第 13 页

him in her own way, and to her own measure. And she had spent

much life before he found her as she was, the woman who could

take him and give him fulfilment. She had taken him and given

him fulfilment. She still could do so, in her own times and

ways. But he must control himself, measure himself to her.

He wanted to give her all his love, all his passion, all his

essential energy. But it could not be. He must find other things

than her, other centres of living. She sat close and impregnable

with the child. And he was jealous of the child.

But he loved her, and time came to give some sort of course

to his troublesome current of life, so that it did not foam and

flood and make misery. He formed another centre of love in her

child, Anna. Gradually a part of his stream of life was diverted

to the child, relieving the main flood to his wife. Also he

sought the company of men, he drank heavily now and again.

The child ceased to have so much anxiety for her mother after

the baby came. Seeing the mother with the baby boy, delighted

and serene and secure, Anna was at first puzzled, then gradually

she became indignant, and at last her little life settled on its

own swivel, she was no more strained and distorted to support

her mother. She became more childish, not so abnormal, not

charged with cares she could not understand. The charge of the

mother, the satisfying of the mother, had devolved elsewhere

than on her. Gradually the child was freed. She became an

independent, forgetful little soul, loving from her own

centre.

Of her own choice, she then loved Brangwen most, or most

obviously. For these two made a little life together, they had a

joint activity. It amused him, at evening, to teach her to

count, or to say her letters. He remembered for her all the

little nursery rhymes and childish songs that lay forgotten at

the bottom of his brain.

At first she thought them rubbish. But he laughed, and she

laughed. They became to her a huge joke. Old King Cole she

thought was Brangwen. Mother Hubbard was Tilly, her mother was

the old woman who lived in a shoe. It was a huge, it was a

frantic delight to the child, this nonsense, after her years

with her mother, after the poignant folk-tales she had had from

her mother, which always troubled and mystified her soul.

She shared a sort of recklessness with her father, a

complete, chosen carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in

it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and defiant

with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark-haired, like

the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called him the

blackbird.

"Hallo," Brangwen would cry, starting as he heard the wail of

the child announcing it wanted to be taken out of the cradle,

"there's the blackbird tuning up."

"The blackbird's singing," Anna would shout with delight,

"the blackbird's singing."

"When the pie was opened," Brangwen shouted in his bawling

bass voice, going over to the cradle, "the bird began to

sing."

"Wasn't it a dainty dish to set before a king?" cried Anna,

her eyes flashing with joy as she uttered the cryptic words,

looking at Brangwen for confirmation. He sat down with the baby,

saying loudly:

"Sing up, my lad, sing up."

And the baby cried loudly, and Anna shouted lustily, dancing

in wild bliss:

"Sing a song of sixpence

Pocketful of posies,

Ascha! Ascha!----"

Then she stopped suddenly in silence and looked at Brangwen

again, her eyes flashing, as she shouted loudly and

delightedly:

"I've got it wrong, I've got it wrong."

"Oh, my sirs," said Tilly entering, "what a racket!"

Brangwen hushed the child and Anna flipped and danced on. She

loved her wild bursts of rowdiness with her father. Tilly hated

it, Mrs. Brangwen did not mind.

Anna did not care much for other children. She domineered

them, she treated them as if they were extremely young and

incapable, to her they were little people, they were not her

equals. So she was mostly alone, flying round the farm,

entertaining the farm-hands and Tilly and the servant-girl,

whirring on and never ceasing.

She loved driving with Brangwen in the trap. Then, sitting

high up and bowling along, her passion for eminence and

dominance was satisfied. She was like a little savage in her

arrogance. She thought her father important, she was installed

beside him on high. And they spanked along, beside the high,

flourishing hedge-tops, surveying the activity of the

countryside. When people shouted a greeting to him from the road

below, and Brangwen shouted jovially back, her little voice was

soon heard shrilling along with his, followed by her chuckling

laugh, when she looked up at her father with bright eyes, and

they laughed at each other. And soon it was the custom for the

passerby to sing out: "How are ter, Tom? Well, my lady!" or

else, "Mornin', Tom, mornin', my Lass!" or else, "You're off

together then?" or else, "You're lookin' rarely, you two."

Anna would respond, with her father: "How are you, John!

Good mornin', William! Ay, makin' for Derby," shrilling

as loudly as she could. Though often, in response to "You're off

out a bit then," she would reply, "Yes, we are," to the great

joy of all. She did not like the people who saluted him and did

not salute her.

She went into the public-house with him, if he had to call,

and often sat beside him in the bar-parlour as he drank his beer

or brandy. The landladies paid court to her, in the obsequious

way landladies have.

"Well, little lady, an' what's your name?"

"Anna Brangwen," came the immediate, haughty answer.

"Indeed it is! An' do you like driving in a trap with your

father?"

"Yes," said Anna, shy, but bored by these inanities. She had

a touch-me-not way of blighting the inane inquiries of grown-up

people.

"My word, she's a fawce little thing," the landlady would say

to Brangwen.

"Ay," he answered, not encouraging comments on the child.

Then there followed the present of a biscuit, or of cake, which

Anna accepted as her dues.

"What does she say, that I'm a fawce little thing?" the small

girl asked afterwards.

"She means you're a sharp-shins."

Anna hesitated. She did not understand. Then she laughed at

some absurdity she found.

Soon he took her every week to market with him. "I can come,

can't I?" she asked every Saturday, or Thursday morning, when he

made himself look fine in his dress of a gentleman farmer. And

his face clouded at having to refuse her.

So at last, he overcame his own shyness, and tucked her

beside him. They drove into Nottingham and put up at the "Black

Swan". So far all right. Then he wanted to leave her at the inn.

But he saw her face, and knew it was impossible. So he mustered

his courage, and set off with her, holding her hand, to the

cattle-market.

She stared in bewilderment, flitting silent at his side. But

in the cattle-market she shrank from the press of men, all men,

all in heavy, filthy boots, and leathern leggins. And the road

underfoot was all nasty with cow-muck. And it frightened her to

see the cattle in the square pens, so many horns, and so little

enclosure, and such a madness of men and a yelling of drovers.

Also she felt her father was embarrassed by her, and

ill-at-ease.

He brought her a cake at the refreshment-booth, and set her

on a seat. A man hailed him.

"Good morning, Tom. That thine, then?"--and the

bearded farmer jerked his head at Anna.

"Ay," said Brangwen, deprecating.

"I did-na know tha'd one that old."

"No, it's my missis's."

"Oh, that's it!" And the man looked at Anna as if she were

some odd little cattle. She glowered with black eyes.

Brangwen left her there, in charge of the barman, whilst he

went to see about the selling of some young stirks. Farmers,

butchers, drovers, dirty, uncouth men from whom she shrank

instinctively stared down at her as she sat on her seat, then

went to get their drink, talking in unabated tones. All was big

and violent about her.

"Whose child met that be?" they asked of the barman.

"It belongs to Tom Brangwen."

The child sat on in neglect, watching the door for her

father. He never came; many, many men came, but not he, and she

sat like a shadow. She knew one did not cry in such a place. And

every man looked at her inquisitively, she shut herself away

from them.

A deep, gathering coldness of isolation took hold on her. He

was never coming back. She sat on, frozen, unmoving.

When she had become blank and timeless he came, and she

slipped off her seat to him, like one come back from the dead.

He had sold his beast as quickly as he could. But all the

business was not finished. He took her again through the

hurtling welter of the cattle-market.

Then at last they turned and went out through the gate. He

was always hailing one man or another, always stopping to gossip

about land and cattle and horses and other things she did not

understand, standing in the filth and the smell, among the legs

and great boots of men. And always she heard the questions:

"What lass is that, then? I didn't know tha'd one o' that

age."

"It belongs to my missis."

Anna was very conscious of her derivation from her mother, in

the end, and of her alienation.

But at last they were away, and Brangwen went with her into a

little dark, ancient eating-house in the Bridlesmith-Gate. They

had cow's-tail soup, and meat and cabbage and potatoes. Other

men, other people, came into the dark, vaulted place, to eat.

Anna was wide-eyed and silent with wonder.

Then they went into the big market, into the corn exchange,

then to shops. He bought her a little book off a stall. He loved

buying things, odd things that he thought would be useful. Then

they went to the "Black Swan", and she drank milk and he brandy,

and they harnessed the horse and drove off, up the Derby

Road.

She was tired out with wonder and marvelling. But the next

day, when she thought of it, she skipped, flipping her leg in

the odd dance she did, and talked the whole time of what had

happened to her, of what she had seen. It lasted her all the

week. And the next Saturday she was eager to go again.

She became a familiar figure in the cattle-market, sitting

waiting in the little booth. But she liked best to go to Derby.

There her father had more friends. And she liked the familiarity

of the smaller town, the nearness of the river, the strangeness

that did not frighten her, it was so much smaller. She liked the

covered-in market, and the old women. She liked the "George

Inn", where her father put up. The landlord was Brangwen's old

friend, and Anna was made much of. She sat many a day in the

cosy parlour talking to Mr. Wigginton, a fat man with red hair,

the landlord. And when the farmers all gathered at twelve

o'clock for dinner, she was a little heroine.

At first she would only glower or hiss at these strange men

with their uncouth accent. But they were good-humoured. She was

a little oddity, with her fierce, fair hair like spun glass

sticking out in a flamy halo round the apple-blossom face and

the black eyes, and the men liked an oddity. She kindled their

attention.

She was very angry because Marriott, a gentleman-farmer from

Ambergate, called her the little pole-cat.

"Why, you're a pole-cat," he said to her.

"I'm not," she flashed.

"You are. That's just how a pole-cat goes."

She thought about it.

"Well, you're--you're----" she began.

"I'm what?"

She looked him up and down.

"You're a bow-leg man."

Which he was. There was a roar of laughter. They loved her

that she was indomitable.

"Ah," said Marriott. "Only a pole-cat says that."

"Well, I am a pole-cat," she flamed.

There was another roar of laughter from the men.

They loved to tease her.

"Well, me little maid," Braithwaite would say to her, "an'

how's th' lamb's wool?"

He gave a tug at a glistening, pale piece of her hair.

"It's not lamb's wool," said Anna, indignantly putting back

her offended lock.

"Why, what'st ca' it then?"

"It's hair."

"Hair! Wheriver dun they rear that sort?"

"Wheriver dun they?" she asked, in dialect, her curiosity

overcoming her.

Instead of answering he shouted with joy. It was the triumph,

to make her speak dialect.

She had one enemy, the man they called Nut-Nat, or Nat-Nut, a

cretin, with inturned feet, who came flap-lapping along,

shoulder jerking up at every step. This poor creature sold nuts

in the public-houses where he was known. He had no roof to his

mouth, and the men used to mock his speech.

The first time he came into the "George" when Anna was there,

she asked, after he had gone, her eyes very round:

"Why does he do that when he walks?"

"'E canna 'elp 'isself, Duckie, it's th' make o' th'

fellow."

She thought about it, then she laughed nervously. And then

she bethought herself, her cheeks flushed, and she cried:

"He's a horrid man."

"Nay, he's non horrid; he canna help it if he wor struck that

road."

But when poor Nat came wambling in again, she slid away. And

she would not eat his nuts, if the men bought them for her. And

when the farmers gambled at dominoes for them, she was

angry.

"They are dirty-man's nuts," she cried.