Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
He was a broken, cold man. He had no affection for her, nor for anyone.
He had failed in _his_ work, so everything had failed. He stiffened,
and died.
She could not subscribe. He had failed, everything had failed, yet
behind the failure was the unyielding passion of life. The individual
effort might fail, but not the human joy. She belonged to the human
joy.
He died and went his way, but not before there was another child. And
this little Ursula was his grandchild. She was glad of it. For she
still honoured him, though he had been mistaken.
She, Lydia Brangwen, was sorry for him now. He was dead—he had scarcely
lived. He had never known her. He had lain with her, but he had never
known her. He had never received what she could give him. He had gone
away from her empty. So, he had never lived. So, he had died and passed
away. Yet there had been strength and power in him.
She could scarcely forgive him that he had never lived. If it were not
for Anna, and for this little Ursula, who had his brows, there would be
no more left of him than of a broken vessel thrown away, and just
remembered.
Tom Brangwen had served her. He had come to her, and taken from her. He
had died and gone his way into death. But he had made himself immortal
in his knowledge with her. So she had her place here, in life, and in
immortality. For he had taken his knowledge of her into death, so that
she had her place in death. “In my father’s house are many mansions.”
She loved both her husbands. To one she had been a naked little
girl-bride, running to serve him. The other she loved out of
fulfilment, because he was good and had given her being, because he had
served her honourably, and become her man, one with her.
She was established in this stretch of life, she had come to herself.
During her first marriage, she had not existed, except through him, he
was the substance and she the shadow running at his feet. She was very
glad she had come to her own self. She was grateful to Brangwen. She
reached out to him in gratitude, into death.
In her heart she felt a vague tenderness and pity for her first
husband, who had been her lord. He was so wrong when he died. She could
not bear it, that he had never lived, never really become himself. And
he had been her lord! Strange, it all had been! Why had he been her
lord? He seemed now so far off, so without bearing on her.
“Which did you, grandmother?”
“What?”
“Like best.”
“I liked them both. I married the first when I was quite a girl. Then I
loved your grandfather when I was a woman. There is a difference.”
They were silent for a time.
“Did you cry when my first grandfather died?” the child asked.
Lydia Brangwen rocked herself on the bed, thinking aloud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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