pg28948 [41]
She went into the public-house with him, if he had to call, and often sat beside him in the bar-parlour as he drank his beer or brandy. The landladies paid court to her, in the obsequious way landladies have.
"Well, little lady, an' what's your name?"
"Anna Brangwen," came the immediate, haughty answer.
"Indeed it is! An' do you like driving in a trap with your father?"
"Yes," said Anna, shy, but bored by these inanities. She had a touch-me-not way of blighting the inane inquiries of grown-up people.
"My word, she's a fawce little thing," the landlady would say to Brangwen.
"Ay," he answered, not encouraging comments on the child. Then there followed the present of a biscuit, or of cake, which Anna accepted as her dues.
"What does she say, that I'm a fawce little thing?" the small girl asked afterwards.
"She means you're a sharp-shins."
Anna hesitated. She did not understand. Then she laughed at some absurdity she found.
Soon he took her every week to market with him. "I can come, can't I?" she asked every Saturday, or Thursday morning, when he made himself look fine in his dress of a gentleman farmer. And his face clouded at having to refuse her.
So at last, he overcame his own shyness, and tucked her beside him. They drove into Nottingham and put up at the "Black Swan". So far all right. Then he wanted to leave her at the inn. But he saw her face, and knew it was impossible. So he mustered his courage, and set off with her, holding her hand, to the cattle-market.
She stared in bewilderment, flitting silent at his side. But in the cattle-market she shrank from the press of men, all men, all in heavy, filthy boots, and leathern leggins. And the road underfoot was all nasty with cow-muck. And it frightened her to see the cattle in the square pens, so many horns, and so little enclosure, and such a madness of men and a yelling of drovers. Also she felt her father was embarrassed by her, and ill-at-ease.
He brought her a cake at the refreshment-booth, and set her on a seat. A man hailed him.
"Good morning, Tom. That thine, then?"—and the bearded farmer jerked his head at Anna.
"Ay," said Brangwen, deprecating.
"I did-na know tha'd one that old."
"No, it's my missis's."
"Oh, that's it!" And the man looked at Anna as if she were some odd little cattle. She glowered with black eyes.
Brangwen left her there, in charge of the barman, whilst he went to see about the selling of some young stirks. Farmers, butchers, drovers, dirty, uncouth men from whom she shrank instinctively stared down at her as she sat on her seat, then went to get their drink, talking in unabated tones. All was big and violent about her.
"Whose child met that be?" they asked of the barman.
"It belongs to Tom Brangwen."
The child sat on in neglect, watching the door for her father. He never came; many, many men came, but not he, and she sat like a shadow. She knew one did not cry in such a place. And every man looked at her inquisitively, she shut herself away from them.
A deep, gathering coldness of isolation took hold on her. He was never coming back. She sat on, frozen, unmoving.
When she had become blank and timeless he came, and she slipped off her seat to him, like one come back from the dead. He had sold his beast as quickly as he could. But all the business was not finished. He took her again through the hurtling welter of the cattle-market.
Then at last they turned and went out through the gate. He was always hailing one man or another, always stopping to gossip about land and cattle and horses and other things she did not understand, standing in the filth and the smell, among the legs and great boots of men. And always she heard the questions:
"What lass is that, then? I didn't know tha'd one o' that age."
"It belongs to my missis."
Anna was very conscious of her derivation from her mother, in the end, and of her alienation.
But at last they were away, and Brangwen went with her into a little