第 26 页

"It is always more wonderful," she asseverated, in a glad,

child's voice, remembering her fear, and not quite cleared of it

yet.

So it went on continually, the recurrence of love and

conflict between them. One day it seemed as if everything was

shattered, all life spoiled, ruined, desolate and laid waste.

The next day it was all marvellous again, just marvellous. One

day she thought she would go mad from his very presence, the

sound of his drinking was detestable to her. The next day she

loved and rejoiced in the way he crossed the floor, he was sun,

moon and stars in one.

She fretted, however, at last, over the lack of stability.

When the perfect hours came back, her heart did not forget that

they would pass away again. She was uneasy. The surety, the

surety, the inner surety, the confidence in the abidingness of

love: that was what she wanted. And that she did not get. She

knew also that he had not got it.

Nevertheless it was a marvellous world, she was for the most

part lost in the marvellousness of it. Even her great woes were

marvellous to her.

She could be very happy. And she wanted to be happy. She

resented it when he made her unhappy. Then she could kill him,

cast him out. Many days, she waited for the hour when he would

be gone to work. Then the flow of her life, which he seemed to

damn up, was let loose, and she was free. She was free, she was

full of delight. Everything delighted her. She took up the rug

and went to shake it in the garden. Patches of snow were on the

fields, the air was light. She heard the ducks shouting on the

pond, she saw them charge and sail across the water as if they

were setting off on an invasion of the world. She watched the

rough horses, one of which was clipped smooth on the belly, so

that he wore a jacket and long stockings of brown fur, stand

kissing each other in the wintry morning by the church-yard

wall. Everything delighted her, now he was gone, the insulator,

the obstruction removed, the world was all hers, in connection

with her.

She was joyfully active. Nothing pleased her more than to

hang out the washing in a high wind that came full-butt over the

round of the hill, tearing the wet garments out of her hands,

making flap-flap-flap of the waving stuff. She laughed and

struggled and grew angry. But she loved her solitary days.

Then he came home at night, and she knitted her brows because

of some endless contest between them. As he stood in the doorway

her heart changed. It steeled itself. The laughter and zest of

the day disappeared from her. She was stiffened.

They fought an unknown battle, unconsciously. Still they were

in love with each other, the passion was there. But the passion

was consumed in a battle. And the deep, fierce unnamed battle

went on. Everything glowed intensely about them, the world had

put off its clothes and was awful, with new, primal

nakedness.

Sunday came when the strange spell was cast over her by him.

Half she loved it. She was becoming more like him. All the

week-days, there was a glint of sky and fields, the little

church seemed to babble away to the cottages the morning

through. But on Sundays, when he stayed at home, a

deeply-coloured, intense gloom seemed to gather on the face of

the earth, the church seemed to fill itself with shadow, to

become big, a universe to her, there was a burning of blue and

ruby, a sound of worship about her. And when the doors were

opened, and she came out into the world, it was a world

new--created, she stepped into the resurrection of the

world, her heart beating to the memory of the darkness and the

Passion.

If, as very often, they went to the Marsh for tea on Sundays,

then she regained another, lighter world, that had never known

the gloom and the stained glass and the ecstasy of chanting. Her

husband was obliterated, she was with her father again, who was

so fresh and free and all daylight. Her husband, with his

intensity and his darkness, was obliterated. She left him, she

forgot him, she accepted her father.

Yet, as she went home again with the young man, she put her

hand on his arm tentatively, a little bit ashamed, her hand

pleaded that he would not hold it against her, her recusancy.

But he was obscured. He seemed to become blind, as if he were

not there with her.

Then she was afraid. She wanted him. When he was oblivious of

her, she almost went mad with fear. For she had become so

vulnerable, so exposed. She was in touch so intimately. All

things about her had become intimate, she had known them near

and lovely, like presences hovering upon her. What if they

should all go hard and separate again, standing back from her

terrible and distinct, and she, having known them, should be at

their mercy?

This frightened her. Always, her husband was to her the

unknown to which she was delivered up. She was a flower that has

been tempted forth into blossom, and has no retreat. He had her

nakedness in his power. And who was he, what was he? A blind

thing, a dark force, without knowledge. She wanted to preserve

herself.

Then she gathered him to herself again and was satisfied for

a moment. But as time went on, she began to realize more and

more that he did not alter, that he was something dark, alien to

herself. She had thought him just the bright reflex of herself.

As the weeks and months went by she realized that he was a dark

opposite to her, that they were opposites, not complements.

He did not alter, he remained separately himself, and he

seemed to expect her to be part of himself, the extension of his

will. She felt him trying to gain power over her, without

knowing her. What did he want? Was he going to bully her?

What did she want herself? She answered herself, that she

wanted to be happy, to be natural, like the sunlight and the

busy daytime. And, at the bottom of her soul, she felt he wanted

her to be dark, unnatural. Sometimes, when he seemed like the

darkness covering and smothering her, she revolted almost in

horror, and struck at him. She struck at him, and made him

bleed, and he became wicked. Because she dreaded him and held

him in horror, he became wicked, he wanted to destroy. And then

the fight between them was cruel.

She began to tremble. He wanted to impose himself on her. And

he began to shudder. She wanted to desert him, to leave him a

prey to the open, with the unclean dogs of the darkness setting

on to devour him. He must beat her, and make her stay with him.

Whereas she fought to keep herself free of him.

They went their ways now shadowed and stained with blood,

feeling the world far off, unable to give help. Till she began

to get tired. After a certain point, she became impassive,

detached utterly from him. He was always ready to burst out

murderously against her. Her soul got up and left him, she went

her way. Nevertheless in her apparent blitheness, that made his

soul black with opposition, she trembled as if she bled.

And ever and again, the pure love came in sunbeams between

them, when she was like a flower in the sun to him, so

beautiful, so shining, so intensely dear that he could scarcely

bear it. Then as if his soul had six wings of bliss he stood

absorbed in praise, feeling the radiance from the Almighty beat

through him like a pulse, as he stood in the upright flame of

praise, transmitting the pulse of Creation.

And ever and again he appeared to her as the dread flame of

power. Sometimes, when he stood in the doorway, his face lit up,

he seemed like an Annunciation to her, her heart beat fast. And

she watched him, suspended. He had a dark, burning being that

she dreaded and resisted. She was subject to him as to the Angel

of the Presence. She waited upon him and heard his will, and she

trembled in his service.

Then all this passed away. Then he loved her for her

childishness and for her strangeness to him, for the wonder of

her soul which was different from his soul, and which made him

genuine when he would be false. And she loved him for the way he

sat loosely in a chair, or for the way he came through a door

with his face open and eager. She loved his ringing, eager

voice, and the touch of the unknown about him, his absolute

simplicity.

Yet neither of them was quite satisfied. He felt, somewhere,

that she did not respect him. She only respected him as far as

he was related to herself. For what he was, beyond her, she had

no care. She did not care for what he represented in himself. It

is true, he did not know himself what he represented. But

whatever it was she did not really honour it. She did no service

to his work as a lace-designer, nor to himself as bread-winner.

Because he went down to the office and worked every

day--that entitled him to no respect or regard from her, he

knew. Rather she despised him for it. And he almost loved her

for this, though at first it maddened him like an insult.

What was much deeper, she soon came to combat his deepest

feelings. What he thought about life and about society and

mankind did not matter very much to her: he was right enough to

be insignificant. This was again galling to him. She would judge

beyond him on these things. But at length he came to accept her

judgments, discovering them as if they were his own. It was not

here the deep trouble lay. The deep root of his enmity lay in

the fact that she jeered at his soul. He was inarticulate and

stupid in thought. But to some things he clung passionately. He

loved the Church. If she tried to get out of him, what he

believed, then they were both soon in a white rage.

Did he believe the water turned to wine at Cana? She would

drive him to the thing as a historical fact: so much

rain-water-look at it--can it become grape-juice, wine? For

an instant, he saw with the clear eyes of the mind and said no,

his clear mind, answering her for a moment, rejected the idea.

And immediately his whole soul was crying in a mad, inchoate

hatred against this violation of himself. It was true for him.

His mind was extinguished again at once, his blood was up. In

his blood and bones, he wanted the scene, the wedding, the water

brought forward from the firkins as red wine: and Christ saying

to His mother: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?--mine

hour is not yet come."

And then:

"His mother saith unto the servants, 'Whatsoever he saith

unto you, do it.'"

Brangwen loved it, with his bones and blood he loved it, he

could not let it go. Yet she forced him to let it go. She hated

his blind attachments.

Water, natural water, could it suddenly and unnaturally turn

into wine, depart from its being and at haphazard take on

another being? Ah no, he knew it was wrong.

She became again the palpitating, hostile child, hateful,

putting things to destruction. He became mute and dead. His own

being gave him the lie. He knew it was so: wine was wine, water

was water, for ever: the water had not become wine. The miracle

was not a real fact. She seemed to be destroying him. He went

out, dark and destroyed, his soul running its blood. And he

tasted of death. Because his life was formed in these

unquestioned concepts.

She, desolate again as she had been when she was a child,

went away and sobbed. She did not care, she did not care whether

the water had turned to wine or not. Let him believe it if he

wanted to. But she knew she had won. And an ashy desolation came

over her.

They were ashenly miserable for some time. Then the life

began to come back. He was nothing if not dogged. He thought

again of the chapter of St. John. There was a great biting pang.

"But thou hast kept the good wine until now." "The best wine!"

The young man's heart responded in a craving, in a triumph,

although the knowledge that it was not true in fact bit at him

like a weasel in his heart. Which was stronger, the pain of the

denial, or the desire for affirmation? He was stubborn in

spirit, and abode by his desire. But he would not any more

affirm the miracles as true.

Very well, it was not true, the water had not turned into

wine. The water had not turned into wine. But for all that he

would live in his soul as if the water had turned into

wine. For truth of fact, it had not. But for his soul, it

had.

"Whether it turned into wine or whether it didn't," he said,

"it doesn't bother me. I take it for what it is."

"And what is it?" she asked, quickly, hopefully.

"It's the Bible," he said.

That answer enraged her, and she despised him. She did not

actively question the Bible herself. But he drove her to

contempt.

And yet he did not care about the Bible, the written letter.

Although he could not satisfy her, yet she knew of herself that

he had something real. He was not a dogmatist. He did not

believe in fact that the water turned into wine. He did

not want to make a fact out of it. Indeed, his attitude was

without criticism. It was purely individual. He took that which

was of value to him from the Written Word, he added to his

spirit. His mind he let sleep.

And she was bitter against him, that he let his mind sleep.

That which was human, belonged to mankind, he would not exert.

He cared only for himself. He was no Christian. Above all,

Christ had asserted the brotherhood of man.

She, almost against herself, clung to the worship of the

human knowledge. Man must die in the body, but in his knowledge

he was immortal. Such, somewhere, was her belief, quite obscure

and unformulated. She believed in the omnipotence of the human

mind.

He, on the other hand, blind as a subterranean thing, just

ignored the human mind and ran after his own dark-souled

desires, following his own tunnelling nose. She felt often she

must suffocate. And she fought him off.

Then he, knowing he was blind, fought madly back again,

frantic in sensual fear. He did foolish things. He asserted

himself on his rights, he arrogated the old position of master

of the house.

"You've a right to do as I want," he cried.