Testimonies: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Page A

of something that I could not quite understand. She had, more than anybody I had ever seen, the appearance of an amiable young woman, kind and dutiful; and yet day after day I saw the old lady, Emyr’s mother, carrying the pig-swill, scrubbing the floor, drawing the water: sometimes she would have both hands full while the young people were doing nothing. Their standards were different, I knew that: on a mountain farm everybody works—it is hard labor for life. But still this seemed to me to be wrong. There were other less tangible things and I began to wonder whether Bronwen, though lovely to see, were not hard and insensitive; spoilt. A really beautiful face is so rare that one cannot always see beyond it. She certainly tended to be less indulgent than other countrywomen with her child, an unattractive little boy called Gerallt. There seemed to be a contradiction there: I had no pretensions as a physiognomist, but I was unwilling to believe that I could be as mistaken as that. I am sure that what one calls a good-looking face is the outward expression of a kind and generous spirit: that is why one calls it good. It is the product of experience, as simple as recognizing the fruit by its skin: the appearance that one learns to associate with ripeness is a good appearance. If a peach were at its best when it was as rotten as a medlar, one would soon find a dark, wrinkled peach good-looking. I could have sworn that the goodness in Bronwen’s face, the goodness that was there together with her beauty, could not exist with the hardness that appeared in her conduct to old Mrs. Vaughan and, sometimes, to her husband. I thought about it a good deal.
    I watched them. I wanted to find that Bronwen was as beautiful as she looked, because when I looked at her I felt a strange, happy feeling—benign, tender—I do not know how to describe it.
    I should very much like to describe her, but what is there to say? She was rather less than my height, slim of course, and she looked taller than she was because she was so straight. Her hair was black, black as hair can be, with a deep luster; it was straight. Her face was pale—nothing pink and white about it, and I should have said olive, but for its extraordinary purity. There is a head of one of the Pharaohs in the British Museum: it has a full, serene mouth and eyes, the lines simplified as if they were drawn. It was the same with her, the great wide eyes and her mouth the same: in both it was the line that counted and the pure planes; and with her there was the living color.
    That was her in rest, but there was so much as well; the spring of her back, the lovely poise of her head, the way she moved, the timbre of her voice. It is no good—that or a list of virtues.
    I was very simple, I suppose. I had no idea that I was there at all until I was in love so deep that it was a pain in my heart. I had thought it was the pleasure of looking at her, the pleasure of joining that good and kind family circle (good in spite of the bad undercurrent that I suspected) and talking about country things with Emyr and the old man. Then one day it was upon me. I knew then what was the matter, and why nothing had seemed profitable but the evenings I spent there; she came in, just as I had seen her the first time, and my heart leaped up and I knew that Emyr was talking but I could not link his words together.
    I left soon after. I was afraid of giving myself away; though perhaps I had been gaping at her like a moon-calf for weeks before.
    There may be things more absurd than a middle-aged man in the grip of a high-flung romantic passion: a boy can behave more foolishly, but at least in him it is natural.
    I kept away. I read Burton and walked the mountains. We had a spell of idyllic weather, and the soft loving wind was a torment to me.
    I would not pass those days again. I knew I was a ludicrous figure, and it hurt all the more. I did not eat. I could not read, I could not sleep. I walked and walked, and