The Rainbow

Nevertheless Brangwen was uneasy about the girl, the whole

house continued to be disturbed. She had a pathetic, baffled

appeal. She was hostile to her parents, even whilst she lived

entirely with them, within their spell.

Many ways she tried, of escape. She became an assiduous

church-goer. But the language meant nothing to her: it

seemed false. She hated to hear things expressed, put into

words. Whilst the religious feelings were inside her they were

passionately moving. In the mouth of the clergyman, they were

false, indecent. She tried to read. But again the tedium and the

sense of the falsity of the spoken word put her off. She went to

stay with girl friends. At first she thought it splendid. But

then the inner boredom came on, it seemed to her all

nothingness. And she felt always belittled, as if never, never

could she stretch her length and stride her stride.

Her mind reverted often to the torture cell of a certain

Bishop of France, in which the victim could neither stand nor

lie stretched out, never. Not that she thought of herself in any

connection with this. But often there came into her mind the

wonder, how the cell was built, and she could feel the horror of

the crampedness, as something very real.

She was, however, only eighteen when a letter came from Mrs.

Alfred Brangwen, in Nottingham, saying that her son William was

coming to Ilkeston to take a place as junior draughtsman,

scarcely more than apprentice, in a lace factory. He was twenty

years old, and would the Marsh Brangwens be friendly with

him.

Tom Brangwen at once wrote offering the young man a home at

the Marsh. This was not accepted, but the Nottingham Brangwens

expressed gratitude.

There had never been much love lost between the Nottingham

Brangwens and the Marsh. Indeed, Mrs. Alfred, having inherited

three thousand pounds, and having occasion to be dissatisfied

with her husband, held aloof from all the Brangwens whatsoever.

She affected, however, some esteem of Mrs. Tom, as she called

the Polish woman, saying that at any rate she was a lady.

Anna Brangwen was faintly excited at the news of her Cousin

Will's coming to Ilkeston. She knew plenty of young men, but

they had never become real to her. She had seen in this young

gallant a nose she liked, in that a pleasant moustache, in the

other a nice way of wearing clothes, in one a ridiculous fringe

of hair, in another a comical way of talking. They were objects

of amusement and faint wonder to her, rather than real beings,

the young men.

The only man she knew was her father; and, as he was

something large, looming, a kind of Godhead, he embraced all

manhood for her, and other men were just incidental.

She remembered her cousin Will. He had town clothes and was

thin, with a very curious head, black as jet, with hair like

sleek, thin fur. It was a curious head: it reminded her she knew

not of what: of some animal, some mysterious animal that lived

in the darkness under the leaves and never came out, but which

lived vividly, swift and intense. She always thought of him with

that black, keen, blind head. And she considered him odd.