He returned to his lodging at night treading quick, his eyes
glittering, and his face shining darkly as if he came from some
passionate, vital tryst.
The glow remained in him, the fire burned, his heart was
fierce like a sun. He enjoyed his unknown life and his own self.
And he was ready to go back to the Marsh.
Without knowing it, Anna was wanting him to come. In him she
had escaped. In him the bounds of her experience were
transgressed: he was the hole in the wall, beyond which the
sunshine blazed on an outside world.
He came. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, talking again,
there recurred the strange, remote reality which carried
everything before it. Sometimes, he talked of his father, whom
he hated with a hatred that was burningly close to love, of his
mother, whom he loved, with a love that was keenly close to
hatred, or to revolt. His sentences were clumsy, he was only
half articulate. But he had the wonderful voice, that could ring
its vibration through the girl's soul, transport her into his
feeling. Sometimes his voice was hot and declamatory, sometimes
it had a strange, twanging, almost cat-like sound, sometimes it
hesitated, puzzled, sometimes there was the break of a little
laugh. Anna was taken by him. She loved the running flame that
coursed through her as she listened to him. And his mother and
his father became to her two separate people in her life.
For some weeks the youth came frequently, and was received
gladly by them all. He sat amongst them, his dark face glowing,
an eagerness and a touch of derisiveness on his wide mouth,
something grinning and twisted, his eyes always shining like a
bird's, utterly without depth. There was no getting hold of the
fellow, Brangwen irritably thought. He was like a grinning young
tom-cat, that came when he thought he would, and without
cognizance of the other person.
At first the youth had looked towards Tom Brangwen when he
talked; and then he looked towards his aunt, for her
appreciation, valuing it more than his uncle's; and then he
turned to Anna, because from her he got what he wanted, which
was not in the elder people.
So that the two young people, from being always attendant on
the elder, began to draw apart and establish a separate kingdom.
Sometimes Tom Brangwen was irritated. His nephew irritated him.
The lad seemed to him too special, self-contained. His nature
was fierce enough, but too much abstracted, like a separate
thing, like a cat's nature. A cat could lie perfectly peacefully
on the hearthrug whilst its master or mistress writhed in agony
a yard away. It had nothing to do with other people's affairs.
What did the lad really care about anything, save his own
instinctive affairs?