“Go away,” came the sharp little command.
“There’s room for you,” he said.
“You can’t send your father from his own bed, my little bird,” said her mother, pleasantly.
The child glowered at him, miserable in her impotence.
“There’s room for you as well,” he said. “It’s a big bed enough.”
She glowered without answering, then turned and clung to her mother. She would not allow it.
During the day she asked her mother several times:
“When are we going home, mother?”
“We are at home, darling, we live here now. This is our house, we live here with your father.”
The child was forced to accept it. But she remained against the man. As night came on, she asked:
“Where are you going to sleep, mother?”
“I sleep with the father now.”
And when Brangwen came in, the child asked fiercely:
“Why do you sleep with my mother? My mother sleeps with me,” her voice quivering.
“You come as well, an’ sleep with both of us,” he coaxed.
“Mother!” she cried, turning, appealing against him.
“But I must have a husband, darling. All women must have a husband.”
“And you like to have a father with your mother, don’t you?” said Brangwen.
Anna glowered at him. She seemed to cogitate.
“No,” she cried fiercely at length, “no, I don’t want.” And slowly her face puckered, she sobbed bitterly. He stood and watched her, sorry. But there could be no altering it.
Which, when she knew, she became quiet. He was easy with her, talking to her, taking her to see the live creatures, bringing her the first chickens in his cap, taking her to gather the eggs, letting her throw crusts to the horse. She would easily accompany him, and take all he had to give, but she remained neutral still.
She was curiously, incomprehensibly jealous of her mother, always anxiously concerned about her. If Brangwen drove with his wife to Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon came on, there was only one cry-“I want my mother, I want my mother —” and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child’s anguish was that her mother was gone, gone.
Yet as a rule, Anna seemed cold, resenting her mother, critical of her. It was:
“I don’t like you to do that, mother,” or, “I don’t like you to say that.” She was a sore problem to Brangwen and to all the people at the Marsh. As a rule, however, she was active, lightly flitting about the farmyard, only appearing now and again to assure herself of her mother. Happy she never seemed, but quick, sharp, absorbed, full of imagination and changeability. Tilly said she was bewitched. But it did not matter so long as she did not cry. There was something heart-rending about Anna’s crying, her childish anguish seemed so utter and so timeless, as if it were a thing of all the ages.
She made playmates of the creatures of the farmyard, talking to them, telling them the stories she had from her mother, counselling them and correcting them. Brangwen found her at the gate leading to the paddock and to the duckpond. She was peering through the bars and shouting to the stately white geese, that stood in a curving line:
“You’re not to call at people when they want to come. You must not do it.”
The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face and the fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and they raised their heads and swayed off, producing the long, can-canking, protesting noise of geese, rocking their ship-like, beautiful white bodies in a line beyond the gate.
“You’re naughty, you’re naughty,” cried Anna, tears of dismay and vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her slipper.
“Why, what are they doing?” said Brangwen.
“They won’t let me come in,” she said, turning her flushed little face to him.
“Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to,” and he pushed open the gate for her.
She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey-white geese standing monumental under the grey, cold day.
“Go on,” he said.
She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body started convulsively at the sudden, derisive can-cank-ank of the geese. A blankness spread over her. The geese trailed away with uplifted heads under the low grey sky.
“They don’t know you,” said Brangwen. “You should tell ’em what your name is.”
“They’re naughty to shout at me,” she flashed.
“They think you don’t live here,” he said.
Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and imperiously:
“My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because Mr. Brangwen’s my father now. He is, yes he is. And I live here.”
This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, without knowing it herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish, desolate moments, when it was good to creep up to something big and warm, and bury her little self in his big, unlimited being. Instinctively he was careful of her, careful to recognise her and to give himself to her disposal.
She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a childish, essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor woman was such a servant. The child would not let the serving-woman attend to her, do intimate things for her, not for a long time. She treated her as one of an inferior race. Brangwen did not like it.
“Why aren’t you fond of Tilly?” he asked.
“Because-because-because she looks at me with her eyes bent.”
Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the household, never as a person.
For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were for ever on the watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient, spoiled by Tilly, was an easy blusterer. If for a few minutes he upset the household with his noisy impatience, he found at the end the child glowering at him with intense black eyes, and she was sure to dart forward her little head, like a serpent, with her biting:
“Go away.”
“I’m not going away,” he shouted, irritated at last. “Go yourself-hustle-stir thysen-hop.” And he pointed to the door. The child backed away from him, pale with fear. Then she gathered up courage, seeing him become patient.
“We don’t live with you,” she said, thrusting forward her little head at him. “You-you’re-you’re a bomakle.”
“A what?” he shouted.
Her voice wavered-but it came.
“A bomakle.”
“Ay, an’ you’re a comakle.”
She meditated. Then she hissed forwards her head.
“I’m not.”
“Not what?”
“A comakle.”
“No more am I a bomakle.”
He was really cross.
Other times she would say:
“My mother doesn’t live here.”
“Oh, ay?”
“I want her to go away.”
“Then want’s your portion,” he replied laconically.