第 4 页

this odd, middle-aged, dry-skinned man, personally. The talk was

pleasant, but that did not matter so much. It was the gracious

manner, the fine contact that was all.

They talked a long while together, Brangwen flushing like a

girl when the other did not understand his idiom. Then they said

good night, and shook hands. Again the foreigner bowed and

repeated his good night.

"Good night, and bon voyage."

Then he turned to the stairs.

Brangwen went up to his room and lay staring out at the stars

of the summer night, his whole being in a whirl. What was it

all? There was a life so different from what he knew it. What

was there outside his knowledge, how much? What was this that he

had touched? What was he in this new influence? What did

everything mean? Where was life, in that which he knew or all

outside him?

He fell asleep, and in the morning had ridden away before any

other visitors were awake. He shrank from seeing any of them

again, in the morning.

His mind was one big excitement. The girl and the foreigner:

he knew neither of their names. Yet they had set fire to the

homestead of his nature, and he would be burned out of cover. Of

the two experiences, perhaps the meeting with the foreigner was

the more significant. But the girl--he had not settled

about the girl.

He did not know. He had to leave it there, as it was. He

could not sum up his experiences.

The result of these encounters was, that he dreamed day and

night, absorbedly, of a voluptuous woman and of the meeting with

a small, withered foreigner of ancient breeding. No sooner was

his mind free, no sooner had he left his own companions, than he

began to imagine an intimacy with fine-textured, subtle-mannered

people such as the foreigner at Matlock, and amidst this subtle

intimacy was always the satisfaction of a voluptuous woman.

He went about absorbed in the interest and the actuality of

this dream. His eyes glowed, he walked with his head up, full of

the exquisite pleasure of aristocratic subtlety and grace,

tormented with the desire for the girl.

Then gradually the glow began to fade, and the cold material

of his customary life to show through. He resented it. Was he

cheated in his illusion? He balked the mean enclosure of

reality, stood stubbornly like a bull at a gate, refusing to

re-enter the well-known round of his own life.

He drank more than usual to keep up the glow. But it faded

more and more for all that. He set his teeth at the commonplace,

to which he would not submit. It resolved itself starkly before

him, for all that.

He wanted to marry, to get settled somehow, to get out of the

quandary he found himself in. But how? He felt unable to move

his limbs. He had seen a little creature caught in bird-lime,

and the sight was a nightmare to him. He began to feel mad with

the rage of impotency.

He wanted something to get hold of, to pull himself out. But

there was nothing. Steadfastly he looked at the young women, to

find a one he could marry. But not one of them did he want. And

he knew that the idea of a life among such people as the

foreigner was ridiculous.

Yet he dreamed of it, and stuck to his dreams, and would not

have the reality of Cossethay and Ilkeston. There he sat

stubbornly in his corner at the "Red Lion", smoking and musing

and occasionally lifting his beer-pot, and saying nothing, for

all the world like a gorping farm-labourer, as he said

himself.

Then a fever of restless anger came upon him. He wanted to go

away--right away. He dreamed of foreign parts. But somehow

he had no contact with them. And it was a very strong root which

held him to the Marsh, to his own house and land.

Then Effie got married, and he was left in the house with

only Tilly, the cross-eyed woman-servant who had been with them

for fifteen years. He felt things coming to a close. All the

time, he had held himself stubbornly resistant to the action of

the commonplace unreality which wanted to absorb him. But now he

had to do something.

He was by nature temperate. Being sensitive and emotional,

his nausea prevented him from drinking too much.

But, in futile anger, with the greatest of determination and

apparent good humour, he began to drink in order to get drunk.

"Damn it," he said to himself, "you must have it one road or

another--you can't hitch your horse to the shadow of a

gate-post--if you've got legs you've got to rise off your

backside some time or other."

So he rose and went down to Ilkeston, rather awkwardly took

his place among a gang of young bloods, stood drinks to the

company, and discovered he could carry it off quite well. He had

an idea that everybody in the room was a man after his own

heart, that everything was glorious, everything was perfect.

When somebody in alarm told him his coat pocket was on fire, he

could only beam from a red, blissful face and say

"Iss-all-ri-ight--iss-al'-ri-ight--it's a'

right--let it be, let it be----" and he laughed

with pleasure, and was rather indignant that the others should

think it unnatural for his coat pocket to burn:--it was the

happiest and most natural thing in the world--what?

He went home talking to himself and to the moon, that was

very high and small, stumbling at the flashes of moonlight from

the puddles at his feet, wondering What the Hanover! then

laughing confidently to the moon, assuring her this was first

class, this was.

In the morning he woke up and thought about it, and for the

first time in his life, knew what it was to feel really acutely

irritable, in a misery of real bad temper. After bawling and

snarling at Tilly, he took himself off for very shame, to be

alone. And looking at the ashen fields and the putty roads, he

wondered what in the name of Hell he could do to get out of this

prickly sense of disgust and physical repulsion. And he knew

that this was the result of his glorious evening.

And his stomach did not want any more brandy. He went

doggedly across the fields with his terrier, and looked at

everything with a jaundiced eye.

The next evening found him back again in his place at the

"Red Lion", moderate and decent. There he sat and stubbornly

waited for what would happen next.

Did he, or did he not believe that he belonged to this world

of Cossethay and Ilkeston? There was nothing in it he wanted.

Yet could he ever get out of it? Was there anything in himself

that would carry him out of it? Or was he a dunderheaded baby,

not man enough to be like the other young fellows who drank a

good deal and wenched a little without any question, and were

satisfied.

He went on stubbornly for a time. Then the strain became too

great for him. A hot, accumulated consciousness was always awake

in his chest, his wrists felt swelled and quivering, his mind

became full of lustful images, his eyes seemed blood-flushed. He

fought with himself furiously, to remain normal. He did not seek

any woman. He just went on as if he were normal. Till he must

either take some action or beat his head against the wall.

Then he went deliberately to Ilkeston, in silence, intent and

beaten. He drank to get drunk. He gulped down the brandy, and

more brandy, till his face became pale, his eyes burning. And

still he could not get free. He went to sleep in drunken

unconsciousness, woke up at four o'clock in the morning and

continued drinking. He would get free. Gradually the

tension in him began to relax. He began to feel happy. His

riveted silence was unfastened, he began to talk and babble. He

was happy and at one with all the world, he was united with all

flesh in a hot blood-relationship. So, after three days of

incessant brandy-drinking, he had burned out the youth from his

blood, he had achieved this kindled state of oneness with all

the world, which is the end of youth's most passionate desire.

But he had achieved his satisfaction by obliterating his own

individuality, that which it depended on his manhood to preserve

and develop.

So he became a bout-drinker, having at intervals these bouts

of three or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was drunk for

the whole time. He did not think about it. A deep resentment

burned in him. He kept aloof from any women, antagonistic.

When he was twenty-eight, a thick-limbed, stiff, fair man

with fresh complexion, and blue eyes staring very straight

ahead, he was coming one day down from Cossethay with a load of

seed out of Nottingham. It was a time when he was getting ready

for another bout of drinking, so he stared fixedly before him,

watchful yet absorbed, seeing everything and aware of nothing,

coiled in himself. It was early in the year.

He walked steadily beside the horse, the load clanked behind

as the hill descended steeper. The road curved down-hill before

him, under banks and hedges, seen only for a few yards

ahead.

Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope,

his horse britching between the shafts, he saw a woman

approaching. But he was thinking for the moment of the

horse.

Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, was

apparently rather small and slight, beneath her long black

cloak, and she wore a black bonnet. She walked hastily, as if

unseeing, her head rather forward. It was her curious, absorbed,

flitting motion, as if she were passing unseen by everybody,

that first arrested him.

She had heard the cart, and looked up. Her face was pale and

clear, she had thick dark eyebrows and a wide mouth, curiously

held. He saw her face clearly, as if by a light in the air. He

saw her face so distinctly, that he ceased to coil on himself,

and was suspended.

"That's her," he said involuntarily. As the cart passed by,

splashing through the thin mud, she stood back against the bank.

Then, as he walked still beside his britching horse, his eyes

met hers. He looked quickly away, pressing back his head, a pain

of joy running through him. He could not bear to think of

anything.

He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, her

shape in the black cloak, the movement as she walked. Then she

was gone round the bend.

She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a

far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He

went on, quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think

or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed

motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved

within the knowledge of her, in the world that was beyond

reality.

The feeling that they had exchanged recognition possessed him

like a madness, like a torment. How could he be sure, what

confirmation had he? The doubt was like a sense of infinite

space, a nothingness, annihilating. He kept within his breast

the will to surety. They had exchanged recognition.

He walked about in this state for the next few days. And then

again like a mist it began to break to let through the common,

barren world. He was very gentle with man and beast, but he

dreaded the starkness of disillusion cropping through again.

As he was standing with his back to the fire after dinner a

few days later, he saw the woman passing. He wanted to know that

she knew him, that she was aware. He wanted it said that there

was something between them. So he stood anxiously watching,

looking at her as she went down the road. He called to

Tilly.

"Who might that be?" he asked.

Tilly, the cross-eyed woman of forty, who adored him, ran

gladly to the window to look. She was glad when he asked her for

anything. She craned her head over the short curtain, the little

tight knob of her black hair sticking out pathetically as she

bobbed about.

"Oh why"--she lifted her head and peered with her

twisted, keen brown eyes--"why, you know who it

is--it's her from th' vicarage--you know--"

"How do I know, you hen-bird," he shouted.

Tilly blushed and drew her neck in and looked at him with her

squinting, sharp, almost reproachful look.

"Why you do--it's the new housekeeper."

"Ay--an' what by that?"

"Well, an' what by that?" rejoined the indignant

Tilly.

"She's a woman, isn't she, housekeeper or no housekeeper?

She's got more to her than that! Who is she--she's got a

name?"

"Well, if she has, I don't know," retorted Tilly, not

to be badgered by this lad who had grown up into a man.

"What's her name?" he asked, more gently.

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you," replied Tilly, on her

dignity.

"An' is that all as you've gathered, as she's housekeeping at

the vicarage?"

"I've 'eered mention of 'er name, but I couldn't remember it

for my life."

"Why, yer riddle-skulled woman o' nonsense, what have you got

a head for?"

"For what other folks 'as got theirs for," retorted Tilly,

who loved nothing more than these tilts when he would call her

names.

There was a lull.

"I don't believe as anybody could keep it in their head," the

woman-servant continued, tentatively.

"What?" he asked.

"Why, 'er name."

"How's that?"

"She's fra some foreign parts or other."

"Who told you that?"

"That's all I do know, as she is."

"An' wheer do you reckon she's from, then?"

"I don't know. They do say as she hails fra th' Pole. I don't

know," Tilly hastened to add, knowing he would attack her.

"Fra th' Pole, why do you hail fra th' Pole? Who set

up that menagerie confabulation?"

"That's what they say--I don't know----"

"Who says?"

"Mrs. Bentley says as she's fra th' Pole--else she is a

Pole, or summat."

Tilly was only afraid she was landing herself deeper now.