第 11 页

serving-woman attend to her, do intimate things for her, not for

a long time. She treated her as one of an inferior race.

Brangwen did not like it.

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

"Because--because--because she looks at me with her

eyes bent."

Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the

household, never as a person.

For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were for

ever on the watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient,

spoiled by Tilly, was an easy blusterer. If for a few minutes he

upset the household with his noisy impatience, he found at the

end the child glowering at him with intense black eyes, and she

was sure to dart forward her little head, like a serpent, with

her biting:

"Go away."

"I'm not going away," he shouted, irritated at last.

"Go yourself--hustle--stir thysen--hop." And he

pointed to the door. The child backed away from him, pale with

fear. Then she gathered up courage, seeing him become

patient.

"We don't live with you," she said, thrusting forward

her little head at him. "You--you're--you're a

bomakle."

"A what?" he shouted.

Her voice wavered--but it came.

"A bomakle."

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

She meditated. Then she hissed forwards her head.

"I'm not."

"Not what?"

"A comakle."

"No more am I a bomakle."

He was really cross.

Other times she would say:

"My mother doesn't live here."

"Oh, ay?"

"I want her to go away."

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

So they drew nearer together. He would take her with him when

he went out in the trap. The horse ready at the gate, he came

noisily into the house, which seemed quiet and peaceful till he

appeared to set everything awake.

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

The child drew herself up, resenting the indignity of the

address.

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

"Not man enough yet," he said, tying the ribbons under her

chin with clumsy fingers.

She held up her face to him. Her little bright-red lips moved

as he fumbled under her chin.

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

phrases.

"That face shouts for th' pump," he said, and taking

out a big red handkerchief, that smelled of strong tobacco,

began wiping round her mouth.

"Is Kitty waiting for me?" she asked.

"Ay," he said. "Let's finish wiping your face--it'll

pass wi' a cat-lick."

She submitted prettily. Then, when he let her go, she began

to skip, with a curious flicking up of one leg behind her.

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

She came and was shaken into her coat, and the two set off.

She sat very close beside him in the gig, tucked tightly,

feeling his big body sway, against her, very splendid. She loved

the rocking of the gig, when his big, live body swayed upon her,

against her. She laughed, a poignant little shrill laugh, and

her black eyes glowed.

She was curiously hard, and then passionately tenderhearted.

Her mother was ill, the child stole about on tip-toe in the

bedroom for hours, being nurse, and doing the thing thoughtfully

and diligently. Another day, her mother was unhappy. Anna would

stand with her legs apart, glowering, balancing on the sides of

her slippers. She laughed when the goslings wriggled in Tilly's

hand, as the pellets of food were rammed down their throats with

a skewer, she laughed nervously. She was hard and imperious with

the animals, squandering no love, running about amongst them

like a cruel mistress.

Summer came, and hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish mite

dancing about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more than she

loved her.

But always in the child was some anxious connection with the

mother. So long as Mrs. Brangwen was all right, the little girl

played about and took very little notice of her. But

corn-harvest went by, the autumn drew on, and the mother, the

later months of her pregnancy beginning, was strange and

detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, the old, unhealthy

uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility came on the child

again. If she went to the fields with her father, then, instead

of playing about carelessly, it was:

"I want to go home."

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

"I want to go home."

"What for? What ails thee?"

"I want my mother."

"Thy mother! Thy mother none wants thee."

"I want to go home."

There would be tears in a moment.

"Can ter find t'road, then?"

And he watched her scudding, silent and intent, along the

hedge-bottom, at a steady, anxious pace, till she turned and was

gone through the gateway. Then he saw her two fields off, still

pressing forward, small and urgent. His face was clouded as he

turned to plough up the stubble.

The year drew on, in the hedges the berries shone red and

twinkling above bare twigs, robins were seen, great droves of

birds dashed like spray from the fallow, rooks appeared, black

and flapping down to earth, the ground was cold as he pulled the

turnips, the roads were churned deep in mud. Then the turnips

were pitted and work was slack.

Inside the house it was dark, and quiet. The child flitted

uneasily round, and now and again came her plaintive, startled

cry:

"Mother!"

Mrs. Brangwen was heavy and unresponsive, tired, lapsed back.

Brangwen went on working out of doors.

At evening, when he came in to milk, the child would run

behind him. Then, in the cosy cow-sheds, with the doors shut and

the air looking warm by the light of the hanging lantern, above

the branching horns of the cows, she would stand watching his

hands squeezing rhythmically the teats of the placid beast,

watch the froth and the leaping squirt of milk, watch his hand

sometimes rubbing slowly, understandingly, upon a hanging udder.

So they kept each other company, but at a distance, rarely

speaking.

The darkest days of the year came on, the child was fretful,

sighing as if some oppression were on her, running hither and

thither without relief. And Brangwen went about at his work,

heavy, his heart heavy as the sodden earth.

The winter nights fell early, the lamp was lighted before

tea-time, the shutters were closed, they were all shut into the

room with the tension and stress. Mrs. Brangwen went early to

bed, Anna playing on the floor beside her. Brangwen sat in the

emptiness of the downstairs room, smoking, scarcely conscious

even of his own misery. And very often he went out to escape

it.

Christmas passed, the wet, drenched, cold days of January

recurred monotonously, with now and then a brilliance of blue

flashing in, when Brangwen went out into a morning like crystal,

when every sound rang again, and the birds were many and sudden

and brusque in the hedges. Then an elation came over him in

spite of everything, whether his wife were strange or sad, or

whether he craved for her to be with him, it did not matter, the

air rang with clear noises, the sky was like crystal, like a

bell, and the earth was hard. Then he worked and was happy, his

eyes shining, his cheeks flushed. And the zest of life was

strong in him.

The birds pecked busily round him, the horses were fresh and

ready, the bare branches of the trees flung themselves up like a

man yawning, taut with energy, the twigs radiated off into the

clear light. He was alive and full of zest for it all. And if

his wife were heavy, separated from him, extinguished, then, let

her be, let him remain himself. Things would be as they would

be. Meanwhile he heard the ringing crow of a cockerel in the

distance, he saw the pale shell of the moon effaced on a blue

sky.

So he shouted to the horses, and was happy. If, driving into

Ilkeston, a fresh young woman were going in to do her shopping,

he hailed her, and reined in his horse, and picked her up. Then

he was glad to have her near him, his eyes shone, his voice,

laughing, teasing in a warm fashion, made the poise of her head

more beautiful, her blood ran quicker. They were both

stimulated, the morning was fine.

What did it matter that, at the bottom of his heart, was care

and pain? It was at the bottom, let it stop at the bottom. His

wife, her suffering, her coming pain--well, it must be so.

She suffered, but he was out of doors, full in life, and it

would be ridiculous, indecent, to pull a long face and to insist

on being miserable. He was happy, this morning, driving to town,

with the hoofs of the horse spanking the hard earth. Well he was

happy, if half the world were weeping at the funeral of the

other half. And it was a jolly girl sitting beside him. And

Woman was immortal, whatever happened, whoever turned towards

death. Let the misery come when it could not be resisted.

The evening arrived later very beautiful, with a rosy flush

hovering above the sunset, and passing away into violet and

lavender, with turquoise green north and south in the sky, and

in the east, a great, yellow moon hanging heavy and radiant. It

was magnificent to walk between the sunset and the moon, on a

road where little holly trees thrust black into the rose and

lavender, and starlings flickered in droves across the light.

But what was the end of the journey? The pain came right enough,

later on, when his heart and his feet were heavy, his brain

dead, his life stopped.

One afternoon, the pains began, Mrs. Brangwen was put to bed,

the midwife came. Night fell, the shutters were closed, Brangwen

came in to tea, to the loaf and the pewter teapot, the child,

silent and quivering, playing with glass beads, the house,

empty, it seemed, or exposed to the winter night, as if it had

no walls.

Sometimes there sounded, long and remote in the house,

vibrating through everything, the moaning cry of a woman in

labour. Brangwen, sitting downstairs, was divided. His lower,

deeper self was with her, bound to her, suffering. But the big

shell of his body remembered the sound of owls that used to fly

round the farmstead when he was a boy. He was back in his youth,

a boy, haunted by the sound of the owls, waking up his brother

to speak to him. And his mind drifted away to the birds, their

solemn, dignified faces, their flight so soft and broad-winged.

And then to the birds his brother had shot, fluffy,

dust-coloured, dead heaps of softness with faces absurdly

asleep. It was a queer thing, a dead owl.

He lifted his cup to his lips, he watched the child with the

beads. But his mind was occupied with owls, and the atmosphere

of his boyhood, with his brothers and sisters. Elsewhere,

fundamental, he was with his wife in labour, the child was being

brought forth out of their one flesh. He and she, one flesh, out

of which life must be put forth. The rent was not in his body,

but it was of his body. On her the blows fell, but the quiver

ran through to him, to his last fibre. She must be torn asunder

for life to come forth, yet still they were one flesh, and

still, from further back, the life came out of him to her, and

still he was the unbroken that has the broken rock in its arms,

their flesh was one rock from which the life gushed, out of her

who was smitten and rent, from him who quivered and yielded.

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

to him in Polish.

"Is it very bad?" he asked.

She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the

effort to understand another language, the weariness of hearing

him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he stood there

fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew something of

him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. She closed her

eyes.

He turned away, white to the gills.

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

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

The child glanced up at him, frightened.

"I want my mother," she quavered.

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

She looked at him with lost, frightened eyes.

"Has she got a headache?"

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

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

again in terror.

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

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

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

"I want my mother," rang automatically from the wincing,

panic-stricken child, that felt cut off and lost in a horror of

desolation.

Tilly came forward, her heart wrung.

"Come an' let me undress her then, pet-lamb," she crooned.

"You s'll have your mother in th' mornin', don't you fret, my

duckie; never mind, angel."

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

"I want my mother," she cried, her little face quivering, and

the great tears of childish, utter anguish falling.

"She's poorly, my lamb, she's poorly to-night, but she'll be

better by mornin'. Oh, don't cry, don't cry, love, she doesn't

want you to cry, precious little heart, no, she doesn't."

Tilly took gently hold of the child's skirts. Anna snatched

back her dress, and cried, in a little hysteria:

"No, you're not to undress me--I want my

mother,"--and her child's face was running with grief and

tears, her body shaken.

"Oh, but let Tilly undress you. Let Tilly undress you, who

loves you, don't be wilful to-night. Mother's poorly, she

doesn't want you to cry."

The child sobbed distractedly, she could not hear.

"I want--my--mother," she wept.