Almost in horror, she began to take the wet things from him,
to pull off him the incongruous market-clothes of a well-to-do
farmer. The children were sent away to the Vicarage, the dead
body lay on the parlour floor, Anna quickly began to undress
him, laid his fob and seals in a wet heap on the table. Her
husband and the woman helped her. They cleared and washed the
body, and laid it on the bed.
There, it looked still and grand. He was perfectly calm in
death, and, now he was laid in line, inviolable, unapproachable.
To Anna, he was the majesty of the inaccessible male, the
majesty of death. It made her still and awe-stricken, almost
glad.
Lydia Brangwen, the mother, also came and saw the impressive,
inviolable body of the dead man. She went pale, seeing death. He
was beyond change or knowledge, absolute, laid in line with the
infinite. What had she to do with him? He was a majestic
Abstraction, made visible now for a moment, inviolate, absolute.
And who could lay claim to him, who could speak of him, of the
him who was revealed in the stripped moment of transit from life
into death? Neither the living nor the dead could claim him, he
was both the one and the other, inviolable, inaccessibly
himself.
"I shared life with you, I belong in my own way to eternity,"
said Lydia Brangwen, her heart cold, knowing her own
singleness.
"I did not know you in life. You are beyond me, supreme now
in death," said Anna Brangwen, awe-stricken, almost glad.
It was the sons who could not bear it. Fred Brangwen went
about with a set, blanched face and shut hands, his heart full
of hatred and rage for what had been done to his father,
bleeding also with desire to have his father again, to see him,
to hear him again. He could not bear it.
Tom Brangwen only arrived on the day of the funeral. He was
quiet and controlled as ever. He kissed his mother, who was
still dark-faced, inscrutable, he shook hands with his brother
without looking at him, he saw the great coffin with its black
handles. He even read the name-plate, "Tom Brangwen, of the
Marsh Farm. Born ----. Died ----."
The good-looking, still face of the young man crinkled up for
a moment in a terrible grimace, then resumed its stillness. The
coffin was carried round to the church, the funeral bell tanged
at intervals, the mourners carried their wreaths of white
flowers. The mother, the Polish woman, went with dark, abstract
face, on her son's arm. He was good-looking as ever, his face
perfectly motionless and somehow pleasant. Fred walked with
Anna, she strange and winsome, he with a face like wood, stiff,
unyielding.
Only afterwards Ursula, flitting between the currant bushes
down the garden, saw her Uncle Tom standing in his black
clothes, erect and fashionable, but his fists lifted, and his
face distorted, his lips curled back from his teeth in a
horrible grin, like an animal which grimaces with torment,
whilst his body panted quick, like a panting dog's. He was
facing the open distance, panting, and holding still, then
panting rapidly again, but his face never changing from its
almost bestial look of torture, the teeth all showing, the nose
wrinkled up, the eyes, unseeing, fixed.