Terrified, Ursula slipped away. And when her Uncle Tom was in
the house again, grave and very quiet, so that he seemed almost
to affect gravity, to pretend grief, she watched his still,
handsome face, imagining it again in its distortion. But she saw
the nose was rather thick, rather Russian, under its transparent
skin, she remembered the teeth under the carefully cut moustache
were small and sharp and spaced. She could see him, in all his
elegant demeanour, bestial, almost corrupt. And she was
frightened. She never forgot to look for the bestial,
frightening side of him, after this.
He said "Good-bye" to his mother and went away at once.
Ursula almost shrank from his kiss, now. She wanted it,
nevertheless, and the little revulsion as well.
At the funeral, and after the funeral, Will Brangwen was
madly in love with his wife. The death had shaken him. But death
and all seemed to gather in him into a mad, over-whelming
passion for his wife. She seemed so strange and winsome. He was
almost beside himself with desire for her.
And she took him, she seemed ready for him, she wanted
him.
The grandmother stayed a while at the Yew Cottage, till the
Marsh was restored. Then she returned to her own rooms, quiet,
and it seemed, wanting nothing. Fred threw himself into the work
of restoring the farm. That his father was killed there, seemed
to make it only the more intimate and the more inevitably his
own place.
There was a saying that the Brangwens always died a violent
death. To them all, except perhaps Tom, it seemed almost
natural. Yet Fred went about obstinate, his heart fixed. He
could never forgive the Unknown this murder of his father.
After the death of the father, the Marsh was very quiet. Mrs.
Brangwen was unsettled. She could not sit all the evening
peacefully, as she could before, and during the day she was
always rising to her feet and hesitating, as if she must go
somewhere, and were not quite sure whither.
She was seen loitering about the garden, in her little
woollen jacket. She was often driven out in the gig, sitting
beside her son and watching the countryside or the streets of
the town, with a childish, candid, uncanny face, as if it all
were strange to her.
The children, Ursula and Gudrun and Theresa went by the
garden gate on their way to school. The grandmother would have
them call in each time they passed, she would have them come to
the Marsh for dinner. She wanted children about her.
Of her sons, she was almost afraid. She could see the sombre
passion and desire and dissatisfaction in them, and she wanted
not to see it any more. Even Fred, with his blue eyes and his
heavy jaw, troubled her. There was no peace. He wanted
something, he wanted love, passion, and he could not find them.
But why must he trouble her? Why must he come to her with his
seething and suffering and dissatisfactions? She was too
old.