He bought her a cake at the refreshment-booth, and set her on a seat. A man hailed him.
‘Good morning, Tom. That thine, then?’—and the bearded farmer jerked his head at Anna.
‘Ay,’ said Brangwen, deprecating.
‘I did-na know tha’d one that old.’
‘No, it’s my Missis’s.’
‘Oh, that’s it!’ And the man looked at Anna as if she were some odd little cattle. She glowered with black eyes.
Brangwen left her there, in charge of the barman, whilst he went to see about the selling of some young stirks.* Farmers, butchers, drovers, dirty, uncouth men from whom she shrank instinctively stared down at her as she sat on her seat, then went to get their drink, talking in unabated tones. All was big and violent about her.
‘Whose child met* that be?’ they asked of the barman.
‘It belongs to Tom Brangwen.’
The child sat on in neglect, watching the door for her father. He never came; many, many men came, but not he, and she sat like a shadow. She knew one did not cry in such a place. And every man looked at her inquisitively, she shut herself away from them.
A deep, gathering coldness of isolation took hold on her. He was never coming back. She sat on, frozen, unmoving.
When she had become blank and timeless he came, and she slipped off her seat to him, like one come back from the dead. He had sold his beast as quickly as he could. But all the business was not finished. He took her again through the hurtling welter of the cattle-market.
Then at last they turned and went out through the gate. He was always hailing one man or another, always stopping to gossip about land and cattle and horses and other things she did not understand, standing in the filth and the smell, among the legs and great boots of men. And always she heard the questions:
‘What lass is that, then? I didn’t know tha’d one o’ that age.’
‘It belongs to my missis.’
Anna was very conscious of her derivation from her mother, in the end, and of her alienation.
But at last they were away, and Brangwen went with her into a little dark, ancient eating-house in the Bridlesmith-Gate. They had cow’s-tail soup, and meat and cabbage and potatoes. Other men, other people, came into the dark, vaulted place, to eat. Anna was wide-eyed and silent with wonder.
Then they went into the big market, into the corn exchange, then to shops. He bought her a little book off a stall. He loved buying things, odd things that he thought would be useful. Then they went to the Black Swan, and she drank milk and he brandy, and they harnessed the horse and drove off, up the Derby Road.
She was tired out with wonder and marvelling. But the next day, when she thought of it, she skipped, flipping her leg in the odd dance she did, and talked the whole time of what had happened to her, of what she had seen. It lasted her all the week. And the next Saturday she was eager to go again.
She became a familiar figure in the cattle-market, sitting waiting in the little booth. But she liked best to go to Derby. There her father had more friends. And she liked the familiarity of the smaller town, the nearness of the river, the strangeness that did not frighten her, it was so much smaller. She liked the covered-in market,* and the old women. She liked the George Inn, where her father put up. The landlord was Brangwen’s old friend, and Anna was made much of. She sat many a day in the cosy parlour talking to Mr Wiggin-ton, a fat man with red hair, the landlord. And when the farmers all gathered at twelve o’clock for dinner, she was a little heroine.
At first she would only glower or hiss at these strange men with their uncouth accent. But they were good-humoured. She was a little oddity, with her fierce, fair hair like spun glass sticking out in a flamy halo round the apple-blossom face and the black eyes, and the men liked an oddity. She kindled their attention.
She was very angry because Marriott, a gentleman-farmer from Ambergate, called her the little pole-cat.
‘Why you’re a pole-cat,’ he said to her.
‘I’m not,’ she flashed.
‘You are. That’s just how a pole-cat goes.’
She thought about it.
‘Well you’re—you’re—’ she began.
‘I’m what?’
She looked him up and down.
‘You’re a bow-leg man.’
Which he was. There was a roar of laughter. They loved her that she was indomitable.
‘Ah,’ said Marriott. ‘Only a pole-cat says that.’
‘Well I am a pole-cat,’ she flamed.
There was another roar of laughter from the men.
They loved to tease her.
‘Well me little maid,’ Braithwaite would say to her, ‘an’ how’s th’ lamb’s wool?’
He gave a tug at a glistening, pale piece of her hair.
‘It’s not lamb’s wool,’ said Anna, indignantly putting back her offended lock.
‘Why, what’st ca’ it then?’
‘It’s hair.’
‘Hair! Wheriver dun they rear that sort?’
‘Wheriver dun they?’ she asked, in dialect, her curiosity overcoming her.
Instead of answering he shouted with joy. It was the triumph, to make her speak dialect.
She had one enemy, the man they called Nut-Nat, or Nat-Nut, a cretin, with inturned feet, who came flap-lapping along, shoulder jerking up at every step. This poor creature sold nuts in the public-houses where he was known. He had no roof to his mouth, and the men used to mock his speech.
The first time he came into the George when Anna was there, she asked, after he had gone, her eyes very round:
‘Why does he do that when he walks?’
‘’E canna ‘elp ‘isself, Duckie, it’s th’ make o’ th’ fellow.’
She thought about it, then she laughed nervously. And then she bethought herself, her cheeks flushed, and she cried:
‘He’s a horrid man.’
‘Nay, he’s non horrid; he canna help it if he wor struck that road.’
But when poor Nat came wambling* in again, she slid away. And she would not eat his nuts, if the men bought them for her. And when the farmers gambled at dominoes for them, she was angry.
‘They are dirty-man’s nuts,’ she cried.
So a revulsion started against Nat, who had not long after to go to the workhouse.
There grew in Brangwen’s heart now a secret desire to make her a lady. His brother Alfred, in Nottingham, had caused a great scandal by becoming the lover of an educated woman, a lady, widow of a doctor. Very often, Alfred Brangwen went down as a friend to her cottage, which was in Derbyshire, leaving his wife and family for a day or two, then returning to them. And no-one dared gainsay him, for he was a strong-willed, direct man, and he said he was a friend of this widow.
One day Brangwen met his brother on the station.
‘Where are you going to, then?’ asked the younger brother.
‘I’m going down to Wirksworth.’
‘You’ve got friends down there, I’m told.’
‘Yes.’
‘I s’ll have to be lookin’ in when I’m down that road.’
‘You please yourself.’
Tom Brangwen was so curious about the woman that the next time he was in Wirksworth he asked for her house.
He found a beautiful cottage on the steep side of a hill, looking clean over the town, that lay in the bottom of the basin, and away at the old quarries on the opposite side of the space. Mrs Forbes was in the garden. She was a tall woman with white hair. She came up the path taking off her thick gloves, laying down her shears. It was autumn. She wore a wide-brimmed hat.
Brangwen blushed to the roots of his hair, and did not know what to say.
‘I thought I might look in,’ he said, ‘knowing you were friends of my brother’s. I had to come to Wirksworth.’
She saw at once that he was a Brangwen.
‘Will you come in?’ she said. ‘My father is lying down.’
She took him into a drawing-room, full of books, with a pia
no and a violin-stand. And they talked, she simply and easily. She was full of dignity. The room was of a kind Brangwen had never known; the atmosphere seemed open and spacious, like a mountain-top to him.
‘Does my brother like reading?’ he asked.
‘Some things. He has been reading Herbert Spencer.* And we read Browning* sometimes.’
Brangwen was full of admiration, deep thrilling, almost reverential admiration. He looked at her with lit-up eyes when she said ‘we read.’ At last he burst out, looking round the room:
‘I didn’t know our Alfred was this way inclined.’
‘He is quite an unusual man.’
He looked at her in amazement. She evidently had a new idea of his brother: she evidently appreciated him. He looked again at the woman. She was about forty, straight, rather hard, a curious, separate creature. Himself, he was not in love with her, there was something chilling about her. But he was filled with boundless admiration.
At tea-time he was introduced to her father, an invalid who had to be helped about, but who was ruddy and well-favoured, with snowy hair and watery blue eyes, and a courtly naïve manner that again was new and strange to Brangwen, so suave, so merry, so innocent.
His brother was this woman’s lover! It was too amazing. Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud. More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to this visionary polite world.
He was well off. He was as well off as Alfred, who could not have above six hundred a year, all told. He himself made about four hundred, and could make more. His investments got better every day. Why did he not do something? His wife was a lady also.
But when he got to the Marsh, he realized how fixed everything was, how the other form of life was beyond him, and he regretted for the first time that he had succeeded to the farm. He felt a prisoner, sitting safe and easy and unadventurous. He might, with risk, have done more with himself. He could neither read Browning nor Herbert Spencer, nor have access to such a room as Mrs Forbes’s. All that form of life was outside him.
But then, he said he did not want it. The excitement of the visit began to pass off. The next day he was himself, and if he thought of the other woman, there was something about her and her place that he did not like, something cold, something alien, as if she were not a woman, but an inhuman being who used up human life for cold, unliving purposes.
The evening came on, he played with Anna, and then sat alone with his own wife. She was sewing. He sat very still, smoking, perturbed. He was aware of his wife’s quiet figure, and quiet dark head bent over her needle. It was too quiet for him. It was too peaceful. He wanted to smash the walls down, and let the night in, so that his wife should not be so secure and quiet, sitting there. He wished the air were not so close and narrow. His wife was obliterated from him, she was in her own world, quiet, secure, unnoticed, unnoticing. He was shut down by her.
He rose to go out. He could not sit still any longer. He must get out of this oppressive, shut-down, woman-haunt.
His wife lifted her head and looked at him.
‘Are you going out?’ she asked.
He looked down and met her eyes. They were darker than darkness, and gave deeper space. He felt himself retreating before her, defensive, whilst her eyes followed and tracked him down.
‘I was just going up to Cossethay,’ he said.
She remained watching him.
‘Why do you go?’ she said.
His heart beat fast, and he sat down, slowly.
‘No reason particular,’ he said, beginning to fill his pipe again, mechanically.
‘Why do you go away so often?’ she said.
‘But you don’t want me,’ he replied.
She was silent for a while.
‘You do not want to be with me any more,’ she said.
It startled him. How did she know this truth? He thought it was his secret.
‘Yi,’ he said.
‘You want to find something else,’ she said.
He did not answer. ‘Did he?’ he asked himself.
‘You should not want so much attention,’ she said. ‘You are not a baby.’
‘I’m not grumbling,’ he said. Yet he knew he was.
‘You think you have not enough,’ she said.
‘How enough?’
‘You think you have not enough in me. But how do you know me? What do you do to make me love you?’
He was flabbergasted.
‘I never said I hadn’t enough in you,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t know you wanted making to love me. What do you want?’
‘You don’t make it good between us any more, you are not interested. You do not make me want you.’
‘And you don’t make me want you, do you now?’ There was a silence. They were such strangers.
‘Would you like to have another woman?’ she asked.
His eyes grew round, he did not know where he was. How could she, his own wife, say such a thing? But she sat there, small and foreign and separate. It dawned upon him she did not consider herself his wife, except in so far as they agreed. She did not feel she had married him. At any rate, she was willing to allow he might want another woman. A gap, a space opened before him.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘What other woman should I want?’
‘Like your brother,’ she said.
He was silent for some time, ashamed also.
‘What of her?’ he said. ‘I didn’t like the woman.’
‘Yes, you liked her,’ she answered persistently.
He stared in wonder at his own wife as she told him his own heart so callously. And he was indignant. What right had she to sit there telling him these things. She was his wife, what right had she to speak to him like this, as if she were a stranger.
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I want no woman.’
‘Yes, you would like to be like Alfred.’
His silence was one of angry frustration. He was astonished. He had told her of his visit to Wirksworth, but briefly, without interest, he thought.
As she sat with her strange dark face turned towards him, her eyes watched him, inscrutable, casting him up. He began to oppose her. She was again the active unknown facing him. Must he admit her? He resisted involuntarily.
‘Why should you want to find a woman who is more to you than me?’ she said.
The turbulence raged in his breast.
‘I don’t,’ he said.
‘Why do you?’ she repeated. ‘Why do you want to deny me?’
Suddenly, in a flash, he saw she might be lonely, isolated, unsure. She had seemed to him the utterly certain, satisfied, absolute, excluding him. Could she need anything?
‘Why aren’t you satisfied with me?—I’m not satisfied with you. Paul used to come to me and take me like a man does. You only leave me alone or take me like your cattle, quickly, to forget me again—so that you can forget me again.’
‘What am I to remember about you?’ said Brangwen.
‘I want you to know there is somebody there besides yourself.’
‘Well don’t I know it?’
‘You come to me as if it was for nothing, as if I was nothing there. When Paul came to me, I was something to him—a woman, I was. To you I am nothing—it is like cattle—or nothing—’
‘You make me feel as if I was nothing,’ he said.
They were silent. She sat watching him. He could not move, his soul was seething and chaotic. She turned to her sewing again. But the sight of her bent before him held him and would not let him be. She was a strange, hostile, dominant thing. Yet not quite hostile. As he sat he felt his limbs were strong and hard, he sat in strength.
She was silent for a long time, stitching. He was aware, poignantly, of the round shape of her head, very intimate, compelling. She lifted her head and sighed. The blood burned in him, her voice ran to him like fire.
‘Come here,’ she said, unsure.
For some moments he did not move.
Then he rose slowly and went across the hearth. It required an almost deathly effort of volition, or of acquiescence. He stood before her and looked down at her. Her face was shining again, her eyes were shining again like terrible laughter. It was to him terrible, how she could be transfigured. He could not look at her, it burnt his heart.
‘My love!’ she said.
And she put her arms round him as he stood before her, round his thighs, pressing him against her breast. And her hands on him seemed to reveal to him the mould of his own nakedness, he was passionately lovely to himself. He could not bear to look at her.
‘My dear!’ she said. He knew she spoke a foreign language. The fear was like bliss in his heart. He looked down. Her face was shining, her eyes were full of light, she was awful. He suffered from the compulsion to her. She was the awful unknown. He bent down to her, suffering, unable to let go, unable to let himself go, yet drawn, driven. She was now the transfigured, she was wonderful, beyond him. He wanted to go. But he could not as yet kiss her. He was himself apart. Easiest he could kiss her feet. But he was too ashamed for the actual deed, which were like an affront. She waited for him to meet her, not to bow before her and serve her. She wanted his active participation, not his submission. She put her fingers on him. And it was torture to him, that he must give himself to her actively, participate in her, that he must meet and embrace and know her, who was other than himself. There was that in him which shrank from yielding to her, resisted the relaxing towards her, opposed the mingling with her, even whilst he most desired it. He was afraid, he wanted to save himself.
There were a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, the tension, the withholding relaxed in him, and he began to flow towards her. She was beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go his hold on himself, he relinquished himself, and knew the subterranean force of his desire to come to her, to be with her, to mingle with her, losing himself to find her, to find himself in her. He began to approach her, to draw near.
His blood beat up in waves of desire. He wanted to come to her, to meet her. She was there, if he could reach her. The reality of her who was just beyond him absorbed him. Blind and destroyed, he pressed forward, nearer, nearer, to receive the consummation of himself, be received within the darkness which should swallow him and yield him up to himself. If he could come really within the blazing kernel of darkness, if really he could be destroyed, burnt away till he lit with her in one consummation, that were supreme, supreme.