第 18 页

was acutely angry that her parents looked up scrutinizing at him

and her. What right had they there: why should they look up! Let

them remove themselves, or look elsewhere.

And the youth went home with the stars in heaven whirling

fiercely about the blackness of his head, and his heart fierce,

insistent, but fierce as if he felt something baulking him. He

wanted to smash through something.

A spell was cast over her. And how uneasy her parents were,

as she went about the house unnoticing, not noticing them,

moving in a spell as if she were invisible to them. She was

invisible to them. It made them angry. Yet they had to submit.

She went about absorbed, obscured for a while.

Over him too the darkness of obscurity settled. He seemed to

be hidden in a tense, electric darkness, in which his soul, his

life was intensely active, but without his aid or attention. His

mind was obscured. He worked swiftly and mechanically, and he

produced some beautiful things.

His favourite work was wood-carving. The first thing he made

for her was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mythological

bird, a phoenix, something like an eagle, rising on symmetrical

wings, from a circle of very beautiful flickering flames that

rose upwards from the rim of the cup.

Anna thought nothing of the gift on the evening when he gave

it to her. In the morning, however, when the butter was made,

she fetched his seal in place of the old wooden stamper of

oak-leaves and acorns. She was curiously excited to see how it

would turn out. Strange, the uncouth bird moulded there, in the

cup-like hollow, with curious, thick waverings running inwards

from a smooth rim. She pressed another mould. Strange, to lift

the stamp and see that eagle-beaked bird raising its breast to

her. She loved creating it over and over again. And every time

she looked, it seemed a new thing come to life. Every piece of

butter became this strange, vital emblem.

She showed it to her mother and father.

"That is beautiful," said her mother, a little light coming

on to her face.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed the father, puzzled, fretted. "Why,

what sort of a bird does he call it?"

And this was the question put by the customers during the

next weeks.

"What sort of a bird do you call that, as you've got

on th' butter?"

When he came in the evening, she took him into the dairy to

show him.

"Do you like it?" he asked, in his loud, vibrating voice that

always sounded strange, re-echoing in the dark places of her

being.

They very rarely touched each other. They liked to be alone

together, near to each other, but there was still a distance

between them.

In the cool dairy the candle-light lit on the large, white

surfaces of the cream pans. He turned his head sharply. It was

so cool and remote in there, so remote. His mouth was open in a

little, strained laugh. She stood with her head bent, turned

aside. He wanted to go near to her. He had kissed her once.

Again his eye rested on the round blocks of butter, where the

emblematic bird lifted its breast from the shadow cast by the

candle flame. What was restraining him? Her breast was near him;

his head lifted like an eagle's. She did not move. Suddenly,

with an incredibly quick, delicate movement, he put his arms

round her and drew her to him. It was quick, cleanly done, like

a bird that swoops and sinks close, closer.

He was kissing her throat. She turned and looked at him. Her

eyes were dark and flowing with fire. His eyes were hard and

bright with a fierce purpose and gladness, like a hawk's. She

felt him flying into the dark space of her flames, like a brand,

like a gleaming hawk.

They had looked at each other, and seen each other strange,

yet near, very near, like a hawk stooping, swooping, dropping

into a flame of darkness. So she took the candle and they went

back to the kitchen.

They went on in this way for some time, always coming

together, but rarely touching, very seldom did they kiss. And

then, often, it was merely a touch of the lips, a sign. But her

eyes began to waken with a constant fire, she paused often in

the midst of her transit, as if to recollect something, or to

discover something.

And his face became sombre, intent, he did not really hear

what was said to him.

One evening in August he came when it was raining. He came in

with his jacket collar turned up, his jacket buttoned close, his

face wet. And he looked so slim and definite, coming out of the

chill rain, she was suddenly blinded with love for him. Yet he

sat and talked with her father and mother, meaninglessly, whilst

her blood seethed to anguish in her. She wanted to touch him

now, only to touch him.

There was the queer, abstract look on her silvery radiant

face that maddened her father, her dark eyes were hidden. But

she raised them to the youth. And they were dark with a flare

that made him quail for a moment.

She went into the second kitchen and took a lantern. Her

father watched her as she returned.

"Come with me, Will," she said to her cousin. "I want to see

if I put the brick over where that rat comes in."

"You've no need to do that," retorted her father. She took no

notice. The youth was between the two wills. The colour mounted

into the father's face, his blue eyes stared. The girl stood

near the door, her head held slightly back, like an indication

that the youth must come. He rose, in his silent, intent way,

and was gone with her. The blood swelled in Brangwen's forehead

veins.

It was raining. The light of the lantern flashed on the

cobbled path and the bottom of the wall. She came to a small

ladder, and climbed up. He reached her the lantern, and

followed. Up there in the fowl-loft, the birds sat in fat

bunches on the perches, the red combs shining like fire. Bright,

sharp eyes opened. There was a sharp crawk of expostulation as

one of the hens shifted over. The cock sat watching, his yellow

neck-feathers bright as glass. Anna went across the dirty floor.

Brangwen crouched in the loft watching. The light was soft under

the red, naked tiles. The girl crouched in a corner. There was

another explosive bustle of a hen springing from her perch.

Anna came back, stooping under the perches. He was waiting

for her near the door. Suddenly she had her arms round him, was

clinging close to him, cleaving her body against his, and

crying, in a whispering, whimpering sound.

"Will, I love you, I love you, Will, I love you." It sounded

as if it were tearing her.

He was not even very much surprised. He held her in his arms,

and his bones melted. He leaned back against the wall. The door

of the loft was open. Outside, the rain slanted by in fine,

steely, mysterious haste, emerging out of the gulf of darkness.

He held her in his arms, and he and she together seemed to be

swinging in big, swooping oscillations, the two of them clasped

together up in the darkness. Outside the open door of the loft

in which they stood, beyond them and below them, was darkness,

with a travelling veil of rain.

"I love you, Will, I love you," she moaned, "I love you,

Will."

He held her as thought they were one, and was silent.

In the house, Tom Brangwen waited a while. Then he got up and

went out. He went down the yard. He saw the curious misty shaft

coming from the loft door. He scarcely knew it was the light in

the rain. He went on till the illumination fell on him dimly.

Then looking up, through the blurr, he saw the youth and the

girl together, the youth with his back against the wall, his

head sunk over the head of the girl. The elder man saw them,

blurred through the rain, but lit up. They thought themselves so

buried in the night. He even saw the lighted dryness of the loft

behind, and shadows and bunches of roosting fowls, up in the

night, strange shadows cast from the lantern on the floor.

And a black gloom of anger, and a tenderness of

self-effacement, fought in his heart. She did not understand

what she was doing. She betrayed herself. She was a child, a

mere child. She did not know how much of herself she was

squandering. And he was blackly and furiously miserable. Was he

then an old man, that he should be giving her away in marriage?

Was he old? He was not old. He was younger than that young

thoughtless fellow in whose arms she lay. Who knew her--he

or that blind-headed youth? To whom did she belong, if not to

himself?

He thought again of the child he had carried out at night

into the barn, whilst his wife was in labour with the young Tom.

He remembered the soft, warm weight of the little girl on his

arm, round his neck. Now she would say he was finished. She was

going away, to deny him, to leave an unendurable emptiness in

him, a void that he could not bear. Almost he hated her. How

dared she say he was old. He walked on in the rain, sweating

with pain, with the horror of being old, with the agony of

having to relinquish what was life to him.

Will Brangwen went home without having seen his uncle. He

held his hot face to the rain, and walked on in a trance. "I

love you, Will, I love you." The words repeated themselves

endlessly. The veils had ripped and issued him naked into the

endless space, and he shuddered. The walls had thrust him out

and given him a vast space to walk in. Whither, through this

darkness of infinite space, was he walking blindly? Where, at

the end of all the darkness, was God the Almighty still darkly,

seated, thrusting him on? "I love you, Will, I love you." He

trembled with fear as the words beat in his heart again. And he

dared not think of her face, of her eyes which shone, and of her

strange, transfigured face. The hand of the Hidden Almighty,

burning bright, had thrust out of the darkness and gripped him.

He went on subject and in fear, his heart gripped and burning

from the touch.

The days went by, they ran on dark-padded feet in silence. He

went to see Anna, but again there had come a reserve between

them. Tom Brangwen was gloomy, his blue eyes sombre. Anna was

strange and delivered up. Her face in its delicate colouring was

mute, touched dumb and poignant. The mother bowed her head and

moved in her own dark world, that was pregnant again with

fulfilment.

Will Brangwen worked at his wood-carving. It was a passion, a

passion for him to have the chisel under his grip. Verily the

passion of his heart lifted the fine bite of steel. He was

carving, as he had always wanted, the Creation of Eve. It was a

panel in low relief, for a church. Adam lay asleep as if

suffering, and God, a dim, large figure, stooped towards him,

stretching forward His unveiled hand; and Eve, a small vivid,

naked female shape, was issuing like a flame towards the hand of

God, from the torn side of Adam.

Now, Will Brangwen was working at the Eve. She was thin, a

keen, unripe thing. With trembling passion, fine as a breath of

air, he sent the chisel over her belly, her hard, unripe, small

belly. She was a stiff little figure, with sharp lines, in the

throes and torture and ecstasy of her creation. But he trembled

as he touched her. He had not finished any of his figures. There

was a bird on a bough overhead, lifting its wings for flight,

and a serpent wreathing up to it. It was not finished yet. He

trembled with passion, at last able to create the new, sharp

body of his Eve.

At the sides, at the far sides, at either end, were two

Angels covering their faces with their wings. They were like

trees. As he went to the Marsh, in the twilight, he felt that

the Angels, with covered faces, were standing back as he went

by. The darkness was of their shadows and the covering of their

faces. When he went through the Canal bridge, the evening glowed

in its last deep colours, the sky was dark blue, the stars

glittered from afar, very remote and approaching above the

darkening cluster of the farm, above the paths of crystal along

the edge of the heavens.

She waited for him like the glow of light, and as if his face

were covered. And he dared not lift his face to look at her.

Corn harvest came on. One evening they walked out through the

farm buildings at nightfall. A large gold moon hung heavily to

the grey horizon, trees hovered tall, standing back in the dusk,

waiting. Anna and the young man went on noiselessly by the

hedge, along where the farm-carts had made dark ruts in the

grass. They came through a gate into a wide open field where

still much light seemed to spread against their faces. In the

under-shadow the sheaves lay on the ground where the reapers had

left them, many sheaves like bodies prostrate in shadowy bulk;

others were riding hazily in shocks, like ships in the haze of

moonlight and of dusk, farther off.

They did not want to turn back, yet whither were they to go,

towards the moon? For they were separate, single.

"We will put up some sheaves," said Anna. So they could

remain there in the broad, open place.

They went across the stubble to where the long rows of

upreared shocks ended. Curiously populous that part of the field

looked, where the shocks rode erect; the rest was open and

prostrate.

The air was all hoary silver. She looked around her. Trees

stood vaguely at their distance, as if waiting like heralds, for

the signal to approach. In this space of vague crystal her heart

seemed like a bell ringing. She was afraid lest the sound should

be heard.

"You take this row," she said to the youth, and passing on,

she stooped in the next row of lying sheaves, grasping her hands

in the tresses of the oats, lifting the heavy corn in either

hand, carrying it, as it hung heavily against her, to the

cleared space, where she set the two sheaves sharply down,

bringing them together with a faint, keen clash. Her two bulks

stood leaning together. He was coming, walking shadowily with

the gossamer dusk, carrying his two sheaves. She waited near-by.