Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
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?
This frightened her. Always, her husband was to her the unknown to
which she was delivered up. She was a flower that has been tempted
forth into blossom, and has no retreat. He had her nakedness in his
power. And who was he, what was he? A blind thing, a dark force,
without knowledge. She wanted to preserve herself.
Then she gathered him to herself again and was satisfied for a moment.
But as time went on, she began to realize more and more that he did not
alter, that he was something dark, alien to herself. She had thought
him just the bright reflex of herself. As the weeks and months went by
she realized that he was a dark opposite to her, that they were
opposites, not complements.
He did not alter, he remained separately himself, and he seemed to
expect her to be part of himself, the extension of his will. She felt
him trying to gain power over her, without knowing her. What did he
want? Was he going to bully her?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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