Then, when he was twenty-three, his mother died, and he was left at home with Effie. His mother’s death was another blow out of the dark. He could not understand it, he knew it was no good his trying. One had to submit to these unforeseen blows that come unawares and leave a bruise that remains and hurts whenever it is touched. He began to be afraid of all that which was up against him. He had loved his mother.
After this, Effie and he quarrelled fiercely. They meant a very great deal to each other, but they were both under a strange, unnatural tension. He stayed out of the house as much as possible. He got a special corner for himself at the Red Lion at Cossethay, and became a usual figure by the fire, a fresh, fair young fellow with heavy limbs and head held back, mostly silent, though alert and attentive, very hearty in his greeting of everybody he knew, shy of strangers. He teased all the women, who liked him extremely, and he was very attentive to the talk of the men, very respectful.
To drink made him quickly flush very red in the face, and brought out the look of self-consciousness and unsureness, almost bewilderment, in his blue eyes. When he came home in this state of tipsy confusion his sister hated him and abused him, and he went off his head, like a mad bull with rage.
He had still another turn with a light-o’-love. One Whitsuntide he went a jaunt with two other young fellows, on horseback, to Matlock and thence to Bakewell. Matlock was at that time just becoming a famous beauty-spot, visited from Manchester and from the Staffordshire towns. In the hotel where the young men took lunch, were two girls, and the parties struck up a friendship.
The Miss who made up to Tom Brangwen, then twenty-four years old, was a handsome, reckless girl neglected for an afternoon by the man who had brought her out. She saw Brangwen and liked him, as all women did, for his warmth and his generous nature, and for the innate delicacy in him. But she saw he was one who would have to be brought to the scratch. However, she was roused and unsatisfied and made mischievous, so she dared anything. It would be an easy interlude, restoring her pride.
She was a handsome girl with a bosom, and dark hair and blue eyes, a girl full of easy laughter, flushed from the sun, inclined to wipe her laughing face in a very natural and taking manner.
Brangwen was in a state of wonder. He treated her with his chaffing deference, roused, but very unsure of himself, afraid to death of being too forward, ashamed lest he might be thought backward, mad with desire yet restrained by instinctive regard for women from making any definite approach, feeling all the while that his attitude was ridiculous, and flushing deep with confusion. She, however, became hard and daring as he became confused, it amused her to see him come on.
“When must you get back?” she asked.
“I’m not particular,” he said.
There the conversation again broke down.
Brangwen’s companions were ready to go on.
“Art commin’, Tom,” they called, “or art for stoppin’?”
“Ay, I’m commin’,” he replied, rising reluctantly, an angry sense of futility and disappointment spreading over him.
He met the full, almost taunting look of the girl, and he trembled with unusedness.
“Shall you come an’ have a look at my mare,” he said to her, with his hearty kindliness that was now shaken with trepidation.
“Oh, I should like to,” she said, rising.
And she followed him, his rather sloping shoulders and his cloth riding-gaiters, out of the room. The young men got their own horses out of the stable.
“Can you ride?” Brangwen asked her.
“I should like to if I could—I have never tried,” she said.
“Come then, an’ have a try,” he said.
And he lifted her, he blushing, she laughing, into the saddle.
“I s’ll slip off—it’s not a lady’s saddle,” she cried.
“Hold yer tight,” he said, and he led her out of the hotel gate.
The girl sat very insecurely, clinging fast. He put a hand on her waist, to support her. And he held her closely, he clasped her as in an embrace, he was weak with desire as he strode beside her.
The horse walked by the river.
“You want to sit straddle-leg,” he said to her.
“I know I do,” she said.
It was the time of very full skirts. She managed to get astride the horse, quite decently, showing an intent concern for covering her pretty leg.
“It’s a lot’s better this road,” she said, looking down at him.
“Ay, it is,” he said, feeling the marrow melt in his bones from the look in her eyes. “I dunno why they have that sidesaddle business, twistin’ a woman in two.”
“Should us leave you then—you seem to be fixed up there?” called Brangwen’s companions from the road.
He went red with anger.
“Ay—don’t worry,” he called back.
“How long are yer stoppin’?” they asked.
“Not after Christmas,” he said.
And the girl gave a tinkling peal of laughter.
“All right—bye-bye!” called his friends.
And they cantered off, leaving him very flushed, trying to be quite normal with the girl. But presently he had gone back to the hotel and given his horse into the charge of an ostler and had gone off with the girl into the woods, not quite knowing where he was or what he was doing. His heart thumped and he thought it the most glorious adventure, and was mad with desire for the girl.
Afterwards he glowed with pleasure. By Jove, but that was something like! He stayed the afternoon with the girl, and wanted to stay the night. She, however, told him this was impossible: her own man would be back by dark, and she must be with him. He, Brangwen, must not let on that there had been anything between
