第 9 页

let him go again.

He suffered very much from the thought of actual marriage,

the intimacy and nakedness of marriage. He knew her so little.

They were so foreign to each other, they were such strangers.

And they could not talk to each other. When she talked, of

Poland or of what had been, it was all so foreign, she scarcely

communicated anything to him. And when he looked at her, an

over-much reverence and fear of the unknown changed the nature

of his desire into a sort of worship, holding her aloof from his

physical desire, self-thwarting.

She did not know this, she did not understand. They had

looked at each other, and had accepted each other. It was so,

then there was nothing to balk at, it was complete between

them.

At the wedding, his face was stiff and expressionless. He

wanted to drink, to get rid of his forethought and afterthought,

to set the moment free. But he could not. The suspense only

tightened at his heart. The jesting and joviality and jolly,

broad insinuation of the guests only coiled him more. He could

not hear. That which was impending obsessed him, he could not

get free.

She sat quiet, with a strange, still smile. She was not

afraid. Having accepted him, she wanted to take him, she

belonged altogether to the hour, now. No future, no past, only

this, her hour. She did not even notice him, as she sat beside

him at the head of the table. He was very near, their coming

together was close at hand. What more!

As the time came for all the guests to go, her dark face was

softly lighted, the bend of her head was proud, her grey eyes

clear and dilated, so that the men could not look at her, and

the women were elated by her, they served her. Very wonderful

she was, as she bade farewell, her ugly wide mouth smiling with

pride and recognition, her voice speaking softly and richly in

the foreign accent, her dilated eyes ignoring one and all the

departing guests. Her manner was gracious and fascinating, but

she ignored the being of him or her to whom she gave her

hand.

And Brangwen stood beside her, giving his hearty handshake to

his friends, receiving their regard gratefully, glad of their

attention. His heart was tormented within him, he did not try to

smile. The time of his trial and his admittance, his Gethsemane

and his Triumphal Entry in one, had come now.

Behind her, there was so much unknown to him. When he

approached her, he came to such a terrible painful unknown. How

could he embrace it and fathom it? How could he close his arms

round all this darkness and hold it to his breast and give

himself to it? What might not happen to him? If he stretched and

strained for ever he would never be able to grasp it all, and to

yield himself naked out of his own hands into the unknown power!

How could a man be strong enough to take her, put his arms round

her and have her, and be sure he could conquer this awful

unknown next his heart? What was it then that she was, to which

he must also deliver himself up, and which at the same time he

must embrace, contain?

He was to be her husband. It was established so. And he

wanted it more than he wanted life, or anything. She stood

beside him in her silk dress, looking at him strangely, so that

a certain terror, horror took possession of him, because she was

strange and impending and he had no choice. He could not bear to

meet her look from under her strange, thick brows.

"Is it late?" she said.

He looked at his watch.

"No--half-past eleven," he said. And he made an excuse

to go into the kitchen, leaving her standing in the room among

the disorder and the drinking-glasses.

Tilly was seated beside the fire in the kitchen, her head in

her hands. She started up when he entered.

"Why haven't you gone to bed?" he said.

"I thought I'd better stop an' lock up an' do," she said. Her

agitation quietened him. He gave her some little order, then

returned, steadied now, almost ashamed, to his wife. She stood a

moment watching him, as he moved with averted face. Then she

said:

"You will be good to me, won't you?"

She was small and girlish and terrible, with a queer, wide

look in her eyes. His heart leaped in him, in anguish of love

and desire, he went blindly to her and took her in his arms.

"I want to," he said as he drew her closer and closer in. She

was soothed by the stress of his embrace, and remained quite

still, relaxed against him, mingling in to him. And he let

himself go from past and future, was reduced to the moment with

her. In which he took her and was with her and there was nothing

beyond, they were together in an elemental embrace beyond their

superficial foreignness. But in the morning he was uneasy again.

She was still foreign and unknown to him. Only, within the fear

was pride, belief in himself as mate for her. And she,

everything forgotten in her new hour of coming to life, radiated

vigour and joy, so that he quivered to touch her.

It made a great difference to him, marriage. Things became so

remote and of so little significance, as he knew the powerful

source of his life, his eyes opened on a new universe, and he

wondered in thinking of his triviality before. A new, calm

relationship showed to him in the things he saw, in the cattle

he used, the young wheat as it eddied in a wind.

And each time he returned home, he went steadily,

expectantly, like a man who goes to a profound, unknown

satisfaction. At dinner-time, he appeared in the doorway,

hanging back a moment from entering, to see if she was there. He

saw her setting the plates on the white-scrubbed table. Her arms

were slim, she had a slim body and full skirts, she had a dark,

shapely head with close-banded hair. Somehow it was her head, so

shapely and poignant, that revealed her his woman to him. As she

moved about clothed closely, full-skirted and wearing her little

silk apron, her dark hair smoothly parted, her head revealed

itself to him in all its subtle, intrinsic beauty, and he knew

she was his woman, he knew her essence, that it was his to

possess. And he seemed to live thus in contact with her, in

contact with the unknown, the unaccountable and

incalculable.

They did not take much notice of each other, consciously.

"I'm betimes," he said.

"Yes," she answered.

He turned to the dogs, or to the child if she was there. The

little Anna played about the farm, flitting constantly in to

call something to her mother, to fling her arms round her

mother's skirts, to be noticed, perhaps caressed, then,

forgetting, to slip out again.

Then Brangwen, talking to the child, or to the dog between

his knees, would be aware of his wife, as, in her tight, dark

bodice and her lace fichu, she was reaching up to the corner

cupboard. He realized with a sharp pang that she belonged to

him, and he to her. He realized that he lived by her. Did he own

her? Was she here for ever? Or might she go away? She was not

really his, it was not a real marriage, this marriage between

them. She might go away. He did not feel like a master, husband,

father of her children. She belonged elsewhere. Any moment, she

might be gone. And he was ever drawn to her, drawn after her,

with ever-raging, ever-unsatisfied desire. He must always turn

home, wherever his steps were taking him, always to her, and he

could never quite reach her, he could never quite be satisfied,

never be at peace, because she might go away.

At evening, he was glad. Then, when he had finished in the

yard, and come in and washed himself, when the child was put to

bed, he could sit on the other side of the fire with his beer on

the hob and his long white pipe in his fingers, conscious of her

there opposite him, as she worked at her embroidery, or as she

talked to him, and he was safe with her now, till morning. She

was curiously self-sufficient and did not say very much.

Occasionally she lifted her head, her grey eyes shining with a

strange light, that had nothing to do with him or with this

place, and would tell him about herself. She seemed to be back

again in the past, chiefly in her childhood or her girlhood,

with her father. She very rarely talked of her first husband.

But sometimes, all shining-eyed, she was back at her own home,

telling him about the riotous times, the trip to Paris with her

father, tales of the mad acts of the peasants when a burst of

religious, self-hurting fervour had passed over the country.

She would lift her head and say:

"When they brought the railway across the country, they made

afterwards smaller railways, of shorter width, to come down to

our town-a hundred miles. When I was a girl, Gisla, my German

gouvernante, was very shocked and she would not tell me. But I

heard the servants talking. I remember, it was Pierre, the

coachman. And my father, and some of his friends, landowners,

they had taken a wagon, a whole railway wagon--that you

travel in----"

"A railway-carriage," said Brangwen.

She laughed to herself.

"I know it was a great scandal: yes--a whole wagon, and

they had girls, you know, filles, naked, all the

wagon-full, and so they came down to our village. They came

through villages of the Jews, and it was a great scandal. Can

you imagine? All the countryside! And my mother, she did not

like it. Gisla said to me, 'Madame, she must not know that you

have heard such things.'

"My mother, she used to cry, and she wished to beat my

father, plainly beat him. He would say, when she cried because

he sold the forest, the wood, to jingle money in his pocket, and

go to Warsaw or Paris or Kiev, when she said he must take back

his word, he must not sell the forest, he would stand and say,

'I know, I know, I have heard it all, I have heard it all

before. Tell me some new thing. I know, I know, I know.' Oh, but

can you understand, I loved him when he stood there under the

door, saying only, 'I know, I know, I know it all already.' She

could not change him, no, not if she killed herself for it. And

she could change everybody else, but him, she could not change

him----"

Brangwen could not understand. He had pictures of a

cattle-truck full of naked girls riding from nowhere to nowhere,

of Lydia laughing because her father made great debts and said,

"I know, I know"; of Jews running down the street shouting in

Yiddish, "Don't do it, don't do it," and being cut down by

demented peasants--she called them "cattle"--whilst

she looked on interested and even amused; of tutors and

governesses and Paris and a convent. It was too much for him.

And there she sat, telling the tales to the open space, not to

him, arrogating a curious superiority to him, a distance between

them, something strange and foreign and outside his life,

talking, rattling, without rhyme or reason, laughing when he was

shocked or astounded, condemning nothing, confounding his mind

and making the whole world a chaos, without order or stability

of any kind. Then, when they went to bed, he knew that he had

nothing to do with her. She was back in her childhood, he was a

peasant, a serf, a servant, a lover, a paramour, a shadow, a

nothing. He lay still in amazement, staring at the room he knew

so well, and wondering whether it was really there, the window,

the chest of drawers, or whether it was merely a figment in the

atmosphere. And gradually he grew into a raging fury against

her. But because he was so much amazed, and there was as yet

such a distance between them, and she was such an amazing thing

to him, with all wonder opening out behind her, he made no

retaliation on her. Only he lay still and wide-eyed with rage,

inarticulate, not understanding, but solid with hostility.

And he remained wrathful and distinct from her, unchanged

outwardly to her, but underneath a solid power of antagonism to

her. Of which she became gradually aware. And it irritated her

to be made aware of him as a separate power. She lapsed into a

sort of sombre exclusion, a curious communion with mysterious

powers, a sort of mystic, dark state which drove him and the

child nearly mad. He walked about for days stiffened with

resistance to her, stiff with a will to destroy her as she was.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, there was connection between them

again. It came on him as he was working in the fields. The

tension, the bond, burst, and the passionate flood broke forward

into a tremendous, magnificent rush, so that he felt he could

snap off the trees as he passed, and create the world

afresh.

And when he arrived home, there was no sign between them. He

waited and waited till she came. And as he waited, his limbs

seemed strong and splendid to him, his hands seemed like

passionate servants to him, goodly, he felt a stupendous power

in himself, of life, and of urgent, strong blood.

She was sure to come at last, and touch him. Then he burst

into flame for her, and lost himself. They looked at each other,

a deep laugh at the bottom of their eyes, and he went to take of

her again, wholesale, mad to revel in the inexhaustible wealth

of her, to bury himself in the depths of her in an inexhaustible

exploration, she all the while revelling in that he revelled in

her, tossed all her secrets aside and plunged to that which was

secret to her as well, whilst she quivered with fear and the

last anguish of delight.

What did it matter who they were, whether they knew each

other or not?

The hour passed away again, there was severance between them,

and rage and misery and bereavement for her, and deposition and

toiling at the mill with slaves for him. But no matter. They had

had their hour, and should it chime again, they were ready for

it, ready to renew the game at the point where it was left off,

on the edge of the outer darkness, when the secrets within the

woman are game for the man, hunted doggedly, when the secrets of

the woman are the man's adventure, and they both give themselves