Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
One evening, suddenly, he saw the tiny, living thing rolling naked in
the mother’s lap, and he was sick, it was so utterly helpless and
vulnerable and extraneous; in a world of hard surfaces and varying
altitudes, it lay vulnerable and naked at every point. Yet it was quite
blithe. And yet, in its blind, awful crying, was there not the blind,
far-off terror of its own vulnerable nakedness, the terror of being so
utterly delivered over, helpless at every point. He could not bear to
hear it crying. His heart strained and stood on guard against the whole
universe.
But he waited for the dread of these days to pass; he saw the joy
coming. He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear of the baby, a bit
of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like bronze-dust. And he waited,
for the child to become his, to look at him and answer him.
It had a separate being, but it was his own child. His flesh and blood
vibrated to it. He caught the baby to his breast with his passionate,
clapping laugh. And the infant knew him.
As the newly-opened, newly-dawned eyes looked at him, he wanted them to
perceive him, to recognize him. Then he was verified. The child knew
him, a queer contortion of laughter came on its face for him. He caught
it to his breast, clapping with a triumphant laugh.
The golden-brown eyes of the child gradually lit up and dilated at the
sight of the dark-glowing face of the youth. It knew its mother better,
it wanted its mother more. But the brightest, sharpest little ecstasy
was for the father.
It began to be strong, to move vigorously and freely, to make sounds
like words. It was a baby girl now. Already it knew his strong hands,
it exulted in his strong clasp, it laughed and crowed when he played
with it.
And his heart grew red-hot with passionate feeling for the child. She
was not much more than a year old when the second baby was born. Then
he took Ursula for his own. She his first little girl. He had set his
heart on her.
The second had dark blue eyes and a fair skin: it was more a Brangwen,
people said. The hair was fair. But they forgot Anna’s stiff blonde
fleece of childhood. They called the newcomer Gudrun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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