The wake departed, and the guysers came. There was loud applause, and shouting and excitement as the old mystery play of St George,* in which every man present had acted as a boy, proceeded, with banging and thumping of club and dripping pan.
‘By Jove, I got a crack once, when I was playin’ Beelzebub,’* said Tom Brangwen, his eyes full of water with laughing. ‘It knocked all th’ sense out of me as you’d crack an egg. But I tell you, when I come to, I played Old Johnny Roger* with St George, I did that.’
He was shaking with laughter. Another knock came at the door. There was a hush.
‘It’s th’ cab,’ said somebody from the door.
‘Walk in,’ shouted Tom Brangwen, and a red-faced grinning man entered.
‘Now you two, get yourselves ready an’ off to blanket fair,’* shouted Tom Brangwen. ‘Strike a daisy, but if you’re not off like a blink o’ lightnin’, you shanna go, you s’ll sleep separate.’
Anna rose silently and went to change her dress. Will Brangwen would have gone out, but Tilly came with his hat and coat. The youth was helped on.
‘Well, here’s luck, my boy,’ shouted his father.
‘When th’ fat’s in th’ fire, let it frizzle,’ admonished his uncle Frank.
‘Fair and softly does it, fair an’ softly does it,’ cried his aunt, Frank’s wife, contrary.
‘You don’t want to fall over yourself,’ said his uncle by marriage. ‘You’re not a bull at a gate.’
‘Let a man have his own road,’ said Tom Brangwen testily. ‘Don’t be so free of your advice—it’s his wedding this time, not yours.’
‘’E won’t want many sign-posts,’ said his father. ‘There’s some roads a man has to be led, an’ there’s some roads a boss-eyed man* can only follow wi’ one eye shut. But this road can’t be lost by a blind man nor a boss-eyed man nor a cripple—and he’s neither, thank God.’
‘Don’t you be so sure o’ your walkin’ powers,’ cried Frank’s wife. ‘There’s many a man gets no further than half-way, nor can’t to save his life, let him live for ever.’
‘Why, how do you know?’ said Alfred.
‘It’s plain enough in th’ looks o’ some,’ retorted Lizzie, his sister-in-law.
The youth stood with a faint, half-hearing smile on his face. He was tense and abstracted. These things, or anything, scarcely touched him.
Anna came down, in her day dress, very elusive. She kissed everybody, men and women, Will Brangwen shook hands with everybody, kissed his mother, who began to cry, and the whole party went surging out to the cab.
The young couple were shut up, last injunctions shouted at them.
‘Drive on,’ shouted Tom Brangwen.
The cab rolled off. They saw the light diminish under the ash-trees. Then the whole party, quietened, went indoors.
‘They’ll have three good fires burning,’ said Tom Brangwen, looking at his watch. ‘I told Emma to make ’em up at nine, an’ then leave the door on th’ latch. It’s only half-past. They’ll have three fires burning, an’ lamps lighted, an’ Emma will ha’ warmed th’ bed wi’ th’ warmin’ pan. So I s’d think they’ll be all right.’
The party was much quieter. They talked of the young couple.
‘She said she didn’t want a servant in,’ said Tom Brangwen.
‘The house isn’t big enough, she’d always have the creature under her nose. Emma’ll do what is wanted of her, an’ they’ll be to themselves.’
‘It’s best,’ said Lizzie, ‘you’re more free.’
The party talked on slowly. Brangwen looked at his watch.
‘Let’s go an’ give ’em a carol,’ he said, ‘We s’ll find th’ fiddles at the Cock an’ Robin.’
‘Ay, come on,’ said Frank.
Alfred rose in silence. The brother-in-law and one of Will’s brothers rose also.
The five men went out. The night was flashing with stars. Sirius blazed like a signal at the side of the hill, Orion, stately and magnificent, was sloping along.
Tom walked with his brother, Alfred. The men’s heels rang on the ground.
‘It’s a fine night,’ said Tom.
‘Ay,’ said Alfred.
‘Nice to get out.’
‘Ay.’
The brothers walked close together, the bond of blood strong between them. Tom always felt very much the junior to Alfred.
‘It’s a long while since you left home,’ he said.
‘Ay,’ said Alfred. ‘I thought I was getting a bit oldish—but I’m not. It’s the things you’ve got as gets worn out, it’s not you yourself.’
‘Why, what’s worn out?’
‘Most folks as I’ve anything to do with—as has anything to do with me. They all break down. You’ve got to go on by yourself, if it’s only to perdition. There’s nobody going alongside even there.’
Tom Brangwen meditated this.
‘Maybe you was never broken in,’ he said.
‘No, I never was,’ said Alfred proudly.
And Tom felt his elder brother despised him a little. He winced under it.
‘Everybody’s got a way of their own,’ he said, stubbornly.
‘It’s only a dog as hasn’t. An’ them as can’t take what they give an’ give what they take, they must go by themselves, or get a dog as’ll follow ’em.’
‘They can do without the dog,’ said his brother. And again Tom Brangwen was humble, thinking his brother was bigger than himself. But if he was, he was. And if it were finer to go alone, it was: he did not want to go for all that.
They went over the field, where a thin, keen wind blew round the ball of the hill, in the starlight. They came to the stile, and to the side of Anna’s house. The lights were out, only on the blinds of the rooms downstairs, and of a bedroom upstairs, firelight flickered.
‘We’d better leave ’em alone,’ said Alfred Brangwen.
‘Nay, nay,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll carol ’em, for th’ last time.’
And in a quarter of an hour’s time, eleven silent, rather tipsy men scrambled over the wall, and into the garden by the yew-trees, outside the windows where faint firelight glowered on the blinds. There came a shrill sound, two violins and a piccolo shrilling on the frosty air.
‘In the fields with their flocks abiding.’* A commotion of men’s voices broke out singing in ragged unison.
Anna Brangwen had started up, listening, when the music began. She was afraid.
‘It’s the wake,’ he whispered.
She remained tense, her heart beating heavily, possessed with strange, strong fear. Then there came the burst of men’s singing, rather uneven. She strained still, listening.
‘It’s Dad,’ she said, in a low voice. They were silent, listening.
‘And my father,’ he said.
She listened still. But she was sure. She sank down again into bed, into his arms. He held her very close, kissing her. The hymn rambled on outside, all the men singing their best, having forgotten everything else under the spell of the fiddles and the tune. The firelight glowed against the darkness in the room. Anna could hear her father singing with gusto.
‘Aren’t they silly,’ she whispered.
And they crept closer, closer together, hearts beating to one another. And even as the hymn rolled on, they ceased to hear it.
CHAPTER VI
ANNA VICTRIX
WILL BRANGWEN had some weeks of holiday after his marriage, so the two took their honeymoon in full hands, alone in their cottage together.
And to him, as the days went by, it was as if the heavens had fallen, and he were sitting with her among the ruins, in a new world, everybody else buried, themselves two blissful survivors, with everything to squander as they would. At first, he could not get rid of a culpable sense of licence on his part. Wasn’t there some duty outside, calling him and he did not come?
It was all very well at night, when the doors were locked and the darkness drawn round the two of them. Then they were the only inhabitants of the visible
earth, the rest were under the flood. And being alone in the world, they were a law unto themselves, they could enjoy and squander and waste like conscienceless gods.
But in the morning, as the carts clanked by, and children shouted down the lane; as the hucksters came calling their wares, and the church clock struck eleven, and he and she had not got up yet, even to breakfast, he could not help feeling guilty, as if he were committing a breach of the law—ashamed that he was not up and doing.
‘Doing what?’ she asked. ‘What is there to do? You will only lounge about.’
Still, even lounging about was respectable. One was at least in connection with the world, then. Whereas now, lying so still and peacefully, while the daylight came obscurely through the drawn blind, one was severed from the world, one shut oneself off in tacit denial of the world. And he was troubled.
But it was so sweet and satisfying lying there talking desultorily with her. It was sweeter than sunshine, and not so evanescent. It was even irritating the way the church-clock kept on chiming: there seemed no space between the hours, just a moment, golden and still, whilst she traced his features with her finger-tips, utterly careless and happy, and he loved her to do it.
But he was strange and unused. So suddenly, everything that had been before was shed away and gone. One day, he was a bachelor, living with the world. The next day, he was with her, as remote from the world as if the two of them were buried like a seed in darkness. Suddenly, like a chestnut falling out of a burr, he was shed naked and glistening on to a soft, fecund earth, leaving behind him the hard rind of worldly knowledge and experience. He heard it in the hucksters’ cries, the noise of carts, the calling of children. And it was all like the hard, shed rind, discarded. Inside, in the softness and stillness of the room, was the naked kernel, that palpitated in silent activity, absorbed in reality.
Inside the room was a great steadiness, a core of living eternity. Only far outside, at the rim, went on the noise and the destruction. Here at the centre the great wheel was motionless, centred upon itself. Here was a poised, unflawed stillness that was beyond time, because it remained the same, inexhaustible, unchanging, unexhausted.
As they lay close together, complete and beyond the touch of time or change, it was as if they were at the very centre of all the slow wheeling of space and the rapid agitation of life, deep, deep inside them all, at the centre where there is utter radiance, and eternal being, and the silence absorbed in praise: the steady core of all movements, the unawakened sleep of all wakefulness. They found themselves there, and they lay still, in each other’s arms; for their moment they were at the heart of eternity, whilst time roared far off, forever far off, towards the rim.
Then gradually they were passed away from the supreme centre, down the circles of praise and joy and gladness, further and further out, towards the noise and the friction. But their hearts had burned and were tempered by the inner reality, they were unalterably glad.
Gradually they began to wake up, the noises outside became more real. They understood and answered the call outside. They counted the strokes of the bell. And when they counted midday, they understood that it was midday, in the world, and for themselves also.
It dawned upon her that she was hungry. She had been getting hungrier for a lifetime. But even yet it was not sufficiently real to rouse her. A long way off she could hear the words ‘I am dying of hunger.’ Yet she lay still, separate, at peace, and the words were unuttered. There was still another lapse.
And then, quite calmly, even a little surprised, she was in the present, and was saying:
‘I am dying with hunger.’
‘So am I,’ he said calmly, as if it were of not the slightest significance. And they relapsed into the warm, golden stillness. And the minutes flowed unheeded past the window outside.
Then suddenly she stirred against him.
‘My dear, I am dying of hunger,’ she said.
It was a slight pain to him to be brought to.
‘We’ll get up,’ he said, unmoving.
And she sank her head on to him again, and they lay still, lapsing. Half consciously, he heard the clock chime the hour. She did not hear.
‘Do get up,’ she murmured at length, ‘and give me something to eat.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and he put his arms round her, and she lay with her face on him. They were faintly astonished that they did not move. The minutes rustled louder at the window.
‘Let me go then,’ he said.
She lifted her head from him, relinquishingly. With a little breaking away, he moved out of bed, and was taking his clothes. She stretched out her hand to him.
‘You are so nice,’ she said, and he went back for a moment or two.
Then actually he did slip into some clothes, and, looking round quickly at her, was gone out of the room. She lay translated again into a pale, clearer peace. As if she were a spirit, she listened to the noise of him downstairs, as if she were no longer of the material world.
It was half past one. He looked at the silent kitchen, untouched from last night, dim with the drawn blind. And he hastened to draw up the blind, so people should know they were not in bed any later. Well, it was his own house, it did not matter. Hastily he put wood in the grate and made a fire. He exulted in himself, like an adventurer on an undiscovered island. The fire blazed up, he put on the kettle. How happy he felt! How still and secluded the house was! There were only he and she in the world.
But when he unbolted the door, and, half-dressed, looked out, he felt furtive and guilty. The world was there, after all. And he had felt so secure, as though this house were the Ark in the flood,* and all the rest was drowned. The world was there: and it was afternoon. The morning had vanished and gone by, the day was growing old. Where was the bright, fresh morning? He was accused. Was the morning gone, and he had lain with blinds drawn, let it pass by unnoticed?
He looked again round the chill, grey afternoon. And he himself so soft and warm and glowing! There were two sprigs of yellow jasmine in the saucer that covered the milk-jug. He wondered who had been and left the sign. Taking the jug, he hastily shut the door. Let the day and the daylight drop out, let it go by unseen. He did not care. What did one day more or less matter to him. It could fall into oblivion unspent if it liked, this one course of daylight.
‘Somebody has been and found the door locked,’ he said when he went upstairs with the tray. He gave her the two sprigs of jasmine. She laughed as she sat up in bed, childishly threading the flowers in the breast of her nightdress. Her brown hair stuck out like a nimbus, all fierce, round her softly glowing face. Her dark eyes watched the tray eagerly.
‘How good!’ she cried, sniffing the cold air. ‘I’m glad you did a lot.’ And she stretched out her hands eagerly for her plate—‘Come back to bed, quick—it’s cold.’ She rubbed her hands together sharply.
He put off what little clothing he had on, and sat beside her in the bed.
‘You look like a lion, with your mane sticking out, and your nose pushed over your food,’ he said.
She tinkled with laughter, and gladly ate her breakfast.
The morning was sunk away unseen, the afternoon was steadily going too, and he was letting it go. One bright transit of daylight gone by unacknowledged! There was something unmanly, recusant in it. He could not quite reconcile himself to the fact. He felt he ought to get up, go out quickly into the daylight, and work or spend himself energetically in the open air of the afternoon, retrieving what was left to him of the day.
But he did not go. Well, one might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. If he had lost this day of his life, he had lost it. He gave it up. He was not going to count his losses. She didn’t care. She didn’t care in the least. Then why should he? Should he be behind her in recklessness and independence? She was superb in her indifference. He wanted to be like her.
She took her responsibilities lightly. When she spilled her tea on the pillow, she rubbed it carelessly with a handkerchief, and turned
over the pillow. He would have felt guilty. She did not. And it pleased him. It pleased him very much to see how these things did not matter to her.
When the meal was over, she wiped her mouth on her handkerchief quickly, satisfied and happy, and settled down on the pillow again, with her fingers in his close, strange, fur-like hair.
The evening began to fall, the light was half alive, livid. He hid his face against her.
‘I don’t like the twilight,’ he said.
‘I love it,’ she answered.
He hid his face against her, who was warm and like sunlight. She seemed to have sunlight inside her. Her heart beating seemed like sunlight upon him. In her was a more real day than the day could give: so warm and steady and restoring. He hid his face against her whilst the twilight fell, whilst she lay staring out with her unseeing dark eyes, as if she wandered forth untrammelled in the vagueness. The vagueness gave her scope and set her free.
To him, turned towards her heart-pulse, all was very still and very warm and very close, like noon-tide. He was glad to know this warm, full noon. It ripened him and took away his responsibility, some of his conscience.
They got up when it was quite dark. She hastily twisted her hair into a knot, and was dressed in a twinkling. Then they went downstairs, drew to the fire, and sat in silence, saying a few words now and then.
Her father was coming. She bundled the dishes away, flew round and tidied the room, assumed another character, and again seated herself. He sat thinking of his carving of Eve. He loved to go over his carving in his mind, dwelling on every stroke, every line. How he loved it now! When he went back to his Creation-panel again, he would finish his Eve, tender and sparkling. It did not satisfy him yet. The Lord should labour over her in a silent passion of Creation, and Adam should be tense as if in a dream of immortality, and Eve should take form glimmeringly, shadowily, as if the Lord must wrestle with His own soul for her, yet she was a radiance.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.
He found it difficult to say. His soul became shy when he tried to communicate it.