The Rainbow - D. H. Lawrence [39]
And the baby cried loudly, and Anna shouted lustily, dancing in wild bliss:
"Sing a song of sixpence
Pocketful of posies,
Ascha! Ascha!——"
Then she stopped suddenly in silence and looked at Brangwen again, her eyes flashing, as she shouted loudly and delightedly:
"I've got it wrong, I've got it wrong."
"Oh, my sirs," said Tilly entering, "what a racket!"
Brangwen hushed the child and Anna flipped and danced on. She loved her wild bursts of rowdiness with her father. Tilly hated it, Mrs. Brangwen did not mind.
Anna did not care much for other children. She domineered them, she treated them as if they were extremely young and incapable, to her they were little people, they were not her equals. So she was mostly alone, flying round the farm, entertaining the farm-hands and Tilly and the servant-girl, whirring on and never ceasing.
She loved driving with Brangwen in the trap. Then, sitting high up and bowling along, her passion for eminence and dominance was satisfied. She was like a little savage in her arrogance. She thought her father important, she was installed beside him on high. And they spanked along, beside the high, flourishing hedge-tops, surveying the activity of the countryside. When people shouted a greeting to him from the road below, and Brangwen shouted jovially back, her little voice was soon heard shrilling along with his, followed by her chuckling laugh, when she looked up at her father with bright eyes, and they laughed at each other. And soon it was the custom for the passerby to sing out: "How are ter, Tom? Well, my lady!" or else, "Mornin', Tom, mornin', my Lass!" or else, "You're off together then?" or else, "You're lookin' rarely, you two."
Anna would respond, with her father: "How are you, John! Good mornin', William! Ay, makin' for Derby," shrilling as loudly as she could. Though often, in response to "You're off out a bit then," she would reply, "Yes, we are," to the great joy of all. She did not like the people who saluted him and did not salute her.
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?"