第 5 页

"Who says she's a Pole?"

"They all say so."

"Then what's brought her to these parts?"

"I couldn't tell you. She's got a little girl with her."

"Got a little girl with her?"

"Of three or four, with a head like a fuzz-ball."

"Black?"

"White--fair as can be, an' all of a fuzz."

"Is there a father, then?"

"Not to my knowledge. I don't know."

"What brought her here?"

"I couldn't say, without th' vicar axed her."

"Is the child her child?"

"I s'd think so--they say so."

"Who told you about her?"

"Why, Lizzie--a-Monday--we seed her goin'

past."

"You'd have to be rattling your tongues if anything went

past."

Brangwen stood musing. That evening he went up to Cossethay

to the "Red Lion", half with the intention of hearing more.

She was the widow of a Polish doctor, he gathered. Her

husband had died, a refugee, in London. She spoke a bit

foreign-like, but you could easily make out what she said. She

had one little girl named Anna. Lensky was the woman's name,

Mrs. Lensky.

Brangwen felt that here was the unreality established at

last. He felt also a curious certainty about her, as if she were

destined to him. It was to him a profound satisfaction that she

was a foreigner.

A swift change had taken place on the earth for him, as if a

new creation were fulfilled, in which he had real existence.

Things had all been stark, unreal, barren, mere nullities

before. Now they were actualities that he could handle.

He dared scarcely think of the woman. He was afraid. Only all

the time he was aware of her presence not far off, he lived in

her. But he dared not know her, even acquaint himself with her

by thinking of her.

One day he met her walking along the road with her little

girl. It was a child with a face like a bud of apple-blossom,

and glistening fair hair like thistle-down sticking out in

straight, wild, flamy pieces, and very dark eyes. The child

clung jealously to her mother's side when he looked at her,

staring with resentful black eyes. But the mother glanced at him

again, almost vacantly. And the very vacancy of her look

inflamed him. She had wide grey-brown eyes with very dark,

fathomless pupils. He felt the fine flame running under his

skin, as if all his veins had caught fire on the surface. And he

went on walking without knowledge.

It was coming, he knew, his fate. The world was submitting to

its transformation. He made no move: it would come, what would

come.

When his sister Effie came to the Marsh for a week, he went

with her for once to church. In the tiny place, with its mere

dozen pews, he sat not far from the stranger. There was a

fineness about her, a poignancy about the way she sat and held

her head lifted. She was strange, from far off, yet so intimate.

She was from far away, a presence, so close to his soul. She was

not really there, sitting in Cossethay church beside her little

girl. She was not living the apparent life of her days. She

belonged to somewhere else. He felt it poignantly, as something

real and natural. But a pang of fear for his own concrete life,

that was only Cossethay, hurt him, and gave him misgiving.

Her thick dark brows almost met above her irregular nose, she

had a wide, rather thick mouth. But her face was lifted to

another world of life: not to heaven or death: but to some place

where she still lived, in spite of her body's absence.

The child beside her watched everything with wide, black

eyes. She had an odd little defiant look, her little red mouth

was pinched shut. She seemed to be jealously guarding something,

to be always on the alert for defence. She met Brangwen's near,

vacant, intimate gaze, and a palpitating hostility, almost like

a flame of pain, came into the wide, over-conscious dark

eyes.

The old clergyman droned on, Cossethay sat unmoved as usual.

And there was the foreign woman with a foreign air about her,

inviolate, and the strange child, also foreign, jealously

guarding something.

When the service was over, he walked in the way of another

existence out of the church. As he went down the church-path

with his sister, behind the woman and child, the little girl

suddenly broke from her mother's hand, and slipped back with

quick, almost invisible movement, and was picking at something

almost under Brangwen's feet. Her tiny fingers were fine and

quick, but they missed the red button.

"Have you found something?" said Brangwen to her.

And he also stooped for the button. But she had got it, and

she stood back with it pressed against her little coat, her

black eyes flaring at him, as if to forbid him to notice her.

Then, having silenced him, she turned with a swift

"Mother----," and was gone down the path.

The mother had stood watching impassive, looking not at the

child, but at Brangwen. He became aware of the woman looking at

him, standing there isolated yet for him dominant in her foreign

existence.

He did not know what to do, and turned to his sister. But the

wide grey eyes, almost vacant yet so moving, held him beyond

himself.

"Mother, I may have it, mayn't I?" came the child's proud,

silvery tones. "Mother"-she seemed always to be calling her

mother to remember her-"mother"-and she had nothing to continue

now her mother had replied "Yes, my child." But, with ready

invention, the child stumbled and ran on, "What are those

people's names?"

Brangwen heard the abstract:

"I don't know, dear."

He went on down the road as if he were not living inside

himself, but somewhere outside.

"Who was that person?" his sister Effie asked.

"I couldn't tell you," he answered unknowing.

"She's somebody very funny," said Effie, almost in

condemnation. "That child's like one bewitched."

"Bewitched--how bewitched?" he repeated.

"You can see for yourself. The mother's plain, I must

say--but the child is like a changeling. She'd be about

thirty-five."

But he took no notice. His sister talked on.

"There's your woman for you," she continued. "You'd better

marry her." But still he took no notice. Things were as

they were.

Another day, at tea-time, as he sat alone at table, there

came a knock at the front door. It startled him like a portent.

No one ever knocked at the front door. He rose and began

slotting back the bolts, turning the big key. When he had opened

the door, the strange woman stood on the threshold.

"Can you give me a pound of butter?" she asked, in a curious

detached way of one speaking a foreign language.

He tried to attend to her question. She was looking at him

questioningly. But underneath the question, what was there, in

her very standing motionless, which affected him?

He stepped aside and she at once entered the house, as if the

door had been opened to admit her. That startled him. It was the

custom for everybody to wait on the doorstep till asked inside.

He went into the kitchen and she followed.

His tea-things were spread on the scrubbed deal table, a big

fire was burning, a dog rose from the hearth and went to her.

She stood motionless just inside the kitchen.

"Tilly," he called loudly, "have we got any butter?"

The stranger stood there like a silence in her black

cloak.

"Eh?" came the shrill cry from the distance.

He shouted his question again.

"We've got what's on t' table," answered Tilly's shrill voice

out of the dairy.

Brangwen looked at the table. There was a large pat of butter

on a plate, almost a pound. It was round, and stamped with

acorns and oak-leaves.

"Can't you come when you're wanted?" he shouted.

"Why, what d'you want?" Tilly protested, as she came peeking

inquisitively through the other door.

She saw the strange woman, stared at her with cross-eyes, but

said nothing.

"Haven't we any butter?" asked Brangwen again,

impatiently, as if he could command some by his question.

"I tell you there's what's on t' table," said Tilly,

impatient that she was unable to create any to his demand. "We

haven't a morsel besides."

There was a moment's silence.

The stranger spoke, in her curiously distinct, detached

manner of one who must think her speech first.

"Oh, then thank you very much. I am sorry that I have come to

trouble you."

She could not understand the entire lack of manners, was

slightly puzzled. Any politeness would have made the situation

quite impersonal. But here it was a case of wills in confusion.

Brangwen flushed at her polite speech. Still he did not let her

go.

"Get summat an' wrap that up for her," he said to

Tilly, looking at the butter on the table.

And taking a clean knife, he cut off that side of the butter

where it was touched.

His speech, the "for her", penetrated slowly into the foreign

woman and angered Tilly.

"Vicar has his butter fra Brown's by rights," said the

insuppressible servant-woman. "We s'll be churnin' to-morrow

mornin' first thing."

"Yes"--the long-drawn foreign yes--"yes," said the

Polish woman, "I went to Mrs. Brown's. She hasn't any more."

Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according to

the etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort of

manners whatever coming to a place cool as you like and knocking

at the front door asking for a pound as a stop-gap while your

other people were short. If you go to Brown's you go to Brown's,

an' my butter isn't just to make shift when Brown's has got

none.

Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of

Tilly's. The Polish lady did not. And as she wanted butter for

the vicar, and as Tilly was churning in the morning, she

waited.

"Sluther up now," said Brangwen loudly after this silence had

resolved itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the inner

door.

"I am afraid that I should not come, so," said the stranger,

looking at him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it

was usual to do.

He felt confused.

"How's that?" he said, trying to be genial and being only

protective.

"Do you----?" she began deliberately. But she was

not sure of her ground, and the conversation came to an end. Her

eyes looked at him all the while, because she could not speak

the language.

They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from her to

him. He bent down to it.

"And how's your little girl?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you, she is very well," was the reply, a phrase

of polite speech in a foreign language merely.

"Sit you down," he said.

And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through the

slits of her cloak, resting on her lap.

"You're not used to these parts," he said, still standing on

the hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking with

curious directness at the woman. Her self-possession pleased him

and inspired him, set him curiously free. It seemed to him

almost brutal to feel so master of himself and of the

situation.

Her eyes rested on him for a moment, questioning, as she

thought of the meaning of his speech.

"No," she said, understanding. "No--it is strange."

"You find it middlin' rough?" he said.

Her eyes waited on him, so that he should say it again.

"Our ways are rough to you," he repeated.

"Yes--yes, I understand. Yes, it is different, it is

strange. But I was in Yorkshire----"

"Oh, well then," he said, "it's no worse here than what they

are up there."

She did not quite understand. His protective manner, and his

sureness, and his intimacy, puzzled her. What did he mean? If he

was her equal, why did he behave so without formality?

"No----" she said, vaguely, her eyes resting on

him.

She saw him fresh and naive, uncouth, almost entirely

beyond relationship with her. Yet he was good-looking, with his

fair hair and blue eyes full of energy, and with his healthy

body that seemed to take equality with her. She watched him

steadily. He was difficult for her to understand, warm, uncouth,

and confident as he was, sure on his feet as if he did not know

what it was to be unsure. What then was it that gave him this

curious stability?

She did not know. She wondered. She looked round the room he

lived in. It had a close intimacy that fascinated and almost

frightened her. The furniture was old and familiar as old

people, the whole place seemed so kin to him, as if it partook

of his being, that she was uneasy.

"It is already a long time that you have lived in this

house--yes?" she asked.

"I've always lived here," he said.

"Yes--but your people--your family?"

"We've been here above two hundred years," he said. Her eyes

were on him all the time, wide-open and trying to grasp him. He

felt that he was there for her.

"It is your own place, the house, the

farm----?"

"Yes," he said. He looked down at her and met her look. It

disturbed her. She did not know him. He was a foreigner, they

had nothing to do with each other. Yet his look disturbed her to

knowledge of him. He was so strangely confident and direct.

"You live quite alone?"

"Yes--if you call it alone?"

She did not understand. It seemed unusual to her. What was

the meaning of it?

And whenever her eyes, after watching him for some time,