Brangwen was irritated. Nevertheless he liked and respected

his nephew. Mrs. Brangwen was irritated by Anna, who was

suddenly changed, under the influence of the youth. The mother

liked the boy: he was not quite an outsider. But she did not

like her daughter to be so much under the spell.

So that gradually the two young people drew apart, escaped

from the elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He worked

in the garden to propitiate his uncle. He talked churches to

propitiate his aunt. He followed Anna like a shadow: like a

long, persistent, unswerving black shadow he went after the

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girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It exasperated him

beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat-grin as he

called it, on his nephew's face.

And Anna had a new reserve, a new independence. Suddenly she

began to act independently of her parents, to live beyond them.

Her mother had flashes of anger.

But the courtship went on. Anna would find occasion to go

shopping in Ilkeston at evening. She always returned with her

cousin; he walking with his head over her shoulder, a little bit

behind her, like the Devil looking over Lincoln, as Brangwen

noted angrily and yet with satisfaction.

To his own wonder, Will Brangwen found himself in an electric

state of passion. To his wonder, he had stopped her at the gate

as they came home from Ilkeston one night, and had kissed her,

blocking her way and kissing her whilst he felt as if some blow

were struck at him in the dark. And when they went indoors, he

was acutely angry that her parents looked up scrutinizing at him

and her. What right had they there: why should they look up! Let

them remove themselves, or look elsewhere.

And the youth went home with the stars in heaven whirling

fiercely about the blackness of his head, and his heart fierce,

insistent, but fierce as if he felt something baulking him. He

wanted to smash through something.

A spell was cast over her. And how uneasy her parents were,

as she went about the house unnoticing, not noticing them,

moving in a spell as if she were invisible to them. She was

invisible to them. It made them angry. Yet they had to submit.

She went about absorbed, obscured for a while.

Over him too the darkness of obscurity settled. He seemed to

be hidden in a tense, electric darkness, in which his soul, his

life was intensely active, but without his aid or attention. His

mind was obscured. He worked swiftly and mechanically, and he

produced some beautiful things.

His favourite work was wood-carving. The first thing he made

for her was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mythological

bird, a phoenix, something like an eagle, rising on symmetrical

wings, from a circle of very beautiful flickering flames that

rose upwards from the rim of the cup.




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