第 33 页

and blood vibrated to it. He caught the baby to his breast with

his passionate, clapping laugh. And the infant knew him.

As the newly-opened, newly-dawned eyes looked at him, he

wanted them to perceive him, to recognize him. Then he was

verified. The child knew him, a queer contortion of laughter

came on its face for him. He caught it to his breast, clapping

with a triumphant laugh.

The golden-brown eyes of the child gradually lit up and

dilated at the sight of the dark-glowing face of the youth. It

knew its mother better, it wanted its mother more. But the

brightest, sharpest little ecstasy was for the father.

It began to be strong, to move vigorously and freely, to make

sounds like words. It was a baby girl now. Already it knew his

strong hands, it exulted in his strong clasp, it laughed and

crowed when he played with it.

And his heart grew red--hot with passionate feeling for

the child. She was not much more than a year old when the second

baby was born. Then he took Ursula for his own. She his first

little girl. He had set his heart on her.

The second had dark blue eyes and a fair skin: it was more a

Brangwen, people said. The hair was fair. But they forgot Anna's

stiff blonde fleece of childhood. They called the newcomer

Gudrun.

This time, Anna was stronger, and not so eager. She did not

mind that the baby was not a boy. It was enough that she had

milk and could suckle her child: Oh, oh, the bliss of the little

life sucking the milk of her body! Oh, oh, oh the bliss, as the

infant grew stronger, of the two tiny hands clutching, catching

blindly yet passionately at her breast, of the tiny mouth

seeking her in blind, sure, vital knowledge, of the sudden

consummate peace as the little body sank, the mouth and throat

sucking, sucking, sucking, drinking life from her to make a new

life, almost sobbing with passionate joy of receiving its own

existence, the tiny hands clutching frantically as the nipple

was drawn back, not to be gainsaid. This was enough for Anna.

She seemed to pass off into a kind of rapture of motherhood, her

rapture of motherhood was everything.

So that the father had the elder baby, the weaned child, the

golden-brown, wondering vivid eyes of the little Ursula were for

him, who had waited behind the mother till the need was for him.

The mother felt a sharp stab of jealousy. But she was still more

absorbed in the tiny baby. It was entirely hers, its need was

direct upon her.

So Ursula became the child of her father's heart. She was the

little blossom, he was the sun. He was patient, energetic,

inventive for her. He taught her all the funny little things, he

filled her and roused her to her fullest tiny measure. She

answered him with her extravagant infant's laughter and her call

of delight.

Now there were two babies, a woman came in to do the

housework. Anna was wholly nurse. Two babies were not too much

for her. But she hated any form of work, now her children had

come, except the charge of them.

When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy child,

always amusing herself, needing not much attention from other

people. At evening, towards six o'clock, Anna very often went

across the lane to the stile, lifted Ursula over into the field,

with a: "Go and meet Daddy." Then Brangwen, coming up the steep

round of the hill, would see before him on the brow of the path

a tiny, tottering, windblown little mite with a dark head, who,

as soon as she saw him, would come running in tiny, wild,

windmill fashion, lifting her arms up and down to him, down the

steep hill. His heart leapt up, he ran his fastest to her, to

catch her, because he knew she would fall. She came fluttering

on, wildly, with her little limbs flying. And he was glad when

he caught her up in his arms. Once she fell as she came flying

to him, he saw her pitch forward suddenly as she was running

with her hands lifted to him; and when he picked her up, her

mouth was bleeding. He could never bear to think of it, he

always wanted to cry, even when he was an old man and she had

become a stranger to him. How he loved that little

Ursula!--his heart had been sharply seared for her, when he

was a youth, first married.

When she was a little older, he would see her recklessly

climbing over the bars of the stile, in her red pinafore,

swinging in peril and tumbling over, picking herself up and

flitting towards him. Sometimes she liked to ride on his

shoulder, sometimes she preferred to walk with his hand,

sometimes she would fling her arms round his legs for a moment,

then race free again, whilst he went shouting and calling to

her, a child along with her. He was still only a tall, thin,

unsettled lad of twenty-two.

It was he who had made her her cradle, her little chair, her

little stool, her high chair. It was he who would swing her up

to table or who would make for her a doll out of an old

table-leg, whilst she watched him, saying:

"Make her eyes, Daddy, make her eyes!"

And he made her eyes with his knife.

She was very fond of adorning herself, so he would tie a

piece of cotton round her ear, and hang a blue bead on it

underneath for an ear-ring. The ear-rings varied with a red

bead, and a golden bead, and a little pearl bead. And as he came

home at night, seeing her bridling and looking very

self-conscious, he took notice and said:

"So you're wearing your best golden and pearl ear-rings,

to-day?"

"Yes."

"I suppose you've been to see the queen?"

"Yes, I have."

"Oh, and what had she to say?"

"She said--she said--'You won't dirty your nice

white frock."'

He gave her the nicest bits from his plate, putting them into

her red, moist mouth. And he would make on a piece of

bread-and-butter a bird, out of jam: which she ate with

extraordinary relish.

After the tea-things were washed up, the woman went away,

leaving the family free. Usually Brangwen helped in the bathing

of the children. He held long discussions with his child as she

sat on his knee and he unfastened her clothes. And he seemed to

be talking really of momentous things, deep moralities. Then

suddenly she ceased to hear, having caught sight of a glassie

rolled into a corner. She slipped away, and was in no hurry to

return.

"Come back here," he said, waiting. She became absorbed,

taking no notice.

"Come on," he repeated, with a touch of command.

An excited little chuckle came from her, but she pretended to

be absorbed.

"Do you hear, Milady?"

She turned with a fleeting, exulting laugh. He rushed on her,

and swept her up.

"Who was it that didn't come!" he said, rolling her between

his strong hands, tickling her. And she laughed heartily,

heartily. She loved him that he compelled her with his strength

and decision. He was all-powerful, the tower of strength which

rose out of her sight.

When the children were in bed, sometimes Anna and he sat and

talked, desultorily, both of them idle. He read very little.

Anything he was drawn to read became a burning reality to him,

another scene outside his window. Whereas Anna skimmed through a

book to see what happened, then she had enough.

Therefore they would often sit together, talking desultorily.

What was really between them they could not utter. Their words

were only accidents in the mutual silence. When they talked,

they gossiped. She did not care for sewing.

She had a beautiful way of sitting musing, gratefully, as if

her heart were lit up. Sometimes she would turn to him,

laughing, to tell him some little thing that had happened during

the day. Then he would laugh, they would talk awhile, before the

vital, physical silence was between them again.

She was thin but full of colour and life. She was perfectly

happy to do just nothing, only to sit with a curious, languid

dignity, so careless as to be almost regal, so utterly

indifferent, so confident. The bond between them was

undefinable, but very strong. It kept everyone else at a

distance.

His face never changed whilst she knew him, it only became

more intense. It was ruddy and dark in its abstraction, not very

human, it had a strong, intent brightness. Sometimes, when his

eyes met hers, a yellow flash from them caused a darkness to

swoon over her consciousness, electric, and a slight strange

laugh came on his face. Her eyes would turn languidly, then

close, as if hypnotized. And they lapsed into the same potent

darkness. He had the quality of a young black cat, intent,

unnoticeable, and yet his presence gradually made itself felt,

stealthily and powerfully took hold of her. He called, not to

her, but to something in her, which responded subtly, out of her

unconscious darkness.

So they were together in a darkness, passionate, electric,

for ever haunting the back of the common day, never in the

light. In the light, he seemed to sleep, unknowing. Only she

knew him when the darkness set him free, and he could see with

his gold-glowing eyes his intention and his desires in the dark.

Then she was in a spell, then she answered his harsh,

penetrating call with a soft leap of her soul, the darkness woke

up, electric, bristling with an unknown, overwhelming

insinuation.

By now they knew each other; she was the daytime, the

daylight, he was the shadow, put aside, but in the darkness

potent with an overwhelming voluptuousness.

She learned not to dread and to hate him, but to fill herself

with him, to give herself to his black, sensual power, that was

hidden all the daytime. And the curious rolling of the eyes, as

if she were lapsing in a trance away from her ordinary

consciousness became habitual with her, when something

threatened and opposed her in life, the conscious life.

So they remained as separate in the light, and in the thick

darkness, married. He supported her daytime authority, kept it

inviolable at last. And she, in all the darkness, belonged to

him, to his close, insinuating, hypnotic familiarity.

All his daytime activity, all his public life, was a kind of

sleep. She wanted to be free, to belong to the day. And he ran

avoiding the day in work. After tea, he went to the shed to his

carpentry or his woodcarving. He was restoring the patched,

degraded pulpit to its original form.

But he loved to have the child near him, playing by his feet.

She was a piece of light that really belonged to him, that

played within his darkness. He left the shed door on the latch.

And when, with his second sense of another presence, he knew she

was coming, he was satisfied, he was at rest. When he was alone

with her, he did not want to take notice, to talk. He wanted to

live unthinking, with her presence flickering upon him.

He always went in silence. The child would push open the shed

door, and see him working by lamplight, his sleeves rolled back.

His clothes hung about him, carelessly, like mere wrapping.

Inside, his body was concentrated with a flexible, charged power

all of its own, isolated. From when she was a tiny child Ursula

could remember his forearm, with its fine black hairs and its

electric flexibility, working at the bench through swift,

unnoticeable movements, always ambushed in a sort of

silence.

She hung a moment in the door of the shed, waiting for him to

notice her. He turned, his black, curved eyebrows arching

slightly.

"Hullo, Twittermiss!"

And he closed the door behind her. Then the child was happy

in the shed that smelled of sweet wood and resounded to the

noise of the plane or the hammer or the saw, yet was charged

with the silence of the worker. She played on, intent and

absorbed, among the shavings and the little nogs of wood. She

never touched him: his feet and legs were near, she did not

approach them.

She liked to flit out after him when he was going to church

at night. If he were going to be alone, he swung her over the

wall, and let her come.

Again she was transported when the door was shut behind them,

and they two inherited the big, pale, void place. She would

watch him as he lit the organ candles, wait whilst he began his

practicing his tunes, then she ran foraging here and there, like

a kitten playing by herself in the darkness with eyes dilated.

The ropes hung vaguely, twining on the floor, from the bells in

the tower, and Ursula always wanted the fluffy, red-and-white,

or blue-and-white rope-grips. But they were above her.

Sometimes her mother came to claim her. Then the child was

seized with resentment. She passionately resented her mother's

superficial authority. She wanted to assert her own

detachment.

He, however, also gave her occasional cruel shocks. He let

her play about in the church, she rifled foot-stools and

hymn-books and cushions, like a bee among flowers, whilst the

organ echoed away. This continued for some weeks. Then the

charwoman worked herself up into a frenzy of rage, to dare to

attack Brangwen, and one day descended on him like a harpy. He

wilted away, and wanted to break the old beast's neck.

Instead he came glowering in fury to the house, and turned on

Ursula.

"Why, you tiresome little monkey, can't you even come to

church without pulling the place to bits?"

His voice was harsh and cat-like, he was blind to the child.

She shrank away in childish anguish and dread. What was it, what

awful thing was it?

The mother turned with her calm, almost superb manner.

"What has she done, then?"

"Done? She shall go in the church no more, pulling and

littering and destroying."

The wife slowly rolled her eyes and lowered her eyelids.

"What has she destroyed, then?"

He did not know.

"I've just had Mrs. Wilkinson at me," he cried, "with a list

of things she's done."

Ursula withered under the contempt and anger of the "she", as

he spoke of her.

"Send Mrs. Wilkinson here to me with a list of the things