They learned to criticize their father, even, from some effulgence of
worldly white light, to see him as inferior. But this was all very well
in the head. The moment they forgot their tricks of criticism, the old
red glow of his authority came over them again. He was not to be
quenched.
Let the psycho-analyst talk about father complex. It is just a word
invented. Here was a man who had kept alive the old red flame of
fatherhood, fatherhood that had even the right to sacrifice the child to
God, like Isaac. Fatherhood that had life-and-death authority over the
children: a great natural power. And till his children could be brought
under some other great authority as girls; or could arrive at manhood and
become themselves centres of the same power, continuing the same male
mystery as men; until such time, willy-nilly, Godfrey Marshall would keep
his children.
It had seemed as if he might lose Winifred. Winifred had _adored_ her
husband, and looked up to him as to something wonderful. Perhaps she had
expected in him another great authority, a male authority greater, finer
than her father's. For having once known the glow of male power, she
would not easily turn to the cold white light of feminine independence.
She would hunger, hunger all her life for the warmth and shelter of true
male strength.
And hunger she might, for Egbert's power lay in the abnegation of power.
He was himself the living negative of power.
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