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golden-brown like the father's. So they called her Ursula

because of the picture of the saint.

It was a rather delicate baby at first, but soon it became

stronger, and was restless as a young eel. Anna was worn out

with the day-long wrestling with its young vigour.

As a little animal, she loved and adored it and was happy.

She loved her husband, she kissed his eyes and nose and mouth,

and made much of him, she said his limbs were beautiful, she was

fascinated by the physical form of him.

And she was indeed Anna Victrix. He could not combat her any

more. He was out in the wilderness, alone with her. Having

occasion to go to London, he marvelled, as he returned, thinking

of naked, lurking savages on an island, how these had built up

and created the great mass of Oxford Street or Piccadilly. How

had helpless savages, running with their spears on the

riverside, after fish, how had they come to rear up this great

London, the ponderous, massive, ugly superstructure of a world

of man upon a world of nature! It frightened and awed him. Man

was terrible, awful in his works. The works of man were more

terrible than man himself, almost monstrous.

And yet, for his own part, for his private being, Brangwen

felt that the whole of the man's world was exterior and

extraneous to his own real life with Anna. Sweep away the whole

monstrous superstructure of the world of to-day, cities and

industries and civilization, leave only the bare earth with

plants growing and waters running, and he would not mind, so

long as he were whole, had Anna and the child and the new,

strange certainty in his soul. Then, if he were naked, he would

find clothing somewhere, he would make a shelter and bring food

to his wife.

And what more? What more would be necessary? The great mass

of activity in which mankind was engaged meant nothing to him.

By nature, he had no part in it. What did he live for, then? For

Anna only, and for the sake of living? What did he want on this

earth? Anna only, and his children, and his life with his

children and her? Was there no more?

He was attended by a sense of something more, something

further, which gave him absolute being. It was as if now he

existed in Eternity, let Time be what it might. What was there

outside? The fabricated world, that he did not believe in? What

should he bring to her, from outside? Nothing? Was it enough, as

it was? He was troubled in his acquiescence. She was not with

him. Yet he scarcely believed in himself, apart from her, though

the whole Infinite was with him. Let the whole world slide down

and over the edge of oblivion, he would stand alone. But he was

unsure of her. And he existed also in her. So he was unsure.

He hovered near to her, never quite able to forget the vague,

haunting uncertainty, that seemed to challenge him, and which he

would not hear. A pang of dread, almost guilt, as of

insufficiency, would go over him as he heard her talking to the

baby. She stood before the window, with the month-old child in

her arms, talking in a musical, young sing-song that he had not

heard before, and which rang on his heart like a claim from the

distance, or the voice of another world sounding its claim on

him. He stood near, listening, and his heart surged, surged to

rise and submit. Then it shrank back and stayed aloof. He could

not move, a denial was upon him, as if he could not deny

himself. He must, he must be himself.

"Look at the silly blue-caps, my beauty," she crooned,

holding up the infant to the window, where shone the white

garden, and the blue-tits scuffling in the snow: "Look at the

silly blue-caps, my darling, having a fight in the snow! Look at

them, my bird--beating the snow about with their wings, and

shaking their heads. Oh, aren't they wicked things, wicked

things! Look at their yellow feathers on the snow there! They'll

miss them, won't they, when they're cold later on.

"Must we tell them to stop, must we say 'stop it' to them, my

bird? But they are naughty, naughty! Look at them!" Suddenly her

voice broke loud and fierce, she rapped the pane sharply.

"Stop it," she cried, "stop it, you little nuisances. Stop

it!" She called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. Her

voice was fierce and imperative.

"Have more sense," she cried.

"There, now they're gone. Where have they gone, the silly

things? What will they say to each other? What will they say, my

lambkin? They'll forget, won't they, they'll forget all about

it, out of their silly little heads, and their blue caps."

After a moment, she turned her bright face to her

husband.

"They were really fighting, they were really fierce

with each other!" she said, her voice keen with excitement and

wonder, as if she belonged to the birds' world, were identified

with the race of birds.

"Ay, they'll fight, will blue-caps," he said, glad when she

turned to him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and stood

beside her and looked out at the marks on the snow where the

birds had scuffled, and at the yew trees' burdened, white and

black branches. What was the appeal it made to him, what was the

question of her bright face, what was the challenge he was

called to answer? He did not know. But as he stood there he felt

some responsibility which made him glad, but uneasy, as if he

must put out his own light. And he could not move as yet.

Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still she

was not quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feeling, as

of a door half opened. Here she was, safe and still in

Cossethay. But she felt as if she were not in Cossethay at all.

She was straining her eyes to something beyond. And from her

Pisgah mount, which she had attained, what could she see? A

faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a rainbow like an

archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured coping above it.

Must she be moving thither?

Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could not

arrive at. There was something beyond her. But why must she

start on the journey? She stood so safely on the Pisgah

mountain.

In the winter, when she rose with the sunrise, and out of the

back windows saw the east flaming yellow and orange above the

green, glowing grass, while the great pear tree in between stood

dark and magnificent as an idol, and under the dark pear tree,

the little sheet of water spread smooth in burnished, yellow

light, she said, "It is here". And when, at evening, the sunset

came in a red glare through the big opening in the clouds, she

said again, "It is beyond".

Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned the

day, and she saw the hope, the promise. Why should she travel

any further?

Yet she always asked the question. As the sun went down in

his fiery winter haste, she faced the blazing close of the

affair, in which she had not played her fullest part, and she

made her demand still: "What are you doing, making this big

shining commotion? What is it that you keep so busy about, that

you will not let us alone?"

She did not turn to her husband, for him to lead her. He was

apart from her, with her, according to her different conceptions

of him. The child she might hold up, she might toss the child

forward into the furnace, the child might walk there, amid the

burning coals and the incandescent roar of heat, as the three

witnesses walked with the angel in the fire.

Soon, she felt sure of her husband. She knew his dark face

and the extent of its passion. She knew his slim, vigorous body,

she said it was hers. Then there was no denying her. She was a

rich woman enjoying her riches.

And soon again she was with child. Which made her satisfied

and took away her discontent. She forgot that she had watched

the sun climb up and pass his way, a magnificent traveller

surging forward. She forgot that the moon had looked through a

window of the high, dark night, and nodded like a magic

recognition, signalled to her to follow. Sun and moon travelled

on, and left her, passed her by, a rich woman enjoying her

riches. She should go also. But she could not go, when they

called, because she must stay at home now. With satisfaction she

relinquished the adventure to the unknown. She was bearing her

children.

There was another child coming, and Anna lapsed into vague

content. If she were not the wayfarer to the unknown, if she

were arrived now, settled in her builded house, a rich woman,

still her doors opened under the arch of the rainbow, her

threshold reflected the passing of the sun and moon, the great

travellers, her house was full of the echo of journeying.

She was a door and a threshold, she herself. Through her

another soul was coming, to stand upon her as upon the

threshold, looking out, shading its eyes for the direction to

take.

CHAPTER VII

THE CATHEDRAL

During the first year of her marriage, before Ursula was

born, Anna Brangwen and her husband went to visit her mother's

friend, the Baron Skrebensky. The latter had kept a slight

connection with Anna's mother, and had always preserved some

officious interest in the young girl, because she was a pure

Pole.

When Baron Skrebensky was about forty years old, his wife

died, and left him raving, disconsolate. Lydia had visited him

then, taking Anna with her. It was when the girl was fourteen

years old. Since then she had not seen him. She remembered him

as a small sharp clergyman who cried and talked and terrified

her, whilst her mother was most strangely consoling, in a

foreign language.

The little Baron never quite approved of Anna, because she

spoke no Polish. Still, he considered himself in some way her

guardian, on Lensky's behalf, and he presented her with some

old, heavy Russian jewellery, the least valuable of his wife's

relics. Then he lapsed out of the Brangwen's life again, though

he lived only about thirty miles away.

Three years later came the startling news that he had married

a young English girl of good family. Everybody marvelled. Then

came a copy of "The History of the Parish of Briswell, by

Rudolph, Baron Skrebensky, Vicar of Briswell." It was a curious

book, incoherent, full of interesting exhumations. It was

dedicated: "To my wife, Millicent Maud Pearse, in whom I embrace

the generous spirit of England."

"If he embraces no more than the spirit of England," said Tom

Brangwen, "it's a bad look-out for him."

But paying a formal visit with his wife, he found the new

Baroness a little, creamy-skinned, insidious thing with

red-brown hair and a mouth that one must always watch, because

it curved back continually in an incomprehensible, strange laugh

that exposed her rather prominent teeth. She was not beautiful,

yet Tom Brangwen was immediately under her spell. She seemed to

snuggle like a kitten within his warmth, whilst she was at the

same time elusive and ironical, suggesting the fine steel of her

claws.

The Baron was almost dotingly courteous and attentive to her.

She, almost mockingly, yet quite happy, let him dote. Curious

little thing she was, she had the soft, creamy, elusive beauty

of a ferret. Tom Brangwen was quite at a loss, at her mercy, and

she laughed, a little breathlessly, as if tempted to cruelty.

She did put fine torments on the elderly Baron.

When some months later she bore a son, the Baron Skrebensky

was loud with delight.

Gradually she gathered a circle of acquaintances in the

county. For she was of good family, half Venetian, educated in

Dresden. The little foreign vicar attained to a social status

which almost satisfied his maddened pride.

Therefore the Brangwens were surprised when the invitation

came for Anna and her young husband to pay a visit to Briswell

vicarage. For the Skrebenskys were now moderately well off,

Millicent Skrebensky having some fortune of her own.

Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school

manner, and arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, ruddy,

bright, with long limbs and a small head, like some uncouth

bird, was not changed in the least. The little Baroness was

smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real charm, a kind of

joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like some weasel. Anna at

once respected her, and was on her guard before her,

instinctively attracted by the strange, childlike surety of the

Baroness, yet mistrusting it, fascinated. The little baron was

now quite white-haired, very brittle. He was wizened and

wrinkled, yet fiery, unsubdued. Anna looked at his lean body, at

his small, fine lean legs and lean hands as he sat talking, and

she flushed. She recognized the quality of the male in him, his

lean, concentrated age, his informed fire, his faculty for

sharp, deliberate response. He was so detached, so purely

objective. A woman was thoroughly outside him. There was no

confusion. So he could give that fine, deliberate response.

He was something separate and interesting; his hard,

intrinsic being, whittled down by age to an essentiality and a

directness almost death-like, cruel, was yet so unswervingly

sure in its action, so distinct in its surety, that she was

attracted to him. She watched his cool, hard, separate fire,

fascinated by it. Would she rather have it than her husband's

diffuse heat, than his blind, hot youth?

She seemed to be breathing high, sharp air, as if she had

just come out of a hot room. These strange Skrebenskys made her

aware of another, freer element, in which each person was

detached and isolated. Was not this her natural element? Was not

the close Brangwen life stifling her?

Meanwhile the little baroness, with always a subtle light

stirring of her full, lustrous, hazel eyes, was playing with

Will Brangwen. He was not quick enough to see all her movements.

Yet he watched her steadily, with unchanging, lit-up eyes. She

was a strange creature to him. But she had no power over him.