we tell them to stop, must we say ‘stop it’ to them, my bird? But they are naughty, naughty! Look at them!” Suddenly her voice broke loud and fierce, she rapped the pane sharply.
“Stop it,” she cried, “stop it, you little nuisances. Stop it!” She called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. Her voice was fierce and imperative.
“Have more sense,” she cried.
“There, now they’re gone. Where have they gone, the silly things? What will they say to each other? What will they say, my lambkin? They’ll forget, won’t they, they’ll forget all about it, out of their silly little heads, and their blue caps.”
After a moment, she turned her bright face to her husband.
“They were really fighting, they were really fierce with each other!” she said, her voice keen with excitement and wonder, as if she belonged to the birds’ world, were identified with the race of birds.
“Ay, they’ll fight, will blue-caps,” he said, glad when she turned to him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and stood beside her and looked out at the marks on the snow where the birds had scuffled, and at the yew trees’ burdened, white and black branches. What was the appeal it made to him, what was the question of her bright face, what was the challenge he was called to answer? He did not know. But as he stood there he felt some responsibility which made him glad, but uneasy, as if he must put out his own light. And he could not move as yet.
Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still she was not quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feeling, as of a door half opened. Here she was, safe and still in Cossethay. But she felt as if she were not in Cossethay at all. She was straining her eyes to something beyond. And from her Pisgah mount, which she had attained, what could she see? A faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a rainbow like an archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured coping above it. Must she be moving thither?
Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could not arrive at. There was something beyond her. But why must she start on the journey? She stood so safely on the Pisgah mountain.
In the winter, when she rose with the sunrise, and out of the back windows saw the east flaming yellow and orange above the green, glowing grass, while the great pear tree in between stood dark and magnificent as an idol, and under the dark pear tree, the little sheet of water spread smooth in burnished, yellow light, she said, “It is here”. And when, at evening, the sunset came in a red glare through the big opening in the clouds, she said again, “It is beyond”.
Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned the day, and she saw the hope, the promise. Why should she travel any further?
Yet she always asked the question. As the sun went down in his fiery winter haste, she faced the blazing close of the affair, in which she had not played her fullest part, and she made her demand still: “What are you doing, making this big shining commotion? What is it that you keep so busy about, that you will not let us alone?”
She did not turn to her husband, for him to lead her. He was apart from her, with her, according to her different conceptions of him. The child she might hold up, she might toss the child forward into the furnace, the child might walk there, amid the burning coals and the incandescent roar of heat, as the three witnesses walked with the angel in the fire.
Soon, she felt sure of her husband. She knew his dark face and the extent of its passion. She knew his slim, vigorous body, she said it was hers. Then there was no denying her. She was a rich woman enjoying her riches.
And soon again she was with child. Which made her satisfied and took away her discontent. She forgot that she had watched the sun climb up and pass his way, a magnificent traveller surging forward. She forgot that the moon had looked through a window of the high, dark night, and nodded like a magic recognition, signalled to her to follow. Sun and moon travelled on, and left her, passed her by, a rich woman enjoying her riches. She should go also. But she could not go, when they called, because she must stay at home now. With satisfaction she relinquished the adventure to the unknown. She was bearing her children.
There was another child coming, and Anna lapsed into vague content. If she were not the wayfarer to the unknown, if she were arrived now, settled in her builded house, a rich woman, still her doors opened under the arch of the rainbow, her threshold reflected the passing of the sun and moon, the great travellers, her house was full of the echo of journeying.
She was a door and a threshold, she herself. Through her another soul was coming, to stand upon her as upon the threshold, looking out, shading its eyes for the direction to take.
Chapter 7
The Cathedral
During the first year of her marriage, before Ursula was born, Anna Brangwen and her husband went to visit her mother’s friend, the Baron Skrebensky. The latter had kept a slight connection with Anna’s mother, and had always preserved some officious interest in the young girl, because she was a pure Pole.
When Baron Skrebensky was about forty years old, his wife died, and left him raving, disconsolate. Lydia had visited him then, taking Anna with her. It was when the girl was fourteen years old. Since then she had not seen him. She remembered him as a small sharp clergyman who cried and talked and terrified her, whilst her mother was most strangely consoling, in a foreign language.
The little Baron never quite approved of Anna, because she spoke no Polish. Still, he considered himself in some way her guardian, on Lensky’s behalf, and he presented her with some old, heavy Russian jewellery, the least valuable of his wife’s relics. Then he lapsed out of the Brangwen’s life again, though he lived only about thirty miles away.
Three years later came the startling news that he had married a young English girl of good family. Everybody marvelled. Then came a copy of “The History of the Parish of Briswell, by Rudolph, Baron Skrebensky, Vicar of Briswell.” It was a curious book, incoherent, full of interesting exhumations. It was dedicated: “To my wife, Millicent Maud Pearse, in whom I embrace the generous spirit of England.”
“If he embraces no more than the spirit of England,” said Tom Brangwen, “it’s a bad look-out for him.”
But paying a formal visit with his wife, he found the new Baroness a little, creamy-skinned, insidious thing with red-brown hair and a mouth that one must always watch, because it curved back continually in an incomprehensible, strange laugh that exposed her rather prominent teeth. She was not beautiful, yet Tom Brangwen was immediately under her spell. She seemed to snuggle like a kitten within his warmth, whilst she was at the same time elusive and ironical, suggesting the fine steel of her claws.
The Baron was almost dotingly courteous and attentive to her. She, almost mockingly, yet quite happy, let him dote. Curious little thing she was, she had the soft, creamy, elusive beauty of a ferret. Tom Brangwen was quite at a loss, at her mercy, and she laughed, a little breathlessly, as if tempted to cruelty. She did put fine torments on the elderly Baron.
When some months later she bore a son, the Baron Skrebensky was loud with delight.
Gradually she gathered a circle of acquaintances in the county. For she was of good family, half Venetian, educated in Dresden. The little foreign vicar attained to a social status which almost satisfied his maddened pride.
Therefore the Brangwens were surprised when the invitation came for Anna and her young husband to pay a visit to Briswell vicarage. For the Skrebenskys were now moderately well off, Millicent Skrebensky having some fortune of her own.
Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school manner, and arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, ruddy, bright, with long limbs and a small head, like some uncouth bird, was not changed in the least. The little Baroness was smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real charm, a kind of joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like some weasel. Anna at once respected her, and was on her guard before her, instinctively