第 14 页

So a revulsion started against Nat, who had not long after to

go to the workhouse.

There grew in Brangwen's heart now a secret desire to make

her a lady. His brother Alfred, in Nottingham, had caused a

great scandal by becoming the lover of an educated woman, a

lady, widow of a doctor. Very often, Alfred Brangwen went down

as a friend to her cottage, which was in Derbyshire, leaving his

wife and family for a day or two, then returning to them. And

no-one dared gainsay him, for he was a strong-willed, direct

man, and he said he was a friend of this widow.

One day Brangwen met his brother on the station.

"Where are you going to, then?" asked the younger

brother.

"I'm going down to Wirksworth."

"You've got friends down there, I'm told."

"Yes."

"I s'll have to be lookin' in when I'm down that road."

"You please yourself."

Tom Brangwen was so curious about the woman that the next

time he was in Wirksworth he asked for her house.

He found a beautiful cottage on the steep side of a hill,

looking clean over the town, that lay in the bottom of the

basin, and away at the old quarries on the opposite side of the

space. Mrs. Forbes was in the garden. She was a tall woman with

white hair. She came up the path taking off her thick gloves,

laying down her shears. It was autumn. She wore a wide-brimmed

hat.

Brangwen blushed to the roots of his hair, and did not know

what to say.

"I thought I might look in," he said, "knowing you were

friends of my brother's. I had to come to Wirksworth."

She saw at once that he was a Brangwen.

"Will you come in?" she said. "My father is lying down."

She took him into a drawing-room, full of books, with a piano

and a violin-stand. And they talked, she simply and easily. She

was full of dignity. The room was of a kind Brangwen had never

known; the atmosphere seemed open and spacious, like a

mountain-top to him.

"Does my brother like reading?" he asked.

"Some things. He has been reading Herbert Spencer. And we

read Browning sometimes."

Brangwen was full of admiration, deep thrilling, almost

reverential admiration. He looked at her with lit-up eyes when

she said, "we read". At last he burst out, looking round the

room:

"I didn't know our Alfred was this way inclined."

"He is quite an unusual man."

He looked at her in amazement. She evidently had a new idea

of his brother: she evidently appreciated him. He looked again

at the woman. She was about forty, straight, rather hard, a

curious, separate creature. Himself, he was not in love with

her, there was something chilling about her. But he was filled

with boundless admiration.

At tea-time he was introduced to her father, an invalid who

had to be helped about, but who was ruddy and well-favoured,

with snowy hair and watery blue eyes, and a courtly naive manner

that again was new and strange to Brangwen, so suave, so merry,

so innocent.

His brother was this woman's lover! It was too amazing.

Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of

life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud.

More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to this visionary

polite world.

He was well off. He was as well off as Alfred, who could not

have above six hundred a year, all told. He himself made about

four hundred, and could make more. His investments got better

every day. Why did he not do something? His wife was a lady

also.

But when he got to the Marsh, he realized how fixed

everything was, how the other form of life was beyond him, and

he regretted for the first time that he had succeeded to the

farm. He felt a prisoner, sitting safe and easy and

unadventurous. He might, with risk, have done more with himself.

He could neither read Browning nor Herbert Spencer, nor have

access to such a room as Mrs. Forbes's. All that form of life

was outside him.

But then, he said he did not want it. The excitement of the

visit began to pass off. The next day he was himself, and if he

thought of the other woman, there was something about her and

her place that he did not like, something cold something alien,

as if she were not a woman, but an inhuman being who used up

human life for cold, unliving purposes.

The evening came on, he played with Anna, and then sat alone

with his own wife. She was sewing. He sat very still, smoking,

perturbed. He was aware of his wife's quiet figure, and quiet

dark head bent over her needle. It was too quiet for him. It was

too peaceful. He wanted to smash the walls down, and let the

night in, so that his wife should not be so secure and quiet,

sitting there. He wished the air were not so close and narrow.

His wife was obliterated from him, she was in her own world,

quiet, secure, unnoticed, unnoticing. He was shut down by

her.

He rose to go out. He could not sit still any longer. He must

get out of this oppressive, shut-down, woman-haunt.

His wife lifted her head and looked at him.

"Are you going out?" she asked.

He looked down and met her eyes. They were darker than

darkness, and gave deeper space. He felt himself retreating

before her, defensive, whilst her eyes followed and tracked him

own.

"I was just going up to Cossethay," he said.

She remained watching him.

"Why do you go?" she said.

His heart beat fast, and he sat down, slowly.

"No reason particular," he said, beginning to fill his pipe

again, mechanically.

"Why do you go away so often?" she said.

"But you don't want me," he replied.

She was silent for a while.

"You do not want to be with me any more," she said.

It startled him. How did she know this truth? He thought it

was his secret.

"Yi," he said.

"You want to find something else," she said.

He did not answer. "Did he?" he asked himself.

"You should not want so much attention," she said. "You are

not a baby."

"I'm not grumbling," he said. Yet he knew he was.

"You think you have not enough," she said.

"How enough?"

"You think you have not enough in me. But how do you know me?

What do you do to make me love you?"

He was flabbergasted.

"I never said I hadn't enough in you," he replied. "I didn't

know you wanted making to love me. What do you want?"

"You don't make it good between us any more, you are not

interested. You do not make me want you."

"And you don't make me want you, do you now?" There was a

silence. They were such strangers.

"Would you like to have another woman?" she asked.

His eyes grew round, he did not know where he was. How could

she, his own wife, say such a thing? But she sat there, small

and foreign and separate. It dawned upon him she did not

consider herself his wife, except in so far as they agreed. She

did not feel she had married him. At any rate, she was willing

to allow he might want another woman. A gap, a space opened

before him.

"No," he said slowly. "What other woman should I want?"

"Like your brother," she said.

He was silent for some time, ashamed also.

"What of her?" he said. "I didn't like the woman."

"Yes, you liked her," she answered persistently.

He stared in wonder at his own wife as she told him his own

heart so callously. And he was indignant. What right had she to

sit there telling him these things? She was his wife, what right

had she to speak to him like this, as if she were a

stranger.

"I didn't," he said. "I want no woman."

"Yes, you would like to be like Alfred."

His silence was one of angry frustration. He was astonished.

He had told her of his visit to Wirksworth, but briefly, without

interest, he thought.

As she sat with her strange dark face turned towards him, her

eyes watched him, inscrutable, casting him up. He began to

oppose her. She was again the active unknown facing him. Must he

admit her? He resisted involuntarily.

"Why should you want to find a woman who is more to you than

me?" she said.

The turbulence raged in his breast.

"I don't," he said.

"Why do you?" she repeated. "Why do you want to deny me?"

Suddenly, in a flash, he saw she might be lonely, isolated,

unsure. She had seemed to him the utterly certain, satisfied,

absolute, excluding him. Could she need anything?

"Why aren't you satisfied with me?--I'm not satisfied

with you. Paul used to come to me and take me like a man does.

You only leave me alone or take me like your cattle, quickly, to

forget me again--so that you can forget me again."

"What am I to remember about you?" said Brangwen.

"I want you to know there is somebody there besides

yourself."

"Well, don't I know it?"

"You come to me as if it was for nothing, as if I was nothing

there. When Paul came to me, I was something to him--a

woman, I was. To you I am nothing--it is like

cattle--or nothing----"

"You make me feel as if I was nothing," he said.

They were silent. She sat watching him. He could not move,

his soul was seething and chaotic. She turned to her sewing

again. But the sight of her bent before him held him and would

not let him be. She was a strange, hostile, dominant thing. Yet

not quite hostile. As he sat he felt his limbs were strong and

hard, he sat in strength.

She was silent for a long time, stitching. He was aware,

poignantly, of the round shape of her head, very intimate,

compelling. She lifted her head and sighed. The blood burned in

him, her voice ran to him like fire.

"Come here," she said, unsure.

For some moments he did not move. Then he rose slowly and

went across the hearth. It required an almost deathly effort of

volition, or of acquiescence. He stood before her and looked

down at her. Her face was shining again, her eyes were shining

again like terrible laughter. It was to him terrible, how she

could be transfigured. He could not look at her, it burnt his

heart.

"My love!" she said.

And she put her arms round him as he stood before her round

his thighs, pressing him against her breast. And her hands on

him seemed to reveal to him the mould of his own nakedness, he

was passionately lovely to himself. He could not bear to look at

her.

"My dear!" she said. He knew she spoke a foreign language.

The fear was like bliss in his heart. He looked down. Her face

was shining, her eyes were full of light, she was awful. He

suffered from the compulsion to her. She was the awful unknown.

He bent down to her, suffering, unable to let go, unable to let

himself go, yet drawn, driven. She was now the transfigured, she

was wonderful, beyond him. He wanted to go. But he could not as

yet kiss her. He was himself apart. Easiest he could kiss her

feet. But he was too ashamed for the actual deed, which were

like an affront. She waited for him to meet her, not to bow

before her and serve her. She wanted his active participation,

not his submission. She put her fingers on him. And it was

torture to him, that he must give himself to her actively,

participate in her, that he must meet and embrace and know her,

who was other than himself. There was that in him which shrank

from yielding to her, resisted the relaxing towards her, opposed

the mingling with her, even while he most desired it. He was

afraid, he wanted to save himself.

There were a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, the

tension, the withholding relaxed in him, and he began to flow

towards her. She was beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go

his hold on himself, he relinquished himself, and knew the

subterranean force of his desire to come to her, to be with her,

to mingle with her, losing himself to find her, to find himself

in her. He began to approach her, to draw near.

His blood beat up in waves of desire. He wanted to come to

her, to meet her. She was there, if he could reach her. The

reality of her who was just beyond him absorbed him. Blind and

destroyed, he pressed forward, nearer, nearer, to receive the

consummation of himself, he received within the darkness which

should swallow him and yield him up to himself. If he could come

really within the blazing kernel of darkness, if really he could

be destroyed, burnt away till he lit with her in one

consummation, that were supreme, supreme.

Their coming together now, after two years of married life,

was much more wonderful to them than it had been before. It was

the entry into another circle of existence, it was the baptism

to another life, it was the complete confirmation. Their feet

trod strange ground of knowledge, their footsteps were lit-up

with discovery. Wherever they walked, it was well, the world

re-echoed round them in discovery. They went gladly and

forgetful. Everything was lost, and everything was found. The

new world was discovered, it remained only to be explored.

They had passed through the doorway into the further space,

where movement was so big, that it contained bonds and

constraints and labours, and still was complete liberty. She was

the doorway to him, he to her. At last they had thrown open the

doors, each to the other, and had stood in the doorways facing

each other, whilst the light flooded out from behind on to each

of their faces, it was the transfiguration, glorification, the

admission.

And always the light of the transfiguration burned on in

their hearts. He went his way, as before, she went her way, to

the rest of the world there seemed no change. But to the two of

them, there was the perpetual wonder of the transfiguration.

He did not know her any better, any more precisely, now that