She was joyfully active. Nothing pleased her more than to
hang out the washing in a high wind that came full-butt over the
round of the hill, tearing the wet garments out of her hands,
making flap-flap-flap of the waving stuff. She laughed and
struggled and grew angry. But she loved her solitary days.
Then he came home at night, and she knitted her brows because
of some endless contest between them. As he stood in the doorway
her heart changed. It steeled itself. The laughter and zest of
the day disappeared from her. She was stiffened.
They fought an unknown battle, unconsciously. Still they were
in love with each other, the passion was there. But the passion
was consumed in a battle. And the deep, fierce unnamed battle
went on. Everything glowed intensely about them, the world had
put off its clothes and was awful, with new, primal
nakedness.
Sunday came when the strange spell was cast over her by him.
Half she loved it. She was becoming more like him. All the
week-days, there was a glint of sky and fields, the little
church seemed to babble away to the cottages the morning
through. But on Sundays, when he stayed at home, a
deeply-coloured, intense gloom seemed to gather on the face of
the earth, the church seemed to fill itself with shadow, to
become big, a universe to her, there was a burning of blue and
ruby, a sound of worship about her. And when the doors were
opened, and she came out into the world, it was a world
new--created, she stepped into the resurrection of the
world, her heart beating to the memory of the darkness and the
Passion.
If, as very often, they went to the Marsh for tea on Sundays,
then she regained another, lighter world, that had never known
the gloom and the stained glass and the ecstasy of chanting. Her
husband was obliterated, she was with her father again, who was
so fresh and free and all daylight. Her husband, with his
intensity and his darkness, was obliterated. She left him, she
forgot him, she accepted her father.
Yet, as she went home again with the young man, she put her
hand on his arm tentatively, a little bit ashamed, her hand
pleaded that he would not hold it against her, her recusancy.
But he was obscured. He seemed to become blind, as if he were
not there with her.
Then she was afraid. She wanted him. When he was oblivious of
her, she almost went mad with fear. For she had become so
vulnerable, so exposed. She was in touch so intimately. All
things about her had become intimate, she had known them near
and lovely, like presences hovering upon her. What if they
should all go hard and separate again, standing back from her
terrible and distinct, and she, having known them, should be at
their mercy?