There was a rather uneasy friendship between him and one of

the young Hardys at the Hall. The two households were different,

yet the young men met on shy terms of equality.

It was young Tom Brangwen, with his dark lashes and beautiful

colouring, his soft, inscrutable nature, his strange repose and

his informed air, added to his position in London, who seemed to

emphasize the superior foreign element in the Marsh. When he

appeared, perfectly dressed, as if soft and affable, and yet

quite removed from everybody, he created an uneasiness in

people, he was reserved in the minds of the Cossethay and

Ilkeston acquaintances to a different, remote world.

He and his mother had a kind of affinity. The affection

between them was of a mute, distant character, but radical. His

father was always uneasy and slightly deferential to his eldest

son. Tom also formed the link that kept the Marsh in real

connection with the Skrebenskys, now quite important people in

their own district.

So a change in tone came over the Marsh. Tom Brangwen the

father, as he grew older, seemed to mature into a

gentleman-farmer. His figure lent itself: burly and handsome.

His face remained fresh and his blue eyes as full of light, his

thick hair and beard had turned gradually to a silky whiteness.

It was his custom to laugh a great deal, in his acquiescent,

wilful manner. Things had puzzled him very much, so he had taken

the line of easy, good-humoured acceptance. He was not

responsible for the frame of things. Yet he was afraid of the

unknown in life.

He was fairly well-off. His wife was there with him, a

different being from himself, yet somewhere vitally connected

with him:--who was he to understand where and how? His two

sons were gentlemen. They were men distinct from himself, they

had separate beings of their own, yet they were connected with

himself. It was all adventurous and puzzling. Yet one remained

vital within one's own existence, whatever the off-shoots.

So, handsome and puzzled, he laughed and stuck to himself as

the only thing he could stick to. His youngness and the wonder

remained almost the same in him. He became indolent, he

developed a luxuriant ease. Fred did most of the farm-work, the

father saw to the more important transactions. He drove a good

mare, and sometimes he rode his cob. He drank in the hotels and

the inns with better-class farmers and proprietors, he had

well-to-do acquaintances among men. But one class suited him no

better than another.

His wife, as ever, had no acquaintances. Her hair was

threaded now with grey, her face grew older in form without

changing in expression. She seemed the same as when she had come

to the Marsh twenty-five years ago, save that her health was

more fragile. She seemed always to haunt the Marsh rather than

to live there. She was never part of the life. Something she

represented was alien there, she remained a stranger within the

gates, in some ways fixed and impervious, in some ways curiously

refining. She caused the separateness and individuality of all

the Marsh inmates, the friability of the household.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024