“Mother”-she seemed always to be calling her mother to remember her-“mother”-and she had nothing to continue now her mother had replied “Yes, my child.” But, with ready invention, the child stumbled and ran on, “What are those people’s names?”
Brangwen heard the abstract:
“I don’t know, dear.”
He went on down the road as if he were not living inside himself, but somewhere outside.
“Who was that person?” his sister Effie asked.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he answered unknowing.
“She’s somebody very funny,” said Effie, almost in condemnation. “That child’s like one bewitched.”
“Bewitched-how bewitched?” he repeated.
“You can see for yourself. The mother’s plain, I must say-but the child is like a changeling. She’d be about thirty-five.”
But he took no notice. His sister talked on.
“There’s your woman for you,” she continued. “You’d better marry her.” But still he took no notice. Things were as they were.
Another day, at tea-time, as he sat alone at table, there came a knock at the front door. It startled him like a portent. No one ever knocked at the front door. He rose and began slotting back the bolts, turning the big key. When he had opened the door, the strange woman stood on the threshold.
“Can you give me a pound of butter?” she asked, in a curious detached way of one speaking a foreign language.
He tried to attend to her question. She was looking at him questioningly. But underneath the question, what was there, in her very standing motionless, which affected him?
He stepped aside and she at once entered the house, as if the door had been opened to admit her. That startled him. It was the custom for everybody to wait on the doorstep till asked inside. He went into the kitchen and she followed.
His tea-things were spread on the scrubbed deal table, a big fire was burning, a dog rose from the hearth and went to her. She stood motionless just inside the kitchen.
“Tilly,” he called loudly, “have we got any butter?”
The stranger stood there like a silence in her black cloak.
“Eh?” came the shrill cry from the distance.
He shouted his question again.
“We’ve got what’s on t’ table,” answered Tilly’s shrill voice out of the dairy.
Brangwen looked at the table. There was a large pat of butter on a plate, almost a pound. It was round, and stamped with acorns and oak-leaves.
“Can’t you come when you’re wanted?” he shouted.
“Why, what d’you want?” Tilly protested, as she came peeking inquisitively through the other door.
She saw the strange woman, stared at her with cross-eyes, but said nothing.
“Haven’t we any butter?” asked Brangwen again, impatiently, as if he could command some by his question.
“I tell you there’s what’s on t’ table,” said Tilly, impatient that she was unable to create any to his demand. “We haven’t a morsel besides.”
There was a moment’s silence.
The stranger spoke, in her curiously distinct, detached manner of one who must think her speech first.
“Oh, then thank you very much. I am sorry that I have come to trouble you.”
She could not understand the entire lack of manners, was slightly puzzled. Any politeness would have made the situation quite impersonal. But here it was a case of wills in confusion. Brangwen flushed at her polite speech. Still he did not let her go.
“Get summat an’ wrap that up for her,” he said to Tilly, looking at the butter on the table.
And taking a clean knife, he cut off that side of the butter where it was touched.
His speech, the “for her”, penetrated slowly into the foreign woman and angered Tilly.
“Vicar has his butter fra Brown’s by rights,” said the insuppressible servant-woman. “We s’ll be churnin’ to-morrow mornin’ first thing.”
“Yes”-the long-drawn foreign yes-“yes,” said the Polish woman, “I went to Mrs. Brown’s. She hasn’t any more.”
Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according to the etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort of manners whatever coming to a place cool as you like and knocking at the front door asking for a pound as a stop-gap while your other people were short. If you go to Brown’s you go to Brown’s, an’ my butter isn’t just to make shift when Brown’s has got none.
Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of Tilly’s. The Polish lady did not. And as she wanted butter for the vicar, and as Tilly was churning in the morning, she waited.
“Sluther up now,” said Brangwen loudly after this silence had resolved itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the inner door.
“I am afraid that I should not come, so,” said the stranger, looking at him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it was usual to do.
He felt confused.
“How’s that?” he said, trying to be genial and being only protective.
“Do you —?” she began deliberately. But she was not sure of her ground, and the conversation came to an end. Her eyes looked at him all the while, because she could not speak the language.
They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from her to him. He bent down to it.
“And how’s your little girl?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you, she is very well,” was the reply, a phrase of polite speech in a foreign language merely.
“Sit you down,” he said.
And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through the slits of her cloak, resting on her lap.
“You’re not used to these parts,” he said, still standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking with curious directness at the woman. Her self-possession pleased him and inspired him, set him curiously free. It seemed to him almost brutal to feel so master of himself and of the situation.
Her eyes rested on him for a moment, questioning, as she thought of the meaning of his speech.
“No,” she said, understanding. “No-it is strange.”
“You find it middlin’ rough?” he said.
Her
