第 17 页

"Give it here, Fred, don't have it smelling in church," she

said to the little boy, her page.

Her fair, small brother handed her the flower dutifully. She

sniffed it and gave it without a word to her cousin, for his

judgment. He smelled the dangling flower curiously.

"It's a funny smell," he said.

And suddenly she laughed, and a quick light came on all their

faces, there was a blithe trip in the small boy's walk.

The bells were ringing, they were going up the summery hill

in their Sunday clothes. Anna was very fine in a silk frock of

brown and white stripes, tight along the arms and the body,

bunched up very elegantly behind the skirt. There was something

of the cavalier about Will Brangwen, and he was well

dressed.

He walked along with the sprig of currant-blossom dangling

between his fingers, and none of them spoke. The sun shone

brightly on little showers of buttercup down the bank, in the

fields the fool's-parsley was foamy, held very high and proud

above a number of flowers that flitted in the greenish twilight

of the mowing-grass below.

They reached the church. Fred led the way to the pew,

followed by the cousin, then Anna. She felt very conspicuous and

important. Somehow, this young man gave her away to other

people. He stood aside and let her pass to her place, then sat

next to her. It was a curious sensation, to sit next to him.

The colour came streaming from the painted window above her.

It lit on the dark wood of the pew, on the stone, worn aisle, on

the pillar behind her cousin, and on her cousin's hands, as they

lay on his knees. She sat amid illumination, illumination and

luminous shadow all around her, her soul very bright. She sat,

without knowing it, conscious of the hands and motionless knees

of her cousin. Something strange had entered into her world,

something entirely strange and unlike what she knew.

She was curiously elated. She sat in a glowing world of

unreality, very delightful. A brooding light, like laughter, was

in her eyes. She was aware of a strange influence entering in to

her, which she enjoyed. It was a dark enrichening influence she

had not known before. She did not think of her cousin. But she

was startled when his hands moved.

She wished he would not say the responses so plainly. It

diverted her from her vague enjoyment. Why would he obtrude, and

draw notice to himself? It was bad taste. But she went on all

right till the hymn came. He stood up beside her to sing, and

that pleased her. Then suddenly, at the very first word, his

voice came strong and over-riding, filling the church. He was

singing the tenor. Her soul opened in amazement. His voice

filled the church! It rang out like a trumpet, and rang out

again. She started to giggle over her hymn-book. But he went on,

perfectly steady. Up and down rang his voice, going its own way.

She was helplessly shocked into laughter. Between moments of

dead silence in herself she shook with laughter. On came the

laughter, seized her and shook her till the tears were in her

eyes. She was amazed, and rather enjoyed it. And still the hymn

rolled on, and still she laughed. She bent over her hymn-book

crimson with confusion, but still her sides shook with laughter.

She pretended to cough, she pretended to have a crumb in her

throat. Fred was gazing up at her with clear blue eyes. She was

recovering herself. And then a slur in the strong, blind voice

at her side brought it all on again, in a gust of mad

laughter.

She bent down to prayer in cold reproof of herself. And yet,

as she knelt, little eddies of giggling went over her. The very

sight of his knees on the praying cushion sent the little shock

of laughter over her.

She gathered herself together and sat with prim, pure face,

white and pink and cold as a Christmas rose, her hands in her

silk gloves folded on her lap, her dark eyes all vague,

abstracted in a sort of dream, oblivious of everything.

The sermon rolled on vaguely, in a tide of pregnant

peace.

Her cousin took out his pocket-handkerchief. He seemed to be

drifted absorbed into the sermon. He put his handkerchief to his

face. Then something dropped on to his knee. There lay the bit

of flowering currant! He was looking down at it in real

astonishment. A wild snort of laughter came from Anna. Everybody

heard: it was torture. He had shut the crumpled flower in his

hand and was looking up again with the same absorbed attention

to the sermon. Another snort of laughter from Anna. Fred nudged

her remindingly.

Her cousin sat motionless. Somehow he was aware that his face

was red. She could feel him. His hand, closed over the flower,

remained quite still, pretending to be normal. Another wild

struggle in Anna's breast, and the snort of laughter. She bent

forward shaking with laughter. It was now no joke. Fred was

nudge-nudging at her. She nudged him back fiercely. Then another

vicious spasm of laughter seized her. She tried to ward it off

in a little cough. The cough ended in a suppressed whoop. She

wanted to die. And the closed hand crept away to the pocket.

Whilst she sat in taut suspense, the laughter rushed back at

her, knowing he was fumbling in his pocket to shove the flower

away.

In the end, she felt weak, exhausted and thoroughly

depressed. A blankness of wincing depression came over her. She

hated the presence of the other people. Her face became quite

haughty. She was unaware of her cousin any more.

When the collection arrived with the last hymn, her cousin

was again singing resoundingly. And still it amused her. In

spite of the shameful exhibition she had made of herself, it

amused her still. She listened to it in a spell of amusement.

And the bag was thrust in front of her, and her sixpence was

mingled in the folds of her glove. In her haste to get it out,

it flipped away and went twinkling in the next pew. She stood

and giggled. She could not help it: she laughed outright, a

figure of shame.

"What were you laughing about, our Anna?" asked Fred, the

moment they were out of the church.

"Oh, I couldn't help it," she said, in her careless,

half-mocking fashion. "I don't know why Cousin Will's

singing set me off."

"What was there in my singing to make you laugh?" he

asked.

"It was so loud," she said.

They did not look at each other, but they both laughed again,

both reddening.

"What were you snorting and laughing for, our Anna?" asked

Tom, the elder brother, at the dinner table, his hazel eyes

bright with joy. "Everybody stopped to look at you." Tom was in

the choir.

She was aware of Will's eyes shining steadily upon her,

waiting for her to speak.

"It was Cousin Will's singing," she said.

At which her cousin burst into a suppressed, chuckling laugh,

suddenly showing all his small, regular, rather sharp teeth, and

just as quickly closing his mouth again.

"Has he got such a remarkable voice on him then?" asked

Brangwen.

"No, it's not that," said Anna. "Only it tickled me--I

couldn't tell you why."

And again a ripple of laughter went down the table.

Will Brangwen thrust forward his dark face, his eyes dancing,

and said:

"I'm in the choir of St. Nicholas."

"Oh, you go to church then!" said Brangwen.

"Mother does--father doesn't," replied the youth.

It was the little things, his movement, the funny tones of

his voice, that showed up big to Anna. The matter-of-fact things

he said were absurd in contrast. The things her father said

seemed meaningless and neutral.

During the afternoon they sat in the parlour, that smelled of

geranium, and they ate cherries, and talked. Will Brangwen was

called on to give himself forth. And soon he was drawn out.

He was interested in churches, in church architecture. The

influence of Ruskin had stimulated him to a pleasure in the

medieval forms. His talk was fragmentary, he was only half

articulate. But listening to him, as he spoke of church after

church, of nave and chancel and transept, of rood-screen and

font, of hatchet-carving and moulding and tracery, speaking

always with close passion of particular things, particular

places, there gathered in her heart a pregnant hush of churches,

a mystery, a ponderous significance of bowed stone, a

dim-coloured light through which something took place obscurely,

passing into darkness: a high, delighted framework of the mystic

screen, and beyond, in the furthest beyond, the altar. It was a

very real experience. She was carried away. And the land seemed

to be covered with a vast, mystic church, reserved in gloom,

thrilled with an unknown Presence.

Almost it hurt her, to look out of the window and see the

lilacs towering in the vivid sunshine. Or was this the jewelled

glass?

He talked of Gothic and Renaissance and Perpendicular, and

Early English and Norman. The words thrilled her.

"Have you been to Southwell?" he said. "I was there at twelve

o'clock at midday, eating my lunch in the churchyard. And the

bells played a hymn.

"Ay, it's a fine Minster, Southwell, heavy. It's got heavy,

round arches, rather low, on thick pillars. It's grand, the way

those arches travel forward.

"There's a sedilia as well--pretty. But I like the main

body of the church--and that north porch--"

He was very much excited and filled with himself that

afternoon. A flame kindled round him, making his experience

passionate and glowing, burningly real.

His uncle listened with twinkling eyes, half-moved. His aunt

bent forward her dark face, half-moved, but held by other

knowledge. Anna went with him.

He returned to his lodging at night treading quick, his eyes

glittering, and his face shining darkly as if he came from some

passionate, vital tryst.

The glow remained in him, the fire burned, his heart was

fierce like a sun. He enjoyed his unknown life and his own self.

And he was ready to go back to the Marsh.

Without knowing it, Anna was wanting him to come. In him she

had escaped. In him the bounds of her experience were

transgressed: he was the hole in the wall, beyond which the

sunshine blazed on an outside world.

He came. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, talking again,

there recurred the strange, remote reality which carried

everything before it. Sometimes, he talked of his father, whom

he hated with a hatred that was burningly close to love, of his

mother, whom he loved, with a love that was keenly close to

hatred, or to revolt. His sentences were clumsy, he was only

half articulate. But he had the wonderful voice, that could ring

its vibration through the girl's soul, transport her into his

feeling. Sometimes his voice was hot and declamatory, sometimes

it had a strange, twanging, almost cat-like sound, sometimes it

hesitated, puzzled, sometimes there was the break of a little

laugh. Anna was taken by him. She loved the running flame that

coursed through her as she listened to him. And his mother and

his father became to her two separate people in her life.

For some weeks the youth came frequently, and was received

gladly by them all. He sat amongst them, his dark face glowing,

an eagerness and a touch of derisiveness on his wide mouth,

something grinning and twisted, his eyes always shining like a

bird's, utterly without depth. There was no getting hold of the

fellow, Brangwen irritably thought. He was like a grinning young

tom-cat, that came when he thought he would, and without

cognizance of the other person.

At first the youth had looked towards Tom Brangwen when he

talked; and then he looked towards his aunt, for her

appreciation, valuing it more than his uncle's; and then he

turned to Anna, because from her he got what he wanted, which

was not in the elder people.

So that the two young people, from being always attendant on

the elder, began to draw apart and establish a separate kingdom.

Sometimes Tom Brangwen was irritated. His nephew irritated him.

The lad seemed to him too special, self-contained. His nature

was fierce enough, but too much abstracted, like a separate

thing, like a cat's nature. A cat could lie perfectly peacefully

on the hearthrug whilst its master or mistress writhed in agony

a yard away. It had nothing to do with other people's affairs.

What did the lad really care about anything, save his own

instinctive affairs?

Brangwen was irritated. Nevertheless he liked and respected

his nephew. Mrs. Brangwen was irritated by Anna, who was

suddenly changed, under the influence of the youth. The mother

liked the boy: he was not quite an outsider. But she did not

like her daughter to be so much under the spell.

So that gradually the two young people drew apart, escaped

from the elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He worked

in the garden to propitiate his uncle. He talked churches to

propitiate his aunt. He followed Anna like a shadow: like a

long, persistent, unswerving black shadow he went after the

girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It exasperated him

beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat-grin as he

called it, on his nephew's face.

And Anna had a new reserve, a new independence. Suddenly she

began to act independently of her parents, to live beyond them.

Her mother had flashes of anger.

But the courtship went on. Anna would find occasion to go

shopping in Ilkeston at evening. She always returned with her

cousin; he walking with his head over her shoulder, a little bit

behind her, like the Devil looking over Lincoln, as Brangwen

noted angrily and yet with satisfaction.

To his own wonder, Will Brangwen found himself in an electric

state of passion. To his wonder, he had stopped her at the gate

as they came home from Ilkeston one night, and had kissed her,

blocking her way and kissing her whilst he felt as if some blow

were struck at him in the dark. And when they went indoors, he