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from his beloved realities. He wanted his cathedral; he wanted

to satisfy his blind passion. And he could not any more.

Something intervened.

They went home again, both of them altered. She had some new

reverence for that which he wanted, he felt that his cathedrals

would never again be to him as they had been. Before, he had

thought them absolute. But now he saw them crouching under the

sky, with still the dark, mysterious world of reality inside,

but as a world within a world, a sort of side show, whereas

before they had been as a world to him within a chaos: a

reality, an order, an absolute, within a meaningless

confusion.

He had felt, before, that could he but go through the great

door and look down the gloom towards the far-off, concluding

wonder of the altar, that then, with the windows suspended

around like tablets of jewels, emanating their own glory, then

he had arrived. Here the satisfaction he had yearned after came

near, towards this, the porch of the great Unknown, all reality

gathered, and there, the altar was the mystic door, through

which all and everything must move on to eternity.

But now, somehow, sadly and disillusioned, he realized that

the doorway was no doorway. It was too narrow, it was false.

Outside the cathedral were many flying spirits that could never

be sifted through the jewelled gloom. He had lost his

absolute.

He listened to the thrushes in the gardens and heard a note

which the cathedrals did not include: something free and

careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow with

dandelions, on his way to work, and the bath of yellow glowing

was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was

glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral.

There was life outside the Church. There was much that the

Church did not include. He thought of God, and of the whole blue

rotunda of the day. That was something great and free. He

thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, and it seemed, a

temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and

mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs.

Still he loved the Church. As a symbol, he loved it. He

tended it for what it tried to represent, rather than for that

which it did represent. Still he loved it. The little church

across his garden-wall drew him, he gave it loving attention.

But he went to take charge of it, to preserve it. It was as an

old, sacred thing to him. He looked after the stone and

woodwork, mending the organ and restoring a piece of broken

carving, repairing the church furniture. Later, he became

choir-master also.

His life was shifting its centre, becoming more superficial.

He had failed to become really articulate, failed to find real

expression. He had to continue in the old form. But in spirit,

he was uncreated.

Anna was absorbed in the child now, she left her husband to

take his own way. She was willing now to postpone all adventure

into unknown realities. She had the child, her palpable and

immediate future was the child. If her soul had found no

utterance, her womb had.

The church that neighboured with his house became very

intimate and dear to him. He cherished it, he had it entirely in

his charge. If he could find no new activity, he would be happy

cherishing the old, dear form of worship. He knew this little,

whitewashed church. In its shadowy atmosphere he sank back into

being. He liked to sink himself in its hush as a stone sinks

into water.

He went across his garden, mounted the wall by the little

steps, and entered the hush and peace of the church. As the

heavy door clanged to behind him, his feet re-echoed in the

aisle, his heart re-echoed with a little passion of tenderness

and mystic peace. He was also slightly ashamed, like a man who

has failed, who lapses back for his fulfilment.

He loved to light the candles at the organ, and sitting there

alone in the little glow, practice the hymns and chants for the

service. The whitewashed arches retreated into darkness, the

sound of the organ and the organ-pedals died away upon the

unalterable stillness of the church, there were faint, ghostly

noises in the tower, and then the music swelled out again,

loudly, triumphantly.

He ceased to fret about his life. He relaxed his will, and

let everything go. What was between him and his wife was a great

thing, if it was not everything. She had conquered, really. Let

him wait, and abide, wait and abide. She and the baby and

himself, they were one. The organ rang out his protestation. His

soul lay in the darkness as he pressed the keys of the

organ.

To Anna, the baby was a complete bliss and fulfilment. Her

desires sank into abeyance, her soul was in bliss over the baby.

It was rather a delicate child, she had trouble to rear it. She

never for a moment thought it would die. It was a delicate

infant, therefore it behoved her to make it strong. She threw

herself into the labour, the child was everything. Her

imagination was all occupied here. She was a mother. It was

enough to handle the new little limbs, the new little body, hear

the new little voice crying in the stillness. All the future

rang to her out of the sound of the baby's crying and cooing,

she balanced the coming years of life in her hands, as she

nursed the child. The passionate sense of fulfilment, of the

future germinated in her, made her vivid and powerful. All the

future was in her hands, in the hands of the woman. And before

this baby was ten months old, she was again with child. She

seemed to be in the fecund of storm life, every moment was full

and busy with productiveness to her. She felt like the earth,

the mother of everything.

Brangwen occupied himself with the church, he played the

organ, he trained the choir-boys, he taught a Sunday-school

class of youths. He was happy enough. There was an eager,

yearning kind of happiness in him as he taught the boys on

Sundays. He was all the time exciting himself with the proximity

of some secret that he had not yet fathomed.

In the house, he served his wife and the little matriarchy.

She loved him because he was the father of her children. And she

always had a physical passion for him. So he gave up trying to

have the spiritual superiority and control, or even her respect

for his conscious or public life. He lived simply by her

physical love for him. And he served the little matriarchy,

nursing the child and helping with the housework, indifferent

any more of his own dignity and importance. But his abandoning

of claims, his living isolated upon his own interest, made him

seem unreal, unimportant.

Anna was not publicly proud of him. But very soon she learned

to be indifferent to public life. He was not what is called a

manly man: he did not drink or smoke or arrogate importance. But

he was her man, and his very indifference to all claims of

manliness set her supreme in her own world with him. Physically,

she loved him and he satisfied her. He went alone and subsidiary

always. At first it had irritated her, the outer world existed

so little to him. Looking at him with outside eyes, she was

inclined to sneer at him. But her sneer changed to a sort of

respect. She respected him, that he could serve her so simply

and completely. Above all, she loved to bear his children. She

loved to be the source of children.

She could not understand him, his strange, dark rages and his

devotion to the church. It was the church building he cared for;

and yet his soul was passionate for something. He laboured

cleaning the stonework, repairing the woodwork, restoring the

organ, and making the singing as perfect as possible. To keep

the church fabric and the church-ritual intact was his business;

to have the intimate sacred building utterly in his own hands,

and to make the form of service complete. There was a little

bright anguish and tension on his face, and in his intent

movements. He was like a lover who knows he is betrayed, but who

still loves, whose love is only the more intense. The church was

false, but he served it the more attentively.

During the day, at his work in the office, he kept himself

suspended. He did not exist. He worked automatically till it was

time to go home.

He loved with a hot heart the dark-haired little Ursula, and

he waited for the child to come to consciousness. Now the mother

monopolized the baby. But his heart waited in its darkness. His

hour would come.

In the long run, he learned to submit to Anna. She forced him

to the spirit of her laws, whilst leaving him the letter of his

own. She combated in him his devils. She suffered very much from

his inexplicable and incalculable dark rages, when a blackness

filled him, and a black wind seemed to sweep out of existence

everything that had to do with him. She could feel herself,

everything, being annihilated by him.

At first she fought him. At night, in this state, he would

kneel down to say his prayers. She looked at his crouching

figure.

"Why are you kneeling there, pretending to pray?" she said,

harshly. "Do you think anybody can pray, when they are in the

vile temper you are in?"

He remained crouching by the beside, motionless.

"It's horrible," she continued, "and such a pretence! What do

you pretend you are saying? Who do you pretend you are praying

to?"

He still remained motionless, seething with inchoate rage,

when his whole nature seemed to disintegrate. He seemed to live

with a strain upon himself, and occasionally came these dark,

chaotic rages, the lust for destruction. She then fought with

him, and their fights were horrible, murderous. And then the

passion between them came just as black and awful.

But little by little, as she learned to love him better, she

would put herself aside, and when she felt one of his fits upon

him, would ignore him, successfully leave him in his world,

whilst she remained in her own. He had a black struggle with

himself, to come back to her. For at last he learned that he

would be in hell until he came back to her. So he struggled to

submit to her, and she was afraid of the ugly strain in his

eyes. She made love to him, and took him. Then he was grateful

to her love, humble.

He made himself a woodwork shed, in which to restore things

which were destroyed in the church. So he had plenty to do: his

wife, his child, the church, the woodwork, and his wage-earning,

all occupying him. If only there were not some limit to him,

some darkness across his eyes! He had to give in to it at last

himself. He must submit to his own inadequacy, aware of some

limit to himself, of [something unformed in] his own black,

violent temper, and to reckon with it. But as she was more gentle

with him, it became quieter.

As he sat sometimes very still, with a bright, vacant face,

Anna could see the suffering among the brightness. He was aware

of some limit to himself, of something unformed in his very

being, of some buds which were not ripe in him, some folded

centres of darkness which would never develop and unfold whilst

he was alive in the body. He was unready for fulfilment.

Something undeveloped in him limited him, there was a darkness

in him which he could not unfold, which would never

unfold in him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHILD

From the first, the baby stirred in the young father a

deep, strong emotion he dared scarcely acknowledge, it was so

strong and came out of the dark of him. When he heard the child

cry, a terror possessed him, because of the answering echo from

the unfathomed distances in himself. Must he know in himself

such distances, perilous and imminent?

He had the infant in his arms, he walked backwards and

forwards troubled by the crying of his own flesh and blood. This

was his own flesh and blood crying! His soul rose against the

voice suddenly breaking out from him, from the distances in

him.

Sometimes in the night, the child cried and cried, when the

night was heavy and sleep oppressed him. And half asleep, he

stretched out his hand to put it over the baby's face to stop

the crying. But something arrested his hand: the very

inhumanness of the intolerable, continuous crying arrested him.

It was so impersonal, without cause or object. Yet he echoed to

it directly, his soul answered its madness. It filled him with

terror, almost with frenzy.

He learned to acquiesce to this, to submit to the awful,

obliterated sources which were the origin of his living tissue.

He was not what he conceived himself to be! Then he was what he

was, unknown, potent, dark.

He became accustomed to the child, he knew how to lift and

balance the little body. The baby had a beautiful, rounded head

that moved him passionately. He would have fought to the last

drop to defend that exquisite, perfect round head.

He learned to know the little hands and feet, the strange,

unseeing, golden-brown eyes, the mouth that opened only to cry,

or to suck, or to show a queer, toothless laugh. He could almost

understand even the dangling legs, which at first had created in

him a feeling of aversion. They could kick in their queer little

way, they had their own softness.

One evening, suddenly, he saw the tiny, living thing rolling

naked in the mother's lap, and he was sick, it was so utterly

helpless and vulnerable and extraneous; in a world of hard

surfaces and varying altitudes, it lay vulnerable and naked at

every point. Yet it was quite blithe. And yet, in its blind,

awful crying, was there not the blind, far-off terror of its own

vulnerable nakedness, the terror of being so utterly delivered

over, helpless at every point. He could not bear to hear it

crying. His heart strained and stood on guard against the whole

universe.

But he waited for the dread of these days to pass; he saw the

joy coming. He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear of the

baby, a bit of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like

bronze-dust. And he waited, for the child to become his, to look

at him and answer him.

It had a separate being, but it was his own child. His flesh