第 10 页

to the adventure.

She was with child, and there was again the silence and

distance between them. She did not want him nor his secrets nor

his game, he was deposed, he was cast out. He seethed with fury

at the small, ugly-mouthed woman who had nothing to do with him.

Sometimes his anger broke on her, but she did not cry. She

turned on him like a tiger, and there was battle.

He had to learn to contain himself again, and he hated it. He

hated her that she was not there for him. And he took himself

off, anywhere.

But an instinct of gratitude and a knowledge that she would

receive him back again, that later on she would be there for him

again, prevented his straying very far. He cautiously did not go

too far. He knew she might lapse into ignorance of him, lapse

away from him, farther, farther, farther, till she was lost to

him. He had sense enough, premonition enough in himself, to be

aware of this and to measure himself accordingly. For he did not

want to lose her: he did not want her to lapse away.

Cold, he called her, selfish, only caring about herself, a

foreigner with a bad nature, caring really about nothing, having

no proper feelings at the bottom of her, and no proper niceness.

He raged, and piled up accusations that had some measure of

truth in them all. But a certain grace in him forbade him from

going too far. He knew, and he quivered with rage and hatred,

that she was all these vile things, that she was everything vile

and detestable. But he had grace at the bottom of him, which

told him that, above all things, he did not want to lose her, he

was not going to lose her.

So he kept some consideration for her, he preserved some

relationship. He went out more often, to the "Red Lion" again,

to escape the madness of sitting next to her when she did not

belong to him, when she was as absent as any woman in

indifference could be. He could not stay at home. So he went to

the "Red Lion". And sometimes he got drunk. But he preserved his

measure, some things between them he never forfeited.

A tormented look came into his eyes, as if something were

always dogging him. He glanced sharp and quick, he could not

bear to sit still doing nothing. He had to go out, to find

company, to give himself away there. For he had no other outlet,

he could not work to give himself out, he had not the

knowledge.

As the months of her pregnancy went on, she left him more and

more alone, she was more and more unaware of him, his existence

was annulled. And he felt bound down, bound, unable to stir,

beginning to go mad, ready to rave. For she was quiet and

polite, as if he did not exist, as one is quiet and polite to a

servant.

Nevertheless she was great with his child, it was his turn to

submit. She sat opposite him, sewing, her foreign face

inscrutable and indifferent. He felt he wanted to break her into

acknowledgment of him, into awareness of him. It was

insufferable that she had so obliterated him. He would smash her

into regarding him. He had a raging agony of desire to do

so.

But something bigger in him withheld him, kept him

motionless. So he went out of the house for relief. Or he turned

to the little girl for her sympathy and her love, he appealed

with all his power to the small Anna. So soon they were like

lovers, father and child.

For he was afraid of his wife. As she sat there with bent

head, silent, working or reading, but so unutterably silent that

his heart seemed under the millstone of it, she became herself

like the upper millstone lying on him, crushing him, as

sometimes a heavy sky lies on the earth.

Yet he knew he could not tear her away from the heavy

obscurity into which she was merged. He must not try to tear her

into recognition of himself, and agreement with himself. It were

disastrous, impious. So, let him rage as he might, he must

withhold himself. But his wrists trembled and seemed mad, seemed

as if they would burst.

When, in November, the leaves came beating against the window

shutters, with a lashing sound, he started, and his eyes

flickered with flame. The dog looked up at him, he sunk his head

to the fire. But his wife was startled. He was aware of her

listening.

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

"What?" she asked.

"The leaves."

She sank away again. The strange leaves beating in the wind

on the wood had come nearer than she. The tension in the room

was overpowering, it was difficult for him to move his head. He

sat with every nerve, every vein, every fibre of muscle in his

body stretched on a tension. He felt like a broken arch thrust

sickeningly out from support. For her response was gone, he

thrust at nothing. And he remained himself, he saved himself

from crashing down into nothingness, from being squandered into

fragments, by sheer tension, sheer backward resistance.

During the last months of her pregnancy, he went about in a

surcharged, imminent state that did not exhaust itself. She was

also depressed, and sometimes she cried. It needed so much life

to begin afresh, after she had lost so lavishly. Sometimes she

cried. Then he stood stiff, feeling his heart would burst. For

she did not want him, she did not want even to be made aware of

him. By the very puckering of her face he knew that he must

stand back, leave her intact, alone. For it was the old grief

come back in her, the old loss, the pain of the old life, the

dead husband, the dead children. This was sacred to her, and he

must not violate her with his comfort. For what she wanted she

would come to him. He stood aloof with turgid heart.

He had to see her tears come, fall over her scarcely moving

face, that only puckered sometimes, down on to her breast, that

was so still, scarcely moving. And there was no noise, save now

and again, when, with a strange, somnambulant movement, she took

her handkerchief and wiped her face and blew her nose, and went

on with the noiseless weeping. He knew that any offer of comfort

from himself would be worse than useless, hateful to her,

jangling her. She must cry. But it drove him insane. His heart

was scalded, his brain hurt in his head, he went away, out of

the house.

His great and chiefest source of solace was the child. She

had been at first aloof from him, reserved. However friendly she

might seem one day, the next she would have lapsed to her

original disregard of him, cold, detached, at her distance.

The first morning after his marriage he had discovered it

would not be so easy with the child. At the break of dawn he had

started awake hearing a small voice outside the door saying

plaintively:

"Mother!"

He rose and opened the door. She stood on the threshold in

her night-dress, as she had climbed out of bed, black eyes

staring round and hostile, her fair hair sticking out in a wild

fleece. The man and child confronted each other.

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

"my".

"Come on then," he said gently.

"Where's my mother?"

"She's here--come on."

The child's eyes, staring at the man with ruffled hair and

beard, did not change. The mother's voice called softly. The

little bare feet entered the room with trepidation.

"Mother!"

"Come, my dear."

The small bare feet approached swiftly.

"I wondered where you were," came the plaintive voice. The

mother stretched out her arms. The child stood beside the high

bed. Brangwen lightly lifted the tiny girl, with an

"up-a-daisy", then took his own place in the bed again.

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

"What, my pet?"

Anna wriggled close into her mother's arms, clinging tight,

hiding from the fact of the man. Brangwen lay still, and waited.

There was a long silence.

Then suddenly, Anna looked round, as if she thought he would

be gone. She saw the face of the man lying upturned to the

ceiling. Her black eyes stared antagonistic from her exquisite

face, her arms clung tightly to her mother, afraid. He did not

move for some time, not knowing what to say. His face was smooth

and soft-skinned with love, his eyes full of soft light. He

looked at her, scarcely moving his head, his eyes smiling.

"Have you just wakened up?" he said.

"Go away," she retorted, with a little darting forward of the

head, something like a viper.

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

"Go away," came the sharp little command.

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

"You can't send your father from his own bed, my little

bird," said her mother, pleasantly.

The child glowered at him, miserable in her impotence.

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

enough."

She glowered without answering, then turned and clung to her

mother. She would not allow it.

During the day she asked her mother several times:

"When are we going home, mother?"

"We are at home, darling, we live here now. This is our

house, we live here with your father."

The child was forced to accept it. But she remained against

the man. As night came on, she asked:

"Where are you going to sleep, mother?"

"I sleep with the father now."

And when Brangwen came in, the child asked fiercely:

"Why do you sleep with my mother? My mother

sleeps with me," her voice quivering.

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

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

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

husband."

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

said Brangwen.

Anna glowered at him. She seemed to cogitate.

"No," she cried fiercely at length, "no, I don't

want." And slowly her face puckered, she sobbed bitterly.

He stood and watched her, sorry. But there could be no altering

it.

Which, when she knew, she became quiet. He was easy with her,

talking to her, taking her to see the live creatures, bringing

her the first chickens in his cap, taking her to gather the

eggs, letting her throw crusts to the horse. She would easily

accompany him, and take all he had to give, but she remained

neutral still.

She was curiously, incomprehensibly jealous of her mother,

always anxiously concerned about her. If Brangwen drove with his

wife to Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or

unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon came on, there

was only one cry--"I want my mother, I want my

mother----" and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon

had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child's anguish was

that her mother was gone, gone.

Yet as a rule, Anna seemed cold, resenting her mother,

critical of her. It was:

"I don't like you to do that, mother," or, "I don't like you

to say that." She was a sore problem to Brangwen and to all the

people at the Marsh. As a rule, however, she was active, lightly

flitting about the farmyard, only appearing now and again to

assure herself of her mother. Happy she never seemed, but quick,

sharp, absorbed, full of imagination and changeability. Tilly

said she was bewitched. But it did not matter so long as she did

not cry. There was something heart-rending about Anna's crying,

her childish anguish seemed so utter and so timeless, as if it

were a thing of all the ages.

She made playmates of the creatures of the farmyard, talking

to them, telling them the stories she had from her mother,

counselling them and correcting them. Brangwen found her at the

gate leading to the paddock and to the duckpond. She was peering

through the bars and shouting to the stately white geese, that

stood in a curving line:

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

must not do it."

The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face

and the fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and they

raised their heads and swayed off, producing the long,

can-canking, protesting noise of geese, rocking their ship-like,

beautiful white bodies in a line beyond the gate.

"You're naughty, you're naughty," cried Anna, tears of dismay

and vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her slipper.

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

"They won't let me come in," she said, turning her flushed

little face to him.

"Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to," and he pushed

open the gate for her.

She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey-white

geese standing monumental under the grey, cold day.

"Go on," he said.

She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body started

convulsively at the sudden, derisive can-cank-ank of the geese.

A blankness spread over her. The geese trailed away with

uplifted heads under the low grey sky.

"They don't know you," said Brangwen. "You should tell 'em

what your name is."

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

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

Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and

imperiously:

"My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because Mr.

Brangwen's my father now. He is, yes he is. And I

live here."

This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, without

knowing it herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish,

desolate moments, when it was good to creep up to something big

and warm, and bury her little self in his big, unlimited being.

Instinctively he was careful of her, careful to recognize her

and to give himself to her disposal.

She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a

childish, essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor

woman was such a servant. The child would not let the