little smile. And as the child watched him, for the first time in
her life a disillusion came over her, something cold and isolating. She
went over to her mother. Her soul was dead towards him. It made her
sick.
Still she forgot and continued to love him, but ever more coldly. He
was at this time, when he was about twenty-eight years old, strange and
violent in his being, sensual. He acquired some power over Anna, over
everybody he came into contact with.
After a long bout of hostility, Anna at last closed with him. She had
now four children, all girls. For seven years she had been absorbed in
wifehood and motherhood. For years he had gone on beside her, never
really encroaching upon her. Then gradually another self seemed to
assert its being within him. He was still silent and separate. But she
could feel him all the while coming near upon her, as if his breast and
his body were threatening her, and he was always coming closer.
Gradually he became indifferent of responsibility. He would do what
pleased him, and no more.
He began to go away from home. He went to Nottingham on Saturdays,
always alone, to the football match and to the music-hall, and all the
time he was watching, in readiness. He never cared to drink. But with
his hard, golden-brown eyes, so keen seeing with their tiny black
pupils, he watched all the people, everything that happened, and he
waited.
In the Empire one evening he sat next to two girls. He was aware of the
one beside him. She was rather small, common, with a fresh complexion
and an upper lip that lifted from her teeth, so that, when she was not
conscious, her mouth was slightly open and her lips pressed outwards in
a kind of blind appeal. She was strongly aware of the man next to her,
so that all her body was still, very still. Her face watched the stage.
Her arms went down into her lap, very self-conscious and still.
A gleam lit up in him: should he begin with her? Should he begin with
her to live the other, the unadmitted life of his desire? Why not? He
had always been so good. Save for his wife, he was a virgin. And why,
when all women were different? Why, when he would only live once? He
wanted the other life. His own life was barren, not enough. He wanted
the other.
Her open mouth, showing the small, irregular, white teeth, appealed to
him. It was open and ready. It was so vulnerable. Why should he not go
in and enjoy what was there? The slim arm that went down so still and
motionless to the lap, it was pretty. She would be small, he would be
able almost to hold her in his two hands. She would be small, almost
like a child, and pretty. Her childishness whetted him keenly. She
would be helpless between his hands.
“That was the best turn we’ve had,” he said to her, leaning over as he
clapped his hands. He felt strong and unshakeable in himself, set over
against all the world. His soul was keen and watchful, glittering with
a kind of amusement. He was perfectly self-contained. He was himself,
the absolute, the rest of the world was the object that should
contribute to his being.
The girl started, turned round, her eyes lit up with an almost painful
flash of a smile, the colour came deeply in her cheeks.
“Yes, it was,” she said, quite meaninglessly, and she covered her
rather prominent teeth with her lips. Then she sat looking straight
before her, seeing nothing, only conscious of the colour burning in her
cheeks.
It pricked him with a pleasant sensation. His veins and his nerves
attended to her, she was so young and palpitating.
“It’s not such a good programme as last week’s,” he said.
Again she half turned her face to him, and her clear, bright eyes,
bright like shallow water, filled with light, frightened, yet
involuntarily lighting and shaking with response.
“Oh, isn’t it! I wasn’t able to come last week.”
He noted the common accent. It pleased him. He knew what class she came
of. Probably she was a warehouse-lass. He was glad she was a common
girl.
He proceeded to tell her about the last week’s programme. She answered
at random, very confusedly. The colour burned in her cheek. Yet she
always answered him. The girl on the other side sat remotely, obviously
silent. He ignored her. All his address was for his own girl, with her
bright, shallow eyes and her vulnerably opened mouth.
The talk went on, meaningless and random on her part, quite deliberate
and purposive on his. It was a pleasure to him to make this
conversation, an activity pleasant as a fine game of chance and skill.
He was very quiet and pleasant-humoured, but so full of strength. She
fluttered beside his steady pressure of warmth and his surety.
He saw the performance drawing to a close. His senses were alert and
wilful. He would press his advantages. He followed her and her plain
friend down the stairs to the street. It was raining.
“It’s a nasty night,” he said. “Shall you come and have a drink of
something—a cup of coffee—it’s early yet.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, looking away into the night.
“I wish you would,” he said, putting himself as it were at her mercy.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Come to Rollins?” he said.
“No—not there.”
“To Carson’s, then?”
There was a silence. The other girl hung on. The man was the centre of
positive force.
“Will your friend come as well?”
There was another moment of silence, while the other girl felt her
ground.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve promised to meet a friend.”
“Another time, then?” he said.
“Oh, thanks,” she replied, very awkward.
“Good night,” he said.
“See you later,” said his girl to her friend.
“Where?” said the friend.
“You know, Gertie,” replied his girl.
“All right, Jennie.”
The friend was gone into the darkness. He turned with his girl to the
tea-shop. They talked all the time. He made his sentences in sheer,
almost muscular pleasure of exercising himself with her. He was looking
at her all the time, perceiving her, appreciating her, finding her out,
gratifying himself with her. He could see distinct attractions in her;
her eyebrows, with their particular curve, gave him keen aesthetic
pleasure. Later on he would see her bright, pellucid eyes, like shallow
water, and know those. And there remained the open, exposed mouth, red
and vulnerable. That he reserved as yet. And all the while his eyes
were on the girl, estimating and handling with pleasure her young
softness. About the girl herself, who or what she was, he cared
nothing, he was quite unaware that she was anybody. She was just the
sensual object of his attention.
“Shall we go, then?” he said.
She rose in silence, as if acting without a mind, merely physically. He
seemed to hold her in his will. Outside it was still raining.
“Let’s have a walk,” he said. “I don’t mind the rain, do you?”
“No, I don’t mind it,” she said.
He was alert in every sense and fibre, and yet quite sure and steady,
and lit up, as if transfused. He had a free sensation of walking in his
own darkness, not in anybody else’s world at all. He was purely a world
to himself, he had nothing to do with any general consciousness. Just
his own senses were supreme. All the rest was external, insignificant,
leaving him alone with this girl whom he wanted to absorb, whose
properties he wanted to absorb into his own senses. He did not care
about her, except that he wanted to overcome her resistance, to have
her in his power, fully and exhaustively to enjoy her.
They turned into the dark streets. He held her umbrella over her, and
put his arm round her. She walked as if she were unaware. But
gradually, as he walked, he drew her a little closer, into the movement
of his side and hip. She fitted in there very well. It was a real good
fit, to walk with her like this. It made him exquisitely aware of his
own muscular self. And his hand that grasped her side felt one curve of
her, and it seemed like a new creation to him, a reality, an absolute,
an existing tangible beauty of the absolute. It was like a star.
Everything in him was absorbed in the sensual delight of this one
small, firm curve in her body, that his hand, and his whole being, had
lighted upon.
He led her into the Park, where it was almost dark. He noticed a corner
between two walls, under a great overhanging bush of ivy.
“Let us stand here a minute,” he said.
He put down the umbrella, and followed her into the corner, retreating
out of the rain. He needed no eyes to see. All he wanted was to know
through touch. She was like a piece of palpable darkness. He found her
in the darkness, put his arms round her and his hands upon her. She was
silent and inscrutable. But he did not want to know anything about her,
he only wanted to discover her. And through her clothing, what absolute
beauty he touched.
“Take your hat off,” he said.
Silently, obediently, she shook off her hat and gave herself to his
arms again. He liked her—he liked the feel of her—he wanted to know her
more closely. He let his fingers subtly seek out her cheek and neck.
What amazing beauty and pleasure, in the dark! His fingers had often
touched Anna on the face and neck like that. What matter! It was one
man who touched Anna, another who now touched this girl. He liked best
his new self. He was given over altogether to the sensuous knowledge of
this woman, and every moment he seemed to be touching absolute beauty,
something beyond knowledge.
Very close, marvelling and exceedingly joyful in their discoveries, his
hands pressed upon her, so subtly, so seekingly, so finely and
desirously searching her out, that she too was almost swooning in the
absolute of sensual knowledge. In utter sensual delight she clenched
her knees, her thighs, her loins together! It was an added beauty to
him.
But he was patiently working for her relaxation, patiently, his whole
being fixed in the smile of latent gratification, his whole body
electric with a subtle, powerful, reducing force upon her. So he came
at length to kiss her, and she was almost betrayed by his insidious
kiss. Her open mouth was too helpless and unguarded. He knew this, and
his first kiss was very gentle, and soft, and assuring, so assuring. So
that her soft, defenseless mouth became assured, even bold, seeking
upon his mouth. And he answered her gradually, gradually, his soft kiss
sinking in softly, softly, but ever more heavily, more heavily yet,
till it was too heavy for her to meet, and she began to sink under it.
She was sinking, sinking, his smile of latent gratification was
becoming more tense, he was sure of her. He let the whole force of his
will sink upon her to sweep her away. But it was too great a shock for
her. With a sudden horrible movement she ruptured the state that
contained them both.
“Don’t—don’t!”
It was a rather horrible cry that seemed to come out of her, not to
belong to her. It was some strange agony of terror crying out the
words. There was something vibrating and beside herself in the noise.
His nerves ripped like silk.
“What’s the matter?” he said, as if calmly. “What’s the matter?”
She came back to him, but trembling, reservedly this time.
Her cry had given him gratification. But he knew he had been too sudden
for her. He was now careful. For a while he merely sheltered her. Also
there had broken a flaw into his perfect will. He wanted to persist, to
begin again, to lead up to the point where he had let himself go on
her, and then manage more carefully, successfully. So far she had won.
And the battle was not over yet. But another voice woke in him and
prompted him to let her go—let her go in contempt.
He sheltered her, and soothed her, and caressed her, and kissed her,
and again began to come nearer, nearer. He gathered himself together.
Even if he did not take her, he would make her relax, he would fuse
away her resistance. So softly, softly, with infinite caressiveness he
kissed her, and the whole of his being seemed to fondle her. Till, at
the verge, swooning at the breaking point, there came from her a
beaten, inarticulate, moaning cry:
“Don’t—oh, don’t!”
His veins fused with extreme voluptuousness. For a moment he almost
lost control of himself, and continued automatically. But there was a
moment of inaction, of cold suspension. He was not going to take her.
He drew her to him and soothed her, and caressed her. But the pure zest
had gone. She struggled to herself and realized he was not going to
take her. And then, at the very last moment, when his fondling had come
near again, his hot living desire despising her, against his cold
sensual desire, she broke violently away from him.
“Don’t,” she cried, harsh now with hatred, and she flung her hand
across and hit him violently. “Keep off of me.”
His blood stood still for a moment. Then the smile came again within
him, steady, cruel.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he said, with suave irony. “Nobody’s going to
hurt you.”
“I know what _you_ want,” she said.
“_I_ know what I want,” he said. “What’s the odds?”
“Well, you’re not going to have it off _me._”
“Aren’t I? Well, then I’m not. It’s no use crying about it, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” said the girl, rather disconcerted by his irony.
“But there’s no need to have a row about it. We can kiss good night
just the same, can’t we?”
She was silent in the darkness.
“Or do you want your hat and umbrella to go home this minute?”
Still she was silent. He watched her dark figure as she stood there on
the edge of the faint darkness, and he waited.
“Come and say good night nicely, if we’re going to say it,” he said.
Still she did not stir. He put his hand out and drew her into the
darkness again.
“It’s warmer in here,” he said; “a lot cosier.”
His will had not yet relaxed from her. The moment of hatred exhilarated
him.
“I’m going now,” she muttered, as he closed his hand over her.
“See how well you fit your place,” he said, as he drew her to her
previous position, close upon him. “What do you want to leave it for?”
And gradually the intoxication invaded him again, the zest came back.
After all, why should he not take her?
But she did not yield to him entirely.
“Are you a married man?” she asked at length.
“What if I am?” he said.
She did not answer.
“I don’t ask you whether _you’re_ married or not,” he said.
“You know jolly well I’m _not,”_ she answered hotly. Oh, if she could
only break away from him, if only she need not yield to him.
At length her will became cold against him. She had escaped. But she
hated him for her escape more than for her danger. Did he despise her
so coldly? And she was in torture of adherence to him still.
“Shall I see you next week—next Saturday?” he said, as they returned to
the town. She did not answer.
“Come to the Empire with me—you and Gertie,” he said.
“I should look well, going with a married man,” she said.
“I’m no less of a man for being married, am I?” he said.
“Oh, it’s a different matter altogether with a married man,” she said,
in a ready-made speech that showed her chagrin.
“How’s that?” he asked.
But she would not enlighten him. Yet she promised, without promising,
to be at the meeting-place next Saturday evening.
So he left her. He did not know her name. He caught a train and went
home.
It was the last train, he was very late. He was not home till midnight.
But he was quite indifferent. He had no real relation with his home,
not this man which he now was. Anna was sitting up for him. She saw the
queer, absolved look on his face, a sort of latent, almost sinister
smile, as if he were absolved from his “good” ties.
“Where have you been?” she asked, puzzled, interested.
“To the Empire.”
“Who with?”
“By myself. I came home with Tom Cooper.”
She looked at him, and wondered what he had been doing. She was
indifferent as to whether he lied or not.
“You have come home very strange,” she said. And there was an
appreciative inflexion in the speech.
He was not affected. As for his humble, good self, he was absolved from
it. He sat down and ate heartily. He was not tired. He seemed to take
no notice of her.
For Anna the moment was critical. She kept herself aloof, and watched
him. He talked to her, but with a little indifference, since he was
scarcely aware of her. So, then she did not affect him. Here was a new
turn of affairs! He was rather attractive, nevertheless. She liked him
better than the ordinary mute, half-effaced, half-subdued man she
usually knew him to be. So, he was blossoming out into his real self!
It piqued her. Very good, let him blossom! She liked a new turn of
affairs. He was a strange man come home to her. Glancing at him, she
saw she could not reduce him to what he had been before. In an instant
she gave it up. Yet not without a pang of rage, which would insist on
their old, beloved love, their old, accustomed intimacy and her old,
established supremacy. She almost rose up to fight for them. And
looking at him, and remembering his father, she was wary. This was the
new turn of affairs!
Very good, if she could not influence him in the old way, she would be
level with him in the new. Her old defiant hostility came up. Very
good, she too was out on her own adventure. Her voice, her manner
changed, she was ready for the game. Something was liberated in her.
She liked him. She liked this strange man come home to her. He was very
welcome, indeed! She was very glad to welcome a stranger. She had been
bored by the old husband. To his latent, cruel smile she replied with
brilliant challenge. He expected her to keep the moral fortress. Not
she! It was much too dull a part. She challenged him back with a sort
of radiance, very bright and free, opposite to him. He looked at her,
and his eyes glinted. She too was out in the field.
His senses pricked up and keenly attended to her. She laughed,
perfectly indifferent and loose as he was. He came towards her. She
neither rejected him nor responded to him. In a kind of radiance,
superb in her inscrutability, she laughed before him. She too could
throw everything overboard, love, intimacy, responsibility. What were
her four children to her now? What did it matter that this man was the
father of her four children?
He was the sensual male seeking his pleasure, she was the female ready
to take hers: but in her own way. A man could turn into a free lance:
so then could a woman. She adhered as little as he to the moral world.
All that had gone before was nothing to her. She was another woman,
under the instance of a strange man. He was a stranger to her, seeking
his own ends. Very good. She wanted to see what this stranger would do
now, what he was.
She laughed, and kept him at arm’s length, whilst apparently ignoring
him. She watched him undress as if he were a stranger. Indeed he was a
stranger to her.
And she roused him profoundly, violently, even before he touched her.
The little creature in Nottingham had but been leading up to this. They
abandoned in one motion the moral position, each was seeking
gratification pure and simple.
Strange his wife was to him. It was as if he were a perfect stranger,
as if she were infinitely and essentially strange to him, the other
half of the world, the dark half of the moon. She waited for his touch
as if he were a marauder who had come in, infinitely unknown and
desirable to her. And he began to discover her. He had an inkling of
the vastness of the unknown sensual store of delights she was. With a
passion of voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny beauty, in a
kind of frenzy of enjoyment, he lit upon her: her beauty, the beauties,
the separate, several beauties of her body.
He was quite ousted from himself, and sensually transported by that
which he discovered in her. He was another man revelling over her.
There was no tenderness, no love between them any more, only the
maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant
gratification in the sensual beauties of her body. And she was a store,
a store of absolute beauties that it drove him to contemplate. There
was such a feast to enjoy, and he with only one man’s capacity.
He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some time—it
was a duel: no love, no words, no kisses even, only the maddening
perception of beauty consummate, absolute through touch. He wanted to
touch her, to discover her, maddeningly he wanted to know her. Yet he
must not hurry, or he missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a
time. And the multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little
rapturous places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire to be able
to know more, to have strength to know more. For all was there.
He would say during the daytime:
“To-night I shall know the little hollow under her ankle, where the
blue vein crosses.” And the thought of it, and the desire for it, made
a thick darkness of anticipation.
He would go all the day waiting for the night to come, when he could
give himself to the enjoyment of some luxurious absolute of beauty in
her. The thought of the hidden resources of her, the undiscovered
beauties and ecstatic places of delight in her body, waiting, only
waiting for him to discover them, sent him slightly insane. He was
obsessed. If he did not discover and make known to himself these
delights, they might be lost for ever. He wished he had a hundred men’s
energies, with which to enjoy her. [He wished he were a cat, to lick
her with a rough, grating, lascivious tongue. He wanted to wallow in
her, bury himself in her flesh, cover himself over with her flesh.]
And she, separate, with a strange, dangerous, glistening look in her
eyes received all his activities upon her as if they were expected by
her, and provoked him when he was quiet to more, till sometimes he was
ready to perish for sheer inability to be satisfied of her, inability
to have had enough of her.
Their children became mere offspring to them, they lived in the
darkness and death of their own sensual activities. Sometimes he felt
he was going mad with a sense of Absolute Beauty, perceived by him in
her through his senses. It was something too much for him. And in
everything, was this same, almost sinister, terrifying beauty. But in
the revelations of her body through contact with his body, was the
ultimate beauty, to know which was almost death in itself, and yet for
the knowledge of which he would have undergone endless torture. He
would have forfeited anything, anything, rather than forego his right
even to the instep of her foot, and the place from which the toes
radiated out, the little, miraculous white plain from which ran the
little hillocks of the toes, and the folded, dimpling hollows between
the toes. He felt he would have died rather than forfeit this.
This was what their love had become, a sensuality violent and extreme
as death. They had no conscious intimacy, no tenderness of love. It was
all the lust and the infinite, maddening intoxication of the sense, a
passion of death.
He had always, all his life, had a secret dread of Absolute Beauty. It
had always been like a fetish to him, something to fear, really. For it
was immoral and against mankind. So he had turned to the Gothic form,
which always asserted the broken desire of mankind in its pointed
arches, escaping the rolling, absolute beauty of the round arch.
But now he had given way, and with infinite sensual violence gave
himself to the realization of this supreme, immoral, Absolute Beauty,
in the body of woman. It seemed to him, that it came to being in the
body of woman, under his touch. Under his touch, even under his sight,
it was there. But when he neither saw nor touched the perfect place, it
was not perfect, it was not there. And he must make it exist.
But still the thing terrified him. Awful and threatening it was,
dangerous to a degree, even whilst he gave himself to it. It was pure
darkness, also. All the shameful things of the body revealed themselves
to him now with a sort of sinister, tropical beauty. All the shameful,
natural and unnatural acts of sensual voluptuousness which he and the
woman partook of together, created together, they had their heavy
beauty and their delight. Shame, what was it? It was part of extreme
delight. It was that part of delight of which man is usually afraid.
Why afraid? The secret, shameful things are most terribly beautiful.
They accepted shame, and were one with it in their most unlicensed
pleasures. It was incorporated. It was a bud that blossomed into beauty
and heavy, fundamental gratification.
Their outward life went on much the same, but the inward life was
revolutionized. The children became less important, the parents were
absorbed in their own living.
And gradually, Brangwen began to find himself free to attend to the
outside life as well. His intimate life was so violently active, that
it set another man in him free. And this new man turned with interest
to public life, to see what part he could take in it. This would give
him scope for new activity, activity of a kind for which he was now
created and released. He wanted to be unanimous with the whole of
purposive mankind.
At this time Education was in the forefront as a subject of interest.
There was the talk of new Swedish methods, of handwork instruction, and
so on. Brangwen embraced sincerely the idea of handwork in schools. For
the first time, he began to take real interest in a public affair. He
had at length, from his profound sensual activity, developed a real
purposive self.
There was talk of night-schools, and of handicraft classes. He wanted
to start a woodwork class in Cossethay, to teach carpentry and joinery
and wood-carving to the village boys, two nights a week. This seemed to
him a supremely desirable thing to be doing. His pay would be very
little—and when he had it, he spent it all on extra wood and tools. But
he was very happy and keen in his new public spirit.
He started his night-classes in woodwork when he was thirty years old.
By this time he had five children, the last a boy. But boy or girl
mattered very little to him. He had a natural blood-affection for his
children, and he liked them as they turned up: boys or girls. Only he
was fondest of Ursula. Somehow, she seemed to be at the back of his new
night-school venture.
The house by the yew trees was in connection with the great human
endeavour at last. It gained a new vigour thereby.
To Ursula, a child of eight, the increase in magic was considerable.
She heard all the talk, she saw the parish room fitted up as a
workshop. The parish room was a high, stone, barn-like, ecclesiastical
building standing away by itself in the Brangwens’ second garden,
across the lane. She was always attracted by its age and its stranded
obsoleteness. Now she watched preparations made, she sat on the flight
of stone steps that came down from the porch to the garden, and heard
her father and the vicar talking and planning and working. Then an
inspector came, a very strange man, and stayed talking with her father
all one evening. Everything was settled, and twelve boys enrolled their
names. It was very exciting.
But to Ursula, everything her father did was magic. Whether he came
from Ilkeston with news of the town, whether he went across to the
church with his music or his tools on a sunny evening, whether he sat
in his white surplice at the organ on Sundays, leading the singing with
his strong tenor voice, or whether he were in the workshop with the
boys, he was always a centre of magic and fascination to her, his
voice, sounding out in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a twang
in it that sent a thrill over her blood, and hypnotized her. She seemed
to run in the shadow of some dark, potent secret of which she would
not, of whose existence even she dared not become conscious, it cast
such a spell over her, and so darkened her mind.