Anna loved to watch him. She liked the big, new, rambling

vicarage, desolate and stark on its hill. It was so exposed, so

bleak and bold after the Marsh. The Baron talked endlessly in

Polish to Mrs. Brangwen; he made furious gestures with his

hands, his blue eyes were full of fire. And to Anna, there was a

significance about his sharp, flinging movements. Something in

her responded to his extravagance and his exuberant manner. She

thought him a very wonderful person. She was shy of him, she

liked him to talk to her. She felt a sense of freedom near

him.

She never could tell how she knew it, but she did know that

he was a knight of Malta. She could never remember whether she

had seen his star, or cross, of his order or not, but it flashed

in her mind, like a symbol. He at any rate represented to the

child the real world, where kings and lords and princes moved

and fulfilled their shining lives, whilst queens and ladies and

princesses upheld the noble order.

She had recognized the Baron Skrebensky as a real person, he

had had some regard for her. But when she did not see him any

more, he faded and became a memory. But as a memory he was

always alive to her.

Anna became a tall, awkward girl. Her eyes were still very

dark and quick, but they had grown careless, they had lost their

watchful, hostile look. Her fierce, spun hair turned brown, it

grew heavier and was tied back. She was sent to a young ladies'

school in Nottingham.

And at this period she was absorbed in becoming a young lady.

She was intelligent enough, but not interested in learning. At

first, she thought all the girls at school very ladylike and

wonderful, and she wanted to be like them. She came to a speedy

disillusion: they galled and maddened her, they were petty and

mean. After the loose, generous atmosphere of her home, where

little things did not count, she was always uneasy in the world,

that would snap and bite at every trifle.

A quick change came over her. She mistrusted herself, she

mistrusted the outer world. She did not want to go on, she did

not want to go out into it, she wanted to go no further.

"What do I care about that lot of girls?" she would

say to her father, contemptuously; "they are nobody."

The trouble was that the girls would not accept Anna at her

measure. They would have her according to themselves or not at

all. So she was confused, seduced, she became as they were for a

time, and then, in revulsion, she hated them furiously.

"Why don't you ask some of your girls here?" her father would

say.

"They're not coming here," she cried.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024