She came twice with her child to the farm, but there was this
lull between them, an intense calm and passivity like a torpor
upon them, so that there was no active change took place. He was
almost unaware of the child, yet by his native good humour he
gained her confidence, even her affection, setting her on a
horse to ride, giving her corn for the fowls.
Once he drove the mother and child from Ilkeston, picking
them up on the road. The child huddled close to him as if for
love, the mother sat very still. There was a vagueness, like a
soft mist over all of them, and a silence as if their wills were
suspended. Only he saw her hands, ungloved, folded in her lap,
and he noticed the wedding-ring on her finger. It excluded him:
it was a closed circle. It bound her life, the wedding-ring, it
stood for her life in which he could have no part. Nevertheless,
beyond all this, there was herself and himself which should
meet.
As he helped her down from the trap, almost lifting her, he
felt he had some right to take her thus between his hands. She
belonged as yet to that other, to that which was behind. But he
must care for her also. She was too living to be neglected.
Sometimes her vagueness, in which he was lost, made him
angry, made him rage. But he held himself still as yet. She had
no response, no being towards him. It puzzled and enraged him,
but he submitted for a long time. Then, from the accumulated
troubling of her ignoring him, gradually a fury broke out,
destructive, and he wanted to go away, to escape her.
It happened she came down to the Marsh with the child whilst
he was in this state. Then he stood over against her, strong and
heavy in his revolt, and though he said nothing, still she felt
his anger and heavy impatience grip hold of her, she was shaken
again as out of a torpor. Again her heart stirred with a quick,
out-running impulse, she looked at him, at the stranger who was
not a gentleman yet who insisted on coming into her life, and
the pain of a new birth in herself strung all her veins to a new
form. She would have to begin again, to find a new being, a new
form, to respond to that blind, insistent figure standing over
against her.
A shiver, a sickness of new birth passed over her, the flame
leaped up him, under his skin. She wanted it, this new life from
him, with him, yet she must defend herself against it, for it
was a destruction.