“It needs knowing,” he said.
“I shall have the money later on,” said the nephew. “I will raise some now, and pay it back then.”
“Oh ay!—And why this desperate hurry? She’s a child of eighteen, and you’re a boy of twenty. You’re neither of you of age to do as you like yet.”
Will Brangwen ducked his head and looked at his uncle with swift, mistrustful eyes, like a caged hawk.
“What does it matter how old she is, and how old I am?” he said. “What’s the difference between me now and when I’m thirty?”
“A big difference, let us hope.”
“But you have no experience—you have no experience, and no money. Why do you want to marry, without experience or money?” asked the aunt.
“What experience do I want, Aunt?” asked the boy.
And if Brangwen’s heart had not been hard and intact with anger, like a precious stone, he would have agreed.
Will Brangwen went home strange and untouched. He felt he could not alter from what he was fixed upon, his will was set. To alter it he must be destroyed. And he would not be destroyed. He had no money. But he would get some from somewhere, it did not matter. He lay awake for many hours, hard and clear and unthinking, his soul crystallising more inalterably. Then he went fast asleep.
It was as if his soul had turned into a hard crystal. He might tremble and quiver and suffer, it did not alter.
The next morning Tom Brangwen, inhuman with anger spoke to Anna.
“What’s this about wanting to get married?” he said.
She stood, paling a little, her dark eyes springing to the hostile, startled look of a savage thing that will defend itself, but trembles with sensitiveness.
“I do,” she said, out of her unconsciousness.
His anger rose, and he would have liked to break her.
“You do—you do—and what for?” he sneered with contempt. The old, childish agony, the blindness that could recognise nobody, the palpitating antagonism as of a raw, helpless, undefended thing came back on her.
“I do because I do,” she cried, in the shrill, hysterical way of her childhood. “You are not my father—my father is dead—you are not my father.”
She was still a stranger. She did not recognise him. The cold blade cut down, deep into Brangwen’s soul. It cut him off from her.
“And what if I’m not?” he said.
But he could not bear it. It had been so passionately dear to him, her “Father—Daddie.”
He went about for some days as if stunned. His wife was bemused. She did not understand. She only thought the marriage was impeded for want of money and position.