She could not understand him, his strange, dark rages and his
devotion to the church. It was the church building he cared for;
and yet his soul was passionate for something. He laboured
cleaning the stonework, repairing the woodwork, restoring the
organ, and making the singing as perfect as possible. To keep
the church fabric and the church-ritual intact was his business;
to have the intimate sacred building utterly in his own hands,
and to make the form of service complete. There was a little
bright anguish and tension on his face, and in his intent
movements. He was like a lover who knows he is betrayed, but who
still loves, whose love is only the more intense. The church was
false, but he served it the more attentively.
During the day, at his work in the office, he kept himself
suspended. He did not exist. He worked automatically till it was
time to go home.
He loved with a hot heart the dark-haired little Ursula, and
he waited for the child to come to consciousness. Now the mother
monopolized the baby. But his heart waited in its darkness. His
hour would come.
In the long run, he learned to submit to Anna. She forced him
to the spirit of her laws, whilst leaving him the letter of his
own. She combated in him his devils. She suffered very much from
his inexplicable and incalculable dark rages, when a blackness
filled him, and a black wind seemed to sweep out of existence
everything that had to do with him. She could feel herself,
everything, being annihilated by him.
At first she fought him. At night, in this state, he would
kneel down to say his prayers. She looked at his crouching
figure.
"Why are you kneeling there, pretending to pray?" she said,
harshly. "Do you think anybody can pray, when they are in the
vile temper you are in?"
He remained crouching by the beside, motionless.
"It's horrible," she continued, "and such a pretence! What do
you pretend you are saying? Who do you pretend you are praying
to?"
He still remained motionless, seething with inchoate rage,
when his whole nature seemed to disintegrate. He seemed to live
with a strain upon himself, and occasionally came these dark,
chaotic rages, the lust for destruction. She then fought with
him, and their fights were horrible, murderous. And then the
passion between them came just as black and awful.
But little by little, as she learned to love him better, she
would put herself aside, and when she felt one of his fits upon
him, would ignore him, successfully leave him in his world,
whilst she remained in her own. He had a black struggle with
himself, to come back to her. For at last he learned that he
would be in hell until he came back to her. So he struggled to
submit to her, and she was afraid of the ugly strain in his
eyes. She made love to him, and took him. Then he was grateful
to her love, humble.