Miriam Brangwen

“ A queer painful light came into Birkin's eyes.
'As to that,' he said, 'I only know that it's much more likely that it's I who am at the beck and call of the woman, than she at mine.'
Again there was a pause. The father was somewhat bewildered.
'I know,' he said, 'she'll please herself--she always has done. I've done my best for them, but that doesn't matter. They've got themselves to please, and if they can help it they'll please nobody BUT themselves. But she's a right to consider her mother, and me as well--'
Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts. ”

“ There had never been much love lost between the Nottingham Brangwens and the Marsh. Indeed, Mrs. Alfred, having inherited three thousand pounds, and having occasion to be dissatisfied with her husband, held aloof from all the Brangwens whatsoever. She affected, however, some esteem of Mrs. Tom, as she called the Polish woman, saying that at any rate she was a lady.
Anna Brangwen was faintly excited at the news of her Cousin Will's coming to Ilkeston. She knew plenty of young men, but they had never become real to her. ”

“ Birkin was the good angel. He came smiling to them with his affected social grace, that somehow was never QUITE right. But he took off his hat and smiled at them with a real smile in his eyes, so that Brangwen cried out heartily in relief:
'How do you do? You're better, are you?'
'Yes, I'm better. How do you do, Mrs Brangwen? I know Gudrun and Ursula very well.'
His eyes smiled full of natural warmth. He had a soft, flattering manner with women, particularly with women who were not young. ”

“ And when the farmers gambled at dominoes for them, she was angry.
"They are dirty-man's nuts," she cried.
So a revulsion started against Nat, who had not long after to go to the workhouse.
There grew in Brangwen's heart now a secret desire to make her a lady. His brother Alfred, in Nottingham, had caused a great scandal by becoming the lover of an educated woman, a lady, widow of a doctor. Very often, Alfred Brangwen went down as a friend to her cottage, which was in Derbyshire, leaving his wife and family for a day or two, then returning to them. ”

“ It was as though a waltz should be played at an open grave.
"Miriam," cried Ambrose North, passionately, "why did she kill herself? In God's name, tell me why!"
"I do not know," murmured Miriam. He had asked her more than fifty times, and she always gave the same answer.
"But you must know—someone must know! A woman does not die by her own hand without having a reason! She was well and strong, loved, taken care of and petted, she had all that the world could give her, and hosts of friends. I was blind and Barbara was lame, but she loved us none the less. ”

“ The rhythm of the huge sound had caught him. The life in him expanded awfully, rose to far summits, dropped to utter depths. A sense of glowing exaltation swept through him as though wings of power lifted his heart with enormous ascendancy. The biggest passions of his soul stirred—the sweetest dreams, yearnings, aspirations he had ever known were blown to fever heat. Above all, his passion for Miriam waxed tumultuous and possessed him. ”

“ Rahel was not only helpful but magnanimous. She received Miriam into her home, clothed her in dresses that were then in vogue, and shared the thrill of romance. Though she had often bandied Albert about his peculiar notions of feminine beauty she was forced to admit that Miriam was adorable. In her Berlin attire no one would have taken her for a native of Gnesen. Her innate modesty, her truthfulness, her sweet temper, her want of city mannerisms, fascinated the woman of the world surfeited with the artifices of society. ”

“ Nearly everyone turns to look at Miriam. Various types of French and English beauty are by no means uncommon on the sands at Boulogne, but Miriam's peculiar style of face is very rarely seen in the north of Europe, and it strikes the gay crowd with all the freshness of novelty.
Miriam is dressed in the latest fashion of seaside extravagance. She is quite conscious of the sensation which she creates as she moves slowly along, but she has been used to be stared at from the time that she can remember at all. ”

“ His Jaeger slippers were beneath the chair, his clothes, carefully folded, on the sofa, his collar, studs and necktie in a row on the top of the mahogany chest of drawers. On the mantelpiece stood the glass jar of heather, filled that very day by Miriam. He saw it just as he blew out the candle, and Miriam, accordingly, was the last vision that journeyed with him into the country of dreams and sweet forgetfulness.
The night was perfectly still. Winter, black and hard, lay about the house like an iron wall. No wind stirred. ”

“ With this he turned from me, and removing Medora from the easel, he began looking out for another canvas of the same size. Miriam had looked on, seated on the couch with motionless composure, her calm, statue-like head supported by her hand. She turned round to say—
"What is that for, Cornelius?"
"To begin again, if you do not object. I have already thought of some changes in the attitude."
She looked at him keenly, and not without wonder.
"You soon get over it," she said.
"Why not?" he asked quietly; "do not look astonished, Miriam; I can no more linger over regret than over anger. ”

“ At this rate she knew he would not live. He had that poignant carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life, which is a form of slow suicide. It almost broke her heart. With all the passion of her strong nature she hated Miriam for having in this subtle way undermined his joy. It did not matter to her that Miriam could not help it. Miriam did it, and she hated her.
She wished so much he would fall in love with a girl equal to be his mate—educated and strong. But he would not look at anybody above him in station. He seemed to like Mrs. Dawes. ”

“ Miriam knew the "missus" well. She was a little thin-lipped woman, who, notwithstanding her poverty, was most particularly clean. No speck of dirt was to be seen on her person or in her cottage, but she was as hard as flint. She never showed the least affection for her husband. They had married late in life—why, nobody could tell—and had one child, a girl, whom the mother seemed to disregard just as she did her husband, saving that she dressed her and washed her with the same care which she bestowed on her kettle and candlesticks.
"It's a good thing for you, Fitchew, that she is what she is." ”

“ Nevertheless she was well read in departments more important perhaps than books in the conduct of human life, and in her there was the one thing needful—the one thing which, if ever there is to be a Judgment Day, will put her on the right hand; when all sorts of scientific people, religious people, students of poetry, people with exquisite emotions, will go on the left and be damned everlastingly. Miriam was at once sent to bed, and it was arranged that she should take charge during the following night. ”

“ He saw the other fellow at the evening meal: a small, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a curious face, like a monkey's, but interesting, in its way almost beautiful. Brangwen guessed that he was a foreigner. He was in company with another, an Englishman, dry and hard. The four sat at table, two men and two women. Brangwen watched with all his eyes.
He saw how the foreigner treated the women with courteous contempt, as if they were pleasing animals. Brangwen's girl had put on a ladylike manner, but her voice betrayed her. She wanted to win back her man. ”

“ The wilted flower of yesterday is always forgotten when the perfume of the living one is wafted into our nostrils. No one was like Miriam. There never was any other woman as sweet as Miriam. His whole being yearned for her. Hedwiga, Hilda, Eugenie—they were all fancies—but Miriam—everything swam before his feverish eyes as he thought of her. Nothing in life mattered any more—nothing! He tried to see her at her home—to tell her parents of his love for their daughter, but the rabbi, like Eugenie’s father, shut the door in his face. ”

“ He jingled a handful of loose coins from his pocket to his palm. "Cheer up, ma; if the old man will raise my salary I'll blow you to a wheelbarrow trip through Europe myself."
"'Sh-h-h-h, Izzy! Here comes Miriam. I don't want you should tease her one more word to make her mad. You hear?"
In the frame of the doorway, quiescent as an odalisque and with the golden tinge of a sunflower lighting her darkness, Miriam Binswanger held the picture for a moment, her brother greeting her with bow and banter. ”

“ He took Miriam passionately into his arms as they stood there in the gathering dusk upon the staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriam it was who found the words upon which they separated and went quietly away to the solitude each needed for the soul.
"We'll leave the gods alone," she said with gentle decision, yet making it seem as though she appealed to his greater strength and wisdom to decide; "I want nothing but you—you and Winky. And all you really want is me." ”

“ He was thinking of Miriam, the girl of Gnesen. There was a striking resemblance between the two, except that the girl before him had somnolent black eyes while the iris in Miriam’s eyes were of a deep dark-blue. There was the same lack of artifice in her speech, the same touch of tenderness in her voice. Likewise was her face a book with blank pages.
He lingered in the little shop even after he had made his purchase. Was the woman who had spoken through the doorway her mother? No, she was an aunt, for whom she was working. ”

“ But, father or no father, I’m going to get Miriam away from those Burnplatts riff-raff if it’s to be done by hook or crook. A man’s not a pig if he chances to have been born in a stye, and Miriam’s a good girl, Burnplatter or no Burnplatter. ”

“ The whole scene came vividly back to Miriam—the late afternoon sun streaming in glory from the far hills into Constance North's dainty sitting-room, upstairs; the golden-haired woman, in the full splendour of her youth and beauty, lying upon the couch asleep, with a smile of heavenly peace upon her lips; the blind man's hands straying over her as she lay there, with his tears falling upon her face, and blue-eyed Barbara, cooing and laughing in her own little bed in the next room. ”

“ In the midst of that lake of bluish-green lay Venus, glittering like molten silver. Miriam's first thought was her husband. She always thought of him when she looked at planets or stars, because he was so intimately connected with them in her mind. She waited till it was late and she then turned homewards. A man overtook her whom she recognised at once as Fitchew the jobbing gardener, porter, rough carpenter, creature of all work in Cowfold, one of the honestest souls in the place. He had his never-failing black pipe in his mouth, which he removed for a moment in order to bid her good-night. ”

“ Night fell, the shutters were closed, Brangwen came in to tea, to the loaf and the pewter teapot, the child, silent and quivering, playing with glass beads, the house, empty, it seemed, or exposed to the winter night, as if it had no walls.
Sometimes there sounded, long and remote in the house, vibrating through everything, the moaning cry of a woman in labour. Brangwen, sitting downstairs, was divided. His lower, deeper self was with her, bound to her, suffering. But the big shell of his body remembered the sound of owls that used to fly round the farmstead when he was a boy. ”

“ He drew me nearer to him with a look and motion kinder than a caress, then said to Miriam—
"She looks pale."
"It is only excitement; she is so anxious to please you. When she is near committing a mistake, she is quite agitated, poor child!"
Miriam had struck the right chord at last. There was some truth in what she said. My desire to please Cornelius did agitate me a little, and this he knew.
"She must go back to Kate," he hastily observed; "I won't have her so pale as that; and she must not study so much," he added, with increased anxiety, "she can always make up for lost time." ”

“ Yet the notices, slight as they are, of the "Ethiopian" woman, perhaps impress few minds favourably; and we cannot but feel that in herself she may not have been all that the friends of the lawgiver of Israel could have wished in a wife. Bred in the seclusion of the wilderness, she was probably deficient both in the intelligence and the accomplishments which distinguished Miriam. And Miriam and Aaron seem at last to have cherished feelings of bitterness toward their sister-in-law, which were fast extending to the brother himself. ”

“ Miriam was impatient of men. It took so little to amuse them—even Paul. She thought it anomalous in him that he could be so thoroughly absorbed in a triviality.
It was tea-time when they had finished.
“What song was that?” asked Miriam.
Edgar told her. The conversation turned to singing.
“We have such jolly times,” Miriam said to Clara.
Mrs. Dawes ate her meal in a slow, dignified way. Whenever the men were present she grew distant.
“Do you like singing?” Miriam asked her. ”

“ It was really not coin of the realm, but gilded brass—a forgery; and the language is full of such forgeries, which we continually circulate, and worst of all, pass off upon ourselves. Thus it happened that although Miss Tippit would have been glad to do Miriam many a service, her offers were treated with, something like disdain, and were instantly withdrawn. The only other lodgers in the house were an old gentleman and his wife on the first floor, whom Miriam never saw, and about whom she knew nothing.
Andrew at last began to feel the wear of London life. ”