His father allowed him a liberal pocket-money, besides which he had a sort of post as assistant to his chief. Then from time to time the young man appeared at the Marsh, curiously attractive, well-dressed, reserved, having by nature a subtle, refined manner. And he set the change in the farm.
Fred, the younger brother, was a Brangwen, large-boned, blue-eyed, English. He was his father’s very son, the two men, father and son, were supremely at ease with one another. Fred was succeeding to the farm.
Between the elder brother and the younger existed an almost passionate love. Tom watched over Fred with a woman’s poignant attention and self-less care. Fred looked up to Tom as to something miraculous, that which he himself would aspire to be, were he great also.
So that after Anna’s departure, the Marsh began to take on a new tone. The boys were gentlemen; Tom had a rare nature and had risen high. Fred was sensitive and fond of reading, he pondered Ruskin and then the Agnostic writings. Like all the Brangwens, he was very much a thing to himself, though fond of people, and indulgent to them, having an exaggerated respect for them.
There was a rather uneasy friendship between him and one of the young Hardys at the Hall. The two households were different, yet the young men met on shy terms of equality.
It was young Tom Brangwen, with his dark lashes and beautiful colouring, his soft, inscrutable nature, his strange repose and his informed air, added to his position in London, who seemed to emphasise the superior foreign element in the Marsh. When he appeared, perfectly dressed, as if soft and affable, and yet quite removed from everybody, he created an uneasiness in people, he was reserved in the minds of the Cossethay and Ilkeston acquaintances to a different, remote world.
He and his mother had a kind of affinity. The affection between them was of a mute, distant character, but radical. His father was always uneasy and slightly deferential to his eldest son. Tom also formed the link that kept the Marsh in real connection with the Skrebenskys, now quite important people in their own district.
So a change in tone came over the Marsh. Tom Brangwen the father, as he grew older, seemed to mature into a gentleman-farmer. His figure lent itself: burly and handsome. His face remained fresh and his blue eyes as full of light, his thick hair and beard had turned gradually to a silky whiteness. It was his custom to laugh a great deal, in his acquiescent, wilful manner. Things had puzzled him very much, so he had taken the line of easy, good-humoured acceptance. He was not responsible for the frame of things. Yet he was afraid of the unknown in life.
He was fairly well-off. His wife was there with him, a different being from himself, yet somewhere vitally connected with him:—who was he to understand where and how? His two sons were gentlemen. They were men distinct from himself, they had separate beings of their own, yet they were connected with himself. It was all adventurous and puzzling. Yet one remained vital within one’s own existence, whatever the off-shoots.
So, handsome and puzzled, he laughed and stuck to himself as the only thing he could stick to. His youngness and the wonder remained almost the same in him. He became indolent, he developed a luxuriant ease. Fred did most of the farm-work, the father saw to the more important transactions. He drove a good mare, and sometimes he rode his cob. He drank in the hotels and the inns with better-class farmers and proprietors, he had well-to-do acquaintances among men. But one class suited him no better than another.
His wife, as ever, had no acquaintances. Her hair was threaded now with grey, her face grew older in form without changing in expression. She seemed the same as when she had come to the Marsh twenty-five years ago, save that her health was more fragile. She seemed always to haunt the Marsh rather than to live there. She was never part of the life. Something she represented was alien there, she remained a stranger within the gates, in some ways fixed and impervious, in some ways curiously refining. She caused the separateness and individuality of all the Marsh inmates, the friability of the household.
When young Tom Brangwen was twenty-three years old there was some breach between him and his chief which was never explained, and he went away to Italy, then to America. He came home for a while, then went to Germany; always the same good-looking, carefully-dressed, attractive young man, in perfect health, yet somehow outside of everything. In his dark eyes was a deep misery which he wore with the same ease and pleasantness as he wore his close-sitting clothes.
To Ursula he was a romantic, alluring figure. He had a grace of bringing beautiful presents: a box of expensive sweets, such as Cossethay had never seen; or he gave her a hair-brush and a long slim mirror of mother-of-pearl, all pale and glimmering and exquisite; or he sent her a little necklace of rough stones, amethyst and opal and brilliants and garnet. He spoke other languages easily and fluently, his nature was curiously gracious and insinuating. With all that, he was undefinably an outsider. He belonged to nowhere, to no society.
Anna Brangwen had left her intimacy with her father undeveloped since the time of her marriage. At her marriage it had been abandoned. He and she had drawn a reserve between them. Anna went more to her mother.
Then suddenly the father died.
It happened one springtime when Ursula was about eight years old, he, Tom Brangwen, drove off on a Saturday morning to the market in Nottingham, saying he might not be back till late, as there was a special show and then a meeting he had to attend. His family understood that he would enjoy himself.
The season had been rainy and dreary. In the evening it was pouring with rain. Fred Brangwen, unsettled, uneasy, did not go out, as was his wont. He smoked and read and fidgeted, hearing always the trickling of water outside. This wet, black night seemed to cut him off and make him unsettled, aware of himself, aware that he wanted something else, aware that he was scarcely living. There seemed to him to be no root to his life, no place for him to get satisfied in. He dreamed of going abroad. But his instinct knew that change of place would not solve his problem. He wanted change, deep, vital change of living. And he did not know how to get it.
Tilly, an old woman now, came in saying that the labourers who had been suppering up said the yard and everywhere was just a slew of water. He heard in indifference. But he hated a desolate, raw wetness in the world. He would leave the Marsh.
His mother was in bed. At last he shut his book, his mind was blank, he walked upstairs intoxicated with depression and anger, and, intoxicated with depression and anger, locked himself into sleep.
Tilly set slippers before the kitchen fire, and she also went to bed, leaving the door unlocked. Then the farm was in darkness, in the rain.
At eleven o’clock it was still raining. Tom Brangwen stood in the yard of the Angel, in Nottingham, and buttoned his coat.
“Oh well,” he said cheerfully, “it’s rained on me before. Put ’er in, Jack, my lad, put her in—Tha’rt a rare old cock, Jacky-boy, wi’ a belly on thee as does credit to thy drink, if not to thy corn. Co’ up, lass, let’s get off ter th’ old homestead. Oh my heart, what a wetness in the night! There’ll be no volcanoes after this. Hey, Jack, my beautiful young slender feller, which of us is Noah? It seems as though the water-works is bursted. Ducks and ayquatic fowl’ll be king o’ the castle at this rate—dove an’ olive branch an’ all. Stand up then, gel, stand up, we’re not stoppin’ here all night, even if you thought we was. I’m dashed if the jumping rain wouldn’t make anybody think they was drunk. Hey, Jack—does rain-water wash the sense in, or does it wash it out?” And he laughed to himself at the joke.
He was always ashamed when he had to drive after he had been drinking, always apologetic to the horse. His apologetic frame made him facetious. He was aware of his inability to walk quite straight. Nevertheless his will kept stiff and attentive, in all his fuddledness.
He mounted and bowled off through the gates of the inn-yard. The mare went well, he sat fixed, the rain beating on his face. His heavy body rode motionless in a kind of sleep, one centre of attent
ion was kept fitfully burning, the rest was dark. He concentrated his last attention on the fact of driving along the road he knew so well. He knew it so well, he watched for it attentively, with an effort of will.
He talked aloud to himself, sententious in his anxiety, as if he were perfectly sober, whilst the mare bowled along and the rain beat on him. He watched the rain before the gig-lamps, the faint gleaming of the shadowy horse’s body, the passing of the dark hedges.
“It’s not a fit night to turn a dog out,” he said to himself, aloud. “It’s high time as it did a bit of clearing up, I’ll be damned if it isn’t. It was a lot of use putting those ten loads of cinders on th’ road. They’ll be washed to kingdom-come if it doesn’t alter. Well, it’s our Fred’s look-out, if they are. He’s top-sawyer as far as those things go. I don’t see why I should concern myself. They can wash to kingdom-come and back again for what I care. I suppose they would be washed back again some day. That’s how things are. Th’ rain tumbles down just to mount up in clouds again. So they say. There’s no more water on the earth than there was in the year naught. That’s the story, my boy, if you understand it. There’s no more to-day than there was a thousand years ago—not no less either. You can’t wear water out. No, my boy: it’ll give you the go-by. Try to wear it out, and it takes its hook into vapour, it has its fingers at its nose to you. It turns into cloud and falleth as rain on the just and unjust. I wonder if I’m the just or the unjust.”
He started awake as the trap lurched deep into a rut. And he wakened to the point of his journey. He had travelled some distance since he was last conscious.
But at length he reached the gate, and stumbled heavily down, reeling, gripping fast to the trap. He descended into several inches of water.
“Be damned!” he said angrily. “Be damned to the miserable slop.”
And he led the horse washing through the gate. He was quite drunk now, moving blindly, in habit. Everywhere there was water underfoot.
The raised causeway of the house and the farm-stead was dry, however. But there was a curious roar in the night which seemed to be made in the darkness of his own intoxication. Reeling, blinded, almost without consciousness he carried his parcels and the rug and cushions into the house, dropped them, and went out to put up the horse.
Now he was at home, he was a sleep-walker, waiting only for the moment of activity to stop. Very deliberately and carefully, he led the horse down the slope to the cart-shed. She shied and backed.
“Why wha’s amiss?” he hiccupped, plodding steadily on. And he was again in a wash of water, the horse splashed up water as she went. It was thickly dark, save for the gig-lamps, and they lit on a rippling surface of water.
“Well that’s a knock-out,” he said, as he came to the cart-shed, and was wading in six inches of water. But everything seemed to him amusing. He laughed to think of six inches of water being in the cart-shed.
He backed in the mare. She was restive. He laughed at the fun of untackling the mare with a lot of water washing round his feet. He laughed because it upset her. “What’s amiss, what’s amiss, a drop o’ water won’t hurt you!” As soon as he had undone the traces, she walked quickly away.
He hung up the shafts and took the gig-lamp. As he came out of the familiar jumble of shafts and wheels in the shed, the water, in little waves, came washing strongly against his legs. He staggered and almost fell.
“Well what the deuce!” he said, staring round at the running water in the black, watery night.
He went to meet the running flood, sinking deeper and deeper. His soul was full of great astonishment. He had to go and look where it came from, though the ground was going from under his feet. He went on, down towards the pond, shakily. He rather enjoyed it. He was knee-deep, and the water was pulling heavily. He stumbled, reeled sickeningly.
Fear took hold of him. Gripping tightly to the lamp, he reeled, and looked round. The water was carrying his feet away, he was dizzy. He did not know which way to turn. The water was whirling, whirling, the whole black night was swooping in rings. He swayed uncertainly at the centre of all the attack, reeling in dismay. In his soul, he knew he would fall.
As he staggered something in the water struck his legs, and he fell. Instantly he was in the turmoil of suffocation. He fought in a black horror of suffocation, fighting, wrestling, but always borne down, borne inevitably down. Still he wrestled and fought to get himself free, in the unutterable struggle of suffocation, but he always fell again deeper. Something struck his head, a great wonder of anguish went over him, then the blackness covered him entirely.
In the utter darkness, the unconscious, drowning body was rolled along, the waters pouring, washing, filling in the place. The cattle woke up and rose to their feet, the dog began to yelp. And the unconscious, drowning body was washed along in the black, swirling darkness, passively.
Mrs Brangwen woke up and listened. With preternaturally sharp senses she heard the movement of all the darkness that swirled outside. For a moment she lay still. Then she went to the window. She heard the sharp rain, and the deep running of water. She knew her husband was outside.
“Fred,” she called, “Fred!”
Away in the night was a hoarse, brutal roar of a mass of water rushing downwards.
She went downstairs. She could not understand the multiplied running of water. Stepping down the step into the kitchen, she put her foot into water. The kitchen was flooded. Where did it come from? She could not understand.
Water was running in out of the scullery. She paddled through barefoot, to see. Water was bubbling fiercely under the outer door. She was afraid. Then something washed against her, something twined under her foot. It was the riding whip. On the table were the rug and the cushion and the parcel from the gig.
He had come home.
“Tom!” she called, afraid of her own voice.
She opened the door. Water ran in with a horrid sound. Everywhere was moving water, a sound of waters.
“Tom!” she cried, standing in her nightdress with the candle, calling into the darkness and the flood out of the doorway.
“Tom! Tom!”
And she listened. Fred appeared behind her, in trousers and shirt.
“Where is he?” he asked.
He looked at the flood, then at his mother. She seemed small and uncanny, elvish, in her nightdress.
“Go upstairs,” he said. “He’ll be in th’ stable.”
“To-om! To-om!” cried the elderly woman, with a long, unnatural, penetrating call that chilled her son to the marrow. He quickly pulled on his boots and his coat.
“Go upstairs, mother,” he said. “I’ll go an’ see where he is.”
“To-om! To-o-m!” rang out the shrill, unearthly cry of the small woman. There was only the noise of water and the mooing of uneasy cattle, and the long yelping of the dog, clamouring in the darkness.
Fred Brangwen splashed out into the flood with a lantern. His mother stood on a chair in the doorway, watching him go. It was all water, water, running, flashing under the lantern.
“Tom! Tom! To-o-om!” came her long, unnatural cry, ringing over the night. It made her son feel cold in his soul.
And the unconscious, drowning body of the father rolled on below the house, driven by the black water towards the high-road.
Tilly appeared, a skirt over her nightdress. She saw her mistress clinging on the top of a chair in the open doorway, a candle burning on the table.
“God’s sake!” cried the old serving-woman. “The cut’s burst. That embankment’s broke down. Whativer are we goin’ to do!”
Mrs Brangwen watched her son, and the lantern, go along the upper causeway to the stable. Then she saw the dark figure of a horse: then her son hung the lamp in the stable, and the light shone out faintly on him as he untackled the mare. The mother saw the soft blazed face of the horse thrust forward into the stable-do
or. The stables were still above the flood. But the water flowed strongly into the house.
“It’s getting higher,” said Tilly. “Hasn’t master come in?”
Mrs Brangwen did not hear.
“Isn’t he the-ere?” she called, in her far-reaching, terrifying voice.
“No,” came the short answer out of the night.
“Go and loo-ok for him.”
His mother’s voice nearly drove the youth mad.
He put the halter on the horse and shut the stable door. He came splashing back through the water, the lantern swinging.
The unconscious, drowning body was pushed past the house in the deepest current. Fred Brangwen came to his mother.
“I’ll go to th’ cart-shed,” he said.
“To-om, To-o-om!” rang out the strong, inhuman cry. Fred Brangwen’s blood froze, his heart was very angry. He gripped his veins in a frenzy. Why was she yelling like this? He could not bear the sight of her, perched on a chair in her white nightdress in the doorway, elvish and horrible.
“He’s taken the mare out of the trap, so he’s all right,” he said, growling, pretending to be normal.
But as he descended to the cart-shed, he sank into a foot of water. He heard the rushing in the distance, he knew the canal had broken down. The water was running deeper.
The trap was there all right, but no signs of his father. The young man waded down to the pond. The water rose above his knees, it swirled and forced him. He drew back.
“Is he the-e-ere?” came the maddening cry of the mother.
“No,” was the sharp answer.
“To-om—To-o-om!” came the piercing, free, unearthly call. It seemed high and supernatural, almost pure. Fred Brangwen hated it. It nearly drove him mad. So awfully it sang out, almost like a song.
The water was flowing fuller into the house.
“You’d better go up to Beeby’s and bring him and Arthur down, and tell Mrs Beeby to fetch Wilkinson,” said Fred to Tilly. He forced his mother to go upstairs.
The Rainbow (100th Anniversary ed.) Page 29