Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
She liked Anthony, though. All her life, at intervals, she returned to
the thought of him and of that which he offered. But she was a
traveller, she was a traveller on the face of the earth, and he was an
isolated creature living in the fulfilment of his own senses.
She could not help it, that she was a traveller. She knew Anthony, that
he was not one. But oh, ultimately and finally, she must go on and on,
seeking the goal that she knew she did draw nearer to.
She was wearing away her second and last cycle at St. Philip’s. As the
months went she ticked them off, first October, then November,
December, January. She was careful always to subtract a month from the
remainder, for the summer holidays. She saw herself travelling round a
circle, only an arc of which remained to complete. Then, she was in the
open, like a bird tossed into mid-air, a bird that had learned in some
measure to fly.
There was college ahead; that was her mid-air, unknown, spacious. Come
college, and she would have broken from the confines of all the life
she had known. For her father was also going to move. They were all
going to leave Cossethay.
Brangwen had kept his carelessness about his circumstances. He knew his
work in the lace designing meant little to him personally, he just
earned his wage by it. He did not know what meant much to him. Living
close to Anna Brangwen, his mind was always suffused through with
physical heat, he moved from instinct to instinct, groping, always
groping on.
When it was suggested to him that he might apply for one of the posts
as hand-work instructor, posts about to be created by the Nottingham
Education Committee, it was as if a space had been given to him, into
which he could remove from his hot, dusky enclosure. He sent in his
application, confidently, expectantly. He had a sort of belief in his
supernatural fate. The inevitable weariness of his daily work had
stiffened some of his muscles, and made a slight deadness in his ruddy,
alert face. Now he might escape.
He was full of the new possibilities, and his wife was acquiescent. She
was willing now to have a change. She too was tired of Cossethay. The
house was too small for the growing children. And since she was nearly
forty years old, she began to come awake from her sleep of motherhood,
her energy moved more outwards. The din of growing lives roused her
from her apathy. She too must have her hand in making life. She was
quite ready to move, taking all her brood. It would be better now if
she transplanted them. For she had borne her last child, it would be
growing up.
So that in her easy, unused fashion she talked plans and arrangements
with her husband, indifferent really as to the method of the change,
since a change was coming; even if it did not come in this way it would
come in another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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