第 16 页

resentment filled her. She was quick to forestall him, the

moment he came in.

"You look a sight, you do, red in the face," she cried.

"I might look worse if I was green," he answered.

"Boozing in Ilkeston."

"And what's wrong wi' Il'son?"

She flounced away. He watched her with amused, twinkling

eyes, yet in spite of himself said that she flouted him.

They were a curious family, a law to themselves, separate

from the world, isolated, a small republic set in invisible

bounds. The mother was quite indifferent to Ilkeston and

Cossethay, to any claims made on her from outside, she was very

shy of any outsider, exceedingly courteous, winning even. But

the moment the visitor had gone, she laughed and dismissed him,

he did not exist. It had been all a game to her. She was still a

foreigner, unsure of her ground. But alone with her own children

and husband at the Marsh, she was mistress of a little native

land that lacked nothing.

She had some beliefs somewhere, never defined. She had been

brought up a Roman Catholic. She had gone to the Church of

England for protection. The outward form was a matter of

indifference to her. Yet she had some fundamental religion. It

was as if she worshipped God as a mystery, never seeking in the

least to define what He was.

And inside her, the subtle sense of the Great Absolute

wherein she had her being was very strong. The English dogma

never reached her: the language was too foreign. Through it all

she felt the great Separator who held life in His hands,

gleaming, imminent, terrible, the Great Mystery, immediate

beyond all telling.

She shone and gleamed to the Mystery, Whom she knew through

all her senses, she glanced with strange, mystic superstitions

that never found expression in the English language, never

mounted to thought in English. But so she lived, within a

potent, sensuous belief that included her family and contained

her destiny.

To this she had reduced her husband. He existed with her

entirely indifferent to the general values of the world. Her

very ways, the very mark of her eyebrows were symbols and

indication to him. There, on the farm with her, he lived through

a mystery of life and death and creation, strange, profound

ecstasies and incommunicable satisfactions, of which the rest of

the world knew nothing; which made the pair of them apart and

respected in the English village, for they were also

well-to-do.

But Anna was only half safe within her mother's unthinking

knowledge. She had a mother-of-pearl rosary that had been her

own father's. What it meant to her she could never say. But the

string of moonlight and silver, when she had it between her

fingers, filled her with strange passion. She learned at school

a little Latin, she learned an Ave Maria and a Pater Noster, she

learned how to say her rosary. But that was no good. "Ave Maria,

gratia plena, Dominus tecum, Benedicta tu in mulieribus et

benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus. Ave Maria, Sancta Maria,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,

Amen."

It was not right, somehow. What these words meant when

translated was not the same as the pale rosary meant. There was

a discrepancy, a falsehood. It irritated her to say, "Dominus

tecum," or, "benedicta tu in mulieribus." She loved the mystic

words, "Ave Maria, Sancta Maria;" she was moved by "benedictus

fructus ventris tui Jesus," and by "nunc et in hora mortis

nostrae." But none of it was quite real. It was not

satisfactory, somehow.

She avoided her rosary, because, moving her with curious

passion as it did, it meant only these not very

significant things. She put it away. It was her instinct to put

all these things away. It was her instinct to avoid thinking, to

avoid it, to save herself.

She was seventeen, touchy, full of spirits, and very moody:

quick to flush, and always uneasy, uncertain. For some reason or

other, she turned more to her father, she felt almost flashes of

hatred for her mother. Her mother's dark muzzle and curiously

insidious ways, her mother's utter surety and confidence, her

strange satisfaction, even triumph, her mother's way of laughing

at things and her mother's silent overriding of vexatious

propositions, most of all her mother's triumphant power maddened

the girl.

She became sudden and incalculable. Often she stood at the

window, looking out, as if she wanted to go. Sometimes she went,

she mixed with people. But always she came home in anger, as if

she were diminished, belittled, almost degraded.

There was over the house a kind of dark silence and

intensity, in which passion worked its inevitable conclusions.

There was in the house a sort of richness, a deep, inarticulate

interchange which made other places seem thin and unsatisfying.

Brangwen could sit silent, smoking in his chair, the mother

could move about in her quiet, insidious way, and the sense of

the two presences was powerful, sustaining. The whole

intercourse was wordless, intense and close.

But Anna was uneasy. She wanted to get away. Yet wherever she

went, there came upon her that feeling of thinness, as if she

were made smaller, belittled. She hastened home.

There she raged and interrupted the strong, settled

interchange. Sometimes her mother turned on her with a fierce,

destructive anger, in which was no pity or consideration. And

Anna shrank, afraid. She went to her father.

He would still listen to the spoken word, which fell sterile

on the unheeding mother. Sometimes Anna talked to her father.

She tried to discuss people, she wanted to know what was meant.

But her father became uneasy. He did not want to have things

dragged into consciousness. Only out of consideration for her he

listened. And there was a kind of bristling rousedness in the

room. The cat got up and stretching itself, went uneasily to the

door. Mrs. Brangwen was silent, she seemed ominous. Anna could

not go on with her fault-finding, her criticism, her expression

of dissatisfactions. She felt even her father against her. He

had a strong, dark bond with her mother, a potent intimacy that

existed inarticulate and wild, following its own course, and

savage if interrupted, uncovered.

Nevertheless Brangwen was uneasy about the girl, the whole

house continued to be disturbed. She had a pathetic, baffled

appeal. She was hostile to her parents, even whilst she lived

entirely with them, within their spell.

Many ways she tried, of escape. She became an assiduous

church-goer. But the language meant nothing to her: it

seemed false. She hated to hear things expressed, put into

words. Whilst the religious feelings were inside her they were

passionately moving. In the mouth of the clergyman, they were

false, indecent. She tried to read. But again the tedium and the

sense of the falsity of the spoken word put her off. She went to

stay with girl friends. At first she thought it splendid. But

then the inner boredom came on, it seemed to her all

nothingness. And she felt always belittled, as if never, never

could she stretch her length and stride her stride.

Her mind reverted often to the torture cell of a certain

Bishop of France, in which the victim could neither stand nor

lie stretched out, never. Not that she thought of herself in any

connection with this. But often there came into her mind the

wonder, how the cell was built, and she could feel the horror of

the crampedness, as something very real.

She was, however, only eighteen when a letter came from Mrs.

Alfred Brangwen, in Nottingham, saying that her son William was

coming to Ilkeston to take a place as junior draughtsman,

scarcely more than apprentice, in a lace factory. He was twenty

years old, and would the Marsh Brangwens be friendly with

him.

Tom Brangwen at once wrote offering the young man a home at

the Marsh. This was not accepted, but the Nottingham Brangwens

expressed gratitude.

There had never been much love lost between the Nottingham

Brangwens and the Marsh. Indeed, Mrs. Alfred, having inherited

three thousand pounds, and having occasion to be dissatisfied

with her husband, held aloof from all the Brangwens whatsoever.

She affected, however, some esteem of Mrs. Tom, as she called

the Polish woman, saying that at any rate she was a lady.

Anna Brangwen was faintly excited at the news of her Cousin

Will's coming to Ilkeston. She knew plenty of young men, but

they had never become real to her. She had seen in this young

gallant a nose she liked, in that a pleasant moustache, in the

other a nice way of wearing clothes, in one a ridiculous fringe

of hair, in another a comical way of talking. They were objects

of amusement and faint wonder to her, rather than real beings,

the young men.

The only man she knew was her father; and, as he was

something large, looming, a kind of Godhead, he embraced all

manhood for her, and other men were just incidental.

She remembered her cousin Will. He had town clothes and was

thin, with a very curious head, black as jet, with hair like

sleek, thin fur. It was a curious head: it reminded her she knew

not of what: of some animal, some mysterious animal that lived

in the darkness under the leaves and never came out, but which

lived vividly, swift and intense. She always thought of him with

that black, keen, blind head. And she considered him odd.

He appeared at the Marsh one Sunday morning: a rather long,

thin youth with a bright face and a curious self-possession

among his shyness, a native unawareness of what other people

might be, since he was himself.

When Anna came downstairs in her Sunday clothes, ready for

church, he rose and greeted her conventionally, shaking hands.

His manners were better than hers. She flushed. She noticed that

he now had a thick fledge on his upper lip, a black,

finely-shapen line marking his wide mouth. It rather repelled

her. It reminded her of the thin, fine fur of his hair. She was

aware of something strange in him.

His voice had rather high upper notes, and very resonant

middle notes. It was queer. She wondered why he did it. But he

sat very naturally in the Marsh living-room. He had some

uncouthness, some natural self-possession of the Brangwens, that

made him at home there.

Anna was rather troubled by the strangely intimate,

affectionate way her father had towards this young man. He

seemed gentle towards him, he put himself aside in order to fill

out the young man. This irritated Anna.

"Father," she said abruptly, "give me some collection."

"What collection?" asked Brangwen.

"Don't be ridiculous," she cried, flushing.

"Nay," he said, "what collection's this?"

"You know it's the first Sunday of the month."

Anna stood confused. Why was he doing this, why was he making

her conspicuous before this stranger?

"I want some collection," she reasserted.

"So tha says," he replied indifferently, looking at her, then

turning again to this nephew.

She went forward, and thrust her hand into his breeches

pocket. He smoked steadily, making no resistance, talking to his

nephew. Her hand groped about in his pocket, and then drew out

his leathern purse. Her colour was bright in her clear cheeks,

her eyes shone. Brangwen's eyes were twinkling. The nephew sat

sheepishly. Anna, in her finery, sat down and slid all the money

into her lap. There was silver and gold. The youth could not

help watching her. She was bent over the heap of money,

fingering the different coins.

"I've a good mind to take half a sovereign," she said, and

she looked up with glowing dark eyes. She met the light-brown

eyes of her cousin, close and intent upon her. She was startled.

She laughed quickly, and turned to her father.

"I've a good mind to take half a sovereign, our Dad," she

said.

"Yes, nimble fingers," said her father. "You take what's your

own."

"Are you coming, our Anna?" asked her brother from the

door.

She suddenly chilled to normal, forgetting both her father

and her cousin.

"Yes, I'm ready," she said, taking sixpence from the heap of

money and sliding the rest back into the purse, which she laid

on the table.

"Give it here," said her father.

Hastily she thrust the purse into his pocket and was going

out.

"You'd better go wi' 'em, lad, hadn't you?" said the father

to the nephew.

Will Brangwen rose uncertainly. He had golden-brown, quick,

steady eyes, like a bird's, like a hawk's, which cannot look

afraid.

"Your Cousin Will 'll come with you," said the father.

Anna glanced at the strange youth again. She felt him waiting

there for her to notice him. He was hovering on the edge of her

consciousness, ready to come in. She did not want to look at

him. She was antagonistic to him.

She waited without speaking. Her cousin took his hat and

joined her. It was summer outside. Her brother Fred was plucking

a sprig of flowery currant to put in his coat, from the bush at

the angle of the house. She took no notice. Her cousin followed

just behind her.

They were on the high road. She was aware of a strangeness in

her being. It made her uncertain. She caught sight of the

flowering currant in her brother's buttonhole.

"Oh, our Fred," she cried. "Don't wear that stuff to go to

church."

Fred looked down protectively at the pink adornment on his

breast.

"Why, I like it," he said.

"Then you're the only one who does, I'm sure," she said.

And she turned to her cousin.

"Do you like the smell of it?" she asked.

He was there beside her, tall and uncouth and yet

self-possessed. It excited her.

"I can't say whether I do or not," he replied.