But something bigger in him withheld him, kept him
motionless. So he went out of the house for relief. Or he turned
to the little girl for her sympathy and her love, he appealed
with all his power to the small Anna. So soon they were like
lovers, father and child.
For he was afraid of his wife. As she sat there with bent
head, silent, working or reading, but so unutterably silent that
his heart seemed under the millstone of it, she became herself
like the upper millstone lying on him, crushing him, as
sometimes a heavy sky lies on the earth.
Yet he knew he could not tear her away from the heavy
obscurity into which she was merged. He must not try to tear her
into recognition of himself, and agreement with himself. It were
disastrous, impious. So, let him rage as he might, he must
withhold himself. But his wrists trembled and seemed mad, seemed
as if they would burst.
When, in November, the leaves came beating against the window
shutters, with a lashing sound, he started, and his eyes
flickered with flame. The dog looked up at him, he sunk his head
to the fire. But his wife was startled. He was aware of her
listening.
"They blow up with a rattle," he said.
"What?" she asked.
"The leaves."
She sank away again. The strange leaves beating in the wind
on the wood had come nearer than she. The tension in the room
was overpowering, it was difficult for him to move his head. He
sat with every nerve, every vein, every fibre of muscle in his
body stretched on a tension. He felt like a broken arch thrust
sickeningly out from support. For her response was gone, he
thrust at nothing. And he remained himself, he saved himself
from crashing down into nothingness, from being squandered into
fragments, by sheer tension, sheer backward resistance.
During the last months of her pregnancy, he went about in a
surcharged, imminent state that did not exhaust itself. She was
also depressed, and sometimes she cried. It needed so much life
to begin afresh, after she had lost so lavishly. Sometimes she
cried. Then he stood stiff, feeling his heart would burst. For
she did not want him, she did not want even to be made aware of
him. By the very puckering of her face he knew that he must
stand back, leave her intact, alone. For it was the old grief
come back in her, the old loss, the pain of the old life, the
dead husband, the dead children. This was sacred to her, and he
must not violate her with his comfort. For what she wanted she
would come to him. He stood aloof with turgid heart.
He had to see her tears come, fall over her scarcely moving
face, that only puckered sometimes, down on to her breast, that
was so still, scarcely moving. And there was no noise, save now
and again, when, with a strange, somnambulant movement, she took
her handkerchief and wiped her face and blew her nose, and went
on with the noiseless weeping. He knew that any offer of comfort
from himself would be worse than useless, hateful to her,
jangling her. She must cry. But it drove him insane. His heart
was scalded, his brain hurt in his head, he went away, out of
the house.