The father adored him, and spoke to him in Polish. It was
queer, the stiff, aristocratic manner of the father with the
child, the distance in the relationship, the classic fatherhood
on the one hand, the filial subordination on the other. They
played together, in their different degrees very separate, two
different beings, differing as it were in rank rather than in
relationship. And the baroness smiled, smiled, smiled, always
smiled, showing her rather protruding teeth, having always a
mysterious attraction and charm.
Anna realized how different her own life might have been, how
different her own living. Her soul stirred, she became as
another person. Her intimacy with her husband passed away, the
curious enveloping Brangwen intimacy, so warm, so close, so
stifling, when one seemed always to be in contact with the other
person, like a blood-relation, was annulled. She denied it, this
close relationship with her young husband. He and she were not
one. His heat was not always to suffuse her, suffuse her,
through her mind and her individuality, till she was of one heat
with him, till she had not her own self apart. She wanted her
own life. He seemed to lap her and suffuse her with his being,
his hot life, till she did not know whether she were herself, or
whether she were another creature, united with him in a world of
close blood-intimacy that closed over her and excluded her from
all the cool outside.
She wanted her own, old, sharp self, detached, detached,
active but not absorbed, active for her own part, taking and
giving, but never absorbed. Whereas he wanted this strange
absorption with her, which still she resisted. But she was
partly helpless against it. She had lived so long in Tom
Brangwen's love, beforehand.
From the Skrebensky's, they went to Will Brangwen's beloved
Lincoln Cathedral, because it was not far off. He had promised
her, that one by one, they should visit all the cathedrals of
England. They began with Lincoln, which he knew well.
He began to get excited as the time drew near to set off.
What was it that changed him so much? She was almost angry,
coming as she did from the Skrebensky's. But now he ran on
alone. His very breast seemed to open its doors to watch for the
great church brooding over the town. His soul ran ahead.
When he saw the cathedral in the distance, dark blue lifted
watchful in the sky, his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven,
it was the Spirit hovering like a dove, like an eagle over the
earth. He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth
opened with a strange, ecstatic grin.
"There she is," he said.
The "she" irritated her. Why "she"? It was "it". What was the
cathedral, a big building, a thing of the past, obsolete, to
excite him to such a pitch? She began to stir herself to
readiness.