THE RAINBOW 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 BY 
 
 D. H. LAWRENCE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SONS AND LOVERS" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 
 
 MCMXXI 
 
Copyright, 1815 
 By D. H. LAWRENCE 
 
 Reprinted, 1921 
 
TO ELSE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 I How TOM BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 1 
 
 II THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 43 
 
 III CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 74 
 
 IV GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 89 
 
 V WEDDING AT THE MARSH 123 
 
 VI ANNA VICTRIX 134 
 
 VII THE CATHEDRAL 185 
 
 VIII THE CHILD 198 
 
 IX THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 225 
 
 X THE WIDENING CIRCLE 245 
 
 XI FIRST LOVE 266 
 
 XII SHAME 315 
 
 XIII THE MAN'S WORLD 333 
 
 XIV THE WIDENING CIRCLE 390 
 
 XV THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 404 
 
 XVI THE RAINBOW 456 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 HOW TOM BRANGWKtf MARRIED A POLISH LADY 
 
 THE Brangwens had lived for generations on the 
 Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash 
 twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating 
 Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles 
 away, a church-tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little 
 country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one 
 of the Brangwens in the fields lifted his head from his work, 
 he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So 
 that as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware 
 of something standing above him and beyond him in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 There was a look in the eyes of the Brangwens as if they 
 were expecting something unknown, about which they were 
 eager. They had that air of readiness for what would come 
 to them, a kind of surety, an expectancy, the look of an 
 inheritor. 
 
 They were fresh, blond, slow-speaking people, revealing 
 themselves plainly, but slowly, so that one could watch the 
 change in their eyes from laughter to anger, blue, lit-up 
 laughter, to a hard blue-staring anger ; through all the irreso- 
 lute stages of the sky when the weather is changing. 
 
 Living on rich land, on their own land, near to a growing 
 town, they had forgotten what it was to be in straitened 
 circumstances. They had never become rich, because there 
 were always children, and the patrimony was divided every 
 time. But always, at the Marsh, there was ample. 
 
 So the Brangwens came and went without fear of neces- 
 sity, working hard because of the life that was in them, not 
 for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They 
 
2 THE RAINBOW 
 
 were aware of the last halfpenny, and instinct made them 
 not waste the peeling of their apple, for it would help to feed 
 the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, 
 and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap 
 in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every 
 year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, 
 leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the inter- 
 course between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the 
 breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, naked- 
 ness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' 
 nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations 
 were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that 
 opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and 
 supple after their ploughing, and clung to their feet with 
 a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive 
 when the crops were to be shorn away. The young corn 
 waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along the limbs of 
 the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the 
 cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, 
 the pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the 
 pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses, 
 and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed 
 their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, 
 drew the heaving of the horses after their will. 
 
 In autumn the partridges whirred up, birds in flocks blew 
 like spray across the fallow, rooks appeared on the grey, 
 watery heavens, and flew cawing into the winter. Then the 
 men sat by the fire in the house where the women moved 
 about with surety, and the limbs and the body of the men 
 were impregnated with the day, cattle and earth and vege- 
 tation and the sky, the men sat by the fire and their brains 
 were inert, as their blood flowed heavy with the accumulation 
 from the living day. 
 
 The women were different. On them too was the drowse 
 of blood-intimacy, calves sucking and hens running together 
 in droves, and young geese palpitating in the hand while the 
 food was pushed down their throttle. But the women 
 looked out from the heated, blind intercourse of farm-life, 
 to the spoken world beyond. They were aware of the lips 
 and the mind of the world speaking and giving utterance, 
 they heard the sound in the distance, and they strained to 
 listen. 
 
 It was enough for the men, that the earth heaved and 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 3 
 
 opened its furrow to them, that the wind blew to dry the 
 wet wheat, and set the young ears of corn wheeling freshly 
 round about; it was enough that they helped the cow in 
 labour, or ferreted the rats from under the barn, or broke 
 the back of a rabbit with a sharp knock of the hand. So 
 much warmth and generating and pain and death did they 
 know in their blood, earth and sky and beast and green 
 plants, so much exchange and interchange they had with 
 these, that they lived full and surcharged, their senses full 
 fed, their faces always turned to the heat of the blood, star- 
 ing into the sun, dazed with looking towards the source of 
 generation, unable to turn round. 
 
 But the woman wanted another form of life than this, 
 something that was not blood-intimacy. Her house faced 
 out from the farm-buildings and fields, looked out to the 
 road and the village with church and Hall and the world 
 beyond. She stood to see the far-off world of cities and 
 governments and the active scope of man, the magic land 
 to her, where secrets were made known and desires fulfilled. 
 She faced outwards to where men moved dominant and 
 creative, having turned their back on the pulsing heat of 
 creation, and with this behind them, were set out to discover 
 what was beyond, to enlarge their own scope and range and 
 freedom; whereas the Brangwen men faced inwards to the 
 teeming life of creation, which poured unresolved into their 
 veins. 
 
 Looking out, as she must, from the front of her house 
 towards the activity of man in the world at large, whilst 
 her husband looked out to the back at sky and harvest and 
 beast and land, she strained her eyes to see what man had 
 done in fighting outwards to knowledge, she strained to hear 
 how he uttered himself in his conquest, her deepest desire 
 hung on the battle that she heard, far off, being waged on 
 the edge of the unknown. She also wanted to know, and 
 to be of the fighting host. 
 
 At home, even so near as Cossethay, was the vicar, who 
 spoke the other, magic language, and had the other, finer 
 bearing, both of which she could perceive, but could never 
 attain to. The vicar moved in worlds beyond where her own 
 menfolk existed. Did she not know her own menfolk : fresh, 
 slow, full-built men, masterful enough, but easy, native to 
 the earth, lacking outwardness and range of motion. 
 Whereas the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her hus- 
 
4 THE RAINBOW 
 
 band, had yet a quickness and a range of being that made 
 Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and local. She 
 knew her husband. But in the vicar's nature was that which 
 passed beyond her knowledge. As Brangwen had power over 
 the cattle so the vicar had power over her husband. What 
 was it in the vicar, that raised him above the common men 
 as man is raised above the beast? She craved to know. 
 She craved to achieve this higher being, if not in herself, 
 then in her children. That which makes a man strong even 
 if he be little and frail in body, just as any man is little and 
 frail beside a bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what was 
 it ? It was not money nor power nor position. What power 
 had the vicar over Tom Brangwen none. Yet strip them 
 and set them on a desert island, and the vicar was the master. 
 His soul was master of the other man's. And why why ? 
 She decided it was a question of knowledge. 
 
 The curate was poor enough, and not very efficacious as 
 a man, either, yet he took rank with those others, the su- 
 perior. She watched his children being born, she saw them 
 running as tiny things beside their mother. And already 
 they were separate from her own children, distinct. Why 
 were her own children marked below those others? Why 
 should the curate's children inevitably take precedence over 
 her children, why should dominance be given them from the 
 start? It was not money, nor even class. It was education 
 and experience, she decided. 
 
 It was this, this education, this higher form of being, that 
 the mother wished to give to her children, so that they too 
 could live the supreme life on earth. For her children, at 
 least the children of her heart, had the complete nature that 
 should take place in equality with the living, vital people 
 in the land, not be left behind obscure among the labourers. 
 Why must they remain obscured and stifled all their lives, 
 why should they suffer from lack of freedom to move ? How 
 should they learn the entry into the finer, more vivid circle of 
 life? 
 
 Her imagination was fired by the squire's lady at Shelly 
 Hall, who came to church at Cossethay with her little chil- 
 dren, girls in tidy capes of beaver fur, and smart little hats, 
 herself like a winter rose, so fair and delicate. So fair, so 
 fine in mould, so luminous, what was it that Mrs. Hardy felt 
 which she, Mrs. Brangwen, did not feel? How was Mrs. 
 Hardy's nature different from that of the common women. 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARfclED A POLISH LADY 5 
 
 of Cossethay, in what was it beyond them? All the women 
 of Cossethay talked eagerly about Mrs. Hardy, of her hus- 
 band, her children, her guests, her dress, of her servants and 
 her housekeeping. The lady of the Hall was the living 
 dream of their lives, her life was the epic that inspired their 
 lives. In her they lived imaginatively, and in gossiping of 
 her husband who drank, of her scandalous brother, of Lord 
 William Bentley her friend, member of Parliament for the 
 division, they had their own Odyssey enacting itself, Penelope 
 and Ulysses before them, and Circe and the swine and the 
 endless web. 
 
 So the women of the village were fortunate. They saw 
 themselves in the lady of the manor, each of them lived her 
 own fulfilment in the life of Mrs. Hardy. And the Brang- 
 wen wife of the Marsh aspired beyond herself, towards the 
 further life of the finer woman, towards the extended being 
 she revealed, as a traveller in his self-contained manner re- 
 veals far-off countries present in himself. But why should 
 a knowledge of far-off countries make a man's life a different 
 thing, finer, bigger ? And why is a man more than the beast 
 and the cattle that serve him? It is the same thing. 
 
 The male part of the poem was filled in by such men as 
 the vicar and Lord William, lean, eager men with strange 
 movements, men who had command of the further fields, 
 whose lives ranged over a great extent. Ah, it was some- 
 thing very desirable to know, this touch of the wonderful 
 men who had the power of thought and comprehension. The 
 women of the village might be much fonder of Tom Brang- 
 wen, and more at their ease with him, yet if their lives had 
 been robbed of the vicar, and of Lord William, the leading 
 shoot would have been cut away from them, they would have 
 been heavy and uninspired and inclined to hate. So long as 
 the wonder of the beyond was before them, they could get 
 along, whatever their lot. And Mrs. Hardy, and the vicar, 
 and Lord William, these moved in the wonder of the beyond, 
 and were visible to the eyes of Cossethay in their motion. 
 
 II 
 
 About 1840, a canal was constructed across the meadows 
 of the Marsh Farm, connecting the newly-opened collieries 
 of the Erewash Valley. A high embankment travelled along 
 the fields to carry the canal, which passed close to the home- 
 stead, and, reaching the road, went over in a heavy bridge. 
 
6 THE RAINBOW 
 
 So the Marsh was shut off from Ilkeston, and enclosed in 
 the small valley bed, which ended in a bushy hill and the 
 village spire of Cossethay. 
 
 The Brangwens received a fair sum of money from this 
 trespass across their land. Then, a short time afterwards, a 
 colliery was sunk on the other side of the canal, and in a 
 while the Midland Railway came down the valley at the foot 
 of the Ilkeston hill, and the invasion was complete. The 
 town grew rapidly, the Brangwens were kept busy producing 
 supplies, they became richer, they were almost tradesmen. 
 
 Still the Marsh remained remote and original, on the old, 
 quiet side of the canal embankment, in the sunny valley where 
 slow water wound along in company of stiff alders, and the 
 road went under ash-trees past the Brangwens' garden gate. 
 
 But, looking from the garden gate down the road to the 
 right, there, through the dark archway of the canal's square 
 aqueduct, was a colliery spinning away in the near distance, 
 and further, red, crude houses plastered on the valley in 
 masses, and beyond all, the dim smoking hill of the town. 
 
 The homestead was just on the safe side of civilization, 
 outside the gate. The house stood bare from the road, ap- 
 proached by a straight garden path, along which at spring 
 the daffodils were thick in green and yellow. At the sides 
 of the house were bushes of lilac and guelder-rose and privet, 
 entirely hiding the farm buildings behind. 
 
 At the back a confusion of sheds spread into the home- 
 close from out of two or three indistinct yards. The duck- 
 pond lay beyond the furthest wall, littering its white feathers 
 on the padded earthen banks, blowing its stray soiled feathers 
 into the grass and the gorse bushes below the canal embank- 
 ment, which rose like a high rampart near at hand, so that 
 occasionally a man's figure passed in silhouette, or a man and 
 a towing horse traversed the sky. 
 
 At first the Brangwens were astonished by all this com- 
 motion around them. The building of a canal across their 
 land made them strangers in their own place, this raw bank 
 of earth shutting them off disconcerted them. As they 
 worked in the fields, from beyond the now familiar embank- 
 ment came the rhythmic run of the winding engines, startling 
 at first, but afterwards a narcotic to the brain. Then the 
 shrill whistle of the trains re-echoed through the heart, with 
 fearsome pleasure, announcing the far-off come near and 
 imminent. 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 7 
 
 As they drove home from town, the farmers of the land 
 met the blackened colliers trooping from the pit-mouth. As 
 they gathered the harvest, the west wind brought a faint, 
 sulphurous smell of pit-refuse burning. As they pulled the 
 turnips in November, the sharp clink-clink-clink-clink-clink 
 of empty trucks shunting on the line, vibrated in their hearts 
 with the fact of other activity going on beyond them. 
 
 The Alfred Brangwen of this period had married a woman 
 from Heanor, daughter of the "Black Horse." She was a 
 slim, pretty, dark woman, quaint in her speech, whimsical, 
 so that the sharp things she said did not hurt. She was oddly 
 a thing to herself, rather querulous in her manner, but in- 
 trinsically separate and indifferent, so that her long lamen- 
 table complaints, when she raised her voice against her hus- 
 band in particular and against everybody else after him, 
 only made those who heard her wonder and feel affectionately 
 towards her, even whilst they were irritated and impatient 
 with her. She railed long and loud about her husband, but 
 always with a balanced, easy-flying voice and a quaint man- 
 ner of speech that warmed his belly with pride and male 
 triumph whilst he scowled with mortification at the things 
 she said. 
 
 Consequently Brangwen himself had a humorous puckering 
 at the eyes, a sort of fat laugh, very quiet and full, and he 
 was spoilt like a lord of creation. He calmly did as he liked, 
 laughed at her railing, excused himself in a teasing tone that 
 she loved, followed his natural inclinations, and sometimes, 
 pricked too near the quick, frightened and broke her by a 
 deep, tense fury which seemed to fix on him and hold him 
 for days, and which she would give anything to placate in 
 him. They were two very separate beings, vitally connected, 
 knowing nothing of each other, yet living in their separate 
 ways from one root. 
 
 There were four sons and two daughters. The eldest boy 
 ran away early to sea, and did not come back. After this 
 the mother was more the node and centre of attraction in 
 the home. The second boy, Alfred, whom the mother ad- 
 mired most, was the most reserved. He was sent to school in 
 Ilkeston and made some progress. But in spite of his 
 dogged, yearning effort, he could not get beyond the rudi- 
 ments of anything, save of drawing. At this, in which he 
 had some power, he worked, as if it were his hope. After 
 much grumbling and savage rebellion against everything, 
 
8 THE EAINBOW 
 
 after much trying and shifting about, when his father was 
 incensed against him and his mother almost despairing, he 
 became a draughtsman in a lace-factory in Nottingham. 
 
 He remained heavy and somewhat uncouth, speaking with 
 broad Derbyshire accent, adhering with all his tenacity to 
 his work and to his town position, making good designs, and 
 becoming fairly well-off. But at drawing, his hand swung 
 naturally in big, bold lines, rather lax, so that it was cruel 
 for him to pedgill away at the lace designing, working from 
 the tiny squares of his paper, counting and plotting and 
 niggling. He did it stubbornly, with anguish, crushing the 
 bowels within him, adhering to his chosen lot whatever it 
 should cost. And he came back into life set and rigid, a rare- 
 spoken, almost surly man. 
 
 He married the daughter of a chemist, who affected some 
 social superiority, and he became something of a snob, in 
 his dogged fashion, with a passion for outward refinement 
 in the household, mad when anything clumsy or gross oc- 
 curred. Later, when his three children were growing up, 
 and he seemed a staid, almost middle-aged man, he turned 
 after strange women, and became a silent, inscrutable fol- 
 lower of forbidden pleasure, neglecting his indignant bour- 
 geois wife without a qualm. 
 
 Frank, the third son, refused from the first to have any- 
 thing to do with learning. From the first he hung round the 
 slaughter-house which stood away in the third yard at the 
 back of the farm. The Brangwens had always killed their 
 own meat, and supplied the neighbourhood. Out of this 
 grew a regular butcher's business in connection with the farm. 
 
 As a child Frank had been drawn by the trickle of dark 
 blood that ran across the pavement from the slaughter- 
 house to the crew-yard, by the sight of the man carrying 
 across to the meat-shed a huge side of beef, with the kidneys 
 showing, embedded in their heavy laps of fat. 
 
 He was a handsome lad with soft brown hair and regular 
 features something like a later Koman youth. He was more 
 easily excitable, more readily carried away than the rest, 
 weaker in character. At eighteen he married a little factory 
 girl, a pale, plump, quiet thing with sly eyes and a wheedling 
 voice, who insinuated herself into him and bore him a child 
 every year and made a fool of him. When he had taken 
 over the butchery business, already a growing callousness 
 to it, and a sort of contempt made him neglectful of it. He 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY d 
 
 drank, and was often to be found in his public house blather- 
 ing away as if he knew everything, when in reality he was a 
 noisy fool. 
 
 Of the daughters, Alice, the elder, married a collier and 
 lived for a time stormily in Ilkeston, before moving away 
 to Yorkshire with her numerous young family. Effie, the 
 younger, remained at home. 
 
 The last child, Tom, was considerably younger than his 
 brothers, so had belonged rather to the company of his 
 sisters. He was his mother's favourite. She roused herself 
 to determination, and sent him forcibly away to a grammar- 
 school in Derby when he was twelve years old. He did not 
 want to go, and his father would have given way, but Mrs. 
 Brangwen had set her heart on it. Her slender, pretty, 
 tightly-covered body, with full skirts, was now the centre 
 of resolution in the house, and when she had once set upon 
 anything, which was not often, the family failed before her. 
 
 So Tom went to school, an unwilling failure from the first. 
 He believed his mother was right in decreeing school for him, 
 but he knew she was only right because she would not ac- 
 knowledge his constitution. He knew, with a child's deep, 
 instinctive foreknowledge of what is going to happen to him, 
 that he would cut a sorry figure at school. But he took the 
 infliction as inevitable, as if he were guilty of his own nature, 
 as if his being were wrong, and his mother's conception right. 
 If he could have been what he liked, he would have been that 
 which his mother fondly but deludedly hoped he was. He 
 would have been clever, and capable of becoming a gentle- 
 man. It was her aspiration for him, therefore he knew it 
 as the true aspiration for any boy. But you can't make a 
 silk purse out of a sow's ear, as he told his mother very early, 
 with regard to himself; much to her mortification and 
 chagrin. 
 
 When he got to school, he made a violent struggle against 
 his physical inability to study. He sat gripped, making 
 himself pale and ghastly in his effort to concentrate on the 
 book, to take in what he had to learn. But it was no good. 
 If he beat down his first repulsion, and got like a suicide to 
 the stuff, he went very little further. He could not learn 
 deliberately. His mind simply did not work. 
 
 In feeling he was developed, sensitive to the atmosphere 
 around him, brutal perhaps, but at the same time delicate, 
 very delicate. So he had a low opinion of himself. He knew 
 
10 THE RAINBOW 
 
 his own limitation. He knew that his brain was a slow hope- 
 less good-for-nothing. So he was humble. 
 
 But at the same time his feelings were more discriminating 
 than those of most of the boys, and he was confused. He 
 was more sensuously developed, more refined in instinct than 
 they. For their mechanical stupidity he hated them, and 
 suffered cruel contempt for them. But when it came to 
 mental things, then he was at a disadvantage. He was at 
 their mercy. He was a fool. He had not the power to 
 controvert even the most stupid argument, so that he was 
 forced to admit things he did not in the least believe. And 
 having admitted them, he did not know whether he believed 
 them or not; he rather thought he did. 
 
 But he loved any one who could convey enlightenment to 
 him through feeling. He sat betrayed with emotion when 
 the teacher of literature read, in a moving fashion, Tennyson's 
 " Ulysses/' or Shelley's " Ode to the West Wind." His lips 
 parted, his eyes filled with a strained, almost suffering light. 
 And the teacher read on, fired by his power over the boy. 
 Tom Brangwen was moved by this experience beyond all 
 calculation, he almost dreaded it, it was so deep. But when, 
 almost secretly and shamefully, he came to take the book him- 
 self, and began the words " Oh wild west wind, thou breath 
 of autumn's being," the very fact of the print caused a prickly 
 sensation of repulsion to go over his skin, the blood came to 
 his face, his heart filled with a bursting passion of rage and 
 incompetence. He threw the book down and walked over it 
 and went out to the cricket field. And he hated books as if 
 they were his enemies. He hated them worse than ever he 
 hated any person. 
 
 He could not voluntarily control his attention. His mind 
 had no fixed habits to go by, he had nothing to get hold of, 
 nowhere to start from. For him there was nothing palpable, 
 nothing known in himself, that he could apply to learning. 
 He did not know how to begin. Therefore he was helpless 
 when it came to deliberate understanding or deliberate learn- 
 ing. 
 
 He had an instinct for mathematics, but if this failed him, 
 he was helpless as an idiot. So that he felt that the ground 
 was never sure under his feet, he was nowhere. His final 
 downfall was his complete inability to attend to a question 
 put without suggestion. If he had to write a formal com- 
 position on the Army, he did at last learn to repeat the few 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY, 11 
 
 facts he knew : " You can join the army at eighteen. You 
 have to be over five foot eight." But he had all the time a 
 living conviction that this was a dodge and that his common- 
 places were beneath contempt. Then he reddened furiously, 
 felt his bowels sink with shame, scratched out what he had 
 written, made an agonized effort to think of something in 
 the real composition style, failed, became sullen with rage 
 and humiliation, put the pen down and would have been torn 
 to pieces rather than attempt to write another word. 
 
 He soon got used to the Grammar School, and the Grammar 
 School got used to him, setting him down as a hopeless duffer 
 at learning, but respecting him for a generous, honest nature. 
 Only one narrow, domineering fellow, the Latin master, 
 bullied him and made the blue eyes mad with shame and 
 rage. There was a horrid scene, when the boy laid open the 
 master's head with a slate, and then things went on as be- 
 fore. The teacher got little sympathy. But Brangwen 
 winced and could not bear to think of the deed, not even 
 long after, when he was a grown man. 
 
 He was glad to leave school. It had not been unpleasant, 
 he had enjoyed the companionship of the other youths, or 
 had thought he enjoyed it, the time had passed very quickly, 
 in endless activity. But he knew all the time that he was 
 in an ignominious position, in this place of learning. He was 
 aware of failure all the while, of incapacity. But he was too 
 healthy and sanguine to be wretched, he was too much alive. 
 Yet his soul was wretched almost to hopelessness. 
 
 He had loved one warm, clever boy who was frail in body, 
 a consumptive type. The two had had an almost classic 
 friendship, David and Jonathan, wherein Brangwen was the 
 Jonathan, the server. But he had never felt equal with 
 his friend, because the other's mind outpaced his, and left 
 him ashamed, far in the rear. So the two boys went at once 
 apart on leaving school. But Brangwen always remembered 
 his friend that had been, kept him as a sort of light, a fine 
 experience to remember. 
 
 Tom Brangwen was glad to get back to the farm, where 
 he was in his own again. " I have got a turnip on my shoul- 
 ders, let me stick to th' fallow," he said to his exasperated 
 mother. He had too low an opinion of himself. But he 
 went about at his work on the farm gladly enough, glad of 
 the active labour and the smell of the land again, having 
 youth and vigour and humour, and a comic wit, having the 
 
12 THE RAINBOW 
 
 will and the power to forget his own shortcomings, finding 
 himself violent with occasional rages, but usually on good 
 terms with everybody and everything. 
 
 When he was seventeen, his father fell from a stack and 
 broke his neck. Then the mother and son and daughter 
 lived on at the farm, interrupted by occasional loud-mouthed 
 lamenting, jealous-spirited visitations from the butcher 
 Frank, who had a grievance against the world, which he felt 
 was always giving him less than his dues. Frank was par- 
 ticularly against the young Tom, whom he called a mardy 
 baby, and Tom returned the hatred violently, his face grow- 
 ing red and his blue eyes staring. Effie sided with Tom 
 against Frank. But when Alfred came, from Nottingham, 
 heavy jowled and lowering, speaking very little, but treating 
 those at home with some contempt, Effie and the mother 
 sided with him and put Tom into the shade. It irritated the 
 youth that his elder brother should be made something of a 
 hero by the women, just because he didn't live at home and 
 was a lace-designer and almost a gentleman. But Alfred 
 was something of a Prometheus Bound, so the women loved 
 him. Tom came later to understand his brother better. 
 
 As youngest son, Tom felt some importance when the care 
 of the farm devolved on to him. He was only eighteen, but 
 he was quite capable of doing everything his father had done. 
 And of course, his mother remained as centre to the house. 
 
 The young man grew up very fresh and alert, with zest 
 for every moment of life. He worked and rode and drove to 
 market, he went out with companions and got tipsy occa- 
 sionally and played skittles and went to the little travelling 
 theatres. Once, when he was drunk at a public house, he 
 went upstairs with a prostitute who seduced him. He was 
 then nineteen. 
 
 The thing was something of a shock to him. In the close 
 intimacy of the farm kitchen, the woman occupied the su- 
 preme position. The men deferred to her in the house, on 
 all household points, on all points of morality and behaviour. 
 The woman was the symbol for that further life which com- 
 prised religion and love and morality. The men placed in 
 her hands their own conscience, they said to her "Be my 
 conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my 
 outgoing and my incoming." And the woman fulfilled her 
 trust, the men rested implicitly in her, receiving her praise 
 or her blame with pleasure or with anger, rebelling and 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 13 
 
 storming, but never for a moment really escaping in their 
 own souls from her prerogative. They depended on her for 
 their stability. Without her, they would have felt like straws 
 in the wind, to be blown hither and thither at random. She 
 was the anchor and the security, she was the restraining hand 
 of God, at times highly to be execrated. 
 
 Now when Tom Brangwen, at nineteen, a youth fresh like 
 a plant, rooted in his mother and his sister, found that he 
 had lain with a prostitute woman in a common public house, 
 he was very much startled. For him there was until that 
 time only one kind of woman his mother and sister. 
 
 But now? He did not know what to feel. There was a 
 slight wonder, a pang of anger, of disappointment, a first 
 taste of ash and of cold fear lest this was all that would 
 happen, lest his relations with woman were going to be no 
 more than this nothingness; there was a slight sense of 
 shame before the prostitute, fear that she would despise him 
 for his inefficiency; there was a cold distaste for her, and a 
 fear of her; there was a moment of paralyzed horror when 
 he felt he might have taken a disease from her ; and upon all 
 this startled tumult of emotion, was laid the steadying hand 
 of common sense, which said it did not matter very much, so 
 long as he had no disease. He soon recovered balance, and 
 really it did not matter so very much. 
 
 But it had shocked him, and put a mistrust into his heart, 
 and emphasized his fear of what was within himself. He 
 was, however, in a few days going about again in his own 
 careless, happy-go-lucky fashion, his blue eyes just as clear 
 and honest as ever, his face just as fresh, his appetite just 
 as keen. 
 
 Or apparently so. He had, in fact, lost some of his buoy- 
 ant confidence, and doubt hindered his outgoing. 
 
 For some time after this, he was quieter, more conscious 
 when he drank, more backward from companionship. The 
 disillusion of his first carnal contact with woman, strengthened 
 by his innate desire to find in a woman the embodiment of 
 all his inarticulate, powerful religious impulses, put a bit in 
 his mouth. He had something to lose which he was afraid 
 of losing, which he was not sure even of possessing. This 
 first affair did not matter much: but the business of love 
 was, at the bottom of his soul, the most serious and terrifying 
 of all to him. 
 
 He was tormented now with sex desire, his imagination 
 
14 THE RAINBOW 
 
 reverted always to lustful scenes. But what really prevented 
 his returning to a loose woman, over and above the natural 
 squeamishness, was the recollection of the paucity of the last 
 experience. It had heen so nothing, so dribbling and func- 
 tional, that he was ashamed to expose himself to the risk of a 
 repetition of it. 
 
 He made a strong, instinctive fight to retain his native 
 cheerfulness unimpaired. He had naturally a plentiful 
 stream of life and humour, a sense of sufficiency and exuber- 
 ance, giving ease. But now it tended to cause tension. A 
 strained light came into his eyes, he had a slight knitting of 
 the brows. His boisterous humour gave place to lowering 
 silences, and days passed by in a sort of suspense. 
 
 He did not know there was any difference in him, exactly ; 
 for the most part he was filled with slow anger and resent- 
 ment. But he knew he was always thinking of women, or 
 a woman, day in, day out, and that infuriated him. He 
 could not get free: and he was ashamed. He had one or 
 two sweethearts, starting with them in the hope of speedy 
 development. But when he had a nice girl, he found that 
 he was incapable of pushing the desired development. The 
 very presence of the girl beside him made it impossible. 
 He could not think of her like that, he could not think of her 
 actual nakedness. She was a girl and he liked her, and 
 dreaded violently even the thought of uncovering her. He 
 knew that, in these last issues of nakedness, he did not exist 
 to her nor she to him. Again, if he had a loose girl, and 
 things began to develop, she offended him so deeply all the 
 time, that he never knew whether he were going to get away 
 from her as quickly as possible, or whether he were going to 
 take her out of inflamed necessity. Again he learnt his les- 
 son: if he took her it was a paucity which he was forced to 
 despise. He did not despise himself nor the girl. But he 
 despised the net result in him of the experience he de- 
 spised it deeply and bitterly. 
 
 Then, when he was twenty-three, his mother died, and he 
 was left at home with Effie. His mother's death was another 
 blow out of the dark. He could not understand it, he knew 
 it was no good his trying. One had to submit to these un- 
 foreseen blows that come unawares and leave a bruise that 
 remains and hurts whenever it is touched. He began to be 
 afraid of all that which, was up against him. He had loved 
 his mother,, 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 15 
 
 After this, Effie and he quarrelled fiercely. They meant 
 a very great deal to each other, but they were both under a 
 strange, unnatural tension. He stayed out of the house as 
 much as possible. He got a special corner for himself at 
 the Ked Lion at Cossethay, and became a usual figure by 
 the fire, a fresh, fair young fellow with heavy limbs and head 
 held back, mostly silent, though alert and attentive, very 
 hearty in his greeting of everybody he knew, shy of strangers. 
 He teased all the women, who liked him extremely, and he 
 was very attentive to the talk of the men, very respectful. 
 
 To drink made him quickly flush very red in the face, and 
 brought out the look of self-consciousness and unsureness, 
 almost bewilderment, in his blue eyes. When he came home 
 in this state of tipsy confusion his sister hated him and 
 abused him, and he went off his head, like a mad bull with 
 rage. 
 
 He had still another turn with a light-o'-love. One Whit- 
 suntide he went a jaunt with two other young fellows, on 
 horseback, to Matlock and thence to Bakewell. Matlock was 
 at that time just becoming a famous beauty-spot, visited 
 from Manchester and from the Staffordshire towns. In the 
 hotel where the young men took lunch, were two girls, and 
 the parties struck up a friendship. 
 
 The Miss who made up to Tom Brangwen, then twenty - 
 four years old, was a handsome, reckless girl neglected for 
 an afternoon by the man who had brought her out. She saw 
 Brangwen, and liked him, as all women did, for his warmth 
 and his generous nature, and for the innate delicacy in him. 
 But she saw he was one who would have to be brought to the 
 scratch. However, she was roused and unsatisfied and made 
 mischievous, so she dared anything. It would be an easy in- 
 terlude, restoring her pride. 
 
 She was a handsome girl with a bosom, and dark hair and 
 blue eyes, a girl full of easy laughter, flushed from the sun, in- 
 clined to wipe her laughing face in a very natural and taking 
 manner. 
 
 Brangwen was in a state of wonder. He treated her with 
 his chaffing deference, roused, but very unsure of himself, 
 afraid to death of being too forward, ashamed lest he might 
 be thought backward, mad with desire yet restrained by in- 
 stinctive regard for women from making any definite ap- 
 proach, feeling all the while that his attitude was ridiculous, 
 and flushing deep with confusion. She, however, became hard 
 
16 THE RAINBOW 
 
 and daring as he became confused, it amused her to see him 
 come on. 
 
 " When must you get back ? " she asked. 
 
 " I'm not particular," he said. 
 
 There the conversation again broke down. 
 
 Brangwen's companions were ready to go on. 
 
 " Art commin', Tom/' they called, " or art for stoppin' ? " 
 
 "Ay, I'm commin'," he replied, rising reluctantly, an 
 angry sense of futility and disappointment spreading over 
 him. 
 
 He met the full, almost taunting look of the girl, and he 
 trembled with unusedness. 
 
 "Shall you come an' have a look at my mare," he said 
 to her, with his hearty kindliness that was now shaken with 
 trepidation. 
 
 " Oh, I should like to," she said, rising. 
 
 And she followed him, his rather sloping shoulders and 
 his cloth riding-gaiters, out of the room. The young men 
 got their own horses out of the stable. 
 
 " Can you ride ? " Brangwen asked her. 
 
 " I should like to if I could I have never tried," she said. 
 
 " Come then, an' have a try," he said. 
 
 And he lifted her, he blushing, she laughing, into the 
 saddle. 
 
 " I s'll slip off it's not a lady's saddle," she cried. 
 
 " Hold yer tight," he said, and he led her out of the hotel 
 gate. 
 
 The girl sat very insecurely, clinging fast. He put a hand 
 on her waist, to support her. And he held her closely, he 
 clasped her as an embrace, he was weak with desire as he 
 strode beside her. 
 
 The horse walked by the river. 
 
 " You want to sit straddle-leg," he said to her. 
 
 " I know I do," she said. 
 
 It was the time of very full skirts. She managed to get 
 astride the horse, quite decently, showing an intent concern 
 for covering her pretty leg. 
 
 "It's a lot's better this road," she said, looking down at 
 him. 
 
 " Ay, it is," he said, feeling the marrow melt in his bones 
 from the look in her eyes. "I dunno why they have that 
 side-saddle business, twistin' a woman, in two." 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 17 
 
 " Should us leave you then you seem to be fixed up 
 there ? " called Brangwen's companions from the road. 
 
 He went red with anger. 
 
 " Ay don't worry," he called back. 
 
 "How long are yer stoppin'?" they asked. 
 
 "Not after Christmas," he said. 
 
 And the girl gave a tinkling peal of laughter. 
 
 " All right by-bye ! " called his friends. 
 
 And they cantered off, leaving him very flushed, trying 
 to be quite normal with the girl. But presently he had gone 
 back to the hotel and given his horse into the charge of an 
 ostler and had gone off with the girl into the woods, not 
 quite knowing where he was or what he was doing. His 
 heart thumped and he thought it the most glorious adventure, 
 and was mad with desire for the girl. 
 
 Afterwards he glowed with pleasure. That was a different 
 experience. He wanted to see more of the girl. She, how- 
 ever, told him this was impossible: her own man would be 
 back by dark, and she must be with him. He, Brangwen, 
 must not let on that there had been anything between them. 
 
 She gave him an intimate smile, which made him feel con- 
 fused and gratified. 
 
 He could not tear himself away, though he had promised 
 not to interfere with the girl. He stayed on at the hotel 
 over 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. Brang- 
 wen 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. When dessert came 
 on, however, the little foreigner turned round from his table 
 and calmly surveyed the room, like one unoccupied. Brang- 
 wen marvelled over the cold, animal intelligence of the face. 
 The brown eyes were round, showing all the brown pupil, like 
 a monkey's, and just calmly looking, perceiving the other 
 person without referring to him at all. They rested on 
 Brangwen. The latter marvelled at the old face turned 
 
18 THE RAINBOW 
 
 round on him, looking at him without considering it neces- 
 sary to know him at all. The eyebrows of the round, perceiv- 
 ing, but unconcerned eyes were rather high up, with slight 
 wrinkles above them, just as a monkey's had. It was an old, 
 ageless face. 
 
 The man was most amazingly a gentleman all the time, 
 an aristocrat. Brangwen stared fascinated. The girl was 
 pushing her crumbs about on the cloth, uneasily, flushed and 
 angry. 
 
 As Brangwen sat motionless in the hall afterwards, too 
 much moved and lost to know what to do, the little stranger 
 came up to him with a beautiful smile and manner, offering 
 a cigarette and saying: 
 
 "Will you smoke?" 
 
 Brangwen never smoked cigarettes, yet he took the one 
 offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the 
 roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes 
 at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The 
 latter sat down beside him, and they began to talk, chiefly 
 of horses. 
 
 Brangwen loved the other man for his exquisite gracious- 
 ness, for his tact and reserve, and for his ageless, monkey- 
 like self-surety. They talked of horses, and of Derbyshire, 
 and of farming. The stranger warmed to the young fellow 
 with real warmth, and Brangwen was excited. He was trans- 
 ported at meeting this odd, middle-aged, dry-skinned man, 
 personally. The talk was pleasant, but that did not matter 
 so much. It was the gracious manner, the fine contact that 
 was all. 
 
 They talked a long while together, Brangwen flushing like 
 a girl when the other did not understand his idiom. Then 
 they said goodnight, and shook hands. Again the foreigner 
 bowed and repeated his goodnight. 
 
 " Goodnight, and bon voyage." 
 
 Then he turned to the stairs. 
 
 Brangwen went up to his room and lay staring out at the 
 stars of the summer night, his whole being in a whirl. What 
 was it all ? There was a life so different from what he knew 
 it. What was there outside his knowledge, how much? 
 What was this that he had touched? What was he in this 
 new influence? What did everything mean? Where was 
 life, in that which he knew or all outside him ? 
 
 He fell asleep, and in the morning had ridden away before 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY id 
 
 any other visitors were awake. He shrank from seeing any 
 of them again, in the morning. 
 
 His mind was one big excitement. The girl and the for- 
 eigner: he knew neither of their names. Yet they had set 
 fire to the homestead of his nature, and he would be burned 
 out of cover. Of the two experiences, perhaps the meeting 
 with the foreigner was the more significant. But the girl 
 he had not settled about the girl. 
 
 He did not know. He had to leave it there, as it was. 
 He could not sum up his experiences. 
 
 The result of these encounters was, that he dreamed day 
 and night, absorbedly, of a voluptuous woman and of the 
 meeting with a small, withered foreigner of ancient breeding. 
 No sooner was his mind free, no sooner had he left his own 
 companions, than he began to imagine an intimacy with fine- 
 textured, subtle-mannered people such as the foreigner at 
 Matlock, and amidst this subtle intimacy was always the 
 satisfaction of a voluptuous woman. 
 
 He went about absorbed in the interest and the actuality 
 of this dream. His eyes glowed, he walked with his head 
 up, full of the exquisite pleasure of aristocratic subtlety and 
 grace, tormented with the desire for the girl. 
 
 Then gradually the glow began to fade, and the cold ma- 
 terial of his customary life to show through. He resented it. 
 Was he cheated in his illusion? He balked the mean en- 
 closure of reality, stood stubbornly like a bull at a gate, 
 refusing to re-enter the well-known round of his own life. 
 
 He drank more than usual to keep up the glow. But it 
 faded more and more for all that. He set his teeth at the 
 commonplace, to which he would not submit. It resolved 
 itself starkly before him, for all that. 
 
 He wanted to marry, to get settled somehow, to get out 
 of the quandary he found himself in. But how? He felt 
 unable to move his limbs. He had seen a little creature 
 caught in bird-lime, and the sight was a nightmare to him. 
 He began to feel mad with the rage of impotency. 
 
 He wanted something to get hold of, to pull himself out. 
 But there was nothing. Steadfastly he looked at the young 
 women, to find a one he could marry. But not one of them 
 did he want. And he knew that the idea of a life among 
 such people as the foreigner was ridiculous. 
 
 Yet he dreamed of it, and stuck to his dreams, and would 
 not have the reality of Cossethay and Ilkeston. There he 
 
20 THE RAINBOW 
 
 sat stubbornly in his corner at the Eed Lion, smoking and 
 musing and occasionally lifting his beer-pot, and sa}dng noth- 
 ing, for all the world like a gorping farm-labourer, as he 
 said himself. 
 
 Then a fever of restless anger came upon him. He wanted 
 to go away right away. He dreamed of foreign parts. 
 But somehow he had no contact with them. And it was a 
 very strong root which held him to the Marsh, to his own 
 house and land. 
 
 Then Effie got married, and he was left in the house with 
 only Tilly, the cross-eyed woman-servant who had been with 
 them for fifteen years. He felt things coming to a close. 
 All the time, he had held himself stubbornly resistant to the 
 action of the commonplace unreality which wanted to absorb 
 him. But now he had to do something. 
 
 He was by nature temperate. Being sensitive and emo- 
 tional, his nausea prevented him from drinking too much. 
 
 But, in futile anger, with the greatest of determination 
 and apparent good-humour, he began to drink in order to 
 get drunk. "Damn it/' he said to himself, "you must have 
 it one road or another you can't hitch your horse to the 
 shadow of a gate-post if you've got legs you've got to rise 
 off your backside some time or other." 
 
 So he rose and went down to Ilkeston, rather awkwardly 
 took his place amongst a gang of young bloods, stood drinks 
 to the company, and discovered he could carry it off quite 
 well. He had an idea that everybody in the room was a 
 man after his own heart, that everything was glorious, every- 
 thing was perfect. When somebody in alarm told him his 
 coat pocket was on fire, he could only beam from a red, 
 blissful face and say " Iss-all-ri-ight iss-al'-ri-ight it's 
 a' right let it be, let it be " and he laughed with pleas- 
 ure, and was rather indignant that the others should think it 
 unnatural for his coat pocket to burn : it was the happiest 
 and most natural thing in the world what? 
 
 He went home talking to himself and to the moon, that 
 was very high and small, stumbling at the flashes of moon- 
 light from the puddles at his feet, wondering What the Han- 
 over ! then laughing confidently to the moon, assuring her this 
 was first class, this was. 
 
 In the morning he woke up and thought about it, and for 
 the first time in his life, knew what it was to feel really 
 acutely irritable, in a misery of real bad temper. After 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MAfcfclED A POLISH LADY? 1 
 
 bawling and snarling at Tilly, he took himself off for very 
 shame, to be alone. And looking at the ashen fields and the 
 putty roads, he wondered what in the name of Hell he could 
 do to get out of this prickly sense of disgust and physical 
 repulsion. And he knew that this was the result of his 
 glorious evening. 
 
 And his stomach did not want any more brandy. He 
 went doggedly across the fields with his terrier, and looked 
 at everything with a jaundiced eye. 
 
 The next evening found him back again in his place at the 
 Eed Lion, moderate and decent. There he sat and stub- 
 bornly waited for what would happen next. 
 
 Did he, or did he not believe that he belonged to this 
 world of Cossethay and Ilkeston? There was nothing in 
 it he wanted. Yet could he ever get out of it? Was there 
 anything in himself that would carry him out of it? Or 
 was he a dunderheaded baby, not man enough to be like the 
 other young fellows who drank a good deal and wenched a 
 little without any question, and were satisfied. 
 
 He went on stubbornly for a time. Then the strain became 
 too great for him. A hot, accumulated consciousness was 
 always awake in his chest, his wrists felt swelled and quiver- 
 ing, his mind became full of lustful images, his eyes seemed 
 blood-flushed. He fought with himself furiously, to remain 
 normal. He did not seek any woman. He just went on as 
 if he were normal. Till he must either take some action or 
 beat his head against the wall. 
 
 Then he went deliberately to Ilkeston, in silence, intent 
 and beaten. He drank to get drunk. He gulped down the 
 brandy, and more brandy, till his face became pale, his eyes 
 burning. And still he could not get free. He went to sleep 
 in drunken unconsciousness, woke up at four o'clock in the 
 morning and continued drinking. He would get free. 
 Gradually the tension in him began to relax. He began to 
 feel happy. His riveted silence was unfastened, he began to 
 talk and babble. He was happy and at one with all the 
 world, he was united with all flesh in a hot blood-relation- 
 ship. So, after three days of incessant brandy-drinking, he 
 had burned out the youth from his blood, he had achieved 
 this kindled state of oneness with all the world, which is the 
 end of youth's most passionate desire. But he had achieved 
 his satisfaction by obliterating his own individuality, that 
 which it depended on his manhood to preserve and develop. 
 
22 THE RAINBOW 
 
 So he became a bout-drinker, having at intervals these 
 bouts of three or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was 
 drunk for the whole time. He did not think about it. A 
 deep resentment burned in him. He kept aloof from any 
 women, antagonistic. 
 
 When he was twenty-eight, a thick-limbed, stiff, fair man 
 with fresh complexion, and blue eyes staring very straight 
 ahead, he was coming one day down from Cossethay with a 
 load of seed out of Nottingham. It was a time when he 
 was getting ready for another bout of drinking, so he stared 
 fixedly before him, watchful yet absorbed, seeing everything 
 and aware of nothing, coiled in himself. It was early in the 
 year. 
 
 He walked steadily beside the horse, the load clanked be- 
 hind as the hill descended steeper. The road curved down- 
 hill before him, under banks and hedges, seen only for a few 
 yards ahead. 
 
 Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope, 
 his horse britching between the shafts, he saw a woman 
 approaching. But he was thinking for the moment of the 
 horse. 
 
 Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, 
 was apparently rather small and slight, beneath her long 
 black cloak, and she wore a black bonnet. She walked hastily, 
 as if unseeing, her head rather forward. It was her curious, 
 absorbed, flitting motion, as if she were passing unseen by 
 everybody, that first arrested him. 
 
 She had heard the cart, and looked up. Her face was pale 
 and clear, she had thick dark eyebrows and a wide mouth, 
 curiously held. He saw her face clearly, as if by a light in 
 the air. He saw her face so distinctly, that he ceased to 
 coil on himself, and was suspended. 
 
 "That's her," he said involuntarily. As the cart passed 
 by, splashing through the thin mud, she stood back against 
 the bank. Then, as he walked still beside his britching 
 horse, his eyes met hers. He looked quickly away, pressing 
 back his head, a pain of joy running through him. He could 
 not bear to think of anything. 
 
 He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, 
 her shape in the black cloak, the movement as she walked. 
 Then she was gone round the bend. 
 
 She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in 
 a far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 23 
 
 He went on, quiet, suspended, rarified. He could not bear 
 to think or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change 
 his fixed motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her 
 face. He moved within the knowledge of her, in the world 
 that was beyond reality. 
 
 The feeling that they had exchanged recognition possessed 
 him like a madness, like a torment. How could he be sure, 
 what confirmation had he? The doubt was like a sense of 
 infinite space, a nothingness, annihilating. He kept within 
 his breast the will to surety. They had exchanged recogni- 
 tion. 
 
 He walked about in this state for the next few days. And 
 then again like a mist it began to break to let through the 
 common, barren world. He was very gentle with man and 
 beast, but he dreaded the starkness of disillusion cropping 
 through again. 
 
 As he was standing with his back to the fire after dinner 
 a few days later, he saw the woman passing. He wanted 
 to know that she knew him, that she was aware. He wanted 
 it said that there was something between them. So he stood 
 anxiously watching, looking at her as she went down the 
 road. He called to Tilly. 
 
 " Who might that be ? " he asked. 
 
 Tilly, the cross-eyed woman of forty, who 'adored him, ran 
 gladly to the window to look. She was glad when he asked 
 her for anything. She craned her head over the short cur- 
 tain, the little tight knob of her black hair sticking out 
 pathetically as she bobbed about. 
 
 " Oh why " she lifted her head and peered with her 
 twisted, keen brown eyes " why, you know who it is it's 
 her from th' vicarage you know " 
 
 " How do I know, you hen-bird," he shouted. 
 
 Tilly blushed and drew her neck in and looked at him with 
 her squinting, sharp, almost reproachful look. 
 
 " Why you do it's the new housekeeper." 
 
 " Ay an' what by that ? " 
 
 "Well, an' what by that?" rejoined the indignant Tilly. 
 
 " She's a woman, isn't she, housekeeper or no housekeeper ? 
 She's got more to her than that ! Who is she she's got a 
 name?" 
 
 " Well, if she has, 7 don't know," retorted Tilly, not to be 
 badgered by this lad who had grown up into a man. 
 
 " What's her name ? " he asked, more gently. 
 
4 f HE RAINBOW 
 
 " I'm sure I couldn't tell you," replied Tilly, on her dig- 
 nity. 
 
 " An' is that all as you've gathered, as she's housekeeping 
 at the vicarage ? " 
 
 "I've 'eered mention of 'er name, but I couldn't remem- 
 ber it for my life." 
 
 " Why yer riddle-skulled woman o' nonsense, what have you 
 got a head for?" 
 
 "For what other folks 'as got theirs for," retorted Tilly, 
 who loved nothing more than these tilts when he would call 
 her names. 
 
 There was a lull. 
 
 "1 don't believe as anybody could keep it in their head," 
 the woman-servant continued, tentatively. 
 
 "What? "he asked. 
 
 " Why, 'er name." 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 " She's f ra some foreign parts or other." 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 " That's all I do know, as she is." 
 
 " An' wheer do you reckon she's from, then ? " 
 
 " I don't know. They do say as she hails f ra th' Pole. 
 7 don't know," Tilly hastened to add, knowing he would at- 
 tack her. 
 
 " Fra th' Pole, why do you hail f ra th' Pole ? Who set 
 up that menagerie confabulation?" 
 
 " That's what they say I don't know " 
 
 "Who says?" 
 
 " Mrs. Bentley says as she's f ra th' Pole else she is a 
 Pole, or summat." 
 
 Tilly was only afraid she was landing herself deeper now. 
 
 " Who says she's a Pole? " 
 
 " They all say so." 
 
 " Then whaf s brought her to these parts ? " 
 
 " I couldn't tell you. She's got a little girl with her." 
 
 " Got a little girl with her ? " 
 
 " Of three or four, with a head like a fuzz-ball." 
 
 "Black?" 
 
 " White fair as can be, an' all of a fuzz." 
 
 "Is there a father, then?" 
 
 " Not to my knowledge. I don't know." 
 
 " What brought her here ? " 
 
 "I couldn't say, without th' vicar axed her." 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 25 
 
 "Is the child her child?" 
 
 " I s'd think so they say so." 
 
 "Who told you about her?" 
 
 "Why, Lizzie a-Monday we seed her goin' past." 
 
 " You'd have to be rattling your tongues if anything went 
 past." 
 
 Brangwen stood musing. That evening he went up to 
 Cossethay to the Red Lion, half with the intention of hear- 
 ing more. 
 
 She was the widow of a Polish doctor, he gathered. Her 
 husband had died, a refugee, in London. She spoke a bit 
 foreign-like, but you could easily make out what she said. 
 She had one little girl named Anna. Lensky was the woman's 
 name, Mrs. Lensky. 
 
 Brangwen felt that here was the unreality established at 
 last. He felt also a curious certainty about her, as if she 
 were destined to him. It was to him a profound satisfaction 
 that she was a foreigner. 
 
 A swift change had taken place on the earth for him, as 
 if a new creation were fulfilled, in which he had real existence. 
 Things had all been stark, unreal, barren, mere nullities be- 
 fore. Now they were actualities that he could handle. 
 
 He dared scarcely think of the woman. He was afraid. 
 Only all the time lie was aware of her presence not far off, 
 he lived in her. But he dared not know her, even acquaint 
 himself with her by thinking of her. 
 
 One day he met her walking along the road with her little 
 girl. It was a child with a face like a bud of apple-blossom, 
 and glistening fair hair like thistle-down sticking out in 
 straight, wild, flamy pieces, and very dark eyes. The child 
 clung jealously to her mother's side when he looked at her, 
 staring with resentful black eyes. But the mother glanced 
 at him again, almost vacantly. And the very vacancy of 
 her look inflamed him. She had wide grey-brown eyes with 
 very dark, fathomless pupils. He felt the fine flame running 
 under his skin, as if all his veins had caught fire on the sur- 
 face. And he went on walking without knowledge. 
 
 It was coming, he knew, his fate. The world was submit- 
 ting to its transformation. He made no move: it would 
 come, what would come. 
 
 When his sister Efne came to the Marsh for a week, he 
 went with her for once to church. In the tiny place, with 
 ita mere dozen pews, he sat not far from the stranger. There 
 
26 THE RAINBOW 
 
 was a fineness about her, a poignancy about the way she 
 sat and held her head lifted. She was strange, from far 
 off, yet so intimate. She was from far away, a presence, so 
 close to his soul. She was not really there, sitting in Cosse- 
 thay church beside her little girl. She was not living the 
 apparent life of her days. She belonged to somewhere else. 
 He felt it poignantly, as something real and natural. But a 
 pang of fear for his own concrete life, that was only Cosse- 
 thay, hurt him, and gave him misgiving. 
 
 Her thick dark brows almost met above her irregular nose, 
 she had a wide, rather thick mouth. But her face was lifted 
 to another world of life: not to heaven or death: but to 
 some place where she still lived, in spite of her body's ab- 
 sence. 
 
 The child beside her watched everything with wide, black 
 eyes. She had an odd little defiant look, her little red mouth 
 was pinched shut. She seemed to be jealously guarding some- 
 thing, to be always on the alert for defence. She met Brang- 
 wen's near, vacant, intimate gaze, and a palpitating hostility, 
 almost like a flame of pain, came into the wide, over-conscious 
 dark eyes. 
 
 The old clergyman droned on, Cossethay sat unmoved as 
 usual. And there was the foreign woman with a foreign air 
 about her, inviolate, and the strange child, also foreign, 
 jealously guarding something. 
 
 When the service was over,. he walked in the way of an- 
 other existence out of the church. As he went down the 
 church-path with his sister, behind the woman and child, the 
 little girl suddenly broke from her mother's hand, and slipped 
 back with quick, almost invisible movement, and was pick- 
 ing at something almost under Brangwen's feet. Her tiny 
 fingers were fine and quick, but they missed the red button. 
 
 "Have you found something ?" said Brangwen to her. 
 
 And he also stooped for the button. But she had got it, 
 and she stood back with it pressed against her little coat, 
 her black eyes flaring at him, as if to forbid him to notice 
 her. Then, having silenced him, she turned with a swift 
 " Mother /' and was gone down the path. 
 
 The mother had stood watching impassive, looking not at 
 the child, but at Brangwen. He became aware of the woman 
 looking at him, standing there isolated yet for him dominant 
 in her foreign existence. 
 
 He did not know what to do, and turned to his sister. But 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 27 
 
 the wide grey eyes, almost vacant yet so moving, held him be- 
 yond himself. 
 
 "Mother, I may have it, mayn't I?" came the child's 
 proud, silvery tones. "Mother" she seemed always to be 
 calling her mother to remember her " mother " and she 
 had nothing to continue now her mother had replied "Yes, 
 my child." But, with ready invention, the child stumbled 
 and ran on, " What are those people's names ? " 
 
 Brangwen heard the abstract: 
 
 " I don't know, dear." 
 
 He went on down the road as if he were not living inside 
 himself, but somewhere outside. 
 
 " Who was that person ? " his sister Erne asked. 
 
 " I couldn't tell you," he answered unknowing. 
 
 " She's somebody very funny," said Effie, almost in con- 
 demnation. "That child's like one bewitched." 
 
 "Bewitched how bewitched?" he repeated. 
 
 "You can see for yourself. The mother's plain, I must 
 say but the child is like a changeling. . She'd be about 
 thirty-five." 
 
 But he took no notice. His sister talked on. 
 
 "There's your woman for you," she continued. "You'd 
 better marry her." But still he took no notice. Things were 
 as they were. 
 
 Another day, at tea-time, as he sat alone at table, there 
 came a knock at the front door. It startled him like a por- 
 tent. No one ever knocked at the front door. He rose and 
 began slotting back the bolts, turning the big key. When 
 he had opened the door, the strange woman stood on the 
 threshold. 
 
 " Can you give me a pound of butter ? " she asked, in a 
 curious detached way of one speaking a foreign language. 
 
 He tried to attend to her question. She was looking at 
 him questioningly. But underneath the question, what was 
 there, in her very standing motionless, which affected him? 
 
 He stepped aside and she at once entered the house, as if 
 the door had been opened to admit her. That startled him. 
 It was the custom for everybody to wait on the doorstep till 
 asked inside. He went into the kitchen and she followed. 
 
 His tea-things were spread on the scrubbed deal table, a 
 big fire was burning, a dog rose from the hearth and went 
 to her. She stood motionless just inside the kitchen. 
 
 "Tilly," he called loudly, "have we got any butter?'* 
 
28 THE RAINBOW 
 
 The stranger stood there like a silence in her black cloak. 
 
 " Eh ? " came the shrill cry from the distance. 
 
 He shouted his question again. 
 
 " We've got what's on t' table," answered Tilly's shrill 
 voice out of the dairy. 
 
 Brangwen looked at the table. There was a large pat of 
 butter on a plate, almost a pound. It was round, and 
 stamped with acorns and- oak-leaves. 
 
 "Can't you come when you're wanted?" he shouted. 
 
 "Why, what d'you want?" Tilly protested, as she came 
 peeking inquisitively through the other door. 
 
 She saw the strange woman, stared at her with cross-eyes, 
 but said nothing. 
 
 "Haven't we any butter?" asked Brangwen again, im- 
 patiently, as if he could command some by his question. 
 
 " I tell you there's what's on t' table," said Tilly, impa- 
 tient that she was unable to create any to his demand. 
 " We haven't a morsel besides." 
 
 There was a moment's silence. 
 
 The stranger spoke, in her curiously distinct, detached 
 manner of one who must think her speech first. 
 
 " Oh, then thank you very much. I am sorry that I have 
 come to trouble you." 
 
 She could not understand the entire lack of manners, was 
 slightly puzzled. Any politeness would have made the 
 situation quite impersonal. But here it was a case of wills 
 in confusion. Brangwen flushed at her polite speech. Still 
 he did not let her go. 
 
 " Get summat an' wrap that up for her," he said to Tilly, 
 looking at the butter on the table. 
 
 And taking a clean knife, he cut off that side of the butter 
 where it was touched. 
 
 His speech, the "for her," penetrated slowly into the 
 foreign woman and angered Tilly. 
 
 "Vicar has his butter fra Brown's by rights," said the 
 insuppressible servant- woman. "We s'll be churnin' to- 
 morrow mornin' first thing." 
 
 "Yes" the long-drawn foreign yes "yes," said the 
 Polish woman, "I went to Mrs. Brown's. She hasn't any 
 
 more." 
 
 Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according 
 to the etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort 
 of manners whatever coming to a place cool as you like and 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 29 
 
 knocking at the front door asking for a pound as a stop-gap 
 while your other people were short. If you go to Brown's 
 you go to Brown's, an' my butter isn't just to make shift 
 when Brown's has got none. 
 
 Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of 
 Tilly's. The Polish lady did not. And as she wanted 
 butter for the vicar, and as Tilly was churning in the morn- 
 ing, she waited. 
 
 " Sluther up now," said Brangwen loudly after this silence 
 had resolved itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the 
 inner door. 
 
 " I am afraid that I should not come, so," said the stranger, 
 looking at him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it 
 was usual to do. 
 
 He felt confused. 
 
 " How's that?" he said, trying to be genial and being 
 only protective. 
 
 "Do you ?" she began deliberately. But she was 
 
 not sure of her ground, and the conversation came to an 
 end. Her eyes looked at him all the while, because she 
 could not speak the language. 
 
 They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from 
 her to him. He bent down to it. 
 
 " And how's your little girl ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, thank you, she is very well," was the reply, a phrase 
 of polite speech in a foreign language merely. 
 
 " Sit you down," he said. 
 
 And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through 
 the slits of her cloak, resting on her lap. 
 
 "You're not used to these parts," he said, still standing 
 on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking 
 with curious directness at the woman. Her self-possession 
 pleased him and inspired him, set him curiously free. It 
 eeemed to him almost brutal to feel so master of himself 
 and of the situation. 
 
 Her eyes rested on him for a moment, questioning, as she 
 thought of the meaning of his speech. 
 
 " No," she said, understanding. " No it is strange." 
 
 " You find it middlin' rough ? " he said. 
 
 Her eyes waited on him, so that he should say it again. 
 
 "Our ways are rough to you," he repeated. 
 
 "Yes yes, I understand. Yes, it is different, it is. 
 strange. But I was in Yorkshire " 
 
SO THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Oh, well then/' he said, " it's no worse here than what 
 they are up there.'* 
 
 She did not quite understand. His protective manner, 
 and his sureness, and his intimacy, puzzled her. What did 
 he mean? If he was her equal, why did he behave so with- 
 out formality? 
 
 "No " she said, vaguely, her eyes resting on him. 
 
 She saw him fresh and naive, uncouth, almost entirely 
 beyond relationship with her. Yet he was good-looking, with 
 his fair hair and blue eyes full of energy, and with his 
 healthy body that seemed to take equality with her. She 
 watched him steadily. He was difficult for her to under- 
 stand, warm, uncouth, and confident as he was, sure on his 
 feet as if he did not know what it was to be unsure. What 
 then was it that gave him this curious stability? 
 
 She did not know. She wondered. She looked round the 
 room he lived in. It had a close intimacy that fascinated 
 and almost frightened her. The furniture was old and fa- 
 miliar as old people, the whole place seemed so kin to him, 
 as if it partook of his being, that she was uneasy. 
 
 "It is already a long time that you have lived in this 
 house yes?" she asked. 
 
 " I've always lived here," he said. 
 
 "Yes but your people your family?" 
 
 "We've been here above two hundred years," he said. 
 Her eyes were on him all the time, wide-open and trying to 
 grasp him. He felt that he was there for her. 
 
 " It is your own place, the house, the farm ? " 
 
 "Yes," he said. He looked down at her and met her 
 look. It disturbed her. She did not know him. He was 
 a foreigner, they had nothing to do with each other. Yet 
 his look disturbed her to knowledge of him. He was so 
 strangely confident and direct. 
 
 "You live quite alone?" 
 
 " Yes if you call it alone." 
 
 She did not understand. It seemed unusual to her. 
 What was the meaning of it? 
 
 And whenever her eyes, after watching him for some time, 
 inevitably met his, she was aware of a heat beating up over 
 her consciousness. She sat motionless and in conflict. Who 
 was this strange man who was at once so near to her ? What 
 was happening to her? Something in his young, warm.- 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 31 
 
 twinkling eyes seemed to assume a right to her, to speak to 
 her, to extend her his protection. But how? Why did he 
 speak to her! Why were his eyes so certain, so full of 
 light and confident, waiting for no permission nor signal? 
 
 Tilly returned with a large leaf and found the two silent. 
 At once he felt it incumbent on him to speak, now the serv- 
 ing-woman had come back. 
 
 "How old is your little girl?" he asked. 
 
 "Four years," she replied. 
 
 "Her father hasn't been dead long, then?" he asked. 
 
 " She was one year when he died." 
 
 "Three years?" 
 
 "Yes, three years that he is dead yes." 
 
 Curiously quiet she was, almost abstracted, answering these 
 questions. She looked at him again, with some maiden- 
 hood opening in her eyes. He felt he could not move, neither 
 towards her nor away from her. Something about her pres- 
 ence hurt him, till he was almost rigid before her. He saw 
 the girl's wondering look rise in her eyes. 
 
 Tilly handed her the butter and she rose. 
 
 " Thank you very much," she said. " How much is it ? " 
 
 "We'll make th' vicar a present of it," he said. "It'll 
 do for me goin' to church." 
 
 " It 'ud look better of you if you went to church and took 
 th' money for your butter," said Tilly, persistent in her 
 claim to him. 
 
 " You'd have to put in, shouldn't you ? " he said. 
 
 "How much, please?" said the Polish woman to Tilly. 
 Brangwen stood by and let be. 
 
 "Then, thank you very much," she said. 
 
 "Bring your little girl down sometime to look at th' 
 fowls and horses," he said, " if she'd like it." 
 
 "Yes, she would like it," said the stranger. 
 
 And she went. Brangwen stood dimmed by her departure. 
 He could not notice Tilly, who was looking at him uneasily, 
 wanting to be reassured. He could not think of anything. 
 He felt that he had made some invisible connection with the 
 strange woman. 
 
 A daze had come over his mind, he had another centre of 
 consciousness. In his breast, or in his bowels, somewhere in 
 his body, there had started another activity. It was as if a 
 strong light were burning there, and he was blind within it ? 
 
32 THE RAINBOW 
 
 unable to know anything, except that this transfiguration 
 burned between him and her, connecting them, like a secret 
 power. 
 
 Since she had come to the house he went about in a daze, 
 scarcely seeing even the things he handled, drifting, quiescent, 
 in a state of metamorphosis. He submitted to that which 
 was happening to him, letting go his will, suffering the loss 
 of himself, dormant always on the brink of ecstasy, like a 
 creature evolving to a new birth. 
 
 She came twice with her child to the farm, but there was 
 this lull between them, an intense calm and passivity like a 
 torpor upon them, so that there was no active change took 
 place. He was almost unaware of the child, yet by his 
 native good humour he gained her confidence, even her af- 
 fection, setting her on the horse to ride, giving her corn for 
 the fowls. 
 
 Once he drove the mother and child from Ilkeston, picking 
 them up on the road. The child huddled close to him as if 
 for love, the mother sat very still. There was a vagueness, 
 like a soft mist over all of them, and a silence as if their wills 
 were suspended. Only he saw her hands, ungloved, folded 
 in her lap, and he noticed the wedding-ring on her finger. 
 It excluded him: it was a closed circle. It bound her life, 
 the wedding-ring, it stood for her life in which he could 
 have no part. Nevertheless, beyond all this, there was her- 
 self and himself which should meet. 
 
 As he helped her down from the trap, almost lifting her, 
 he felt he had some right to take her thus between his hands. 
 She belonged as yet to that other, to that which was behind. 
 But he must care for her also. She was too living to be 
 neglected. 
 
 Sometimes her vagueness, in which he was lost, made him 
 angry, made him rage. But he held himself still as yet. 
 She had no response, no being towards him. It puzzled and 
 enraged him, but he submitted for a long time. Then, from 
 the accumulated troubling of her ignoring him, gradually a 
 fury broke out, destructive, and he wanted to go away, to 
 escape her. 
 
 It happened she came down to the Marsh with the child 
 whilst he was in this state. Then he stood over against her, 
 strong and heavy in his revolt, and though he said nothing, 
 still she felt his anger and heavy impatience grip hold of 
 her, she was shaken again as out of a torpor. Again her 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 33 
 
 heart stirred with a quick, out-running impulse, she looked 
 at him, at the stranger who was not a gentleman yet who in- 
 sisted on coming into her life, and the pain of a new birth in 
 herself strung all her veins to a new form. She would have 
 to begin again, to find a new being, a new form, to respond 
 to that blind, insistent figure standing over against her. 
 
 A shiver, a sickness of new birth passed over her, the flame 
 leaped up him, under his skin. She wanted it, this new life 
 from him, with him, yet she must defend herself against 
 it, for it was a destruction. 
 
 As he worked alone on the land, or sat up with his ewes 
 at lambing time, the facts and material of his daily life fell 
 away, leaving the kernel of his purpose clean. And then it 
 came upon him that he would marry her and she would be 
 his life. 
 
 Gradually, even without seeing her, he came to know her. 
 He would have liked to think of her as of something given 
 into his protection, like a child without parents. But it was 
 forbidden him. He had to come down from this pleasant 
 view of the case. She might refuse him. And besides, he 
 was afraid of her. 
 
 But during the long February nights with the ewes in 
 labour, looking out from the shelter into the flashing stars, 
 he knew he did not belong to himself. He must admit that 
 he was only fragmentary, something incomplete and subject. 
 There were the stars in the dark heaven travelling, the whole 
 host passing by on some eternal voyage. So he sat small and 
 submissive to the greater ordering. 
 
 Unless she would come to him, he must remain as a 
 nothingness. It was a hard experience. But, after her re- 
 peated obliviousness to him, after he had seen so often that 
 he did not exist for her, after he had raged and tried to 
 escape, and said he was good enough by himself, he was a 
 man, and could stand alone, he must, in the starry multi- 
 plicity of the night humble himself, and admit and know that 
 without her he was nothing. 
 
 He was nothing. But with her, he would be real. If 
 she were now walking across the frosty grass near the sheep- 
 shelter, through the fretful bleating of the ewes and lambs, 
 she would bring him completeness and perfection. And if 
 it should be so, that she should come to him ! It should be 
 so it was ordained so. 
 
 He was a long time resolving definitely to ask her to 
 
34 THE RAINBOW 
 
 marry him. And he knew, if he asked her, she must really 
 acquiesce. She must, it could not be otherwise. 
 
 He had learned a little of her. She was poor, quite alone, 
 and had had a hard time in London, both before and after 
 her husband died. But in Poland she was a lady well born, 
 a landowner's daughter. 
 
 All these things were only words to him, the fact of her 
 superior birth, the fact that her husband had been a brilliant 
 doctor, the fact that he himself was her inferior in almost 
 every way of distinction. There was an inner reality, a logic 
 of the soul, which connected her with him. 
 
 One evening in March, when the wind was roaring outside, 
 came the moment to ask her. He had sat with his hands 
 before him, leaning to the fire. And as he watched the fire, 
 he knew almost without thinking that he was going this 
 evening. 
 
 " Have you got a clean shirt ? " he asked Tilly. 
 
 "You know you've got clean shirts," she said. 
 
 " Ay, bring me a white one." 
 
 Tilly brought down one of the linen shirts he had inherited 
 from his father, putting it before him to air at the fire. 
 She loved him with a dumb, aching love as he sat leaning 
 with his arms on his knees, still and absorbed, unaware of 
 her. Lately, a quivering inclination to cry had come over 
 her, when she did anything for him in his presence. Now 
 her hands trembled as she spread the shirt. He was never 
 shouting and teasing now. The deep stillness there was in 
 the house made her tremble. 
 
 He went to wash himself. Queer little breaks of con- 
 sciousness seemed to rise and burst like bubbles out of the 
 depths of his stillness. 
 
 "It's got to be done/' he said as he stooped to take the 
 ehirt out of the fender, "it's got to be done, so why balk 
 it?" And as he combed his hair before the mirror on the 
 wall, he retorted to himself, superficially: "The woman's 
 not speechless dumb. She's not clutterin' at the nipple. 
 She's got the right to please herself, and displease whosoever 
 she likes." 
 
 This streak of commonsense carried him a little further. 
 
 "Did you want anythink?" asked Tilly, suddenly ap- 
 pearing, having heard him speak. She stood watching him 
 comb his fair beard. His eyes wer calm and uninter- 
 rupted. 
 
(HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 35 
 
 " Ay," he said, " where have you put the scissors." 
 
 She brought them to him, and stood watching as, chin 
 forward, he trimmed his beard. 
 
 " Don't go .an' crop yourself as if you was at a shearin' 
 contest," she said, anxiously. He blew the fine-curled hair 
 quickly off his lips. 
 
 He put on all clean clothes, folded his stock carefully, and 
 donned his best coat. Then, being ready, as grey twilight 
 was falling, he went across to the orchard to gather the 
 daffodils. The wind was roaring in the lapple-trees, the 
 yellow flowers swayed violently up and down, he heard even 
 the fine whisper of their spears as he stooped to break the 
 flattened, brittle stems of the flowers. 
 
 "What's to-do?" shouted a friend who met him as he 
 left the garden gate. 
 
 "Bit of courtin', like," said Brangwen. 
 
 And Tilly, in a great state of trepidation and excitement, 
 let the wind whisk her over the field to the big gate, whence 
 she could watch him go. 
 
 He went up the hill and on towards the vicarage, the wind 
 roaring through the hedges, whilst he tried to shelter his 
 bunch of daffodils by his side. He did not think of any- 
 thing, only knew that the wind was blowing. 
 
 Night was falling, the bare trees drummed and whistled. 
 The vicar, he knew, would be in his study, the Polish woman 
 in the kitchen, a comfortable room, with her child. In the 
 darkest of twilight, he went through the gate and down the 
 path where a few daffodils stooped in the wind, and shattered 
 crocuses made a pale, colourless ravel. 
 
 There was a light streaming on to the bushes at the back 
 from the kitchen window. He began to hesitate. How 
 could he do this? Looking through the window, he saw 
 her seated in the rocking-chair with the child, already in its 
 nightdress, sitting on her knee. The fair head with its wild, 
 fierce hair was drooping towards the fire-warmth, which re- 
 flected on the bright cheeks and clear skin of the child, who 
 seemed to be musing, almost like a grown-up person. The 
 mother's face was dark and still, and he saw, with a pang, 
 that she was away back in the life that had been. The child's 
 hair gleamed like spun glass, her face was illuminated till 
 it seemed like wax lit up from the inside. The wind boomed 
 strongly. Mother and child sat motionless, silent, the child 
 staring with vacant dark eyes into the fire, the mother look- 
 
86 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ing into space. The little girl was almost asleep. It was 
 her will which kept her eyes so wide. 
 
 Suddenly she looked round, troubled, as the wind shook 
 the house, and Brangwen saw the small lips move. The 
 mother began to rock, he heard the slight crunch of the 
 rockers of the chair. Then he heard the low, monotonous 
 murmur of a song in a foreign language. Then a great burst 
 of wind, the mother seemed to have drifted away, the child's 
 eyes were black and dilated. Brangwen looked up at the 
 clouds which packed in great, alarming haste across the dark 
 sky. 
 
 Then there came the child's high, complaining, yet im- 
 perative voice: 
 
 "Don't sing that stuff, mother; I don't want to hear it." 
 
 The singing died away. 
 
 " You will go to bed," said the mother. 
 
 He saw the clinging protest of the child, the unmoved far- 
 awayness of the mother, the clinging, grasping effort of the 
 child. Then suddenly the clear childish challenge: 
 
 " I want you to tell me a story." 
 
 The wind blew, the story began, the child nestled against 
 the mother, Brangwen waited outside, suspended, looking at 
 the wild waving of the trees in the wind and the gathering 
 darkness. He had his fate to follow, he lingered here at the 
 threshold. 
 
 The child crouched distinct and motionless, curled in 
 against her mother, the eyes dark and unblinking among the 
 keen wisps of hair, like a curled-up animal asleep but for the 
 eyes. The mother sat as if in shadow, the story went on as 
 if by itself. Brangwen stood outside seeing the night fall. 
 He did not notice the passage of time. The hand that held 
 the daffodils was fixed and cold. 
 
 The story came to an end, the mother rose at last, with the 
 child clinging round her neck. She must be strong, to carry 
 so large a child so easily. The little Anna clung round 
 her mother's neck. The fair, strange face of the child looked 
 over the shoulder of the mother, all asleep but the eyes, and 
 these, wide and dark, kept up the resistance and the fight 
 with something unseen. 
 
 When they were gone, Brangwen stirred for the first time 
 from the place where he stood, and looked round at the night. 
 He wished it were really as beautiful and familiar as it 
 seemed in these few moments of release. Along with the 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY tf 
 
 child, he felt a curious strain on him, a suffering, like a fate. 
 
 The mother came down again, and began folding the child's 
 clothes. He knocked. She opened wondering, a little bit 
 at bay, like a foreigner, uneasy. 
 
 " Good-evening/' he said. " I'll just come in a minute/' 
 
 A change went quickly over her face; she was unprepared. 
 She looked down at him as he stood in the light from the 
 window, holding the daffodils, the darkness behind. In his 
 black clothes she again did not know him. She was almost 
 afraid. 
 
 But he was already stepping on to the threshold, and clos- 
 ing the door behind him. She turned into the kitchen, 
 startled out of herself by this invasion from the night. He 
 took off his hat, and came towards her. Then he stood in 
 the light, in his black clothes and his black stock, hat in one 
 hand and yellow flowers in the other. She stood away, at 
 his mercy, snatched out of herself. She did not know him, 
 only she knew he was a man come for her. She could only 
 see the dark-clad man's figure standing there upon her, and 
 the gripped fist of flowers. She could not see the face and 
 the living eyes. 
 
 He was watching her, without knowing her, only aware 
 underneath of her presence. 
 
 " I come to have a word with you," he said, striding for- 
 ward to the table, laying down his hat and the flowers, 
 which tumbled apart and lay in a loose heap. She had 
 flinched from his advance. She had no will, no being. The 
 wind boomed in the chimney, and he waited. He had dis- 
 embarrassed his hands. Now he shut his fists. 
 
 He was aware of her standing there unknown, dread, yet 
 related to him. 
 
 " I came up," he said, speaking curiously matter-of-fact 
 and level, "to ask if you'd marry me. You are free, aren't 
 you?" 
 
 There was a long silence, whilst his blue eyes, strangely 
 impersonal, looked into her eyes to seek an answer to the 
 truth. He was looking for the truth out of her. And she, 
 as if hypnotized, must answer at length. 
 
 " Yes, I am free to marry." 
 
 The expression of his eyes changed, became less impersonal, 
 as if he were looking almost at her, for the truth of 
 her. Steady and intent and eternal they were, as if they 
 would never change. They seemed to fix and to resolve 
 
S8 THE RAINBOW 
 
 her. She quivered, feeling herself created, will-less, lapsing 
 into him, into a common will with him. 
 
 "You want me?" she said. 
 
 A pallor came over his face. 
 
 Yes/' he said. 
 
 Still there was suspense and silence. 
 
 "No," she said, not of herself. "No, I don't know." 
 
 He felt the tension breaking up in him, his fists slack- 
 ened, he was unable to move. He stood looking at her, 
 helpless in his vague collapse. For the moment she had 
 become unreal to him. Then he saw her come to him, curi- 
 ously direct and as if without movement, in a sudden flow. 
 She put her hand to his coat. 
 
 "Yes I want to," she said, impersonally, looking at him 
 with wide, candid, newly-opened eyes, opened now with 
 supreme truth. He went very white as he stood, and did 
 not move, only his eyes were held by hers, and he suffered. 
 She seemed to see him with her newly-opened, wide eyes, 
 almost of a child, and with a strange movement, that was 
 agony to him, she reached slowly forward her dark face and 
 her breast to him, with a slow insinuation of a kiss that 
 made something break in his brain, and it was darkness over 
 him for a few moments. 
 
 He had her in his arms, and, obliterated, was kissing her. 
 And it was sheer, blenched agony to him, to break away from 
 himself. She was there so small and light and accepting in 
 his arms, like a child, and yet with such an insinuation of 
 embrace, of infinite embrace, that he could not bear it, he 
 could not stand. 
 
 He turned and looked for a chair, and keeping her still in 
 his arms, sat down with her close to him, to his breast. Then, 
 for a few seconds, he went utterly to sleep, asleep and sealed 
 in the darkest sleep, utter, extreme oblivion. 
 
 From which he came to gradually, always holding her warm 
 and close upon him, and she as utterly silent as he, involved 
 in the same oblivion, the fecund darkness. 
 
 He returned gradually, but newly created, as after a ges- 
 tation, a new birth, in the womb of darkness. Aerial 
 and light everything was, new as a morning, fresh and 
 newly-begun. Like a dawn the newness and the bliss 
 filled in. And she sat utterly still with him, as if in the 
 same. 
 
 Then she looked up at him, the wide, young eyes blazing 
 '*. 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 39 
 
 with light. And he bent down and kissed her on the lips. 
 And the dawn blazed in them, their new life came to pass, 
 it was beyond all conceiving good, it was so good, that it 
 was almost like a passing-away, a trespass. He drew her 
 suddenly closer to him. 
 
 For soon the light began to fade in her, gradually, and as 
 she was in his arms, her head sank, she leaned it against 
 him, and lay still, with sunk head, a little tired, effaced 
 because she was tired. And in her tiredness was a certain 
 negation of him. 
 
 " There is the child," she said, out of the long silence. 
 
 He did not understand. It was a long time since he had 
 heard a voice. Now also he heard the wind roaring, as if it 
 had just begun again. 
 
 "Yes," he said, not understanding. There was a slight 
 contraction of pain at his heart, a slight tension on his brows. 
 Something he wanted to grasp and could not. 
 
 "You will love her?" she said. 
 
 The quick contraction, like pain, went over him again. 
 
 "I love her now," he said. 
 
 She lay still against him, taking his physical warmth with- 
 out heed. It was great confirmation for him to feel her 
 there, absorbing the warmth from him, giving him back her 
 weight and her strange confidence. But where was she, that 
 she seemed so absent? His mind was open with wonder. 
 He did not know her. 
 
 " But I am much older than you," she said. 
 
 " How old ? " he asked. 
 
 " I am thirty-four," she said. 
 
 " I am twenty-eight," he said. 
 
 " Six years." 
 
 She was oddly concerned, even as if it pleased her a lit- 
 tle. He sat and listened and wondered. It was rather 
 splendid, to be so ignored by her, whilst she lay against him, 
 and he lifted her with his breathing, and felt her weight upon 
 his living, so he had a completeness and an inviolable power. 
 He did not interfere with her. He did not even know her. 
 It was so strange that she lay there with her weight aban- 
 doned upon him. He was silent with delight. He felt 
 strong, physically, carrying her on his breathing. The 
 strange, inviolable completeness of the two of them made 
 him feel as sure and as stable as God. Amused, he won- 
 dered what the vicar would say if he knew. 
 
40 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "You needn't stop here much longer, housekeeping/' he 
 said. 
 
 "I like it also, here," she said. "When one has heen in 
 many places, it is very nice here." 
 
 He was silent again at this. So close on him she lay, and 
 yet she answered him from so far away. But he did not 
 mind. 
 
 "What was your own home like, when you were little?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " My father was a landowner," she replied. " It was near 
 a river," 
 
 This did not convey much to him. All was as vague as 
 before. But he did not care, whilst she was so close. 
 
 "I am a landowner a little one," he said. 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 He had not dared to move. He sat there with his arms 
 round her, her lying motionless on his breathing, and for a 
 long time he did not stir. Then softly, timidly, his hand 
 settled on the roundness of her arm, on the unknown. She 
 seemed to lie a little closer. A hot flame licked up from his 
 belly to his chest. 
 
 But it was too soon. She rose, and went across the room 
 to a drawer, taking out a little tray-cloth. There was some- 
 thing quiet and professional about her. She had been a 
 nurse beside her husband, both in Warsaw and in the re- 
 bellion afterwards. She proceeded to set a tray. It was as 
 if she ignored Brangwen. He sat up, unable to bear a con- 
 tradiction in her. She moved about inscrutably. 
 
 Then, as he sat there, all mused and wondering, she came 
 near to him, looking at him with wide, grey eyes that almost 
 smiled with a low light. But her ugly-beautiful mouth was 
 still unmoved and sad. He was afraid. 
 
 His eyes, strained and roused with unusedness, quailed a 
 little before her, he felt himself quailing and yet he rose, as 
 if obedient to her, he bent and kissed her heavy, sad, wide 
 mouth, that was kissed, and did not alter. Fear was too 
 strong in him. Again he had not got her. 
 
 She turned away. The vicarage kitchen was untidy, and 
 yet to him beautiful with the untidiness of her and her child. 
 Such a wonderful remoteness there was about her, and then 
 something in touch with him, that made his heart knock in 
 his chest. He stood there and waited, suspended. 
 
 Again she came to him, as he stood in his black clothes, 
 
HOW BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY 41 
 
 with blue eyes very bright and puzzled for her, his face 
 tensely alive, his hair dishevelled. She came close up to 
 him, to his intent, black-clothed body, and laid her hand on 
 his arm. He remained unmoved. Her eyes, with a black- 
 ness of memory struggling with passion, primitive and elec- 
 tric away at the back of them, rejected him and absorbed 
 him at once. But he remained himself. He breathed with 
 difficulty, and sweat came out at the roots of his hair, on his 
 forehead. 
 
 " Do you want to marry me ? " she asked slowly, always 
 uncertain. 
 
 He was afraid lest he could not speak. He drew breath 
 hard, saying: 
 
 " I do." 
 
 Then again, what was agony to him, with one hand lightly 
 resting on his arm, she leaned forward a little, and with 
 a strange, primeval suggestion of embrace, held him her 
 mouth. It was ugly-beautiful, and he could not bear it. 
 He put his mouth on hers, and slowly, slowly the response 
 came, gathering force and passion, till it seemed to him she 
 was thundering at him till he could bear no more. He drew 
 away, white, unbreathing. Only, in his blue eyes, was 
 something of himself concentrated. And in her eyes was a 
 little smile upon a black void. 
 
 She was drifting away from him again. And he wanted 
 to go away. It was intolerable. He could bear no more. 
 He must go. Yet he was irresolute. But she turned away 
 from him. 
 
 With a little pang of anguish, of denial, it was decided. 
 
 " I'll come an' speak to the vicar to-morrow," he said, 
 taking his hat. 
 
 She looked at him, her eyes expressionless and full of dark- 
 ness. He could see no answer. 
 
 "That'll do, won't it?" he said. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, mere echo without body or meaning. 
 
 " Goodnight," he said. 
 
 " Goodnight." 
 
 He left her standing there, expressionless and void as she 
 was. Then she went on laying the tray for the vicar. Need- 
 ing the table, she put the daffodils aside on the dresser with- 
 out noticing them. Only their coolness, touching her hand, 
 remained echoing there a long while. 
 
 They were such strangers, they must for ever be such 
 
42 THE RAINBOW 
 
 strangers, that his passion was a clanging torment to him. 
 Such intimacy of embrace, and such utter foreignness of 
 contact! It was unbearable. He could not bear to be near 
 her, and know the utter foreignness between them, know how 
 entirely they were strangers to each other. He went out 
 into the wind. Big holes were blown into the sky, the moon- 
 light blew about. Sometimes a high moon, liquid-brilliant, 
 scudded across a hollow space and took cover under electric, 
 brown-iridescent cloud-edges. Then there was a blot of 
 cloud, and shadow. Then somewhere in the night a radiance 
 again, like a vapour. And all the sky was teeming and 
 tearing along, a vast disorder of flying shapes and darkness 
 and ragged fumes of light and a great brown circling halo, 
 then the terror of a moon running liquid-brilliant into the 
 open for a moment, hurting the eyes before she plunged un- 
 der cover of cloud again. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 
 
 SHE was the daughter of a Polish landowner who, 
 deeply in debt to the Jews, had married a German wife 
 with money, and who had died just before the re- 
 bellion. Quite young, she had married Paul Lensky, 
 an intellectual who had studied at Berlin, and had returned to 
 Warsaw a patriot. Her mother had married a German 
 merchant and gone away. 
 
 Lydia Lensky, married to the young doctor, became with 
 him a patriot and an emancipee. They were poor, but they 
 were very conceited. She learned nursing as a mark of her 
 emancipation. They represented in Poland the new move- 
 ment just begun in Russia. But they were very patriotic: 
 and, at the same time, very " European." 
 
 They had two children. Then came the great rebellion. 
 Lensky, very ardent and full of words, went about inciting 
 his countrymen. Little Poles flamed down the streets of 
 Warsaw, on the way to shoot every Muscovite. So they 
 crossed into the south of Russia, and it was common for 
 six little insurgents to ride into a Jewish village, brandishing 
 swords and words, emphasizing the fact that they were going 
 to shoot every living Muscovite. 
 
 Lensky was something of a fire-eater also. Lydia, tem- 
 pered by her German blood, coming of a different family, was 
 obliterated, carried along in her husband's emphasis of 
 declaration, and his whirl of patriotism. He was indeed a 
 brave man, but no bravery could quite have equalled the 
 vividness of his talk. He worked very hard, till nothing 
 lived in him but his eyes. And Lydia, as if drugged, followed 
 him like a shadow, serving, echoing. Sometimes she had 
 her two children, sometimes they were left behind. 
 
 She returned once to find them both dead of diphtheria. 
 Her husband wept aloud, unaware of everybody. But the 
 war went on, and soon he was back at his work. A dark- 
 ness had come over Lydia's mind. She walked always in a 
 shadow, silenced, with a strange, deep terror having hold of 
 
 43 
 
44 THE RAINBOW 
 
 her, her desire was to seek satisfaction in dread, to enter a 
 nunnery, to satisfy the instincts of dread in her, through 
 service of a dark religion. But she could not. 
 
 Then came the flight to London. Lensky, the little, thin 
 man, had got all his life locked into a resistance and could 
 not relax again. He lived in a sort of insane irritability, 
 touchy, haughty to the last degree, fractious, so that as as- 
 sistant doctor in one of the hospitals he soon became im- 
 possible. They were almost beggars. But he kept still his 
 great ideas of himself, he seemed to live in a complete hallu- 
 cination, where he himself figured vivid and lordly. He 
 guarded his wife jealously against the ignominy of her posi- 
 tion, rushed round her like a brandished weapon, an amazing 
 sight to the English eye, had her in his power, as if he hypno- 
 tized her. She was passive, dark, always in shadow. 
 
 He was wasting away. Already when the child was born 
 he seemed nothing but skin and bone and fixed idea. She 
 watched him dying, nursed him, nursed the baby, but really 
 took no notice of anything. A darkness was on her, like re- 
 morse, or like a remembering of the dark, savage, mystic ride 
 of dread, of death, of the snadow of revenge. When her 
 husband died, she was relieved. He would no longer dart 
 about her. 
 
 England fitted her mood, its aloofness and foreignness. 
 She had known a little of the language before coming, and 
 a sort of parrot-mind made her pick it up fairly easily. But 
 she knew nothing of the English, nor of English life. In- 
 deed, these did not exist for her. She was like one walking 
 in the Underworld, where the shades throng intelligibly but 
 have no connection with one. She felt the English people 
 as a potent, cold, slightly hostile host amongst whom she 
 walked isolated. 
 
 The English people themselves were almost deferential to 
 her, the Church saw that she did not want. She walked 
 without passion, like a shade, tormented into moments of 
 love by the child. Her dying husband with his tortured 
 eyes and the skin drawn tight over his face, he was as a 
 vision to her, not a reality. In a vision he was buried and 
 put away. Then the vision ceased, she was untroubled, 
 time went on grey, uncoloured, like a long journey where 
 she sat unconscious as the landscape unrolled beside her. 
 When she rocked her baby at evening, maybe she fell into a 
 Polish slumber song, or she talked sometimes to herself in 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 4 
 
 Polish. Otherwise she did not think of Poland, nor of that 
 life to which she had belonged. It was a great blot looming 
 blank in its darkness. In the superficial activity of her life, 
 she was all English. She even thought in English. But her 
 long blanks and darknesses of abstraction were Polish. 
 
 So she lived for some time. Then, with slight uneasiness, 
 she used half to awake to the streets of London. She realized 
 that there was something around her, very foreign, she 
 realized she was in a strange place. And then, she was 
 sent away into the country. There came into her mind 
 now the memory of her home where she had been a child, 
 the big house among the land, the peasants of the village. 
 
 She was sent to Yorkshire, to nurse an old rector in his 
 rectory by the sea. This was the first shake of the kaleido- 
 scope that brought in front of her eyes something she must 
 see. It hurt her brain, the open country and the moors. It 
 hurt her and hurt her. Yet it forced itself upon her as some- 
 thing living, it roused some potency of her childhood in her, 
 it had some relation to her. 
 
 There was green and silver and blue in the air about her 
 now. And there was a strange insistence of light from the 
 sea, to which she must attend. Primroses glimmered around, 
 many of them, and she stooped to the disturbing influence 
 near her feet, she even picked one or two flowers, faintly 
 remembering in the new colour of life, what had been. All 
 the day long, as she sat at the upper window, the light came 
 off the sea, constantly, constantly, without refusal, till it 
 seemed to bear her away, and the noise of the sea created a 
 drowsiness in her, a relaxation like sleep. Her automatic 
 consciousness gave way a little, she stumbled sometimes, she 
 had a poignant, momentary vision of her living child, that 
 hurt her unspeakably. Her soul roused to attention. 
 
 Very strange was the constant glitter of the sea unsheathed 
 in heaven, very warm and sweet the graveyard, in a nook 
 of the hill catching the sunshine and holding it as one holds 
 a bee between the palms of the hands, when it is benumbed. 
 Grey grass and lichens and a little church, and snowdrops 
 among coarse grass, and a cupful of incredibly warm sun- 
 shine. 
 
 She was troubled in spirit. Hearing the rushing of the 
 beck away down under the trees, she was startled, and won- 
 dered what it was. Walking down, she found the bluebells 
 around her glowing like a presence, among the trees. 
 
46 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Summer came, the moors were tangled with harebells like 
 water in the ruts of the roads, the heather came rosy under 
 the skies, setting the whole world awake. And she was un- 
 easy. She went past the gorse bushes shrinking from their 
 presence, she stepped into the heather as into a quickening 
 bath that almost hurt. Her fingers moved over the clasped 
 fingers of the child, she heard the anxious voice of the baby, 
 as it tried to make her talk, distraught. 
 
 And she shrank away again, back into her darkness, and 
 for a long while remained blotted safely away from living. 
 But autumn came with the faint red glimmer of robins sing- 
 ing, winter darkened the moors, and almost savagely she 
 turned again to life, demanding her life back again, demand- 
 ing that it should be as it had been when she was a girl, 
 on the land at home, under the sky. Snow lay in great 
 expanses, the telegraph posts strode over the white earth, 
 away under the gloom of the sky. And savagely her desire 
 rose in her again, demanding that this was Poland, her 
 youth, that all was her own again. 
 
 But there were no sledges nor bells, she did not see the 
 peasants coming out like new people, in their sheepskins and 
 their fresh, ruddy, bright faces, that seemed to become new 
 and vivid when the snow lit up the ground. It did not come 
 to her, the life of her youth, it did not come back. There 
 was a little agony of struggle, then a relapse into the dark- 
 ness of the convent, where Satan and the devils raged round 
 the walls, and Christ was white on the cross of victory. 
 
 'She watched from the sick-room the snow whirl past, like 
 flocks of shadows in haste, flying on some final mission out 
 to a leaden inalterable sea, beyond the final whiteness of the 
 curving shore, and the snow-speckled blackness of the rocks 
 half submerged. But near at hand on the trees the snow 
 was soft in bloom. Only the voice of the dying vicar spoke 
 grey and querulous from behind. 
 
 By the time the snowdrops were out, however, he was dead. 
 He was dead. But with curious equanimity the returning 
 woman watched the snowdrops on the edge of the grass be- 
 low, blown white in the wind, but not to be blown away. 
 She watched them fluttering and bobbing, the white, shut 
 flowers, anchored by a thread to the grey-green grass, yet 
 never blown away, not drifting with the wind. 
 
 As she rose in the morning, the dawn was beating up 
 white, gusts of light blown like a thin snowstorm from the 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 47 
 
 east, blown stronger and fiercer, till the rose appeared, and 
 the gold, and the sea lit up below. She was impassive and 
 indifferent. Yet she was outside the enclosure of darkness. 
 
 There passed a space of shadow again, the familiarity of 
 dread-worship, during which she was moved, oblivious, to 
 Cossethay. There, at first, there was nothing just grey 
 nothing. But then one morning there was a light from the 
 yellow jasmine caught her, and after that, morning and even- 
 ing, the persistent ringing of thrushes from the shrubbery, 
 till her heart, beaten upon, was forced to lift up its voice 
 in rivalry and answer. Little tunes came into her mind. 
 She was full of trouble almost like anguish. Resistant, she 
 knew she was beaten, and from fear of darkness turned to 
 fear of light. She would have hidden herself indoors, if shn 
 could. Above all, she craved for the peace and heavy ob- 
 livion of her old state. She could not bear to come to, to 
 realize. The first pangs of this new parturition were so 
 acute, she knew she could not bear it. She would rather 
 remain out of life, than be torn, mutilated into this birth, 
 which she could not survive. She had not the strength to 
 come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. 
 She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless 
 flower that the end of the winter puts forth mercilessly. And 
 she wanted to harbour her modicum of twinkling life. 
 
 But a sunshiny day came full of the scent of a mezereon 
 tree, when bees were tumbling into the yellow crocuses, and 
 she forgot, she felt like somebody else, not herself, a new 
 person, quite glad. But she knew it was fragile, and she 
 dreaded it. The vicar put pea-flower into the crocuses, for 
 his bees to roll in, and she laughed. Then night came, with 
 brilliant stars that she knew of old, from her girlhood. And 
 they flashed so bright, she knew they were victors. 
 
 She could neither wake nor sleep. As if crushed between 
 the past and the future, like a flower that comes above-ground 
 to 'find a great stone lying above it, she was helpless. 
 
 The bewilderment and helplessness continued, she was 
 surrounded by great moving masses that must crush her. 
 And there was no escape. Save in the old obliviousness, the 
 cold darkness she strove to retain. But the vicar showed 
 her eggs in the thrush's nest near the back door. She saw 
 herself the mother-thrush upon the nest, and the way her 
 wings were spread, so eager down upon her secret. The 
 tense, eager, nesting wings moved her beyond endurance. 
 
48 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She thought of them in the morning, when she heard the 
 thrush whistling as he got up, and she thought, " Why didn't 
 I die out there, why am I brought here ? " 
 
 She was aware of people who passed around her, not as 
 persons, but as looming presences. It was very difficult for 
 her to adjust herself. In Poland, the peasantry, the people, 
 had been cattle to her, they had been her cattle that she 
 owned and used. What were these people? Now she was 
 coming awake, she was lost. 
 
 But she had felt Brangden go by almost as if he had 
 brushed her. She had tingled in body as she had gone on 
 up the road. After she had been with him in the Marsh 
 kitchen, the voice of her body had risen strong and insistent. 
 Soon, she wanted him. He was the man who had come near- 
 est to her for her awakening. 
 
 Always, however, between-whiles she lapsed into the old 
 unconsciousness, indifference and there was a will in her to 
 save herself from living any more. But she would wake in 
 the morning one day and feel her blood running, feel herself 
 lying open like a flower unsheathed in the Bun, insistent and 
 potent with demand. 
 
 She got to know him better, and her instinct fixed on him 
 just on him. Her impulse was strong against him, because 
 he was not of her own sort. But one blind instinct led 
 her, to take him, to have him, and then to relinquish herself 
 to him. It would be safety. She felt the rooted safety of 
 him, and the life in him. Also he was young and very 
 fresh. The blue, steady livingness of his eyes she enjoyed 
 like morning. He was very young. 
 
 Then she lapsed again to stupor and indifference. This, 
 however, was bound to pass. The warmth flowed through 
 her, she felt herself opening, unfolding, asking, as a flower 
 opens in full request under the sun, as the beaks of tiny birds 
 open flat, to receive, to receive. And unfolded she turned 
 to him, straight to him. And he came, slowly, afraid, held 
 back by uncouth fear, and driven by a desire bigger than 
 himself. 
 
 . When she opened and turned to him, then all that had 
 been and all that was, was gone from her, she was as new as 
 a flower that unsheathes itself and stands always ready, 
 waiting, receptive. He could not understand this. He 
 forced himself, through lack of understanding, to the adher- 
 ence to the line of honourable courtshig and sanctioned, 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 49 
 
 licensed marriage. Therefore, after he had gone to the 
 vicarage and asked for her, she remained for some days held 
 in this one spell, open, receptive to him, before him. He 
 was roused to chaos. He spoke to the vicar and gave in the 
 banns. Then he stood to wait. 
 
 She remained attentive and instinctively expectant before 
 him, unfolded, ready to receive him. He could not act, be- 
 cause of self-fear and because of his conception of honour 
 towards her. So he remained in a state of chaos. 
 
 And after a few days, gradually she closed again, away 
 from him, was sheathed over, impervious to him, oblivious. 
 Then a black, bottomless despair became real to him, he knew 
 what he had lost. He felt he had lost it for good, he knew 
 what it was to have been in communication with her, and to 
 be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy stone, 
 he went about unliving. 
 
 Till gradually he became desperate, lost his understanding, 
 was plunged in a revolt that knew no bounds. Inarticulate, 
 he moved with her at the Marsh in violent, gloomy, wordless 
 passion, almost in hatred of her. Till gradually she became 
 aware of him, aware of herself with regard to him, her blood 
 stirred to life, she began to open towards him, to flow towards 
 him again. He waited till the spell was between them again, 
 till they were together within one rushing, hastening flame. 
 And then again he was bewildered, he was tied up as with 
 cords, and could not move to her. So she came to him, and 
 unfastened the breast of his waistcoat and his shirt, and put 
 her hand on him, needing to know him. For it was cruel to 
 her, to be opened and offered to him, yet not to know what 
 he was, not even that he was there. She gave herself to the 
 hour, but he could not, and he bungled in taking her. 
 
 So that he lived in suspense, as if only half his faculties 
 worked, until the wedding. She did not understand. But 
 the vagueness came over her again, and the days lapsed by. 
 He could not get definitely into touch with her. For the 
 time being, she let him go again. 
 
 He suffered very much from the thought of actual mar- 
 riage, the intimacy and nakedness of marriage. He knew 
 her so little. They were so foreign to each other, they were 
 such strangers. And they could not talk to each other. 
 When she talked, of Poland or of what had been, it was all 
 so foreign, she scarcely communicated anything to him. And 
 when he looked at her, an over-much reverence and fear of 
 
50 THE RAINBOW 
 
 the unknown changed the nature of his desire into a sort 
 of worship, holding her aloof from his physical desire, self- 
 thwarting. 
 
 She did not know this, she did not understand. They 
 had looked at each other, and had accepted each other. It 
 was so, then there was nothing to balk at, it was complete 
 between them. 
 
 At the wedding, his face was stiff and expressionless. He 
 wanted to drink, to get rid of his forethought and after- 
 thought, to set the moment free. But he could not. The 
 suspense only tightened at his heart. The jesting and 
 joviality and jolly, broad insinuation of the guests only coiled 
 him more. He could not hear. That which was impending 
 obsessed him, he could not get free. 
 
 She sat quiet, with a strange, still smile. She was not 
 afraid. Having accepted him, she wanted to take him, she 
 belonged altogether to the hour, now. No future, no past, 
 only this, her hour. She did not even notice him, as she sat 
 beside him at the head of the table. He was very near, their 
 coming together was close at hand. What more! 
 
 As the time came for all the guests to go, her dark face 
 was softly lighted, the bend of her head was proud, her grey 
 eyes clear and dilated, so that the men could not look at her, 
 and the women were elated by her, they served her. Very 
 wonderful she was, as she bade farewell, her ugly wide mouth 
 smiling with pride and recognition, her voice speaking softly 
 and richly in the foreign accent, her dilated eyes ignoring 
 one and all the departing guests. Her manner was gracious 
 and fascinating, but she ignored the being of him or her to 
 whom she gave her hand. 
 
 And Brangwen stood beside her, giving his hearty hand- 
 shake to his friends, receiving their regard gratefully, glad 
 of their attention. His heart was tormented within him, 
 he did not try to smile. The time of his trial and his ad- 
 mittance, his Gethsemane and his Triumphal Entry in one, 
 had come now. 
 
 Behind her, there was so much unknown to him. When 
 he approached her, he came to such a terrible painful un- 
 known. How could he embrace it and fathom it? How 
 could he close his arms round all this darkness and hold it 
 to his breast and give himself to it? What might not hap- 
 pen to him? If he stretched and strained for ever he would 
 never be able to grasp it all, and to yield himself naked out 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 51 
 
 of his own hands into the unknown power! How could a 
 man be strong enough to take her, put his arms round her 
 and have her, and be sure he could conquer this awful un- 
 known next his heart? What was it then that she was, to 
 which he must also deliver himself up, and which at the 
 same time he must embrace, contain? 
 
 He was to be her husband. It was established so. And 
 he wanted it more than he wanted life, or anything. She 
 stood beside him in her silk dress, looking at him strangely, 
 so that a certain terror, horror took possession of him, be- 
 cause she was strange and impending and he had no choice. 
 He could not bear to meet her look from under her strange, 
 thick brows. 
 
 "Is it late?" she said. 
 
 He looked at his watch. 
 
 " No half-past eleven," he said. And he made an ex- 
 cuse to go into the kitchen, leaving her standing in the room 
 among the disorder and the drinking-glasses. 
 
 Tilly was seated beside the fire in the kitchen, her head 
 in her hands. She started up when he entered. 
 
 " Why haven't you gone to bed ? " he said. 
 
 "I thought I'd better stop an ? lock up an' do," she said. 
 Her agitation quietened him. He gave her some little order, 
 then returned, steadied now, almost ashamed, to his wife. 
 She stood a moment watching him, as he moved with averted 
 face. Then she said: 
 
 " You will be good to me, won't you ? " 
 
 She was small and girlish and terrible, with a queer, wide 
 look in her eyes. His heart leaped in him, in anguish of love 
 and desire, he went blindly to her and took her in his arms. 
 
 " I want to," he said as he drew her closer and closer 
 in. She was soothed by the stress of his embrace, and re- 
 mained quite still, relaxed against him, mingling in to him. 
 And he let himself go from past and future, was reduced to 
 the moment with her. In which he took her and was with 
 her and there was nothing beyond, they were together in an 
 elemental embrace beyond their superficial foreignness. But 
 in the morning he was uneasy again. She was still foreign 
 and unknown to him. Only, within the fear was pride, belief 
 in himself as mate for her. And she, everything forgotten 
 in her new hour of coming to life, radiated vigour and joy, 
 so that he quivered to touch her. 
 
 It made a great difference to him, marriage. Things be- 
 
52 THE RAINBOW 
 
 came so remote and of so little significance, as he knew the 
 powerful source of his life, his eyes opened on a new universe, 
 and he wondered in thinking of his triviality before. A new, 
 calm relationship showed to him in the things he saw, in the 
 cattle he used, the young wheat as it eddied in a wind. 
 
 And each time he returned home, he went steadily, expect- 
 antly, like a man who goes to a profound, unknown satis- 
 faction. At dinner-time, he appeared in the doorway, hang- 
 ing back a moment from entering, to see if she was there. 
 He saw her setting the plates on the white-scrubbed table. 
 Her arms were slim, she had a slim body and full skirts, she 
 had a dark, shapely head with closed-banded hair. Somehow 
 it was her head, so shapely and poignant, that revealed her 
 his woman to him. As she moved about clothed closely, 
 full-skirted and wearing her little silk apron, her dark hair 
 smoothly parted, her head revealed itself to him in all its 
 subtle, intrinsic beauty, and he knew she was his woman, 
 he knew her essence, that it was his to possess. And he 
 seemed to live thus in contact with her, in contact with the 
 unknown, the unaccountable and incalculable. 
 
 They did not take much notice of each other, consciously. 
 
 "I'm betimes," he said. 
 
 "Yes," she answered. 
 
 He turned to the dogs, or to the child if she were there. 
 The little Anna played about the farm, flitting constantly in 
 to call something to her mother, to fling her arms round her 
 mother's skirts, to be noticed, perhaps caressed, then, for- 
 getting, to slip out again. 
 
 Then Brangwen, talking to the child, or to the dog between 
 his knees, would be aware of his wife, as, in her tight, dark 
 bodice and her lace fichu, she was reaching up to the corner 
 cupboard. He realized with a sharp pang that she belonged 
 to him, and he to her. He realized that he lived by her. 
 Did he own her? Was she here for ever? Or might she go 
 away? She was not really his, it was not a real marriage, 
 this marriage between them. She might go away. He 
 did not feel like a master, husband, father of her children. 
 She belonged elsewhere. Any moment, she might be gone. 
 And he was ever drawn to her, drawn after her, with ever- 
 faging, ever-unsatisfied desire. He must always turn home, 
 wherever his steps were taking him, always to her, and he 
 could never quite reach her, he could never quite be satisfied, 
 never be at peace, because she might go away. 
 
THE? LIVE AT THE MAfcSH M 
 
 "At evening, he was glad. Then, when he had finished in 
 the yard, and come in and washed himself, when the child 
 was put to bed, he could sit on the other side of the fire with 
 his beer on the hob and his long white pipe in his fingers, 
 conscious of her there opposite him, as she worked at her 
 embroidery, or as she talked to him, and he was safe with 
 her now, till morning. She was curiously self-sufficient and 
 did not say very much. Occasionally she lifted her head, 
 her grey eyes shining with a strange light, that had nothing 
 to do with him or with this place, and would tell him about 
 herself. She seemed to be back again in the past, chiefly in 
 her childhood or her girlhood, with her father. She very 
 rarely talked of her first husband. But sometimes, all shin- 
 ing-eyed, she was back at her own home, telling him about 
 the riotous times, the trip to Paris with her father, tales of 
 the mad acts of the peasants when a burst of religious, self- 
 hurting fervour had passed over the country. 
 
 She would lift her head and say : 
 
 " When they brought the railway across the country, they 
 made afterwards smaller railways, of shorter width, to come 
 down to our town a hundred miles. When I was a girl, 
 Gisla, my German gouvernante, was very shocked and she 
 would not tell me. But I heard the servants talking. I re- 
 member, it was Pierre, the coachman. And my father, and 
 some of his friends, landowners, they had taken a wagon, 
 a whole railway wagon that you travel in " 
 
 " A railway-carriage," said Brangwen. 
 
 She laughed to herself. 
 
 "I know it was a great scandal: yes a whole wagon, 
 and they had girls, you know, filles, naked, all the wagon-full, 
 and so they came down to our village. They came through 
 villages of the Jews, and it was a great scandal. Can you 
 imagine? All the countryside! And my mother, she did 
 not like it. Gisla said to me, ' Madame, she must not know 
 that you have heard such things/ 
 
 " My mother, she used to cry, and she wished to beat my 
 father^ plainly beat him. He would say, when she cried 
 because he sold the forest, the wood, to jingle money in his 
 pocket, and go to Warsaw or Paris or Kiev, when she said 
 he must take back his word, he must not sell the forest, he 
 would stand and say, 'I know, I know, I have heard it all, 
 I have heard it all before. Tell me some new thing, 
 know, I know, I know/ Oh, but can you understand, I 
 
54 THE RAINBOW 
 
 loved him when he stood there under the door, saying only, 
 ' I know, I know, I know it all already/ She could 
 not change him, no, not if she killed herself for it. And she 
 could change everybody else, but him, she could not change 
 him " 
 
 Brangwen could not understand. He had pictures of a 
 cattle-truck full of naked girls riding from nowhere to no- 
 where, of Lydia laughing because her father made great 
 debts and said, "I know, I know"; of Jews running down 
 the street shouting in Yiddish, " Don't do it, don't do it," and 
 being cut down by demented peasants she called them 
 " cattle " whilst she looked on interested and even amused ; 
 of tutors and governesses and Paris and a convent. It was 
 too much for him. And there she sat, telling the tales to 
 the open space, not to him, arrogating a curious superiority 
 to him, a distance between them, something strange and 
 foreign and outside his life, talking, rattling, without rhyme 
 or reason, laughing when he was shocked or astounded, con- 
 demning nothing, confounding his mind and making the 
 whole world a chaos, without order or stability of any kind. 
 Then, when they went to bed, he knew that he had nothing 
 to do with her. She was back in her childhood, he was a 
 peasant, a serf, a servant, a lover, a paramour, a shadow, a 
 nothing. He lay still in amazement, staring at the room 
 he knew so well, and wondering whether it was really there, 
 the window, the chest of drawers, or whether it was merely 
 a figment in the atmosphere. And gradually he grew into 
 a raging fury against her. But because he was so much 
 amazed, and there was as yet such a distance between them, 
 and she was such an amazing thing to him, with all wonder 
 opening out behind her, he made no retaliation on her. 
 Only he lay still and wide-eyed with rage, inarticulate, not 
 understanding, but solid with hostility. 
 
 And he remained wrathful and distinct from her, un- 
 changed outwardly to her, but underneath a solid power of 
 antagonism to her. Of which she became gradually aware. 
 And it irritated her to be made aware of him as a separate 
 power. She lapsed into a sort of sombre exclusion, a curious 
 communion with mysterious powers, a sort of mystic, dark 
 state which drove him and the child nearly mad. He walked 
 about for days stiffened with resistance to her, stiff with a 
 will to destroy her as she was. Then suddenly, out of no- 
 where, there was connection between them again. It came 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 55 
 
 on him as he was working in the fields. The tension, the 
 bond, burst, and the passionate flood broke forward into a 
 tremendous, magnificent rush, so that he felt he could snap 
 off the trees as he passed, and create the world afresh. 
 
 And when he arrived home, there was no sign between 
 them. He waited and waited till she came. And as he 
 waited, his limbs seemed strong and splendid to him, his 
 hands seemed like passionate servants to him, goodly, he felt 
 a stupendous power in himself, of life, and of urgent, strong 
 blood. 
 
 She was sure to come at last, and touch him. Then he 
 burst into flame for her, and lost himself. They looked at 
 each other, a deep laugh at the bottom of their eyes, and he 
 went to take of her again, wholesale, mad to revel in the 
 inexhaustible wealth of her, to bury himself in the depths 
 of her in an inexhaustible exploration, she all the while 
 revelling in that he revelled in her, tossed all her secrets 
 aside and plunged to that which was secret to her as well, 
 whilst she quivered with fear and the last anguish of delight. 
 
 What did it matter who they were, whether they knew 
 each other or not ? 
 
 The hour passed away again, there was severance between 
 them, and rage and misery and bereavement for her, and 
 deposition and toiling at the mill with slaves for him. But 
 no matter. They had had their hour, and should it chime 
 again, they were ready for it, ready to renew the game at the 
 point where it was left off, on the edge of the outer darkness, 
 when the secrets within the woman are game for the man, 
 hunted doggedly, when the secrets of the woman are the 
 man's adventure, and they both give themselves to the ad- 
 venture. 
 
 She was with child, and there was again the silence and 
 distance between them. She did not want (him nor his 
 secrets nor his game, he was deposed, he was cast out. He 
 seethed with fury at the small, ugly-mouthed woman who 
 had nothing to do with him. Sometimes his anger broke 
 on her, but she did not cry. She turned on him like a tiger, 
 and there was battle. 
 
 He had to learn to contain himself again, and he hated it. 
 He hated her that she was not there for him. And he took 
 himself off, anywhere. 
 
 But an instinct of gratitude and a knowledge that she 
 would receive him back again, that later on she would be 
 
M THE RAINBOW 
 
 there for him again, prevented his straying very far. He 
 cautiously did not go too far. He knew she might lapse 
 into ignorance of him, lapse away from him, farther, farther, 
 farther, till she was lost to him. He had sense enough, pre- 
 monition enough in himself, to be aware of this and to meas- 
 ure himself accordingly. For he did not want to lose her: 
 he did not want her to lapse away. 
 
 Cold, he called her, selfish, only caring about herself, a 
 foreigner with a bad nature, caring really about nothing, 
 having no proper feelings at the bottom of her, and no proper 
 niceness. He raged, and piled up accusations that had some 
 measure of truth in them all. But a certain grace in him 
 forbade him from going too far. He knew, and he quivered 
 with rage and hatred, that she was all these vile things, 
 that she was everything vile and detestable. But he had grace 
 at the bottom of him, which told him that, above all things, 
 he did not want to lose her, he was not going to lose her. 
 
 So he kept some consideration for her, he preserved some 
 relationship. He went out more often, to the Red Lion 
 again, to escape the madness of sitting next to her when she 
 did not belong to him, when she was as absent as any woman 
 in indifference could be. He could not stay at home. So 
 he went to the Red Lion. And sometimes he got drunk. 
 But he preserved his measure, some things between them 
 he never forfeited. 
 
 A tormented look came into his eyes, as if something were 
 always dogging him. He glanced sharp and quick, he could 
 not bear to sit still doing nothing. He had to go out, to find 
 company, to give himself away there. For he had no other 
 outlet, he could not work to give himself out, he had not the 
 knowledge. 
 
 As the months of her pregnancy went on, she left him more 
 and more alone, she was more and more unaware of him, his 
 existence was annulled. And he felt bound down, bound, 
 unable to stir, beginning to go mad, ready to rave. For she 
 was quiet and polite, as if he did not exist, as one is quiet 
 and polite to a servant. 
 
 Nevertheless she was great with his child, it was his turn 
 to submit. She sat opposite him, sewing, her foreign face 
 inscrutable and indifferent. He felt he wanted to break her 
 into acknowledgment of him, into awareness of him. It 
 was insufferable that she had so obliterated him. He would 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 57 
 
 smash her into regarding him. He had a raging agony of 
 desire to do so. 
 
 But something bigger in him withheld him, kept him mo- 
 tionless. So he went out of the house for relief. Or he 
 turned to the little girl for her sympathy and her love, he 
 appealed with all his power to the small Anna. So soon 
 they were like lovers, father and child. 
 
 For he was afraid of his wife. As she sat there with bent 
 head, silent, working or reading, but so unutterably silent 
 that his heart seemed under the millstone of it, she became 
 herself like the upper millstone lying on him, crushing him, 
 as sometimes a heavy sky lies on the earth. 
 
 Yet he knew he could not tear her away from the heavy 
 obscurity into which she was merged. He must not try to 
 tear her into recognition of himself, and agreement with him- 
 self. It were disastrous, impious. So, let him rage as he 
 might, he must withhold himself. But his wrists trembled 
 and seemed mad, seemed as if they would burst. 
 
 When, in November, the leaves came beating against the 
 window shutters, with a lashing sound, he started, and his 
 eyes flickered with flame. The dog looked up at him, he 
 sunk his head to the fire. But his wife was startled. He 
 was aware of her listening. 
 
 " They blow up with a rattle," he said. 
 
 "What?" she asked. 
 
 "The leaves." 
 
 She sank away again. The strange leaves beating in the 
 wind on the wood had come nearer than she. The tension 
 in the room was overpowering, it was difficult for him to 
 move his head. He sat with every nerve, every vein, every 
 fibre of muscle in his body stretched on a tension. He felt 
 like a broken arch thrust sickeningly out from support. 
 For her response was gone, he thrust at nothing. And he 
 remained himself, he saved himself from crashing down into 
 nothingness, from being squandered into fragments, by sheer 
 tension, sheer backward resistance. 
 
 During the last months of her pregnancy, he went about 
 in a surcharged, imminent state that did not exhaust itself. 
 She was also depressed, and sometimes she cried. It needed 
 so much life to begin afresh, after she had lost so lavishly. 
 Sometimes she cried. Then he stood stiff, feeling his heart 
 would burst. For she did not want him, she did not want 
 
58 THE RAINBOW 
 
 even to be made aware of him. By the very puckering of 
 her face he knew that he must stand back, leave her intact, 
 alone. For it was the old grief come back in her, the old 
 loss, the pain of the old life, the dead husband, the dead 
 children. This was sacred to her, and he must not violate 
 her with his comfort. For what she wanted she would come 
 to him. He stood aloof with turgid heart. 
 
 He had to see her tears come, fall over her scarcely moving 
 face, that only puckered sometimes, down on to her breast, 
 that was so still, scarcely moving. And there was no noise, 
 save now and again, when, with a strange, somnambulant 
 movement, she took her handkerchief and wiped her face 
 and blew her nose, and went on with the noiseless weeping. 
 He knew that any offer of comfort from himself would be 
 worse than useless, hateful to her, jangling her. She must 
 cry. But it drove him insane. His heart was scalded, 
 his brain hurt in his head, he went away, out of the 
 house. 
 
 His great and chiefest source of solace was the child. 
 She had been at first aloof from him, reserved. However 
 friendly she might seem one day, the next she would have 
 lapsed to her original disregard of him, cold, detached, 
 at her distance. 
 
 The first morning after his marriage he had discovered it 
 would not be so easy with the child. At the break of dawn 
 he had started awake hearing a small voice outside the door 
 saying plaintively: 
 
 " Mother ! " 
 
 He rose and opened the door. She stood on the threshold 
 in her night-dress, as she had climbed out of bed, black eyes 
 staring round and hostile, her fair hair sticking out in a wild 
 fleece. The man and child confronted each other. 
 
 " I want my mother," she said, jealously accenting the 
 "my." 
 
 " Come on then," he said gently. 
 
 "Where's my mother?" 
 
 " She's here come on." 
 
 The child's eyes, staring at the man with ruffled hair and 
 beard, did not change. The mother's voice called softly. 
 The little bare feet entered the room with trepidation. 
 
 " Mother ! " 
 
 " Come, my dear." 
 
 The small bare feet approached swiftly. 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 59 
 
 "I wondered where you were/' came the plaintive voice. 
 The mother stretched out her arms. The child stood beside 
 the high bed. Brangwen lightly lifted the tiny girl, with an 
 " up-a-daisy," then took his own place in the bed again. 
 
 " Mother ! " cried the child sharply, as in anguish. 
 
 "What, my pet?" 
 
 Anna wriggled close into her mother's arms, clinging 
 tight, hiding from the fact of the man. Brangwen lay 
 still, and waited. There was a long silence. 
 
 Then suddenly, Anna looked round, as if she thought he 
 would be gone. She saw the face of the man lying upturned 
 to the ceiling. Her black eyes stared antagonistic from her 
 exquisite face, her arms clung tightly to her mother, afraid. 
 He did not move for some time, not knowing what to say. 
 His face was smooth and soft-skinned with love, his eyes full 
 of soft light. He looked at her, scarcely moving his head, 
 his eyes smiling. 
 
 "Have you just wakened up?" he said. 
 
 " Go away," she retorted, with a little darting forward of 
 the head, something like a viper. 
 
 " Nay," he answered, "" I'm not going. You can go." 
 
 "Go away," came the sharp little command. 
 
 " There's room for you," he said. 
 
 "You can't send your father from his own bed, my little 
 bird," said her mother, pleasantly. 
 
 The child glowered at him, miserable in her impotence. 
 
 " There's room for you as well," he said. " It's a big bed 
 enough." 
 
 She glowered without answering, then turned and clung to 
 her mother. She would not allow it. 
 
 During the day she asked her mother several times: 
 
 "When are we going home, mother?" 
 
 "We are at home, darling, we live here now. This is our 
 house, we live here with your father." 
 
 The child was forced to accept it. But she remained 
 against the man. As night came on, she asked : 
 
 "Where are you going to sleep, mother?" 
 
 "I sleep with the father now." 
 
 And when Brangwen came in, the child asked fiercely: 
 
 "Why do you sleep with my mother? My mother sleeps 
 with me," her voice quivering. 
 
 " You come as well, an' sleep with both of us," he coaxed. 
 
 " Mother ! " she cried, turning, appealing against him. 
 
60 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "But I must have a husband, darling. All women must 
 have a husband." 
 
 " And you like to have a father with your mother, don't 
 you?" said Brangwen. 
 
 Anna glowered at him. She seemed to cogitate. 
 
 "No," she cried fiercely at length, "no, I don't want." 
 And slowly her face puckered, she sobbed bitterly. He stood 
 and watched her, sorry. But there could be no altering it. 
 
 Which, when she knew, she became quiet. He was easy 
 with her, talking to her, taking her to see the live creatures, 
 bringing her the first chickens in his cap, taking her to 
 gather the eggs, letting her throw crusts to the horse. She 
 would easily accompany him, and take all he had to give, 
 but she remained neutral still. 
 
 She was curiously, incomprehensibly jealous* of her mother, 
 always anxiously concerned about her. If Brangwen drove 
 with his wife to Nottingham, Anna ran about happily 
 enough, or unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon 
 came on, there was only one cry "I want my mother, I 
 
 want my mother " and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that 
 
 soon had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child's 
 anguish was that her mother was gone, gone. 
 
 Yet as a rule, Anna seemed cold, resenting her mother, 
 critical of her. It was: 
 
 "I don't like you to do that, mother," or, "I don't like 
 you to say that." She was a sore problem to Brangwen and 
 to all the people at the Marsh. As a rule, however, she was 
 active, lightly flitting about the farmyard, only appearing 
 now and again to assure herself of her mother. Happy 
 she never seemed, but quick, sharp, absorbed, full of imagina- 
 tion and changeability. Tilly said she was bewitched. But 
 it did not matter so long as she did not cry. There was some- 
 thing heartrending about Anna's crying, her childish anguish 
 seemed so utter and so timeless, as if it were a thing of all 
 the ages. 
 
 She made playmates of the creatures of the farmyard, 
 talking to them, telling them the stories she had from her 
 mother, counselling them and correcting them. Brangwen 
 found her at the gate leading to the paddock and to the 
 duckpond. She was peering through the bars and shouting 
 to the stately white geese, that stood in a curving line: 
 
 "You're not to call at people when they want to come. 
 You must not do it," 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 61 
 
 The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face 
 and the fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and 
 they raised their heads and swayed off, producing the long, 
 can-canking, protesting noise of geese, rocking their ship- 
 like, beautiful white bodies in a line beyond the gate. 
 
 "You're naughty, you're naughty," cried Anna, tears of 
 dismay and vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her 
 slipper. 
 
 "Why, what are they doing?" said Brangwen. 
 
 " They won't let me come in," she said, turning her flushed 
 little face to him. 
 
 "Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to," and he 
 pushed open the gate for her. 
 
 She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey- 
 white geese standing monumental under the grey, cold 
 day. 
 
 " Go on," he said. 
 
 She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body 
 started convulsively at the sudden, derisive can-cank-ank of 
 the geese. A blankness spread over her. The geese trailed 
 away with uplifted heads under the low grey sky. 
 
 " They don't know you," said Brangwen. " You should 
 tell 'em what your name is." 
 
 "They're naughty to shout at me," she flashed. 
 
 "They think you don't live here," he said. 
 
 Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and imperi- 
 ously : 
 
 " My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because 
 Mr. Brangwen's my father now. He is f yes he is. And I 
 live here." 
 
 This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, with- 
 out knowing it herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish, 
 desolate moments, when it was good to creep up to something 
 big and warm, and bury her little self in his big, unlimited 
 being. Instinctively he was careful of her, careful to recog- 
 nize her and to give himself to her disposal. 
 
 She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a 
 childish, essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor 
 woman was such a servant. The child would not let the 
 serving-woman attend to her, do intimate things for her, not 
 for a long time. She treated her as one of an inferior race. 
 Brangwen did not like it. 
 
 "Why aren't you fond of Tilly?" he asked. 
 
62 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "Because because because she looks at me with her 
 eyes bent." 
 
 Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the 
 household, never as a person. 
 
 For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were forever 
 on the watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient, 
 spoiled by Tilly, was an easy blusterer. If for a few minutes 
 he upset the household with his noisy impatience, he found 
 at the end the child glowering at him with intense black 
 eyes, and she was sure to dart forward her little head, like a 
 serpent, with her biting: 
 
 " Go away." 
 
 " I'm not going away/' he shouted, irritated at last. " Go 
 yourself hustle stir thysen hop." And he pointed to 
 the door. The child backed away from him, pale with fear. 
 Then she gathered up courage, seeing him become patient. 
 
 " We don't live with you" she said, thrusting forward her 
 little head at him. " You you're you're a bomakle." 
 
 "A what? "he shouted. 
 
 Her voice wavered but it came. 
 
 "A bomakle." 
 
 "Ay, an' you're a comakle." 
 
 She meditated. Then she hissed forwards her head. 
 
 "I'm not." 
 
 "Not what?" 
 
 " A comakle." 
 
 " No more am I a bomakle." 
 
 He was really cross. 
 
 Other times she would say: 
 
 " My mother doesn't live here." 
 
 "Oh, ay?" 
 
 " I want her to go away." 
 
 " Then want's your portion," he replied laconically. 
 
 So they drew nearer together. He would take her with 
 him when he went out in the trap. The horse ready at the 
 gate, he came noisily into the house, which seemed quiet 
 and peaceful till he appeared to set everything awake. 
 
 " Now then, Topsy, pop into thy bonnet." 
 
 The chijd ,drew herself up, resenting the indignity of the 
 address. 
 
 " I can't fasten my bonnet myself," she said haughtily. 
 
 "Not man enough yet," he said, tying the ribbons under 
 Jier chin with clumsy fingers, 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 63 
 
 She held up her face to him. Her little bright-red lips 
 moved as he fumbled under her chin. 
 
 "You talk nonsents," she said, re-echoing one of his 
 phrases. 
 
 " That face shouts for th' pump," he said, and taking out 
 a big red handkerchief, that smelled of strong tobacco, began 
 wiping round her mouth. 
 
 " Is Kitty waiting for me ? " she asked. 
 
 " Ay," he said. " Let's finish wiping your face it'll pass 
 wi' a cat-lick." 
 
 She submitted prettily. Then, when he let her go, she 
 began to skip, with a curious flicking up of one leg behind 
 her. 
 
 " Now my young buck-rabbit," he said. " Slippy ! " 
 
 She came and was shaken into her coat, and the two set 
 off. She sat very close beside him in the gig, tucked tightly, 
 feeling his big body sway against her, very splendid. She 
 loved the rocking of the gig, when his big, live body swayed 
 upon her, against her. She laughed, a poignant little shrill 
 laugh, and her black eyes glowed. 
 
 She was curiously hard, and then passionately tender- 
 hearted. Her mother was ill, the child stole about on tip-toe 
 in the bedroom for hours, being nurse, and doing the thing 
 thoughtfully and diligently. Another day, her mother was 
 unhappy. Anna would stand with legs apart, glowering, bal- 
 ancing on the sides of her slippers. She laughed when the 
 goslings wriggled in Tilly's hand, as the pellets of food were 
 rammed down their throats with a skewer, she laughed nerv- 
 ously. She was hard and imperious with the animals, squand- 
 ering no love, running about amongst them like a cruel mis- 
 tress. 
 
 Summer came, and hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish 
 mite dancing about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more 
 than she loved her. 
 
 But always in the child was some anxious connection with 
 the mother. So long as Mrs. Brangwen was all right, the 
 little girl played about and took very little notice of her. 
 But corn-harvest went by, the autumn drew on, and the 
 mother, the later months of her pregnancy beginning, was 
 strange and detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, 
 the old, unhealthy uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility 
 came on the child again. If she went to the fields with her 
 father, then, instead of playing about carelessly, it was: 
 
64 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " I want to go home." 
 
 " Home, why tha's nobbut this minute come." 
 
 " I want to go home." 
 
 "What for? What ails thee?" 
 
 " I want my mother." 
 
 " Thy mother ! Thy mother none wants thee." 
 
 " I want to go home." 
 
 There would be tears in a moment. 
 
 "Can ter find t'road, then?" 
 
 And he watched her scudding, silent and intent, along the 
 hedge-bottom, at a steady, anxious pace, till she turned and 
 was gone through the gate-way. Then he saw her two fields 
 off, still pressing forward, small and urgent. His face was 
 clouded as he turned to plough up the stubble. 
 
 The year drew on, in the hedges the berries shone red and 
 twinkling above bare twigs, robins were seen, great droves 
 of birds dashed like spray from the fallow, rooks appeared, 
 black and flapping down to earth, the ground was cold as he 
 pulled* the turnips, the roads were churned deep in mud. 
 Then the turnips were pitted and work was slack. 
 
 Inside the house it was dark, and quiet. The child flitted 
 uneasily round, and now and again came her plaintive, 
 startled cry: 
 
 "Mother!" 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen was heavy and unresponsive, tired, lapsed 
 back. Brangwen went on working out of doors. 
 
 At evening, when he came in to milk, the child would run 
 behind him. Then, in the cosy cow-sheds, with the doors 
 shut and the air looking warm by the light of the hanging 
 lantern, above the branching horns of the cows, she would 
 stand watching his hands squeezing rhythmically the teats 
 of the placid beast, watch the froth and the leaping squirt of 
 milk, watch his hand sometimes rubbing slowly, understand- 
 ingly, upon a hanging udder. So they kept each other com- 
 pany, but at a distance, rarely speaking. 
 
 The darkest days of the year came on, the child was fret- 
 ful, sighing as if some oppression were on her, running hither 
 and thither without relief. And Brangwen went about at 
 his work, heavy, his heart heavy as the sodden earth. 
 
 The winter nights fell early, the lamp was lighted before 
 tea-time, the shutters were closed, they were all shut into 
 the room with the tension and stress. Mrs. Brangwen went 
 early to bed, Anna playing on the floor beside her. Brang- 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 65 
 
 wen sat in the emptiness of the downstairs room, smoking, 
 scarcely conscious even of his own misery. And very often he 
 went out to escape it. 
 
 Christmas passed, the wet, drenched, cold days of January 
 recurred monotonously, with now and then a brilliance of 
 blue flashing in, when Brangwen went out into a morning 
 like crystal, when every sound rang again, and the birds 
 were many and sudden and brusque in the hedges. Then 
 an elation came over him in spite of everything, whether his 
 wife were strange or sad, or whether he craved for her to be 
 with him, it did not matter, the air rang with clear noises, 
 the sky was like crystal, like a bell, and the earth was hard. 
 Then he worked and was happy, his eyes shining, his cheeks 
 flushed. And the zest of life was strong in him. 
 
 The birds pecked busily round him, the horses were fresh 
 and ready, the bare branches of the trees flung themselves 
 up like a man yawning, taut with energy, the twigs radiated 
 off into the clear light. He was alive and full of zest for it 
 all. And if his wife were heavy, separated from him, extin- 
 guished, then, let her be, let him remain himself. Things 
 would be as they would be. Meanwhile he heard the ringing 
 crow of a cockerel in the distance, he saw the pale shell of 
 the moon effaced on a blue sky. 
 
 So he shouted to the horses, and was happy. If, driving 
 into Ilkeston, a fresh young woman were going in to do her 
 shopping, he hailed her, and reined in his horse, and picked 
 her up. Then he was glad to have her near him, his eyes 
 shone, his voice, laughing, teasing in a warm fashion, made 
 the poise of her head more beautiful, her blood ran quicker. 
 They were both stimulated, the morning was fine. 
 
 What did it matter that, at the bottom of his heart, was care 
 and pain? It was at the bottom, let it stop at the bottom. 
 His wife, her suffering, her coming pain well, it must be 
 so. She suffered, but he was out of doors, full in life, and it 
 would be ridiculous, indecent, to pull a long face and to insist 
 on being miserable. He was happy, this morning, driving to 
 town, with the hoofs of the horse spanking the hard earth. 
 Well he was happy, if half the world were weeping at the 
 funeral of the other half. And it was a jolly girl sitting be- 
 side him. And Woman was immortal, whatever happened, 
 whoever turned towards death. Let the misery come when it 
 could not be resisted. 
 
 The evening arrived later very beautiful, with a rosy flush 
 
66 THE RAINBOW 
 
 hovering above the sunset, and passing away into violet and 
 lavender, with turquoise green north and south in the sky, 
 and in the east, a great, yellow moon hanging heavy and 
 radiant. It was magnificent to walk between the sunset and 
 the moon, on a road where little holly trees thrust black into 
 the rose and lavender, and starlings flickered in droves across 
 the light. But what was the end of the journey? The 
 pain came right enough, later on, when his heart and his 
 feet were heavy, his brain dead, his life stopped. 
 
 One afternoon, the pains began, Mrs. Brangwen was put to 
 bed, the midwife came. 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 
 was back in his youth, a boy, haunted by the sound of the 
 owls, waking up his brother to speak to him. And his mind 
 drifted away to the birds, their solemn, dignified faces, their 
 flight so soft and broad-winged. And then to the birds his 
 brother had shot, fluffy, dust-coloured, dead heaps of soft- 
 ness with faces absurdly asleep. It was a queer thing, a 
 dead owl. 
 
 He lifted his cup to his lips, he watched the child with the 
 beads. But his mind was occupied with owls, and the at- 
 mosphere of his boyhood, with his brothers and sisters. Else- 
 where, fundamental, he was with his wife in labour, the child 
 was being brought forth out of their one flesh. He and 
 she, one flesh, out of which life must be put forth. The rent 
 was not in his body, but it was of his body. On her the 
 blows fell, but the quiver ran through to him, to his last 
 fibre. She must be torn asunder for life to come forth, yet 
 still they were one flesh, and still, from further back, the 
 life came out of him to her, and still he was the unbroken 
 that has the broken rock in its arms, their flesh was one rock 
 from which the life gushed, out of her who was smitten and 
 rent, from him who quivered and yielded. 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 67 
 
 He went upstairs to her. As he came to the bedside she 
 spoke to him in Polish. 
 
 "Is it very bad?" he asked. 
 
 She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the 
 effort to understand another language, the weariness of hear- 
 ing him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he 
 stood there fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew 
 something of him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. 
 She closed her eyes. 
 
 He turned away, white to the gills. 
 
 " It's not so very bad/' said the midwife. 
 
 He knew he was a strain on his wife. He went down-stairs. 
 
 The child glanced up at him, frightened. 
 
 "I want my mother," she quavered. 
 
 " Ay, but she's badly," he said mildly, unheeding. 
 
 She looked at him with lost, frightened eyes. 
 
 " Has she got a headache ? " 
 
 " No she's going to have a baby." 
 
 The child looked round. He was unaware of her. She 
 was alone again in terror. 
 
 " I want my mother," came the cry of panic. 
 
 " Let Tilly undress you," he said. " You're tired." 
 
 There was another silence. Again came the cry of labour. 
 
 " I want my mother," rang automatically from the wincing, 
 panic-stricken child, that felt cut off and lost in a horror of 
 desolation. 
 
 Tilly came forward, her heart wrung. 
 
 " Come an' let me undress her then, pet-lamb," she croonefl. 
 "You s'll have your mother in th' mornin', don't you fret, 
 my duckie; never mind, angel." 
 
 But Anna stood upon the sofa, her back to the wall. 
 
 "I want my mother," she cried, her little face quivering, 
 and the great tears of childish, utter anguish falling. 
 
 " She's poorly, my lamb, she's poorly to-night, but she'll 
 be better by mornin'. Oh, don't cry, don't cry, love, she 
 doesn't want you to cry, precious little heart, no, she doesn't." 
 
 Tilly took gently hold of the child's skirts. Anna snatched 
 back her dress, and cried, in a little hysteria : 
 
 "No, you're not to undress me I want my mother," 
 and her child's face was running with grief and tears, her 
 body shaken. 
 
 "Oh, but let Tilly undress you. Let Tilly undress you, 
 
6$ THE RAINBOW 
 
 who loves you, don't be wilful to-night. Mother's poorly, 
 she doesn't want you to cry." 
 
 The child sobbed distractedly, she could not hear. 
 
 " I want my mother," she wept. 
 
 " When you're undressed, you s'll go up to see your mother 
 when you're undressed, pet, when you've let Tilly undress 
 you, when you're a little jewel in your nightie, love. Oh, 
 don't you cry, don't you " 
 
 Brangwen sat stiff in his chair. He felt his brain going 
 tighter. He crossed over the room, aware only of the madden- 
 ing sobbing. 
 
 " Don't make a noise," he said. 
 
 And a new fear shook the child from the sound of his voice. 
 She cried mechanically, her eyes looking watchful through her 
 tears, in terror, alert to what might happen. 
 
 "I want my mother," quavered the sobbing, blind 
 voice. 
 
 A shiver of irritation went over the man's limbs. It was 
 the utter, persistent unreason, the maddening blindness of 
 the voice and the crying. 
 
 "You must come and be undressed," he said, in a quiet 
 voice that was thin with anger. 
 
 And he reached his hand and grasped her. He felt her 
 body catch in a convulsive sob. But he too was blind, and 
 intent, irritated into mechanical action. He began to un- 
 fasten her little apron. She would have shrunk from him, 
 but could not. So her small body remained in his grasp, 
 while he fumbled at the little buttons and tapes, unthinking, 
 intent, unaware of anything but the irritation of her. Her 
 body was held taut and resistant, he pushed off the little 
 dress and the petticoats, revealing the white arms. She 
 kept stiff, overpowered, violated, he went on with his task. 
 And all the while she sobbed, choking: 
 
 " I want my mother." 
 
 He was unheedingly silent, his face stiff. The child was 
 now incapable of understanding, she had become a little, 
 mechanical thing of fixed will. She wept, her body con- 
 vulsed, her voice repeating the same cry. 
 
 " Eh, dear o' me ! " cried Tilly, becoming distracted herself. 
 Brangwen, slow, clumsy, blind, intent, got off all the little 
 garments, and stood the child naked in its shift upon the 
 sofa. 
 
 "Where's her nightie?" he asked. 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MAfcSH 69 
 
 Tilly brought it, and he put it on her. Anna did not move 
 her limbs to his desire. He had to push them into place. 
 She stood, with fixed, blind will, resistant, a small, con- 
 vulsed, unchangeable thing weeping ever and repeating the 
 same phrase. He lifted one foot after the other, pulled off 
 slippers and socks. She was ready. 
 
 " Do you want a drink ? " he asked. 
 
 She did not change. Unheeding, uncaring, she stood on 
 the sofa, standing back, alone, her hands shut and half 
 lifted, her face, all tears, raised and blind. And through the 
 sobbing and choking came the broken : 
 
 "I want my mother ." 
 
 " Do you want a drink ? " he said again. 
 
 There was no answer. He lifted the stiff, denying body 
 between his hands. Its stiff blindness made a flash of rage 
 go through him. He would like to break it. 
 
 He set the child on his knee, and sat again in his chair 
 beside the fire, the wet, sobbing, inarticulate noise going 
 on near his ear, the child sitting stiff, not yielding to him or 
 anything, not aware. 
 
 A new degree of anger came over him. "What did it all 
 matter? What did it matter if the mother talked Polish 
 and cried in labour, if this child were stiff with resistance, 
 and crying? Why take it to heart? Let the mother cry 
 in labour, let the child cry in resistance, since they would 
 do so. Why should he fight against it, why resist? Let 
 it be, if it were so. Let them be as they were, if they in- 
 sisted. 
 
 And in a daze he sat, offering no fight. The child cried 
 on, the minutes ticked away, a sort of torpor was on him. 
 
 It was some little time before he came to, and turned to 
 attend to the child. He was shocked by her little wet, blinded 
 face. A bit dazed, he pushed back the wet hair. Like a liv- 
 ing statue of grief, her blind face cried on. 
 
 " Nay/' he said, " not as bad as that. It's not as bad as 
 that, Anna, my child. Come, what are you crying for so 
 much? Come, stop now, it'll make you sick. I wipe you 
 dry, don't wet your face any more. Don't cry any more 
 wet tears, don't, it's better not to. Don't cry it's not so 
 bad as all that. Hush now, hush let it be enough." 
 
 His voice was queer and distant and calm. He looked at 
 the child. She was beside herself now. He wanted her to 
 stop, he wanted it all to stop, to become natural. 
 
70 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Come," he said, rising to turn away, " we'll go an' sup- 
 per-lip the beast." 
 
 He took a big shawl, folded her round, and went out into 
 the kitchen for the lantern. 
 
 " You're never taking the child out, of a night like this," 
 said Tilly. 
 
 "Ay, it'll quieten her," he answered. 
 
 It was raining. The child was suddenly still, shocked, 
 finding the rain on its face, the darkness. 
 
 "We'll just give the cows their something-to-eat, afore 
 they go to bed," Brangwen was saying to her, holding her 
 close and sure. 
 
 There was a trickling of water into the butt, a burst of 
 rain-drops sputtering on to her shawl, and the light of the 
 lantern swinging, flashing on a wet pavement and the base 
 of a wet wall. Otherwise it was black darkness : one breathed 
 darkness. 
 
 He opened the doors, upper and lower, and they entered 
 into the high, dry barn, that smelled warm even if it were 
 not warm. He hung the lantern on the nail and shut the 
 door. They were in another world now. The light shed 
 softly on the timbered barn, on the white-washed walls, and 
 the great heap of hay ; instruments cast their shadows largely, 
 a ladder rose to the dark arch of a loft. Outside there was 
 the driving rain, inside, the softly-illuminated stillness and 
 calmness of the barn. 
 
 Holding the child on one arm, he set about preparing the 
 food for the cows, filling a pan with chopped hay and brewer's 
 grains and a little meal. The child, all wonder, watched 
 what he did. A new being was created in her for the new 
 conditions. Sometimes, a little spasm, eddying from the 
 bygone storm of sobbing, shook her small body. Her eyes 
 were wide and wondering, pathetic. She was silent, quite 
 still. 
 
 In a sort of dream, his heart sunk to the bottom, leaving 
 the surface of him still, quite still, he rose with the panful 
 of food, carefully balancing the child on one arm, the pan in 
 the other hand. The silky fringe of the shawl swayed softly, 
 grains and hay trickled to the floor; he went along a dimly- 
 lit passage behind the mangers, where the horns of the cows 
 pricked out of the obscurity. The child shrank, he balanced 
 stiffly, rested the pan on the manger wall, and tipped out the 
 food, half to this cow, half to the next. There was a noise 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 71 
 
 of chains running, as the cows lifted or dropped their heads 
 sharply; then a contented, soothing sound, a long snuffing 
 as the beasts ate in silence. 
 
 The journey had to be performed several times. There 
 was the rhythmic sound of the shovel in the barn, then the 
 man returned walking stiffly between the two weights, the 
 face of the child peering out from the shawl. Then the next 
 time, as he stooped, she freed her arm and put it round his 
 neck, clinging soft and warm, making all easier. 
 
 The beasts fed, he dropped the pan and sat down on a box, 
 to arrange the child. 
 
 "Will the cows go to sleep now?" she said, catching her 
 breath as she spoke. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Will they eat all their stuff up first?" 
 
 "Yes. Hark at them." 
 
 And the two sat still listening to the snuffing and breathing 
 of cows feeding in the sheds communicating with this small 
 barn. The lantern shed a soft, steady light from one wall. 
 All outside was still in the rain. He looked down at the 
 silky folds of the paisley shawl. It reminded him of his 
 mother. She used to go to church in it. He was hack again 
 in the old irresponsibility and security, a boy at home. 
 
 The two sat very quiet. His mind, in a sort of trance, 
 seemed to become more and more vague. He held the child 
 close to him. A quivering little shudder, re-echoing from 
 her sobbing, went down her limbs. He held her closer. 
 Gradually she relaxed, the eyelids began to sink over her 
 dark, watchful eyes. As she sank to sleep, his mind became 
 blank. 
 
 When he came to, as if from sleep, he seemed to be sitting 
 in a timeless stillness. What was he listening for? He 
 seemed to be listening for some sound a long way off, from 
 beyond life. He remembered his wife. He must go back to 
 her. The child was asleep, the eyelids not quite shut, show- 
 ing a slight film of black pupil between. Why did she not 
 shut her eyes ? Her mouth was also a little open. 
 
 He rose quickly and went back to the house. 
 
 "Is she asleep?" whispered Tilly. 
 
 He nodded. The servant-woman came to look at the child 
 who slept in the shawl, with cheeks flushed hot and red, and 
 a whiteness, a wanness round the eyes. 
 
 " God-a-mercy ! " whispered Tilly, shaking her head." 
 
73 THE RAINBOJ? 
 
 He pushed off Ms boots and went upstairs with the child. 
 He became aware of the anxiety grasped tight at his heart, 
 because of his wife. But he remained still. The house was 
 silent save for the wind outside, and the noisy trickling and 
 splattering of water in the water-butts. There was a slit of 
 light under his wife's door. 
 
 He put the child into bed wrapped as she was in the shawl, 
 for the sheets would be cold. Then he was afraid that she 
 might not be able to move her arms, so he loosened her. The 
 black eyes opened, rested on him vacantly, sank shut again. 
 He covered her up. The last little quiver from the sobbing 
 shook her breathing. 
 
 This was his room, the room he had had before he married. 
 It was familiar. He remembered what it was to be a young 
 man, untouched. 
 
 He remained suspended. The child slept, pushing her 
 email fists from the shawl. He could tell the woman her 
 child was asleep. But he must go to the other landing. He 
 started. There was the sound of the owls the moaning 
 of the woman. What an uncanny sound ! It was not human 
 at least to a man. 
 
 He went down to her room, entering softly. She was lying 
 still, with eyes shut, pale, tired. His heart leapt, fearing 
 she was dead. Yet he knew perfectly well she was not. He 
 saw the way her hair went loose over her temples, her mouth 
 was shut with suffering in a sort of grin. She was beautiful 
 to him but it was not human. He had a dread of her as 
 she lay there. What had she to do with him ? She was other 
 than himself. 
 
 Something made him go and touch her ringers that were 
 still grasped on the sheet. Her brown-grey eyes opened and 
 looked at him. She did not know him as himself. But she 
 knew him as the man. She looked at him as a woman 
 in childbirth looks at the man who begot the child in her: 
 an impersonal look, in the extreme hour, female to male. 
 Her eyes closed again. A great, scalding peace went over him, 
 burning his heart and his entrails, passing off into the 
 infinite. 
 
 When her pains began afresh, tearing her, he turned aside, 
 and could not look. But his heart in torture was at peace, 
 his bowels were glad. He went downstairs, and to the door, 
 outside, lifted his face to the rain, and felt the darkness 
 striking unseen and steadily upon him. 
 
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH 73 
 
 The swift, unseen threshing of the night upon him silenced 
 him and he was overcome. He turned away indoors, humbly. 
 There was the infinite world, eternal, unchanging, as well as 
 the world of life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 
 
 TOM BRANGWEN never loved his own son as he loved 
 his step-child Anna. When they told him it was a 
 boy, he had a thrill of pleasure. He liked the con- 
 firmation of fatherhood. It gave him satisfaction to 
 know he had a son. But he felt not very much outgoing to 
 the baby itself. He was its father, that was enough. 
 
 He was glad that his wife was mother of his child. She 
 was serene, a little bit shadowy, as if she were transplanted. 
 In the birth of the child she seemed to lose connection with 
 her former self. She became now really English, really Mrs. 
 Brangwen. Her vitality, however, seemed lowered. 
 
 She was still, to Brangwen, immeasurably beautiful. She 
 was still passionate, with a flame of being. But the flame 
 was not robust and present. Her eyes shone, her face glowed 
 for him, but like some flower opened in the shade, that could 
 not bear the full light. She loved the baby. But even this, 
 with a sort of dimness, a faint absence about her, a shadowi- 
 ness even in her mother-love. When Brangwen saw her 
 nursing his child, happy, absorbed in it, a pain went over 
 him like a thin flame. For he perceived how he must subdue 
 himself in his approach to her. And he wanted again the 
 robust, moral exchange of love and passion such as he had 
 had at first with her, at one time and another, when they 
 were matched at their highest intensity. This was the one 
 experience for him now. And he wanted it, always, with re- 
 morseless craving. 
 
 She came to him again, with the same lifting her mouth as 
 had driven him almost mad with trammelled passion at first. 
 She came to him again, and, his heart delirious in delight 
 and readiness, he took her. And it was almost as before. 
 
 Perhaps it was quite as before. At any rate, it made him 
 know perfection, it established in him a constant, eternal 
 knowledge. 
 
 74 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 75 
 
 . But it died down before he wanted it to die down. She 
 was finished, she could take no more. And he was not ex- 
 hausted, he wanted to go on. But it could not be. 
 : So he had to begin the bitter leeson, to abate himself, to 
 take less than he wanted. For she was Woman to him, all 
 other women were her shadows. For she had satisfied him. 
 And he wanted it to go on. And it could not. However 
 he raged, and, filled with suppression that became hot and 
 bitter, hated her in his soul that she did not want him, how- 
 ever he had mad outbursts, and drank and made ugly scenes, 
 still he knew, he was only kicking against the pricks. It was 
 not, he had to learn, that she would not want him enough, 
 as much as he demanded that she should want him. It was 
 that she could not. She could only want him in her own way, 
 and to her own measure. And she had spent much life before 
 he found her as she was, the woman who could take him and 
 give him fulfilment. She had taken him and given him fulfil- 
 ment. She still would do so, in her own times and ways. 
 But he must control himself, measure himself to her. 
 
 He wanted to give her all his love, all his passion, all his 
 essential energy. But it could not be. He must find other 
 things than her, other centres of living. She sat close and 
 impregnable with the child. And he was jealous of the child. 
 
 But he loved her, and time came to give some sort of course 
 to his troublesome current of life, so that it did not foam and 
 flood and make misery. He formed another centre of love in 
 her child, Anna. Gradually a part of his stream of life was 
 diverted to the child, relieving the main flood to his wife. 
 Also he sought the company of men, he drank heavily now and 
 again. 
 
 The child ceased to have so much anxiety for her mother 
 after the baby came. Seeing the mother with the baby boy, 
 delighted and serene and secure, Anna was at first puzzled, 
 then gradually she became indignant, and at last her little life 
 settled on its own swivel, she was no more strained and dis- 
 torted to support her mother. She became more childish, not 
 so abnormal, not charged with cares she could not understand. 
 The charge of the mother, the satisfying of the mother, had 
 devolved elsewhere than on her. Gradually the child was 
 freed. She became an independent, forgetful little soul, 
 loving from her own centre. 
 
 Of her own choice, she then loved Brangwen most, or most 
 obviously. For these two made a little life together, they 
 
76 THE RAINBOW 
 
 had a joint activity. It amused him, at evening, to teach her 
 to count, or to say her letters. He remembered for her all 
 the little nursery rhymes and childish songs that lay forgotten 
 at the bottom of his brain. 
 
 At first she thought them rubbish. But he laughed, and 
 she laughed. They became to her a huge joke. Old King 
 Cole she thought was Brangwen. Mother Hubbard was Tilly, 
 her mother was the old woman who lived in a shoe. It was a 
 huge, it was a frantic delight to the child, this nonsense, after 
 her years with her mother, after the poignant folk-tales she had 
 had from her mother, which always troubled and mystified 
 her soul. 
 
 She shared a sort of recklessness with her father, a com- 
 plete, chosen carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in 
 it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and 
 defiant with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark- 
 haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called 
 him the blackbird. 
 
 "Hallo," Brangwen would cry, starting as he heard the 
 wail of the child announcing it wanted to be taken out of 
 the cradle, " there's the blackbird tuning up." 
 
 " The blackbird's singing," Anna would shout with delight, 
 " the blackbird's singing." 
 
 " When the pie was opened," Brangwen shouted in his bawl- 
 ing bass voice, going over to the cradle, "the bird began to 
 sing." 
 
 "Wasn't it a dainty dish to set before a king?" cried 
 Anna, her eyes flashing with joy as she uttered the cryptic 
 words, looking at Brangwen for confirmation. He sat down 
 with the baby, saying loudly : 
 
 " Sing up, my lad, sing up." 
 
 And the baby cried loudly, and Anna shouted lustily, danc- 
 ing in wild bliss : 
 
 " Sing a song of sixpence 
 Pocketful of posies, 
 
 AnstUn I An /-,!> n I ' 
 
 Ascha ! Ascha ! 
 
 Then she stopped suddenly in silence and looked at Brang- 
 wen again, her eyes flashing, as she shouted loudly and de- 
 lightedly : 
 
 " 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. 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 77 
 
 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 domi- 
 neered 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, en- 
 tertaining the farm-hands and Tilly and the servant-girl, whir- 
 ring on and never ceasing. 
 
 She loved driving with Brangwen in the trap. Then, sit- 
 ting 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, morning 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 p'ublic-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 ob- 
 sequious 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 f awce little thing," the landlady would 
 say to Brangwen. 
 
 " Ay," he answered, not encouraging comments on the child. 
 
78 THE RAINBOW 
 
 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 morn- 
 ing, 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 im- 
 possible. 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 bought 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. Farm- 
 ers, 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 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 79 
 
 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 dark, ancient eating-house in the Bridlesmith- 
 Gate. They had cow's-tail soup, and meat and cabbage and 
 potatoes. Other men, other people, came into the dark, 
 vaulted place, to eat. Anna was wide-eyed and silent with 
 wonder. 
 
 Then they went into the big market, into the corn ex- 
 change, then to shops. He bought her a little book off a 
 stall. He loved buying things, odd things that he thought 
 would be useful. Then they went to the Black Swan, and 
 she drank milk and he brandy, and they harnessed the horse 
 and drove off, up the Derby Road. 
 
 She was tired out with wonder and marvelling. But the 
 next day, when she thought of it, she skipped, flipping her 
 leg in the odd dance she did, and talked the whole time of 
 what had happened to her, of what she had seen. It lasted 
 her all the week. And the next Saturday she was eager to 
 go again. 
 
 She became a familiar figure in the cattle-market, sitting 
 waiting in the little booth. But she liked best to go to Derby. 
 There her father had more friends. And she liked the 
 
80 THE RAINBOW 
 
 familiarity of the smaller town, the nearness of the river, the 
 strangeness that did not frighten her, it was so much smaller. 
 She liked the covered-in market, and the old women. She 
 liked the George Inn, where her father put up. The landlord 
 was Brangwen's old friend, and Anna was made much of. She 
 sat many a day in the cosy parlour talking to Mr. Wigginton, 
 a fat man with red hair, the landlord. And when the farmers 
 all gathered at twelve o'clock for dinner, she was a little 
 heroine. 
 
 At first she would only glower or hiss at these strange men 
 with their uncouth accent. But they were good-humoured. 
 She was a little oddity, with her fierce, fair hair like spun 
 glass sticking out in a flamy halo round the apple-blossom 
 face and the black eyes, and the men liked an oddity. She 
 kindled their attention. 
 
 She was very angry because Marriott, a gentleman-farmer 
 from Ambergate, called her the little pole-cat. 
 
 " Why, you're a pole-cat," he said to her. 
 
 " I'm not," she flashed. 
 
 " You are. That's just how a pole-cat goes." 
 
 She thought about it. 
 
 " Well, you're you're " she began. 
 
 "I'm what?" 
 
 She looked him up and down. 
 
 " You're a bow-leg man." 
 
 Which he was. There was a roar of laughter. They loved 
 her that she was indomitable. 
 
 " Ah," said Marriott. " Only a pole-cat says that." 
 
 " Well, I am a, pole-cat," she flamed. 
 
 There was another roar of laughter from the men. 
 
 They loved to tease her. 
 
 " Well, me little maid," Braithwaite would say to her, " an' 
 how's th' lamb's wool?" 
 
 He gave a tug at a glistening, pale piece of her hair. 
 
 " It's not lamb's wool," said Anna, indignantly putting 
 back her offended lock. 
 
 " Why, what'st ca' it then ? " 
 
 "It's hair." 
 
 " Hair ! Wheriver dun they rear that sort ? " 
 
 " Wheriver dun they ? " she asked, in dialect, her curiosity 
 overcoming her. 
 
 Instead of answering he shouted with joy. It was the 
 triumph, to make her speak dialect. 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY SI 
 
 She had one enemy, the man they called Nut-Nat, or Nat- 
 Nut, a cretin, with inturned feet, who came flap-lapping along, 
 shoulder jerking up at every step. This poor creature sold 
 nuts in the public-houses where he was known. He had no 
 roof to his mouth, and the men used to mock his speech. 
 
 The first time he came into the George when Anna was 
 there, she asked, after he had gone, her eyes very round : 
 
 " Why does he do that when he walks ? " 
 
 ">E canna 'elp 'isself, Duckie, it's th' make o' th 5 fellow." 
 
 She thought about it, then she laughed nervously. And 
 then she bethought herself, her cheeks flushed, and she cried : 
 
 " He's a horrid man." 
 
 "Nay, he's non horrid; he canna help it if he wor struck 
 that road." 
 
 But when poor Nat came wambling in again, she slid away. 
 And she would not eat his nuts, if the men bought them for 
 her. 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 Brang- 
 wen went down as a friend to her cottage, which was in Derby- 
 shire, leaving his wife and family for a day or two, then re- 
 turning to them. And no-one dared gainsay him, for he was a 
 strong-willed, direct man, and he said he was a friend of this 
 widow. 
 
 One day Brangwen met his brother on the station. 
 
 " Where are you going to, then ? " asked the younger brother. 
 
 " I'm going down to Wirksworth." 
 
 " You've got friends down there, I'm told." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I s'll have to be lookin' in when I'm down that road." 
 
 " You please yourself." 
 
 Tom Brangwen was so curious about the woman that the 
 next time he was in Wirksworth he asked for her house. 
 
 He found a beautiful cottage on the steep side of a hill, 
 looking clean over the town, that lay in the bottom of the 
 basin, and away at the old quarries on the opposite side of 
 the space. Mrs. Forbes was in the garden. She was a tall 
 
82 THE RAINBOW 
 
 woman with white hair. She came up the path taking off her 
 thick gloves, laying down her shears. It was autumn. She 
 wore a wide-brimmed hat. 
 
 Brangwen blushed to the roots of his hair, and did not 
 know what to say. 
 
 " I thought I might look in/' he said, " knowing you were 
 friends of my brother's. I had to come to Wirksworth." 
 
 She saw at once that he was a Brangwen. 
 
 " Will you come in ? " she said. " My father is lying down." 
 
 She took him into a drawing-room, full of books, with a 
 piano and a violin-stand. And they talked, she simply and 
 easily. She was full of dignity. The room was of a kind 
 Brangwen had never known; the atmosphere seemed open 
 and spacious, like a mountain-top to him. 
 
 " Does my brother like reading ? " he asked. 
 
 "Some things. He has been reading Herbert Spencer. 
 And we read Browning sometimes." 
 
 Brangwen was full of admiration, deep thrilling, almost 
 reverential admiration. He looked at her with lit-up eyes 
 when she said, " we read." At last he burst out, looking round 
 the room : 
 
 " I didn't know our Alfred was this way inclined." 
 
 "He is quite an unusual man." 
 
 He looked at her in amazement. She evidently had a 
 new idea of his brother: she evidently appreciated him. He 
 looked again at the woman. She was about forty, straight, 
 rather hard, a curious, separate creature. Himself, he was not 
 in love with her, there was something chilling about her. But 
 he was filled with boundless admiration. 
 
 At tea-time he was introduced to her father, an invalid who 
 had to be helped about, but who was ruddy and well-favoured, 
 with snowy hair and watery blue eyes, and a courtly naive man- 
 ner that again was new and strange to Brangwen, so suave, so 
 merry, so innocent. 
 
 His brother was this woman's lover ! It was too amazing. 
 Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way 
 of life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the 
 mud. More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to this 
 visionary polite world. 
 
 He was well off. He was as well off as Alfred, who could 
 not have above six hundred a year, all told. He himself made 
 about four hundred, and could make more. His investments 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 8$ 
 
 got better every day. Why did he not do something? His 
 wife was a lady also. 
 
 But when he got to the Marsh, he realized how fixed every- 
 thing was, how the other form of life was beyond him, and he 
 regretted for the first time that he had succeeded to the farm. 
 He felt a prisoner, sitting safe and easy and unadventuroua. 
 He might, with risk, have done more with himself. He could 
 neither read Browning nor Herbert Spencer, nor have access 
 to such a room as Mrs. Forbes's. All that form of life was 
 outside him. 
 
 But then, he said he did not want it. The excitement of 
 the visit began to pass off. The next day he was himself, 
 and if he thought of the other woman, there was something 
 about her and her place that he did not like, something cold, 
 something alien, as if she were not a woman, but an inhuman 
 being who used up human life for cold, unliving purposes. 
 
 The evening came on, he played with Anna, and then sat 
 alone with his own wife. She was sewing. He sat very still, 
 smoking, perturbed. He was aware of his wife's quiet figure, 
 and quiet dark head bent over her needle. It was too quiet 
 for him. It was too peaceful. He wanted to smash the walls 
 down, and let the night in, so that his wife should not be eo 
 secure and quiet, sitting there. He wished the air were not 
 so close and narrow. His wife was obliterated from him, she 
 was in her own world, quiet, secure, unnoticed, unnoticing. 
 He was shut down by her. 
 
 He rose to go out. He could not sit still any longer. He 
 must get out of this oppressive, shut-down, woman-haunt. 
 
 His wife lifted her head and looked at him. 
 
 " Are you going out? " she asked. 
 
 He looked down and met her eyes. They were darker than 
 darkness, and gave deeper space. He felt himself retreating 
 before her, defensive, whilst her eyes followed and tracked him 
 down. 
 
 " I was just going up to Cossethay," he said. 
 
 She remained watching him. 
 
 " Why do you go ? " she said. 
 
 His heart beat fast, and he sat down, slowly. 
 
 " No reason particular," he said, beginning to fill his pipe 
 again, mechanically. 
 
 " Why do you go away so often ? " she said. 
 
 " But you don't want me," he replied. 
 
84 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She was silent for a while. 
 
 " You do not want to be with me any more," she said. 
 
 It startled him. How did she know this truth? He 
 thought it was his secret. 
 
 " Yi," he said. 
 
 " You want to find something else," she said. 
 
 He did not answer. " Did he ? " he asked himself. 
 
 " You should not want so much attention," she said. 
 " You are not a baby." 
 
 '* I'm not grumbling," he said. Yet he knew he was. 
 
 "You think you have not enough," she said. 
 
 "How enough?" 
 
 " You think you have not enough in me. But how do you 
 know me ? What do you do to make me love you ? " 
 
 He was flabbergasted. 
 
 " I never said I hadn't enough in you," he replied. " I 
 didn't know you wanted making to love me. What do you 
 want?" 
 
 " You don't make it good between us any more, you are not 
 interested. You do not make me want you." 
 
 " And you don't make me want you, do you now ? " There 
 was a silence. They were such strangers. 
 
 " Would you like to have another woman ? " she asked. 
 
 His eyes grew round, he did not know where he was. How 
 could she, his own wife, say such a thing ? But she sat there, 
 small and foreign and separate. It dawned upon him she did 
 not consider herself his wife, except in so far as they agreed. 
 She did not feel she had married him. At any rate, she was 
 willing to allow he might want another woman. A gap, a 
 space opened before him. 
 
 "No," he said slowly. "What other woman should I 
 want?" 
 
 " Like your brother," she said. 
 
 He was silent for some time, ashamed also. 
 
 " What of her ? " he said. " I didn't like the woman." 
 
 " Yes, you liked her," she answered persistently. 
 
 He stared in wonder at his own wife as she told him his 
 own heart so callously. And he was indignant. What right 
 had she to sit there telling him these things? She was his 
 wife, what right had she to speak to him like this, as if she 
 were a stranger. 
 
 " I didn't," he said. " I want no woman." 
 
 " Yes, you would like to be like Alfred." 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 85 
 
 His silence was one of angry frustration. He was aston- 
 ished. He had told her of his visit to Wirksworth, but briefly, 
 without interest, he thought. 
 
 As she sat with her strange dark face turned towards him, 
 her eyes watched him, inscrutable, casting him up. He began 
 to oppose her. She was again the active unknown facing him. 
 Must he admit her ? He resisted involuntarily. 
 
 "Why should you want to find a woman who is more to 
 you than me ? " she said. 
 , The turbulence raged in his breast. 
 
 " I don't/' he said. 
 
 "Why do you?" she repeated. "Why do you want to 
 deny me ? " 
 
 Suddenly, in a flash, he saw she might be lonely, isolated, 
 unsure. She had seemed to him the utterly certain, satisfied, 
 absolute, excluding him. Could she need anything ? 
 
 "Why aren't you satisfied with me? I'm not satisfied 
 with you. Paul used to come to me and take me like a man 
 does. You only leave me alone or take me like your cattle, 
 quickly, to forget me again so that you can forget me 
 again." 
 
 " What am I to remember about you ? " said Brangwen. 
 
 " I want you to know there is somebody there besides your- 
 self." 
 
 "Well, don't I know it?" 
 
 " You come to me as if it was for nothing, as if I was noth- 
 ing there. When Paul came to me, I was something to him 
 a woman, I was. To you I am nothing it is like cattle 
 or nothing " 
 
 " You make me feel as if I was nothing," he said. 
 
 They were silent. She sat watching him. He could not 
 move, his soul was seething and chaotic. She turned to her 
 sewing again. But the sight of her bent before him held him 
 and would not let him be. She was a strange, hostile, domi- 
 nant thing. Yet not quite hostile. As he sat he felt his 
 limbs were strong and hard, he sat in strength. 
 
 She was silent for a long time, stitching. He was aware, 
 poignantly, of the round shape of her head, very intimate, 
 compelling. She lifted her head and sighed. The blood 
 burned in him, her voice ran to him like fire. 
 
 " Come here," she said, unsure. 
 
 For some moments he did not move. Then he rose slowly 
 and went across the hearth. It required an almost deathly 
 
86 THE RAINBOW 
 
 effort of volition, or of acquiescence. He stood before her 
 and looked down at her. Her face was shining again, her 
 eyes were shining again like terrible laughter. It was to him 
 terrible, how she could be transfigured. He could not look at 
 her, it burnt his heart. 
 
 " My love ! " she said. 
 
 And she put her arms round him as he stood before her, 
 round his thighs, pressing him against her breast. And her 
 hands on him seemed to reveal to him the mould of his own 
 nakedness, he was passionately lovely to himself. He could 
 not bear to look at her. 
 
 " My dear ! " she said. He knew she spoke a foreign lan- 
 guage. The fear was like bliss in his heart. He looked down. 
 Her face was shining, her eyes were full of light, she was 
 awful. He suffered from the compulsion to her. She was the 
 awful unknown. He bent down to her, suffering, unable to let 
 go, unable to let himself go, yet drawn, driven. She was now 
 the transfigured, she was wonderful, beyond him. He wanted 
 to go. But he could not as yet kiss her. He was himself 
 apart. Easiest he could kiss her feet. But he was too 
 ashamed for the actual deed, which were like an affront. She 
 waited for him to meet her, not to bow before her and serve 
 her. She wanted his active participation, not his submission. 
 She put her fingers on him. And it was torture to him, that he 
 must give himself to her actively, participate in her, that he 
 must meet and embrace and know her, who was other than 
 himself. There was that in him which shrank from yielding 
 to her, resisted the relaxing towards her, opposed the mingling 
 with her, even whilst he most desired it. He was afraid, he 
 wanted to save himself. 
 
 There were a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, 
 the tension, the withholding relaxed in him, and he began to 
 flow towards her. She was beyond him, the unattainable. 
 But he let go his hold on himself, he relinquished himself, 
 and knew the subterranean force of his desire to come to her, 
 to be with her, to mingle with her, losing himself to find 
 her, to find himself in her. He began to approach her, to 
 draw near. 
 
 His blood beat up in waves of desire. He wanted to come 
 to her, to meet her. She was there, if he could reach her. 
 The reality of her who was just beyond him absorbed him. 
 Blind and destroyed, he pressed forward, nearer, nearer, to 
 receive the consummation of himself, be received within the 
 
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY 87 
 
 darkness which should swallow him and yield him up to him- 
 self. If he could come really within the blazing kernel of 
 darkness, if really he could be destroyed, burnt away till he 
 lit with her in one consummation, that were supreme, supreme. 
 
 Their coming together now, after two years of married life, 
 was much more wonderful to them than it had been before. It 
 was the entry into another circle of existence, it was the 
 baptism to another life, it was the complete confirmation. 
 Their feet trod strange ground of knowledge, their footsteps 
 were lit-up with discovery. "Wherever they walked, it was 
 well, the world re-echoed round them in discovery. They went 
 gladly and forgetful. Everything was lost, and everything 
 was found. The new world was discovered, it remained only 
 to be explored. 
 
 They had passed through the doorway into the further 
 space, where movement was so big, that it contained bonds 
 and constraints and labours, and still was complete liberty. 
 She was the doorway to him, he to her. At last they had 
 thrown open the doors, each to the other, and had stood in 
 the doorways facing each other, whilst the light flooded out 
 from behind on to each of their faces, it was the transfigura- 
 tion, the glorification, the admission. 
 
 Aiid always the light of the transfiguration burned on in 
 their hearts. He went his way, as before, she went her way, 
 to the rest of the world there seemed no change. But to the 
 two of them, there was the perpetual wonder of the trans- 
 figuration. 
 
 He did not know her any better, any more precisely, now 
 that he knew her altogether. Poland, her husband, the war 
 he understood no more of this in her. He did not under- 
 stand her foreign nature, half German, half Polish, nor her 
 foreign speech. But he knew her, he knew her meaning, 
 without understanding. What she said, what she spoke, this 
 was a blind gesture on her part. In herself she walked strong 
 and clear, he knew her, he saluted her, was with her. What 
 was memory after all, but the recording of a number of possi- 
 bilities which had never been fulfilled? What was Paul 
 Lensky to her, but an unfulfilled possibility to which he, 
 Brangwen, was the reality and the fulfilment? What did it 
 matter, that Anna Lensky was born of Lydia and Paul ? God 
 was her father and her mother. He had passed through the 
 married pair without fully making Himself known to them. 
 
 Now He was declared to Brangwen and to Lydia Brang- 
 
$8 THE RAINBOW 
 
 wen, as they stood together. When at last they had joined 
 hands, the house was finished, and the Lord took up his abode. 
 And they were glad. 
 
 The days went on as before, Brangwen went out to his 
 work, his wife nursed her child and attended in some measure 
 to the farm. They did not think of each other why should 
 they? Only when she touched him, he knew her instantly, 
 that she was with him, near him, that she was the gateway 
 and the way out, that she was beyond, and that he was travel- 
 ling in her through the beyond. Whither? What does it 
 matter? He responded always. When she called, he an- 
 swered, when he asked, her response came at once, or at length. 
 
 Anna's soul was put at peace between them. She looked 
 from one to the other, and she saw them established to her 
 safety, and she was free. She played between the pillar of 
 fire and the pillar of cloud in confidence, having the assurance 
 on her right hand and the assurance on her left. She was 
 no longer called upon to uphold with her childish might the 
 broken end of the arch. Her father and her mother now met 
 to the span of the heavens, and she, the child, was free to play 
 in the space beneath, between. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 
 
 WHEN" Anna was nine years old, Brangwen sent her 
 to the dames' school in Cossethay. There she 
 went, flipping and dancing in her inconsequential 
 fashion, doing very much as she liked, disconcert- 
 ing old Miss Coates by her indifference to respectability and 
 by her lack of reverence. Anna only laughed at Miss Coates, 
 liked her, and patronized her in superb, childish fashion. 
 
 The girl was at once shy and wild. She had a curious 
 contempt for ordinary people, a benevolent superiority. She 
 was very shy, and tortured with misery when people did not 
 like her. On the other hand, she cared very little for any- 
 body save her mother, whom she still rather resentfully wor- 
 shipped, and her father, whom she loved and patronized, but 
 upon whom she depended. These two, her mother and father, 
 held her still in fee. But she was free of other people, 
 towards whom, on the whole, she took the benevolent atti- 
 tude. She deeply hated ugliness or intrusion or arrogance, 
 however. As a child, she was as proud and shadowy as a 
 tiger, and as aloof. She could confer favours, but, save from 
 her mother and father, she could receive none. She hated 
 people who came too near to her. Like a wild thing, she 
 wanted her distance. She mistrusted intimacy. 
 
 In Cossethay and Ilkeston she was always an alien. She 
 had plenty of acquaintances, but no friends. Very few people 
 whom she met were significant to her. They seemed part of 
 a herd, undistinguished. She did not take people very seri- 
 ously. 
 
 She had two brothers, Tom, dark-haired, small, volatile, 
 whom she was intimately related to but whom she never 
 mingled with, and Fred, fair and responsive, whom she adored 
 but did not consider as a real, separate being. She was too 
 much the centre of her own universe, too little aware of any- 
 thing outside. 
 
 The first person she met, who affected her as a real, living 
 person, whom she regarded as having definite existence, was 
 
 89 
 
90 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Baron Skrebensky, her mother's friend. He also was a Polish 
 exile, who had taken orders, and had received from Mr. Glad- 
 stone a small country living in Yorkshire. 
 
 When Anna was about ten years old, she went with her 
 mother to spend a few days with the Baron Skrebensky. He 
 was very unhappy in his red-brick vicarage. He was vicar 
 of a country church, a living worth a little over two hundred 
 pounds a year, but he had a large parish containing several 
 collieries, with a new, raw, heathen population. He went 
 to the north of England expecting homage from the common 
 people, for he was an aristocrat. He was roughly, even cruelly 
 received. But he never understood it. He remained a fiery 
 aristocrat. Only he had to learn to avoid his parishioners. 
 
 Anna was very much impressed by him. He was a smallish 
 man with a rugged, rather crumpled face and blue eyes set 
 very deep and glowing. His wife was a tall thin woman, of 
 noble Polish family, mad with pride. He still spoke broken 
 English, for he had kept very close to his wife, both of them 
 forlorn in this strange, inhospitable country, and they always 
 spoke in Polish together. He was disappointed with Mrs. 
 Brangwen's soft, natural English, very disappointed that her 
 child spoke no Polish. 
 
 Anna loved to watch him. She liked the big, new, rambling 
 vicarage, desolate and stark on its hill. It was so exposed, 
 so bleak and bold after the Marsh. The Baron talked end- 
 lessly in Polish to Mrs. Brangwen; he made furious gestures 
 with his hands, his blue eyes were full of fire. And to Anna, 
 there was a significance about his sharp, flinging movements. 
 Something in her responded to his extravagance and his ex- 
 uberant manner. She thought him a very wonderful person. 
 She was shy of him, she liked him to talk to her. She felt a 
 sense of freedom near him. 
 
 She never could tell how she knew it, but she did know 
 that he was a knight of Malta. She could never remember 
 whether she had seen his star, or cross, of his order or not, 
 but it flashed in her mind, like a symbol. He at any rate 
 represented to the child the real world, where kings and lords 
 and princes moved and fulfilled their shining lives, whilst 
 queens and ladies and princesses upheld the noble order. 
 
 She had recognized the Baron Skrebensky as a real person, 
 he had had some regard for her. But when she did not see 
 him any more, he faded and became a memory. But as a 
 memory he was always alive to her. 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 91 
 
 Anna became a tall, awkward girl. Her eyes were still very 
 dark and quick, but they had grown careless, they had lost 
 their watchful, hostile look. Her fierce, spun hair turned 
 brown, it grew heavier and was tied back. She was sent to a 
 young ladies' school in Nottingham. 
 
 And at this period she was absorbed in becoming a young 
 lady. She was intelligent enough, but not interested in learn- 
 ing. At first, she thought all the girls at school very ladylike 
 and wonderful, and she wanted to be like them. She came to 
 a speedy disillusion : they galled and maddened her, they were 
 petty and mean. After the loose, generous atmosphere of her 
 home, where little things did not count, she was always uneasy 
 in the world, that would snap and bite at every trifle. 
 
 A quick change came over her. She mistrusted herself, she 
 mistrusted the outer world. She did not want to go on, she 
 did not want to go out into it, she wanted to go no further. 
 
 " What do I care about that lot of girls ? " she would say to 
 her father, contemptuously ; " they are nobody/' 
 
 The trouble was that the girls would not accept Anna at 
 her measure. They would have her according to themselves 
 or not at all. So she was confused, seduced, she became as 
 they were for a time, and then, in revulsion, she hated them 
 furiously. 
 
 " Why don't you ask some of your girls here ? " her father 
 would say. 
 
 " They're not coming here," she cried. 
 
 "And why not?" 
 
 " They're bagatelle," she said, using one of her mother's 
 rare phrases. 
 
 "Bagatelles or billiards, it makes no matter, they're nice 
 young lasses enough." 
 
 But Anna was not to be won over. She had a curious 
 shrinking from commonplace people, and particularly from 
 the young lady of her day. She would not go into company 
 because of the ill-at-ease feeling other people brought upon 
 her. And she never could decide whether it were her fault 
 or theirs. She half respected these other people, and con- 
 tinuous disillusion maddened her. She wanted to respect 
 them. Still she thought the people she did not know were 
 wonderful. Those she knew seemed always to be limiting her, 
 tying her up in little falsities that irritated her beyond bearing. 
 She would rather stay at home and avoid the rest of the world, 
 leaving it illusory. 
 
92 THE RAINBOW 
 
 For at the Marsh life had indeed a certain freedom and 
 largeness. There was no, fret about money, no mean little 
 precedence, nor care for what other people thought, because 
 neither Mrs. Brangwen nor Brangwen could be sensible of any 
 judgment passed on them from outside. Their lives were 
 too separate. 
 
 So Anna was only easy at home, where the common sense 
 and the supreme relation between her parents produced a 
 freer standard of being than she could find outside. Where, 
 outside the Marsh, could she find the tolerant dignity she 
 had been brought up in? Her parents stood undiminished 
 and unaware of criticism. The people she met outside seemed 
 to begrudge her her very existence. They seemed to want to 
 belittle her also. She was exceedingly reluctant to go amongst 
 them. She depended upon her mother and her father. And 
 yet she wanted to go out. 
 
 At school, or in the world, she was usually at fault, she 
 felt usually that she ought to be slinking in disgrace. She 
 never felt quite sure, in herself, whether she were wrong, or 
 whether the others were wrong. She had not done her lessons : 
 well, she did not see any reason why she should do her lessons, 
 if she did not want to. Was there some occult reason why she 
 should? Were these people, schoolmistresses, representatives 
 of some mystic Eight, some Higher Good? They seemed to 
 think so themselves. But she could not for her life see why a 
 woman should bully and insult her because she did not know 
 thirty lines of " As You Like It/' After all, what did it mat- 
 ter if she knew them or not ? Nothing could persuade her that 
 it was of the slightest importance. Because she despised in- 
 wardly the coarsely working nature of the mistress. Therefore 
 she was always at outs with authority. From constant telling, 
 she came almost to believe in her own badness, her own intrinsic 
 inferiority. She felt that she ought always to be in a state of 
 slinking disgrace, if she fulfilled what was expected of her. 
 But she rebelled. She never really believed in her own bad- 
 ness. At the bottom of her heart she despised the other people, 
 who carped and were loud over trifles. She despised them, 
 and wanted revenge on them. She hated them whilst they had 
 power over her. 
 
 Still she kept an ideal: a free, proud lady absolved from 
 the petty ties, existing beyond petty considerations. She 
 would see such ladies in pictures: Alexandra, Princess of 
 Wales, was one of her models. This lady was proud and 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 93 
 
 royal, and stepped indifferently over all small, mean desires: 
 so thought Anna, in her heart. And the girl did up her hair 
 high under a little slanting hat, her skirts were fashionably 
 bunched up, she wore an elegant, skin-fitting coat. 
 
 Her father was delighted. Anna was very proud in her 
 bearing, too naturally indifferent to smaller bonds to satisfy 
 Ilkeston, which would have liked to put her down. But 
 Brangwen was having no such thing. If she chose to be 
 royal, royal she should be. He stood like a rock between her 
 and the world. 
 
 After the fashion of his family, he grew stout and hand- 
 some. His blue eyes were full of light, twinkling and sensi- 
 tive, his manner was deliberate, but hearty, warm. Hie capac- 
 ity for living his own life without attention from his neigh- 
 bours made them respect him. They would run to do anything 
 for him. He did not consider them, but was open-handed 
 towards them, so they made profit of their willingness. He 
 liked people, so long as they remained in the background. 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen went on in her own way, following her own 
 devices. She had her husband, her two sons and Anna. 
 These staked out and marked her horizon. The other people 
 were outsiders. Inside her own world, her life passed along 
 like a dream for her, it lapsed, and she lived within its lapse, 
 active and always pleased, intent. She scarcely noticed the 
 outer things at all. What was outside was outside, non- 
 existent. She did not mind if the boys fought, so long as it 
 was out of her presence. But if they fought when she was by, 
 she was angry, and they were afraid of her. She did not care 
 if they broke a window of a railway carriage or sold their 
 watches to have a revel at the Goose Fair. Brangwen was per- 
 haps angry over these things. To the mother they were in- 
 significant. It was odd little things that offended her. She 
 was furious if the boys hung round the slaughter-house, she was 
 displeased when the school reports were bad. It did not mat- 
 ter how many sins her boys were accused of, so long as they 
 were not stupid, or inferior. If they seemed to brook insult, 
 she hated them. And it was only a certain gaucherie, a gawki- 
 ness on Anna's part that irritated her against the girl. Cer- 
 tain forms of clumsiness, grossness, made the mother's eyes 
 glow with curious rage. Otherwise she was pleased, indif- 
 ferent. 
 
 Pursuing her splendid-lady ideal, Anna became a lofty 
 demoiselle of sixteen, plagued by family shortcomings. She 
 
94 THE RAINBOW 
 
 was very sensitive to her father. She knew if he had been 
 drinking, were he ever so little affected, and she could not 
 bear it. He flushed when he drank, the veins stood out on 
 his temples, there was a twinkling, cavalier boisterousness in 
 his eyes, his manner was jovially overbearing and mocking. 
 And it angered her. When she heard his loud, roaring, bois- 
 terous mockery, an anger of resentment filled her. She was 
 quick to forestall him, the moment he came in. 
 
 " You look a sight, you do, red in the face," she cried. 
 
 " I might look worse if I was green," he answered. 
 
 "Boozing in Ilkeston." 
 
 " And what's wrong wi' IPson? " 
 
 She flounced away. He watched her with amused, twin- 
 kling eyes, yet in spite of himself said that she flouted him. 
 
 They were a curious family, a law to themselves, separate 
 from the world, isolated, a small republic set in invisible 
 bounds. The mother was quite indifferent to Ilkeston and 
 Cossethay, to any claims made on her from outside, she was 
 very shy of any outsider, exceedingly courteous, winning even. 
 But the moment a visitor had gone, she laughed and dis- 
 missed him, he did not exist. It had been all a game to 
 her. She was still a foreigner, unsure of her ground. But 
 alone with her own children and husband at the Marsh, she 
 was mistress of a little native land that lacked nothing. 
 
 She had some beliefs somewhere, never defined. She had 
 been brought up a Eoman Catholic. She had gone to the 
 Church of England for protection. The outward form was 
 a matter of indifference to her. Yet she had some funda- 
 mental religion. It was as if she worshipped God as a mys- 
 tery, never seeking in the least to define what He was. 
 
 And inside her, the subtle sense of the Great Absolute 
 wherein she had her being was very strong. The English 
 dogma never reached her: the language was too foreign. 
 Through it all she felt the great Separator who held life in 
 His hands, gleaming, imminent, terrible, the Great Mystery, 
 immediate beyond all telling. 
 
 She shone and gleamed to the Mystery, Whom she knew 
 through all her senses, she glanced with strange, mystic 
 superstitions that never found expression in the English lan- 
 guage, never mounted to thought in English. But so she 
 lived, within a potent, sensuous belief that included her family 
 and contained her destiny. 
 
 To this she had reduced her husband, He. existed with 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 95 
 
 her entirely indifferent to the general values of the world. 
 Her very ways, the very mark of her eyebrows were symbols 
 and indication to him. There, on the farm with her, he lived 
 through a mystery of life and death and creation, strange, 
 profound ecstasies and incommunicable satisfactions, of which 
 the rest of the world knew nothing; which made the pair of 
 them apart and respected in the English village, for they were 
 also well-to-do. 
 
 But Anna was only half safe within her mother's unthinking 
 knowledge. She had a mother-of-pearl rosary that had been 
 her own father's. What it meant to her she could never say. 
 But the string of moonlight and silver, when she had it be- 
 tween her fingers, filled her with strange passion. She learned 
 at school a little Latin, she learned an Ave Maria and a Pater 
 Noster, she learned how to say her rosary. But that was no 
 good. " Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, Benedicta 
 tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus. Ave 
 Maria, Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in 
 hora mortis nostrae, Amen." 
 
 It was not right, somehow. What these words meant when 
 translated was not the same as the pale rosary meant. There 
 was a discrepancy, a falsehood. It irritated her to say, 
 "Dominus tecum," or, "benedicta tu in mulieribus." She 
 loved the mystic words, " Ave Maria, Sancta Maria ; " she was 
 moved by "benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus," and by 
 " nunc et in hora mortis nostrae." But none of it was quite 
 real. It was not satisfactory, somehow. 
 
 She avoided her rosary, because, moving her with curious 
 passion as it did, it meant only these not very significant 
 things. She put it away. It was her instinct to put all these 
 things away. It was her instinct to avoid thinking, to avoid 
 it, to save herself. 
 
 She was seventeen, touchy, full of spirits, and very moody : 
 quick to flush, and always uneasy, uncertain. For some reason 
 or other, she turned more to her father, she felt almost flashes 
 of hatred for her mother. Her mother's dark muzzle and 
 curiously insidious ways, her mother's utter surety and confi- 
 dence, her strange satisfaction, even triumph, her mother's 
 way of laughing at things and her mother's silent overriding of 
 vexatious propositions, most of all her mother's triumphant 
 power maddened the girl. 
 
 She became sudden and incalculable. Often she stood at the 
 window, looking out, as if she wanted to go. Sometimes she 
 
96 THE RAINBOW 
 
 went, she mixed with people. But always she came home in 
 anger, as if she were diminished, belittled, almost degraded. 
 
 There was over the house a kind of dark silence and in- 
 tensity, in which passion worked its inevitable conclusions. 
 There was in the house a sort of richness, a deep, inarticulate 
 interchange which made other places seem thin and unsatisfy- 
 ing. Brangwen could sit silent, smoking in his chair, the 
 mother could move about in her quiet, insidious way, and the 
 sense of the two presences was powerful, sustaining. The 
 whole intercourse was wordless, intense and close. 
 
 But Anna was uneasy. She wanted to get away. Yet 
 wherever she went, there came upon her that feeling of thin- 
 ness, as if she were made smaller, belittled. She hastened 
 home. 
 
 There she raged and interrupted the strong, settled inter- 
 change. Sometimes her mother turned on her with a fierce, 
 destructive anger, in which was no pity or consideration. And 
 Anna shrank, afraid. She went to her father. 
 
 He would still listen to the spoken word, which fell sterile 
 on the unheeding mother. Sometimes Anna talked to her 
 father. She tried to discuss people, she wanted to know 
 what was meant. But her father became uneasy. He did 
 not want to have things dragged into consciousness. Only 
 out of consideration for her he listened. And there was a 
 kind of bristling rousedness in the room. The cat got up and 
 stretching itself, went uneasily to the door. Mrs. Brangwen 
 was silent, she seemed ominous. Anna could not go on with 
 her fault-finding, her criticism, her expression of dissatisfac- 
 tions. She felt even her father against her. He had a strong, 
 dark bond with her mother, a potent intimacy that existed in- 
 articulate and wild, following its own course, and savage if 
 interrupted, uncovered. 
 
 Nevertheless Brangwen was uneasy about the girl, the whole 
 house continued to be disturbed. She had a pathetic, baffled 
 appeal. She was hostile to her parents, even whilst she lived 
 entirely with them, within their spell. 
 
 Many ways she tried, of escape. She became an assiduous 
 church-goer. But the language meant nothing to her: it 
 seemed false. She hated to hear things expressed, put into 
 words. Whilst the religious feelings were inside her they 
 were passionately moving. In the mouth of the clergyman, 
 they were false, indecent. She tried to read. But again 
 the tedium and the sense of the falsity of the spoken word 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 97 
 
 put her off. She went to stay with girl friends. At first 
 she thought it splendid. But then the inner boredom came 
 on, it seemed to her all nothingness. And she felt always 
 belittled, as if never, never could she stretch her length and 
 stride her stride. 
 
 Her mind reverted often to the torture cell of a certain 
 Bishop of France, in which the victim could neither stand 
 nor lie stretched out, never. Not that she thought of herself 
 in any connection with this. But often there came into her 
 mind the wonder, how the cell was built, and she could feel 
 the horror of the crampedness, as something very real. 
 
 She was, however, only eighteen when a letter came from 
 Mrs. Alfred Brangwen, in Nottingham, saying that her son 
 William was coming to Ilkeston to take a place as junior 
 draughtsman, scarcely more than apprentice, in a lace factory. 
 He was twenty years old, and would the Marsh Brangwens be 
 friendly with him. 
 
 Tom Brangwen at once wrote offering the young man a 
 home at the Marsh. This was not accepted, but the Notting- 
 ham Brangwens expressed gratitude. 
 
 There had never been much love lost between the Notting- 
 ham 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 Brang- 
 wens 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 reaj. to her. She had seen in 
 this young gallant a nose she liked, in that a pleasant mous- 
 tache, in the other a nice way of wearing clothes, in one a 
 ridiculous fringe of hair, in another a comical way of talking. 
 They were objects of amusement and faint wonder to her, 
 rather than real beings, the young men. 
 
 The only man she knew was her father ; and, as he was some- 
 thing large, looming, a kind of Godhead, he embraced all man- 
 hood for her, and other men were just incidental. 
 
 She remembered her cousin Will. He had town clothes and 
 was thin, with a very curious head, black as jet, with hair like 
 sleek, thin fur. It was a curious head: it reminded her she 
 knew not of what: of some animal, some mysterious animal 
 that lived in the darkness under the leaves and never came out, 
 
98 THE RAINBOW 
 
 but which lived vividly, swift and intense. She always thought 
 of him with that black, keen, blind head. And she considered 
 him odd. 
 
 He appeared at the Marsh one Sunday morning: a rather 
 long, thin youth with a bright face and a curious self-possession 
 among his shyness, a native unawareness of what other people 
 might be, since he was himself. 
 
 When Anna came downstairs in her Sunday clothes, ready 
 for church, he rose and greeted her conventionally, shaking 
 hands. His manners were better than hers. She flushed. 
 She noticed that he now had a black fledge on his upper lip, a 
 black, finely-shapen line marking his wide mouth. It rather 
 repelled her. It reminded her of the thin, fine fur of his hair. 
 She was aware of something strange in him. 
 
 His voice had rather high upper notes, and very resonant 
 middle notes. It was queer. She wondered why he did it. 
 But he sat very naturally in the Marsh living-room. He had 
 some uncouthness, some natural self-possession of the Brang- 
 wens, that made him at home there. 
 
 Anna was rather troubled by the strangely intimate, affec- 
 tionate way her father had towards this young man. He 
 seemed gentle towards him, he put himself aside in order to 
 fill out the young man. This irritated Anna. 
 
 " Father/' she said abruptly, " give me some collection." 
 
 " What collection ? " asked Brangwen. 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous," she cried, flushing. 
 
 " Nay," he said, " what collection's this ? " 
 
 " You know it's the first Sunday of the month." 
 
 Anna stood confused. Why was he doing this, why was he 
 making her conspicuous before this stranger ! 
 
 " I want some collection," she reasserted. 
 
 " So tha says," he replied indifferently, looking at her, then 
 turning again to his nephew. 
 
 She went forward, and thrust her hand into his breeches 
 pocket. He smoked stolidly, making no resistance, talking to 
 his nephew. Her hand groped about in his pocket, and then 
 drew out his leathern purse. Her colour was bright in her 
 clear cheeks, her eyes shone. Brangwen's eyes were twin- 
 kling. The nephew sat sheepishly. Anna, in her finery, sat 
 down and slid all the money into her lap. There was silver 
 and gold. The youth could not help watching her. She was 
 bent over the heap of money, fingering the different coins. 
 
 " I've a good mind to take half-a-sovereign," she said, and 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BBANGWEN 99 
 
 she looked up with glowing dark eyes. She met the light- 
 brown eyes of her cousin, close and intent upon her. She 
 was startled. She laughed quickly, and turned to her father. 
 
 " I've a good mind to take half-a-sovereign, our Dad," she 
 said. 
 
 " Yes, nimble fingers," said her father. " You take what's 
 your own." 
 
 "Are you coming, our Anna?" asked her brother from 
 the door. 
 
 She suddenly chilled to normal, forgetting both her father 
 and her cousin. 
 
 " Yes, I'm ready," she said, taking sixpence from the heap 
 of money and sliding the rest back into the purse, which she 
 laid on the table. 
 
 " Give it here," said her father. 
 
 Hastily she thrust the purse into his pocket and was going 
 out. 
 
 " You'd better go wi' 'em, lad, hadn't you ? " said the father 
 to the nephew. 
 
 Will Brangwen rose uncertainly. He had golden-brown, 
 quick, steady eyes, like a bird's, like a hawk's, which cannot 
 look afraid. 
 
 " Your Cousin "Will '11 come with you," said the father. 
 
 Anna glanced at the strange youth again. She felt him 
 waiting there for her to notice him. He was hovering on 
 the edge of her consciousness, ready to come in. She did 
 not want to look at him. She was antagonistic to him. 
 
 She waited without speaking. Her cousin took his hat 
 and joined her. It was summer outside. Her brother Fred 
 was plucking a sprig of flowering currant to put in his coat, 
 from the bush at the angle of the house. She took no notice. 
 Her cousin followed just behind her. 
 
 They were on the highroad. She was aware of a strange- 
 ness in her being. It made her uncertain. She caught sight 
 of the flowering currant in her brother's buttonhole. 
 
 " Oh, our Fred," she cried. " Don't wear that stuff to go 
 to church." 
 
 Fred looked down protectively at the pink adornment on 
 his breast. 
 
 " Why, I like it," he said. 
 
 "Then you're the only one who does, I'm sure," she said. 
 
 And she turned to her cousin. 
 
 " Do you like the smell of it ? " she asked. 
 
100 THE RAINBOW 
 
 He was there beside her, tall and uncouth and yet self- 
 possessed. It excited her. 
 
 " I can't say whether I do or not/' he replied. 
 
 "Give it here, Fred, don't have it smelling in church/' 
 she said to the little boy, her page. 
 
 Her fair, small brother handed her the flower dutifully. 
 She sniffed it and gave it without a word to her cousin, for 
 his judgment. He smelled the dangling flower curiously. 
 
 " It's a funny smell," he said. 
 
 And suddenly she laughed, and a quick light came on all 
 their faces, there was a blithe trip in the small boy's walk. 
 
 The bells were ringing, they were going up the summery 
 hill in their Sunday clothes. Anna was very fine in a silk 
 frock of brown and white stripes, tight along the arms and 
 the body, bunched up very elegantly behind the skirt. There 
 was something of the cavalier about Will Brangwen, and he 
 was well dressed. 
 
 He walked along with the sprig of currant-blossom dangling 
 between his fingers, and none of them spoke. The sun shone 
 brightly on little showers of buttercup down the bank, in the 
 fields the fool's-parsley was foamy, held very high and proud 
 above a number of flowers that flitted in the greenish twilight 
 of the mowing-grass below. 
 
 They reached the church. Fred led the way to the pew, 
 followed by the cousin, then Anna. She felt very conspicuous 
 and important. Somehow, this young man gave her away 
 to other people. He stood aside and let her pass to her place, 
 then sat next to her. It was a curious sensation, to sit next 
 to him. 
 
 The colour came streaming from the painted window above 
 her. It lit on the dark wood of the pew, on the stone, worn 
 aisle, on the pillar behind her cousin, and on her cousin's 
 hands, as they lay on his knees. She sat amid illumination, 
 illumination and luminous shadow all around her, her soul 
 very bright. She sat, without knowing it, conscious of the 
 hands and motionless knees of her cousin. Something strange 
 had entered into her world, something entirely strange and 
 unlike what she knew. 
 
 She was curiously elated. She sat in a glowing world of 
 unreality, very delightful. A brooding light, like laughter, 
 was in her eyes. She was aware of a strange influence enter- 
 ing in to her, which she enjoyed. It was a dark enrichening 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 101 
 
 influence she had not known before. She did not think of 
 her cousin. But she was startled when his hands moved. 
 
 She wished he would not say the responses so plainly. It 
 diverted her from her vague enjoyment. Why would he 
 obtrude, and draw notice to himself? It was bad taste. 
 But she went on all right till the hymn came. He stood up 
 beside her to sing, and that pleased her. Then suddenly, at 
 the very first word, his voice came strong and over-riding, 
 filling the church. He was singing the tenor. Her soul 
 opened in amazement. His voice filled the church ! It rang 
 out like a trumpet, and rang out again. She started to giggle 
 over her hymn-book. But he went on, perfectly steady. Up 
 and down rang his voice, going its own way. She was help- 
 lessly shocked into laughter. Between moments of dead si- 
 lence in herself she shook with laughter. On came the laugh- 
 ter, seized her and shook her till the tears were in her eyes. 
 She was amazed, and rather enjoyed it. And still the hymn 
 rolled on, and still she laughed. She bent over her hymn- 
 book crimson with confusion, but still her sides shook with 
 laughter. She pretended to cough, she pretended to have a 
 crumb in her throat. Fred was gazing up at her with clear 
 blue eyes. She was recovering herself. And then a slur in 
 the strong, blind voice at her side brought it all on again, in a 
 gust of mad laughter. 
 
 She bent down to prayer in cold reproof of herself. And 
 yet, as she knelt, little eddies of giggling went over her. The 
 very sight of his knees on the praying cushion sent the little 
 shock of laughter over her. 
 
 She gathered herself together and sat with prim, pure face, 
 white and pink and cold as a Christmas rose, her hands in 
 her silk gloves folded on her lap, her dark eyes all vague, 
 abstracted in a sort of dream, oblivious of everything. 
 
 The sermon rolled on vaguely, in a tide of pregnant peace. 
 
 Her cousin took out his pocket-handkerchief. He seemed 
 to be drifted absorbed into the sermon. He put his hand- 
 kerchief to his face. Then something dropped on to his 
 knee. There lay the bit of flowering currant ! He was look- 
 ing down at it in real astonishment. A wild snirt of laughter 
 came from Anna. Everybody heard : it was torture. He had 
 shut the crumpled flower in his hand and was looking up again 
 with the same absorbed attention to the sermon. Another 
 snirt of laughter from Anna. Fred nudged her remindingly. 
 
102 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Her cousin sat motionless. Somehow she was aware that his 
 face was red. She could feel him. His hand, closed over 
 the flower, remained quite still, pretending to be normal. 
 Another wild struggle in Anna's breast, and the snirt of 
 laughter. She bent forward shaking with laughter. It was 
 now no joke. Fred was nudge-nudging at her. She nudged 
 him back fiercely. Then another vicious spasm of laughter 
 seized her. She tried to ward it off in a little cough. The 
 cough ended in a suppressed whoop. She wanted to die. 
 And the closed hand crept away to the pocket. Whilst she sat 
 in taut suspense, the laughter rushed back at her, knowing he 
 was fumbling in his pocket to shove the flower away. 
 
 In the end, she felt weak, exhausted and thoroughly de- 
 pressed. A blankness of wincing depression came over her. 
 She hated the presence of the other people. Her face became 
 quite haughty. She was unaware of her cousin any more. 
 
 When the collection arrived with the last hymn, her cousin 
 was again singing resoundingly. And still it amused her. 
 In spite of the shameful exhibition she had made of herself, it 
 amused her still. She listened to it in a spell of amusement. 
 And the bag was thrust in front of her, and her sixpence was 
 mingled in the folds of her glove. In her haste to get it out, 
 it flipped away and went twinkling in the next pew. She 
 stood and giggled. She could not help it : she laughed out- 
 right, a figure of shame. 
 
 " What were you laughing about, our Anna ? " asked Fred, 
 the moment they were out of the church. 
 
 " Oh, I couldn't help it," she said, in her careless, half- . 
 mocking fashion. " I don't know why Cousin Will's singing 
 set me off." 
 
 " What was there in my singing to make you laugh ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " It was so loud," she said. 
 
 They did not look at each other, but they both laughed 
 again, both reddening. 
 
 "What were you snorting and laughing for, our Anna?" 
 asked Tom, the elder brother, at the dinner table, his hazel 
 eyes bright with joy. "Everybody stopped to look at you." 
 Tom was in the choir. 
 
 She was aware of Will's eyes shining steadily upon her, 
 waiting for her to speak. 
 
 " It was Cousin Will's singing," she said. 
 
 At which her cousin burst into a suppressed, chuckling 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 103 
 
 laugh, suddenly showing all his small, regular, rather sharp 
 teeth, and just as quickly closing his mouth again. 
 
 " Has he got such a remarkable voice on him then ? " asked 
 Brangwen. 
 
 " No, it's not that," said Anna. " Only it tickled me I 
 couldn't tell you why/' 
 
 And again a ripple of laughter went down the table. 
 
 Will Brangwen thrust forward his dark face, his eyes 
 dancing, and said : 
 
 " I'm in the choir of St. Nicholas." 
 
 " Oh, you go to church then ! " said Brangwen. 
 
 " Mother does father doesn't," replied the youth. 
 
 It was the little things, his movement, the funny tones of 
 his voice, that showed up big to Anna. The matter-of-fact 
 things he said were absurd in contrast. The things her father 
 said seemed meaningless and neutral. 
 
 During the afternoon they sat in the parlour, that smelled 
 of geranium, and they ate cherries, and talked. Will Brang- 
 wen was called on to give himself forth. And soon he was 
 drawn out. 
 
 He was interested in churches, in church architecture. The 
 influence of Ruskin had stimulated him to a pleasure in the 
 medieval forms. His talk was fragmentary, he was only half 
 articulate. But listening to him, as he spoke of church after 
 church, of nave and chancel and transept, of rood-screen and 
 font, of hatchet-carving and moulding and tracery, speaking 
 always with close passion of particular things, particular 
 places, there gathered in her heart a pregnant hush of churches, 
 a mystery, a ponderous significance of bowed stone, a dim- 
 coloured light through which something took place obscurely, 
 passing into darkness: a high, delighted framework of the 
 mystic screen, and beyond, in the furthest beyond, the altar. 
 It was a very real experience. She was carried away. And 
 the land seemed to be covered with a vast, mystic church, re- 
 served in gloom, thrilled with an unknown Presence. 
 
 Almost it hurt her, to look out of the window and see the 
 lilacs towering in the vivid sunshine. Or was this the jewelled 
 glass ? 
 
 He talked of Gothic and Renaissance and Perpendicular, 
 and Early English and Norman. The words thrilled her. 
 
 " Have you been to Southwell ? " he said. " I was there 
 at twelve o'clock at midday, eating my lunch in the church- 
 yard. And the bells played a hymn. 
 
104 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Ay, it's a fine Minster, Southwell, heavy. It's got heavy, 
 round arches, rather low, on thick pillars. It's grand, the way 
 those arches travel forward. 
 
 " There's a sedilia as well pretty. But I like the main 
 body of the church and that north porch " 
 
 He was very much excited and filled with himself that after- 
 noon. A flame kindled round him, making his experience 
 passionate and glowing, burningly real. 
 
 His uncle listened with twinkling eyes, half-moved. His 
 aunt bent forward her dark face, half-moved, but held by 
 other knowledge. Anna went with him. 
 
 He returned to his lodging at night treading quick, his eyes 
 glittering, and his face shining darkly as if he came from some 
 passionate, vital tryst. 
 
 The glow remained in him, the fire burned, his heart was 
 fierce like a sun. He enjoyed his unknown life and his own 
 self. And he was ready to go back to the Marsh. 
 
 Without knowing it, Anna was wanting him to come. In 
 him she had escaped. In him the bounds of her experience 
 were transgressed : he was the hole in the wall, beyond which 
 the sunshine blazed on an outside world. 
 
 He came. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, talking 
 again, there recurred the strange, remote reality which carried 
 everything before it. Sometimes, he talked of his father, 
 whom he hated with a hatred that was burningly close to love, 
 of his mother, whom he loved, with a love that was keenly close 
 to hatred, or to revolt. His sentences were clumsy, he was 
 only half articulate. But he had the wonderful voice, that 
 could ring its vibration through the girl's soul, transport her 
 into his feeling. Sometimes his voice was hot and declama- 
 tory, sometimes it had a strange, twanging, almost catlike 
 sound, sometimes it hesitated, puzzled, sometimes there was 
 the break of a little laugh. Anna was taken by him. She 
 loved the running flame that coursed through her as she lis- 
 tened to him. And his mother and his father became to her 
 two separate people in her life. 
 
 For some weeks the youth came frequently, and was re- 
 ceived gladly by them all. He sat amongst them, his dark 
 face glowing, an eagerness and a touch of derisiveness on his 
 wide mouth, something grinning and twisted, his eyes always 
 shining like a bird's, utterly without depth. There was no 
 getting hold of the fellow, Brangwen irritably thought. He 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 105 
 
 was like a grinning young tom-cat, that came when he thought 
 he would, and without cognizance of the other person. 
 
 At first the youth had looked towards Tom Brangwen when 
 he talked ; and then he looked towards his aunt, for her appre- 
 ciation, valuing it more than his uncle's; and then he turned 
 to Anna, because from her he got what he wanted, which was 
 not in the elder people. 
 
 So that the two young people, from being always attendant 
 on the elder, began to draw apart and establish a separate 
 kingdom. Sometimes Tom Brangwen was irritated. His 
 nephew irritated him. The lad seemed to him too special, self- 
 contained. His nature was fierce enough, but too much ab- 
 stracted, like a separate thing, like a cat's nature. A cat could 
 lie perfectly peacefully on the hearthrug whilst its master or 
 mistress writhed in agony a yard away. It had nothing to do 
 with other people's affairs. What did the lad really care 
 about anything, save his own instinctive affairs? 
 
 Brangwen was irritated. Nevertheless he liked and re- 
 spected his nephew. Mrs. Brangwen was irritated by Anna, 
 who was suddenly changed, under the influence of the youth. 
 The mother liked the boy : he was not quite an outsider. But 
 she did not like her daughter to be so much under the spell. 
 
 So that gradually the two young people drew apart, escaped 
 from the elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He 
 worked in the garden to propitiate his uncle. He talked 
 churches to propitiate his aunt. He followed Anna like a 
 shadow: like a long, persistent, unswerving black shadow he 
 went after the girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It 
 exasperated him beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat- 
 grin as he called it, on his nephew's face. 
 
 And Anna had a new reserve, a new independence. Sud- 
 denly she began to act independently of her parents, to live 
 beyond them. Her mother had flashes of anger. 
 
 But the courtship went on. Anna would find occasion to 
 go shopping in Ilkeston at evening. She always returned 
 with her cousin ; he walking with his head over her shoulder, 
 a little bit behind her, like the Devil looking over Lincoln, 
 as Brangwen noted angrily and yet with satisfaction. 
 
 To his own wonder, Will Brangwen found himself in an 
 electric state of passion. To his wonder, he had stopped her 
 at the gate as they came home from Ilkeston one night, and 
 had kissed her, blocking her way and kissing her whilst he 
 
106 THE RAINBOW 
 
 felt as if some blow were struck at him in the dark. And 
 when they went indoors, he was acutely angry that her parents 
 looked up scrutinizingly at him and her. What right had 
 they there: why should they look up! Let them remove 
 themselves, or look elsewhere. 
 
 And the youth went home with the stars in heaven whirling 
 fiercely about the blackness of his head, and his heart fierce, 
 insistent, but fierce as if he felt something baulking him. 
 He wanted to smash through something. 
 
 A spell was cast over her. And how uneasy her parents 
 were, as she went about the house unnoticing, not noticing 
 them, moving in a spell as if she were invisible to them. She 
 was invisible to them. It made them angry. Yet they had 
 to submit. She went about absorbed, obscured for a while. 
 
 Over him too the darkness of obscurity settled. He seemed 
 to be hidden in a tense, electric darkness, in which his soul, 
 his life was intensely active, but without his aid or attention. 
 His mind was obscured. He worked swiftly and mechanically, 
 and he produced some beautiful things. 
 
 His favourite work was wood-carving. The first thing he 
 made for her was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mytho- 
 logical bird, a phoenix, something like an eagle, rising on 
 symmetrical wings, from a circle of very beautiful flickering 
 flames that rose upwards from the rim of the cup. 
 
 Anna thought nothing of the gift on the evening when he 
 gave it to her. In the morning, however, when the butter 
 was made, she fetched his seal in place of the old wooden 
 stamper of oak-leaves and acorns. She was curiously excited 
 to see how it would turn out. Strange, the uncouth bird 
 moulded there, in the cup-like hollow, with curious, thick 
 waverings running inwards from a smooth rim. She pressed 
 another mould. Strange, to lift the stamp and see that eagle- 
 beaked bird raising its breast to her. She loved creating it 
 over and over again. And every time she looked, it seemed a 
 new thing come to life. Every piece of butter became this 
 strange, vital emblem. 
 
 She showed it to her mother and father. 
 
 " That is beautiful/' said her mother, a little light coming 
 on to her face. 
 
 " Beautiful ! " exclaimed the father, puzzled, fretted. 
 "Why, what sort of a bird does he call it?" 
 
 And this was the question put by the customers during the 
 next weeks. 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 107 
 
 " What sort of a bird do you call that, as you've got on th' 
 butter?" 
 
 When he came in the evening, she took him into the dairy 
 to show him. 
 
 "Do you like it?" he asked, in his loud, vibrating voice 
 that always sounded strange, re-echoing in the dark places of 
 her being. 
 
 They very rarely touched each other. They liked to be 
 alone together, near to each other, but there was still a dis- 
 tance between them. 
 
 In the cool dairy the candle-light lit on the large, white 
 surfaces of the cream pans. He turned his head sharply. It 
 was so cool and remote in there, so remote. His mouth was 
 open in a little, strained laugh. She stood with her head 
 bent, turned aside. He wanted to go near to her. He had 
 kissed her once. Again his eye rested on the round blocks 
 of butter, where the emblematic bird lifted its breast from 
 the shadow cast by the candle flame. What was restraining 
 him? Her breast was near him; his head lifted like an 
 eagle's. She did not move. Suddenly, with an incredibly 
 quick, delicate movement, he put his arms round her and 
 drew her to him. It was quick, cleanly done, like a bird that 
 swoops and sinks close, closer. 
 
 He was kissing her throat. She turned and looked at him. 
 Her eyes were dark and flowing with fire. His eyes were hard 
 and bright with a fierce purpose and gladness, like a hawk's. 
 She felt him flying into the dark space of her flames, like a 
 brand, like a gleaming hawk. 
 
 They had looked at each other, and seen each other strange, 
 yet near, very near, like a hawk stooping, swooping, dropping 
 into a flame of darkness. So she took the candle and they 
 went back to the kitchen. 
 
 They went on in this way for some time, always coming 
 together, but rarely touching, very seldom did they kiss. 
 And then, often, it was merely a touch of the lips, a sign. 
 But her eyes began to waken with a constant fire, she paused 
 often in the midst of her transit, as if to recollect something, 
 or to discover something. 
 
 And his face became sombre, intent, he did not readily hear 
 what was said to him. 
 
 One evening in August he came when it was raining. He 
 came in with his jacket collar turned up, his jacket buttoned 
 close, his face wet. And he looked so slim and definite, 
 
108 THE RAINBOW 
 
 coming out of the chill rain, she was suddenly blinded with 
 love for him. Yet he sat and talked with her father and 
 mother, meaninglessly, whilst her blood seethed to anguish in 
 her. She wanted to touch him now, only to touch him. 
 
 There was the queer, abstract look on her silvery radiant 
 face that maddened her father, her dark eyes were hidden. 
 But she raised them to the youth. And they were dark with 
 a flare that made him quail for a moment. 
 
 She went into the second kitchen and took a lantern. Her 
 father watched her as she returned. 
 
 " Come with me, Will," she said to her cousin. " I want 
 to see if I put the brick over where that rat comes in." 
 
 "You've no need to do that," retorted her father. She 
 took no notice. The youth was between the two wills. The 
 colour mounted into the father's face, his blue eyes stared. 
 The girl stood near the door, her head held slightly back, 
 like an indication that the youth must come. He rose, in 
 his silent, intent way, and was gone with her. The blood 
 swelled in Brangwen's forehead veins. 
 
 It was raining. The light of the lantern flashed on the 
 cobbled path and the bottom of the wall. She came to a 
 small ladder, and climbed up. He reached her the lantern, 
 and followed. Up there in the fowl-loft, the birds sat in fat 
 bunches on the perches, the red combs shining like fire. 
 Bright, sharp eyes opened. There was a sharp crawk of ex- 
 postulation as one of the hens shifted over. The cock sat 
 watching, his yellow neck-feathers bright as glass. Anna 
 went across the dirty floor. Brangwen crouched in the loft 
 watching. The light was soft under the red, naked tiles. 
 The girl crouched in a corner. There was another explosive 
 bustle of a hen springing from her perch. 
 
 Anna came back, stooping under the perches. He was 
 waiting for her near the door. Suddenly she had her arms 
 round him, was clinging close to him, cleaving her body against 
 his, and crying, in a whispering, whimpering sound. 
 
 " Will, I love you, I love you, Will, I love you." It sounded 
 as if it were tearing her. 
 
 He was not even very much surprised. He held her in his 
 arms, and his bones melted. He leaned back against the 
 wall. The door of the loft was open. Outside, the rain 
 slanted by in fine, steely, mysterious haste, emerging out of 
 the gulf of darkness. He held her in his arms, and he and 
 she together seemed to be swinging in big, swooping oscilla- 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 109 
 
 tions, the two of them clasped together up in the darkness. 
 Outside the open door of the loft in which they stood, beyond 
 them and below them, was darkness, with a travelling veil 
 of rain. 
 
 " I love you, Will, I love you," she moaned, " I love you, 
 Will/' 
 
 He held her as though they were one, and was silent. 
 
 In the house, Tom Brangwen waited a while. Then he 
 got up and went out. He went down the yard. He saw the 
 curious misty shaft coming from the loft door. He scarcely 
 knew it was the light in the rain. He went on till the illumi- 
 nation fell on him dimly. Then looking up, through the 
 blurr, he saw the youth and the girl together, the youth with 
 his back against the wall, his head sunk over the head of the 
 girl. The elder man saw them, blurred through the rain, but 
 lit up. They thought themselves so buried in the night. He 
 even saw the lighted dryness of the loft behind, and shadows 
 and bunches of roosting fowls, up in the night, strange shad- 
 ows cast from the lantern on the floor. 
 
 And a black gloom of anger, and a tenderness of self-efface- 
 ment, fought in his heart. She did not understand what she 
 was doing. She betrayed herself. She was a child, a mere 
 child. She did not know how much of herself she was squan- 
 dering. And he was blackly and furiously miserable. Was 
 he then an old man, that he should be giving her away in 
 marriage ? Was he old ? He was not old. He was younger 
 than that young thoughtless fellow in whose arms she lay. 
 Who knew her he or that blind-headed youth? To whom 
 did she belong, if not to kimself ? 
 
 He thought again of the child he had carried out at night 
 into the barn, whilst his wife was in labour with the young 
 Tom. He remembered the soft, warm weight of the little 
 girl on his arm, round his neck. Now she would say he was 
 finished. She was going away, to deny him, to leave an un- 
 endurable emptiness in him, a void that he could not bear. 
 Almost he hated her. How dared she say he was old. He 
 walked on in the rain, sweating with pain, with the horror of 
 being old, with the agony of having to relinquish what was 
 life to him. 
 
 Will Brangwen went home without having seen his uncle. 
 He held his hot face to the rain, and walked on in a trance. 
 "I love you, Will, I love you." The words repeated them- 
 selves endlessly. The veils had ripped and issued him naked 
 
110 THE RAINBOW 
 
 into the endless space, and he shuddered. The walls had 
 thrust him out and given him a vast space to walk in. 
 Whither, through this darkness of infinite space, was he walk- 
 ing blindly? Where, at the end of all the darkness, was God 
 the Almighty still darkly seated, thrusting him on ? "I love 
 you, Will, I love you." He trembled with fear as the words 
 beat in his heart again. And he dared not think of her face, 
 of her eyes which shone, and of her strange, transfigured face. 
 The hand of the Hidden Almighty, burning bright, had 
 thrust out of the darkness and gripped him. He went on 
 subject and in fear, his heart gripped and burning from the 
 touch. 
 
 The days went by, they ran on dark-padded feet in silence. 
 He went to see Anna, but again there had come a reserve 
 between them. Tom Brangwen was gloomy, his blue eyes 
 sombre. Anna was strange and delivered up. Her face in 
 its delicate colouring was mute, touched dumb and poignant. 
 The mother bowed her head and moved in her own dark 
 world, that was pregnant again with fulfilment. 
 
 Will Brangwen worked at his wood-carving. It was a 
 passion, a passion for him to have the chisel under his grip. 
 Verily the passion of his heart lifted the fine bite of steel. 
 He was carving, as he had always wanted, the Creation of 
 Eve. It was a panel in low relief, for a church. Adam lay 
 asleep as if suffering, and God, a dim, large figure, stooped 
 towards him, stretching forward His unveiled hand ; and Eve, 
 a small vivid, naked female shape, was issuing like a flame 
 towards the hand of God, from the torn side of Adam. 
 
 Now, Will Brangwen was working at the Eve. She was 
 thin, a keen, unripe thing. With trembling passion, fine as 
 a breath of air, he sent the chisel over her belly, her hard, 
 unripe, small belly. She was a stiff little figure, with sharp 
 lines, in the throes and torture and ecstasy of her creation. 
 But he trembled as he touched her. He had not finished 
 any of his figures. There was a bird on a bough overhead, 
 lifting its wings for flight, and a serpent wreathing up to it. 
 It was not finished yet. He trembled with passion, at last 
 able to create the new, sharp body of his Eve. 
 
 At the sides, at the far sides, at either end, were two Angels 
 covering their faces with their wings. They were like trees. 
 As he went to the Marsh, in the twilight, he felt that the 
 Angels, with covered faces, were standing back as he went 
 by. The darkness was of their shadows and the covering of 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 111 
 
 their faces. When he went through the Canal bridge, the 
 evening glowed in its last deep colours, the sky was dark blue, 
 the stars glittered from afar, very remote and approaching 
 above the darkening cluster of the farm, above the paths of 
 crystal along the edge of the heavens. 
 
 She waited for him like the glow of light, and as if his 
 face were covered. And he dared not lift his face to look 
 at her. 
 
 Corn harvest came on. One evening they walked out 
 through the farm buildings at nightfall. A large gold moon 
 hung heavily to the grey horizon, trees hovered tall, stand- 
 ing back in the dusk, waiting. Anna and the young man 
 went on noiselessly by the hedge, along where the farm-carts 
 had made dark ruts in the grass. They came through a gate 
 into a wide open field where still much light seemed to spread 
 against their faces. In the under-shadow the sheaves lay 
 on the ground where the reapers had left them, many sheaves 
 like bodies prostrate in shadowy bulk; others were riding 
 hazily in shocks, like ships in the haze of moonlight and of 
 dusk, further off. 
 
 They did not want to turn back, yet whither were they to 
 go, towards the moon ? For they were separate, single. 
 
 " We will put up some sheaves," said Anna. So they could 
 remain there in the broad, open place. 
 
 They went across the stubble to where the long rows of 
 upreared shocks ended. Curiously populous that part of the 
 field looked, where the shocks rode erect; the rest was open 
 and prostrate. 
 
 The air was all hoary silver. She looked around her. 
 Trees stood vaguely at their distance, as if waiting like 
 heralds, for the signal to approach. In this space of vague 
 crystal her heart seemed like a bell ringing. She was afraid 
 lest the sound should be heard. 
 
 "You take this row/' she said to the youth, and passing 
 on, she stooped in the next row of lying sheaves, grasping 
 her hands in the tresses of the oats, lifting the heavy corn in 
 either hand, carrying it, as it hung' heavily against her, to 
 the cleared space, where she set the two sheaves sharply down, 
 bringing them together with a faint, keen clash. Her two 
 bulks stood leaning together. He was coming, walking 
 shadowily with the gossamer dusk, carrying his two sheaves. 
 She waited near by. He set his sheaves with a keen, faint 
 clash, next to her sheaves. They rode unsteadily. He tan- 
 
112 THE RAINBOW 
 
 gled the tresses of corn. It hissed like a fountain. He looked 
 up and laughed. 
 
 Then she turned away towards the moon, which seemed 
 glowingly to uncover her bosom every time she faced it. He 
 went to the vague emptiness of the field opposite, dutifully. 
 
 They stooped, grasped the wet, soft hair of the corn, lifted 
 the heavy bundles, and returned. She was always first. She 
 set down her sheaves, making a pent house with those others. 
 He was coming shadowy across the stubble, carrying his bun- 
 dles. She turned away, hearing only the sharp hiss of his 
 mingling corn. She walked between the moon and his shad- 
 owy figure. 
 
 She took her new two sheaves and walked towards him, 
 as he rose from stooping over the earth. He was coming 
 out of the near distance. She set down her sheaves to make 
 a new stock. They were unsure. Her hands fluttered. Yet 
 she broke away, and turned to the moon, which laid bare her 
 bosom, so she felt as if her bosom were heaving and panting 
 with moonlight. And he had to put up her two sheaves, 
 which had fallen down. He worked in silence. The rhythm 
 of the work carried him away again, as she was coming near. 
 
 They worked together, coming and going, in a rhythm, 
 which carried their feet and their bodies in tune. She 
 stooped, she lifted the burden of sheaves, she turned her face 
 to the dimness where he was, and went with her burden over 
 the stubble. She hesitated, set down her sheaves, there was a 
 swish and hiss of mingling oats, he was drawing near, and she 
 must turn again. And there was the flaring moon laying bare 
 her bosom again, making her drift and ebb like a wave. 
 
 He worked steadily, engrossed, threading backwards and 
 forwards like a shuttle across the strip of cleared stubble, 
 weaving the long line of riding shocks, nearer and nearer to 
 the shadowy trees, threading his sheaves with hers. 
 
 And always, she was gone before he came. As he came, she 
 drew away, as he drew away, she came. Were they never to 
 meet? Gradually a low, deep-sounding will in him vibrated 
 to her, tried to set her in accord, tried to bring her gradually 
 to him, to a meeting, till they should be together, till they 
 should meet as the sheaves that swished together. 
 
 And the work went on. The moon grew brighter, clearer, 
 the corn glistened. He bent over the prostrate bundles, there 
 was a hiss as the sheaves left the ground, a trailing of heavy 
 bodies against him, a dazzle of moonlight on. his eyes. And 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 113 
 
 then he was setting the corn together at the stock. And she 
 was coming near. 
 
 He waited for her, he fumbled at the stook. She came. 
 But she stood back till he drew away. He saw her in shadow, 
 a dark column, and spoke to her, and she answered. She 
 saw the moonlight flash question on his face. But there was 
 a space between them, and he went away, the work carried 
 them, rhythmic. 
 
 Why was there always a space between them, why were 
 they apart? Why, as she came up from under the moon, 
 would she halt and stand off from him? Why was he held 
 away from her? His will drummed persistently, darkly, it 
 drowned everything else. 
 
 Into the rhythm of his work there came a pulse and a 
 steadied purpose. He stooped, he lifted the weight, he heaved 
 it towards her, setting it as in her, under the moonlit space. 
 And he went back for more. Ever with increasing closeness 
 he lifted the sheaves and swung striding to the centre with 
 them, ever he drove her more nearly to the meeting, ever he 
 did his share, and drew towards her, overtaking her. There 
 was only the moving to and fro in the moonlight, engrossed, 
 the swinging in the silence, that was marked only by the 
 splash of sheaves, and silence, and a splash of sheaves. And 
 ever the splash of his sheaves broke swifter, beating up to 
 hers, and ever the splash of her sheaves recurred monotonously, 
 unchanging, and ever the splash of his sheaves beat nearer. 
 
 Till at last, they met at the shock, facing each other, sheaves 
 in hand. And he was silvery with moonlight, with a moonlit, 
 shadowy face that frightened her. She waited for him. 
 
 "Put yours down," she said. 
 
 "No, it's your turn." His voice was twanging and in- 
 sistent. 
 
 She set her sheaves against the shock. He saw her hands 
 glisten among the spray of grain. And he dropped his sheaves 
 and he trembled as he took her in his arms. He had over- 
 taken her, and it was his privilege to kiss her. She was 
 sweet and fresh with the night air, and sweet with the scent 
 of grain. And the whole rhythm of him beat into his kisses, 
 and still he pursued her, in his kisses, and still she was not 
 quite overcome. He wondered over the moonlight on her 
 nose! All the moonlight upon her, all the darkness within 
 her! All the night in his arms, darkness and shine, he pos- 
 sessed of it all! All the night for him now, to unfold, to 
 
114 THE RAINBOW 
 
 venture within, all the mystery to be entered, all the discovery 
 to be made. 
 
 Trembling with keen triumph, his heart was white as a star 
 as he drove his kisses nearer. 
 
 " My love ! " she called, in a low voice, from afar. The 
 low sound seemed to call to him from far off, under the moon, 
 to him who was unaware. He stopped, quivered, and listened. 
 
 " My love," came again the low, plaintive call, like a bird 
 unseen in the night. . 
 
 He was afraid. His heart quivered and broke. He was 
 stopped. 
 
 "Anna," he said, as if he answered her from a distance, 
 unsure. 
 
 " My love." 
 
 And he drew near, and she drew near. 
 
 " Anna," he said, in wonder and birthpain of love. 
 
 " My love," she said, her voice growing rapturous. And 
 they kissed on the mouth, in rapture and surprise, long, real 
 kisses. The kiss lasted, there among the moonlight. He 
 kissed her again, and she kissed him. And again they were 
 kissing together. Till something happened in him, he was 
 strange. He wanted her. He wanted her exceedingly. She 
 was something new. They stood there folded, suspended in 
 the night. And his whole being quivered with surprise, as 
 from a blow. He wanted her, and he wanted to tell her so. 
 But the shock was too great to him. He had never realized 
 before. He trembled with irritation and unusedness, he did 
 not know what to do. He held her more gently, gently, much 
 more gently. The conflict was gone by. And he was glad, 
 and breathless, and almost in tears. But he knew he wanted 
 her. Something fixed in him for ever. He was hers. And 
 he was very glad and afraid. He did not know what to do, 
 as they stood there in the open, moonlit field. He looked 
 through her hair at the moon, which seemed to swim liquid- 
 bright. 
 
 She sighed, and seemed to wake up, then she kissed him 
 again. Then she loosened herself away from him and took 
 his hand. It hurt him when she drew away from his breast. 
 It hurt him with a chagrin. Why did she draw away from 
 him? But she held his hand. 
 
 " I want to go home," she said, looking at him in a way he 
 could not understand. 
 
 He held close to her hand. He was dazed and he could not 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 115 
 
 move, he did not know how to move. She drew him away. 
 
 He walked helplessly beside her, holding her hand. She 
 went with bent head. Suddenly he said, as the simple solu- 
 tion stated itself to him: 
 
 "We'll get married, Anna." 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 " We'll get married, Anna, shall we ? " 
 
 She stopped in the field again and kissed him, clinging to 
 him passionately, in a way he could not understand. He 
 could not understand. But he left it all now, to marriage. 
 That was the solution now, fixed ahead. He wanted her, he 
 wanted to be married to her, he wanted to have her altogether, 
 as his own for ever. And he waited, intent, for the accom- 
 plishment. But there was all the while a slight tension of 
 irritation. 
 
 He spoke to his uncle and aunt that night. 
 
 " Uncle," he said, " Anna and me think of getting mar- 
 ried." 
 
 " Oh ay ! " said Brangwen. 
 
 " But how, you have no money ? " said the mother. 
 
 The youth went pale. He hated these words. But he was 
 like a gleaming, bright pebble, something bright and inalter- 
 able. He did not think. He sat there in his hard brightness, 
 and did not speak. 
 
 "Have you mentioned it to your own mother?" asked 
 Brangwen. 
 
 NO I'll tell her on Saturday." 
 
 "You'll go and see her?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 There was a long pause. 
 
 "And what are you going to marry on your pound a 
 week?" 
 
 Again the youth went pale, as if the spirit were being in- 
 jured in him. 
 
 "I don't know," he said, looking at his uncle with his 
 bright inhuman eyes, like a hawk's. 
 
 Brangwen stirred in hatred. 
 
 " It needs knowing," he said. 
 
 " I shall have the money later on," said the nephew. " I 
 will raise some now, and pay it back then." 
 
 " Oh ay ! And why this desperate hurry? She's a child 
 of eighteen, and you're a boy of twenty. You're neither of 
 you of age to do as you like yet." 
 
116 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Will Brangwen ducked his head' and looked at his uncle with 
 swift, bright mistrustful eyes, like a caged hawk. 
 
 " What does it matter how old she is, and how old I am ? " 
 he said. "What's the difference between me now and when 
 I'm thirty?" 
 
 " A big difference, let us hope/' 
 
 " But you have no experience you have no experience, 
 and no money. Why do you want to marry, without experi- 
 ence or money ? " asked the aunt. 
 
 " What experience do I want, Aunt ? " asked the boy. 
 
 And if Brangwen's heart had not been hard and intact with 
 anger, like a precious stone, he would have agreed. 
 
 Will Brangwen went home strange and untouched. He 
 felt he could not alter from what he was fixed upon, his will 
 was set. To alter it he must be destroyed. And he would 
 not be destroyed. He had no money. But he would get some 
 from somewhere, it did not matter. He lay awake for many 
 hours, hard and clear and unthinking, his soul crystallizing 
 more inalterably. Then he went fast asleep. 
 
 It was as if his soul had turned into a hard crystal. He 
 might tremble and quiver and suffer, it did not alter. 
 
 The next morning Tom Brangwen, inhuman with anger, 
 spoke to Anna. 
 
 " What's this about wanting to get married ? " he said. 
 
 She stood, paling a little, her dark eyes springing to the 
 hostile, startled look of a savage thing that will defend itself, 
 but trembles with sensitiveness. 
 
 " I do, ?? she said, out of her unconsciousness. 
 
 ^His anger rose, and he would have liked to break her. 
 
 '" You do you do and what for ? " he sneered with con- 
 tempt. The old, childish agony, the blindness that could 
 recognize nobody, the palpitating antagonism as of a raw, 
 helpless, undefended thing came back on her. 
 
 " I do because I do," she cried, in the shrill, hysterical way 
 of her childhood. " You are not my father my father is 
 dead you are not my father." 
 
 She was still a stranger. She did not recognize him. The 
 cold blade cut down, deep into Brangwen's soul. It cut him 
 off from her. 
 
 " And what if I'm not ? " he said. 
 
 But he could not bear it. It had been so passionately dear 
 to him, her " Father Daddie." 
 
 He went about for some da^s as if stunned. His wile was 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 11? 
 
 bemused. She did not understand. She only thought the 
 marriage was impeded for want of money and position. 
 
 There was a horrible silence in the house. Anna kept out 
 of sight as much as possible. She could be for hours alone. 
 
 Will Brangwen came back, after stupid scenes at Notting- 
 ham. He too was pale and blank, but unchanging. His 
 uncle hated him. He hated this youth, who was so inhuman 
 and obstinate. Nevertheless, it was to Will Brangwen that 
 the uncle, one evening, handed over the shares which he had 
 transferred to Anna Lensky. They were for two thousand 
 five hundred pounds. Will Brangwen looked at his uncle. 
 It was a great deal of the Marsh capital here given away. 
 The youth, however, was only colder and more fixed. He was 
 abstract, purely a fixed will. He gave the shares to Anna. 
 
 After which she cried for a whole day, sobbing her eyes 
 out. And at night, when she had heard her mother go to 
 bed, she slipped down and hung in the doorway. Her father 
 sat in his heavy silence, like a monument. He turned his 
 head slowly. 
 
 " Daddy/' she cried from the doorway, and she ran to 
 him sobbing as if her heart would break. " Daddy daddy 
 daddy." 
 
 She crouched on the hearthrug with her arms round him 
 and her face against him. His body was so big and comfort- 
 able. But something hurt her head intolerably. She sobbed 
 almost with hysteria. 
 
 He was silent, with his hand on her shoulder. His heart 
 was bleak. He was not her father. That beloved image she 
 had broken. Who was he then ? A man put apart with those 
 whose life has no more developments. He was isolated from 
 her. There was a generation between them, he was old, he 
 had died out from hot life. A great deal of ash was in his 
 fire, cold ash. He felt the inevitable coldness, and in bitter- 
 ness forgot the fire. He sat in his coldness of age and isola- 
 tion. He had his own wife. And he blamed himself, he 
 sneered at himself, for this clinging to the young, wanting the 
 young to belong to him. 
 
 The child who clung to him wanted her child-husband. As 
 was natural. And from him, Brangwen, she wanted help, so 
 that her life might be properly fitted out. But love she did 
 not want. Why should there be love between them, between 
 the stout, middle-aged man and this child ? How could there 
 be anything between them, but mere human willingness to 
 
118 THE RAINBOW 
 
 help each other? He was her guardian, no more. His heart 
 was like ice, his face cold and expressionless. She could not 
 move him any more than a statue. 
 
 She crept to bed, and cried. But she was going to be mar- 
 ried to Will Brangwen, and then she need not bother any 
 more. Brangwen went to bed with a hard, cold heart, and 
 cursed himself. He looked at his wife. She was still his 
 wife. Her dark hair was threaded with grey, her face was 
 beautiful in its gathering age. She was just fifty. How 
 poignantly he saw her! And he wanted to cut out some of 
 his own heart, which was incontinent, and demanded still to 
 share the rapid life of youth. How he hated himself. 
 
 His wife was so poignant and timely. She was still young 
 and naive, with some girl's freshness. But she did not want 
 any more the fight, the battle, the control, as he, in his inconti- 
 nence, still did. She was so natural, and he was ugly, un- 
 natural, in his inability to yield place. How hideous, this 
 greedy middle-age, which must stand in the way of life, like a 
 large demon. 
 
 What was missing in his life, that, in his ravening soul, 
 he was not satisfied? He had had that friend at school, his 
 mother, his wife, and Anna? What had he done? He had 
 failed with his friend, he had been a poor son; but he had 
 known satisfaction with his wife, let it be enough ; he loathed 
 himself for the state he was in over Anna. Yet he was not 
 satisfied. It was agony to know it. 
 
 Was his life nothing ? Had he nothing to show, no work ? 
 He did not count his work, anybody could have done it. 
 What had he known, but the long, marital embrace with his 
 wife ! Curious, that this was what his life amounted to ! At 
 any rate, it was something, it was eternal. He would say so 
 to anybody, and be proud of it. He lay with his wife in his 
 arms, and she was still his fulfilment, just the same as ever. 
 And that was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, and he was 
 proud of it. 
 
 But the bitterness, underneath, that there still remained an 
 unsatisfied Tom Brangwen, who suffered agony because a girl 
 cared nothing for him. He loved his sons he had them 
 also. But it was the further, the creative life with the girl, 
 he wanted as well. Oh, and he was ashamed. He trampled 
 himself to extinguish himself. 
 
 What weariness! There was no peace, however old one 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN lid 
 
 grew! One was never right, never decent, never master of 
 oneself. It was as if his hope had been in the girl. 
 
 Anna quickly lapsed again into her love for the youth. 
 Will Brangwen had fixed his marriage for the Saturday before 
 Christmas. And he waited for her, in his bright, unquestion- 
 ing fashion, until then. He wanted her, she was his, he sus- 
 pended his being till the day should come. The wedding day, 
 December the twenty-third, had come into being for him as 
 an absolute thing. He lived in it. 
 
 He did not count the days. But like a man who journeys 
 in a ship, he was suspended till the coming to port. 
 
 He worked at his carving, he worked in his office, he came 
 to see her ; all was but a form of waiting, without thought or 
 question. 
 
 She was much more alive. She wanted to enjoy courtship. 
 He seemed to come and go like the wind, without asking why 
 or whither. But she wanted to enjoy his presence. For her, 
 he was the kernel of life, to touch him alone was bliss. But 
 for him, she was the essence of life. She existed as much 
 when he was at his carving in his lodging in Ilkeston, as 
 when she sat looking at him in the Marsh kitchen. In him- 
 self, he knew her. But his outward faculties seemed sus- 
 pended. He did not see her with his eyes, nor hear her with 
 his voice. 
 
 And yet he trembled, sometimes into a kind of swoon, hold- 
 ing her in his arms. They would stand sometimes folded 
 together in the barn, in silence. Then to her, as she felt his 
 young, tense figure with her hands, the bliss was intolerable, 
 intolerable the sense that she possessed him. For his body 
 was so keen and wonderful, it was the only reality in her 
 world. In her world, there was this one tense, vivid body of 
 a man, and then many other shadowy men, all unreal. In 
 him, she touched the centre of reality. And they were to- 
 gether, he and she, at the heart of the secret. How she 
 clutched him to her, his body the central body of all life. 
 Out of the rock of his form the very fountain of life flowed. 
 
 But to him, she was a flame that consumed him. The 
 flame flowed up his limbs, flowed through him, till he was 
 consumed, till he existed only as an unconscious, dark transit 
 of flame, deriving from her. 
 
 Sometimes, in the darkness, a cow coughed. There was, 
 in the darkness, a slow sound of cud chewing. And it all 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 seemed to flow round them and upon them as the hot blood 
 flows through the womb, laving the unborn young. 
 
 Sometimes, when it was cold, they stood to be lovers in 
 the stables, where the air was warm and sharp with ammonia. 
 And during these dark vigils, he learned to know her, her 
 body against his, they drew nearer and nearer together, the 
 kisses came more subtly close and fitting. So when in the 
 thick darkness a horse suddenly scrambled to its feet, with 
 a dull, thunderous sound, they listened as one person listening, 
 they knew as one person, they were conscious of the horse. 
 
 Tom Brangwen had taken them a cottage at Cossethay, on 
 a twenty-one years' lease. Will Brangwen's eyes lit up as 
 he saw it. It was the cottage next the church, with dark yew- 
 trees, very black old trees, along the side of the house and 
 the grassy front garden; a red, squarish cottage with a low 
 slate roof, and low windows. It had a long dairy-scullery, a 
 big flagged kitchen, and a low parlour, that went up one step 
 from the kitchen. There were whitewashed beams across the 
 ceilings, and odd corners with cupboards. Looking out 
 through the windows, there was the grassy garden, the pro- 
 cession of black yew-trees down one side, and along the other 
 sides, a red wall with ivy separating the place from the high- 
 road and the churchyard. The old, little church, with its 
 small spire on a square tower, seemed to be looking back at 
 the cottage windows. 
 
 " There'll be no need to have a clock," said Will Brangwen, 
 peeping out at the white clock-face on the tower, his neigh- 
 bour. 
 
 At the back of the house was a garden adjoining the pad- 
 dock, a cowshed with standing for two cows, pig-cotes and 
 fowl-houses. Will Brangwen was very happy. Anna was 
 glad to think of being mistress of her own place. 
 
 Tom Brangwen was now the fairy godfather. He was 
 never happy unless he was buying something. Will Brang- 
 wen, with his interest in all wood-work, was getting the furni- 
 ture. He was left to buy tables and round-staved chairs and 
 the dressers, quite ordinary stuff, but such as was identified 
 with his cottage. 
 
 Tom Brangwen, witfi more particular thought, spied out 
 what he called handy little things for her. He appeared with 
 a set of new-fangled cooking-pans, with a special sort of hang- 
 ing lamp, though the rooms were so low, with canny little 
 
GIRLHOOD OF ANNA BRANGWEN 121 
 
 machines for grinding meat or mashing potatoes or whisking 
 eggs. 
 
 Anna took a sharp interest in what he bought, though she 
 was not always pleased. Some of the little contrivances, 
 which he thought so canny, left her doubtful. Nevertheless 
 she was always expectant, on market days there was always 
 a long thrill of anticipation. He arrived with the first dark- 
 ness, the copper lamps of his cart glowing. And she ran to 
 the gate, as he, a dark, burly figure up in the cart, was bending 
 over his parcels. 
 
 " It's cupboard love as brings you out so sharp," he said, his 
 voice resounding in the cold darkness. Nevertheless he waa 
 excited. And she, taking one of the cart lamps, poked and 
 peered among the jumble of things he had brought, pushing 
 aside the oil or implements he had got for himself. 
 
 She dragged out a pair of small, strong bellows, registered 
 them in her mind, and then pulled uncertainly at something 
 else. It had a long handle, and a piece of brown paper round 
 the middle of it, like a waistcoat. 
 
 " What's this ? " she said, poking. 
 
 He stopped to look at her. She went to the lamp-light by 
 the horse, and stood there bent over the new thing, while her 
 hair was like bronze, her apron white and cheerful. Her fin- 
 gers plucked busily at the paper. She dragged forth a little 
 wringer, with clean indiarubber rollers. She examined it 
 critically, not knowing quite how it worked. 
 
 She looked up at him. He stood a shadowy presence be- 
 yond the light. 
 
 " How does it go ? " she asked. 
 
 " Why, it's for pulpin' turnips," he replied. 
 
 She looked at him. His voice disturbed her. 
 
 " Don't be silly. It's a little mangle," she said. " How do 
 you stand it, though ? " 
 
 " You screw it on th' side o' your wash-tub." He came and 
 held it out to her. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " she cried, with one of her little skipping move- 
 ments, which still came when she was suddenly glad. 
 
 And without another thought she ran off into the house, 
 leaving him to untackle the horse. And when he came into 
 the scullery, he found her there, with the little wringer fixed 
 on the dolly-tub, turning blissfully at the handle, and Tilly 
 beside her, exclaiming: 
 
122 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "My word, that's a natty little thing! That'll save you 
 luggin' your inside out. That's the latest contraption, that 
 is." 
 
 And Anna turned away at the handle, with great gusto of 
 possession. Then she let Tilly have a turn. 
 
 "It fair runs by itself," said Tilly, turning on and on. 
 " Your clothes'll nip out on to th' line." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WEDDING AT THE MARSH 
 
 IT was a beautiful sunny day for the wedding, a muddy 
 earth but a bright sky. They had three cabs and two 
 big closed-in vehicles. Everybody crowded in the par- 
 lour in excitement. Anna was still upstairs. Her father 
 kept taking a nip of brandy. He was handsome in his black 
 coat and grey trousers. His voice was hearty but troubled. 
 His wife came down in dark grey silk with lace, and a touch 
 of peacock-blue in her bonnet. Her little body was very sure 
 and definite. Brangwen was thankful she was there, to sus- 
 tain him among all these people. 
 
 The carriages! The Nottingham Mrs. Brangwen, in silk 
 brocade, stands in the doorway saying who must go with 
 whom. There is a great bustle. The front door is opened, 
 and the wedding guests are walking down the garden path, 
 whilst those still waiting peer through the window, and the 
 little crowd at the gate gorps and stretches. How funny such 
 dressed-up people look in the winter sunshine ! 
 
 They are gone another lot! There begins to be more 
 room. Anna comes down blushing and very shy, to be viewed 
 in her white silk and her veil. Her mother-in-law surveys 
 her objectively, twitches the white train, arranges the folds of 
 the veil and asserts herself. 
 
 Loud exclamations from the window that the bridegroom's 
 carriage has just passed. 
 
 "Where's your hat, father, and your gloves?" cries the 
 bride, stamping her white slipper, her eyes flashing through 
 her veil. He hunts round his hair is ruffled. Everybody 
 has gone but the bride and her father. He is ready his 
 face very red and daunted. Tilly dithers in the little porch, 
 waiting to open the door. A waiting woman walks round 
 Anna, who asks: 
 
 "Am I all right ?" 
 
 She is ready. She bridles herself and looks queenly. She 
 waves her hand sharply to her father : 
 
 123 
 
124 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "Come here!" 
 
 He goes. She puts her hand very lightly on his arm, and 
 holding her bouquet like a shower, stepping, oh, very gra- 
 ciously, just a little impatient with her father for being so red 
 in the face, she sweeps slowly past the fluttering Tilly, and 
 down the path. There are hoarse shouts at the gate, and all 
 her floating foamy whiteness passes slowly into the cab. 
 
 Her father notices her slim ankle and foot as she steps up : 
 a child's foot. His heart is hard with tenderness. But she 
 is in ecstasies with herself for making such a lovely spectacle. 
 All the way she sat flamboyant with bliss because it was all 
 so lovely. She looked down solicitously at her bouquet : white 
 roses and lilies-of-the-valley and tube-roses and maidenhair 
 fern very rich and cascade-like. 
 
 Her father sat bewildered with all this strangeness, his 
 heart was so full it felt hard, and he couldn't think of any- 
 thing. 
 
 The church was decorated for Christmas, dark with ever- 
 greens, cold and snowy with white flowers. He went vaguely 
 down to the altar. How long was it since he had gone to be 
 married himself? He was not sure whether he was going to 
 be married now, or what he had come for. He had a troubled 
 notion that he had to do something or other. He saw his 
 wife's bonnet, and wondered why she wasn't there with him. 
 
 They stood before the altar. He was staring up at the 
 east window, that glowed intensely, a sort of blue purple: it 
 was deep blue glowing, and some crimson, and little yellow 
 flowers held fast in veins of shadow, in a heavy web of dark- 
 ness. How it burned alive in radiance among its black web. 
 
 "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" 
 He felt somebody touch him. He started. The words still 
 re-echoed in his memory, but were drawing off. 
 
 " Me," he said hastily. 
 
 Anna bent her head and smiled in her veil. How absurd 
 he was! 
 
 Brangwen was staring away at the burning blue window 
 at the back of the altar, and wondering vaguely, with pain, 
 if he ever should get old, if he ever should feel arrived and 
 established. He was here at Anna's wedding. Well, what 
 right had he to feel responsible, like a father? He was 
 still as unsure and unfixed as when he had married himself. 
 His .wife and he ! With a pang of anguish he realized what 
 uncertainties they both were. He was a man of forty-five. 
 
WEDDING AT THE MARSH 125 
 
 Forty-five! In five more years fifty. Then sixty then 
 seventy then it was finished. My God and one still was 
 so unestablished ! 
 
 How did one grow old how could one become confident ? 
 He wished he felt older. Why, what difference was there, 
 as far as he felt matured or completed, between him now and 
 him at his own wedding? He might be getting married over 
 again he and his wife. He felt himself tiny, a little, up- 
 right figure on a plain circled round with the immense, roar- 
 ing sky: he and his wife, two little, upright figures walking 
 across this plain, whilst the heavens shimmered and roared 
 about them. When did one come to an end? In which di- 
 rection was it finished? There was no end, no finish, only 
 this roaring vast space. Did one never get old, never die? 
 That was the clue. He exulted strangely, with torture. He 
 would go on with his wife, he and she like two children camp- 
 ing in the plains. What was sure but the endless sky ? But 
 that was so sure, so boundless. 
 
 Still the royal blue colour burned and blazed and sported 
 itself in the web of darkness before him, unwearyingly rich 
 and splendid. How rich and splendid his own life was, red 
 and burning and blazing and sporting itself in the dark meshes 
 of his body: and his wife, how she glowed and burned dark 
 within her meshes! Always it was so unfinished and un- 
 formed ! 
 
 There was a loud noise of the organ. The whole party was 
 trooping to the vestry. There was a blotted, scrawled book 
 and that young girl putting back her veil in her vanity, and 
 laying her hand with the wedding-ring self-consciously con- 
 spicuous, and signing her name proudly because of the vain 
 spectacle she made : 
 
 " Anna Theresa Lensky." 
 
 " Anna Theresa Lensky " what a vain, independent minx 
 she was! The bridegroom, slender in his black swallow-tail 
 and grey trousers, solemn as a young solemn cat, was writing 
 seriously : 
 
 "William Brangwen." 
 
 That looked more like it. 
 
 " Come and sign, father," cried the imperious young hussy. 
 
 "Thomas Brangwen clumsy-fist," he said to himself as 
 he signed. 
 
 Then his brother, a big, sallow fellow with Wack 
 whis,kej 8 wrote ; 
 
126 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "Alfred Brangwen." 
 
 "How many more Brangwens?" said Tom Brangwen, 
 ashamed of the too-frequent recurrence of his family name. 
 
 When they were out again in the sunshine, and he saw the 
 frost hoary and blue among the long grass under the tomb- 
 stones, the holly-berries overhead twinkling scarlet as the 
 bells rang, the yew trees hanging their black, motionless, 
 ragged boughs, everything seemed like a vision. 
 
 The marriage party went across the graveyard to the wall, 
 mounted it by the little steps, and descended. Oh, a vain 
 white peacock of a bride perching herself on the top of the 
 wall and giving her hand to the bridegroom on the other side, 
 to be helped down ! The vanity of her white, slim, daintily- 
 stepping feet, and her arched neck. And the regal impu- 
 dence with which she seemed to dismiss them all, the others, 
 parents and wedding guests, as she went with her young hus- 
 band. 
 
 In the cottage big fires were burning, there were dozens of 
 glasses on the table, and holly and mistletoe hanging up. 
 The wedding party crowded in, and Tom Brangwen, becoming 
 roisterous, poured out drinks. Everybody must drink. The 
 bells were ringing away against the windows. 
 
 " Lift your glasses up," shouted Tom Brangwen from the 
 parlour, "lift your glasses up, an' drink to the hearth an' 
 home hearth an' home, an' may they enjoy it." 
 
 "Night an' day, an' may they enjoy it," shouted Frank 
 Brangwen, in addition. 
 
 "Hammer an' tongs, and may they enjoy it," shouted 
 Alfred Brangwen, the saturnine. 
 
 "Fill your glasses up, an' let's have it all over again," 
 shouted Tom Brangwen. 
 
 " Hearth and home, an' may ye enjoy it." 
 
 There was a ragged shout of the company in response. 
 
 "Bed an' blessin', an' may ye enjoy it," shouted Frank 
 Brangwen. 
 
 There was a swelling chorus in answer. 
 
 " Comin' and goin', an' may ye enjoy it," shouted the 
 saturnine Alfred Brangwen, and the men roared by now 
 boldly, and the women said, " Just hark, now ! " 
 
 There was a touch of scandal in the air. 
 
 Then the party rolled off in the carriages, full speed back 
 to the Marsh, to a large meal of the high-tea order, which 
 lasted for an hour and a half. The bride and bridegroom sat 
 
WEDDING AT THE MARSH 127 
 
 at the head of the table, very prim and shining both of them, 
 wordless, whilst the company raged down the table. 
 
 The Brangwen men had brandy in their tea, and were be- 
 coming unmanageable. The saturnine Alfred had glittering, 
 unseeing eyes, and a strange, fierce way of laughing that 
 showed his teeth. His wife glowered at him and jerked her 
 head at him like a snake. He was oblivious. Frank Brang- 
 wen, the butcher, flushed and florid and handsome, roared 
 echoes to his two brothers. Tom Brangwen, in his solid fash- 
 ion, was letting himself go at last. 
 
 These three brothers dominated the whole company. Tom 
 Brangwen wanted to make a speech. For the first time in his 
 life, he must spread himself wordily. 
 
 "Marriage," he began, his eyes twinkling and yet quite 
 profound, for he was deeply serious and hugely amused at the 
 same time, " Marriage," he said, speaking in the slow, full- 
 mouthed way of the Brangwens,. "is what we're made 
 for " 
 
 " Let him talk," said Alfred Brangwen, slowly and inscrut- 
 ably, "let him talk." Mrs. Alfred darted indignant eyes at 
 her husband. 
 
 " A man," continued Tom Brangwen, " enjoys being a man : 
 for what purpose was he made a man, if not to enjoy it? " 
 
 " That a true word," said Frank, floridly. 
 
 " And likewise," continued Tom Brangwen, " a woman en- 
 joys being a woman : at least we surmise she does " 
 
 " Oh, don't you bother " called a farmer's wife. 
 
 "You may back your life they'd be summisin'," said 
 Frank's wife. 
 
 " Now," continued Tom Brangwen, " for a man to be a 
 man, it takes a woman " 
 
 " It does that," said a woman grimly. 
 
 " And for a woman to be a woman, it takes a man " 
 
 continued Tom Brangwen. 
 
 " All speak up, men," chimed in a feminine voice. 
 
 " Therefore we have marriage," continued Tom Brangwen. 
 
 " Hold, hold," said Alfred Brangwen. " Don't run us off 
 our legs." 
 
 And in dead silence the glasses were filled. The bride and 
 bridegroom, two children, sat with intent, shining faces at 
 the head of the table, abstracted. 
 
 " There's no marriage in heaven," went on Tom Brang- 
 wen ; " but on earth there is marriage." 
 
128 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " That's the difference between 'em/' said Alfred Brangwen, 
 mocking. 
 
 " Alfred/' said Tom Brangwen, " keep your remarks till aft- 
 erwards, and then we'll thank you for them. There's very 
 little else, on earth, but marriage. You can talk about mak- 
 ing money, or saving souls. You can save your own soul 
 seven times over, and you may have a mint of money, but 
 your soul goes gnawin', gnawin', gnawin', and it says there's 
 something it must have. In heaven there is no marriage. 
 But on earth there is marriage, else heaven drops out, and 
 there's no bottom to it." 
 
 " Just hark you now," said Frank's wife. 
 
 " Go on, Thomas," said Alfred sardonically. 
 
 "If we've got to be Angels," went on Tom Brangwen, 
 haranguing the company at large, " and if there is no such 
 thing as a man nor a woman amongst them, then it seems 
 to me as a married couple makes one Angel." 
 
 " It's the brandy," said Alfred Brangwen wearily. 
 
 " For," said Tom Brangwen, and the company was listening 
 to the conundrum, "an Angel can't be less than a human 
 being. And if it was only the soul of a man minus the man, 
 then it would be less than a human being." 
 
 " Decidedly," said Alfred. 
 
 And a laugh went round the table. But Tom Brangwen 
 was inspired. 
 
 " An Angel's got to be more than a human being," he con- 
 tinued. " So I say, an Angel is the soul of man and woman 
 in one: they rise united at the Judgment Day, as one 
 Angel "* 
 
 "Praising the Lord," said Frank. 
 
 "Praising the Lord," repeated Tom. 
 
 "And what about the women left over?" asked Alfred, 
 jeering. The company was getting uneasy. 
 
 " That I can't tell. How do I know as there is anybody 
 left over at the Judgment Day? Let that be. What I say 
 is, that when a man's soul and a woman's soul unites together 
 that makes an Angel " 
 
 " I dunno about souls. I know as one plus one makes 
 three, sometimes," said Frank. But he had the laugh to 
 himself. 
 
 "Bodies and souls, it's the same," said Tom. 
 
 " And what about your Missis, who was married afore you 
 knew her? " asked Alfred, set on edge by this discourse. 
 
WEDDING AT THE MARSH 129 
 
 " That I can't tell yon. If I am to become an Angel, it'll 
 be my married soul, and not my single soul. It'll not be the 
 soul of me when I was a lad: for I hadn't a soul as would 
 make an Angel then/' 
 
 " I can always remember," said Frank's wife, " when our 
 Harold was bad, he did nothink but see an angel at th' back 
 o' th' lookin' glass. ' Look, mother/ 'e said, ' at that angel ! ' 
 ' Theer isn't no angel, my duck,' I said, but he wouldn't have 
 it. I took th' lookin' glass off'n th' dressin' table, but it 
 made no difference. He kep' on sayin' it was there. My 
 word, it did give me a turn. I thought for sure as I'd lost 
 him." 
 
 " I can remember," said another man, Tom's sister's hus- 
 band, " my mother gave me a good hidin' once, for sayin' I'd 
 got an angel up my nose. She seed me pokin', an' she said: 
 ' What are you pokin' at your nose for give over.' ' There's 
 an angel up it,' I said, an' she fetched me such a wipe. But 
 there was. We used to call them thistle things 'angels' as 
 wafts about. An' I'd pushed one o' these up my nose, for 
 some reason or other." 
 
 " It's wonderful what children will get up their noses," said 
 Frank's wife. " I c'n remember our Hemmie, she shoved 
 one o' them bluebell things out o' th' middle of a bluebell, 
 what they call 'candles,' up her nose, and oh, we had some 
 work ! I'd seen her stickin' 'em on the end of her nose, like, 
 but I never thought she'd be so soft as to shove it right up. 
 She was a gel of eight or more. Oh, my word, we got a 
 crochet-hook an' I don't know what . . ." 
 
 Tom Brangwen's mood of inspiration began to pass away. 
 He forgot all about it, and was soon roaring and shouting 
 with the rest. Outside the wake came, singing the carols. 
 They were invited into the bursting house. They had two 
 fiddles and a piccolo. There in the parlour they played 
 carols, and the whole company sang them at the top of its 
 voice. Only the bride and bridegroom sat with shining eyes 
 and strange, bright faces, and scarcely sang, or only with just 
 moving lips. 
 
 The wake departed, and the guysers came. There was loud 
 applause, and shouting and excitement as the old mystery 
 play of St. George, in which every man present had acted as 
 a boy, proceeded, with banging and thumping of club and 
 dripping pan. 
 
 "By Jove, I got a crack once, when I was playin' Beelze- 
 
130 THE RAINBOW 
 
 bub," said Tom Brangwen, his eyes full of water with laugh- 
 ing. " It knocked all th' sense out of me as you'd crack 
 an egg. But I tell you, when I come to, I played Old Johnny 
 Koger with St. George, I did that." 
 
 He was shaking with laughter. Another knock came at 
 the door. There was a hush. 
 
 " It's th' cab," said somebody from the door. 
 
 "Walk in," shouted Tom Brangwen, and a red-faced grin- 
 ning man entered. 
 
 "Now you two, get yourselves ready an' off to blanket 
 fair," shouted Tom Brangwen. " Strike a daisy, but if you're 
 not off like a blink o' lightnin', you shanna go, you s'll sleep 
 separate." 
 
 Anna rose silently and went to change her dress. Will 
 Brangwen would have gone out, but Tilly came with his hat 
 and coat. The youth was helped on. 
 
 " Well, here's luck, my boy," shouted his father. 
 
 "When th' fat's in th' fire, let it frizzle," admonished his 
 uncle Frank. 
 
 " Fair and softly does it, fair an' softly does it," cried his 
 aunt, Frank's wife, contrary. 
 
 "You don't want to fall over yourself," said his uncle by 
 marriage. "You're not a bull at a gate.". 
 
 " Let a man have his own road," said Tom Brangwen 
 testily. " Don't be so free of your advice it's his wedding 
 this time, not yours." 
 
 "'E won't want many sign-posts," said his father. 
 "There's some roads a man has to be led, an' there's some 
 roads a boss-eyed man can only follow wi' one eye shut. But 
 this road can't be lost by a blind man nor a boss-eyed man nor 
 a cripple and he's neither, thank God." 
 
 " Don't you be so sure o' your walkin' powers," cried Frank's 
 wife. " There's many a man gets no further than half-way, 
 nor can't to save his life, let him live for ever." 
 
 " Why, how do you know ? " said Alfred. 
 
 "It's plain enough in th' looks o' some," retorted Lizzie, 
 his sister-in-law. 
 
 The youth stood with a faint, half-hearing smile on his 
 face. He was tense and abstracted. These things, or any- 
 thing, scarcely touched him. 
 
 Anna came down, in her day dress, very elusive. She 
 kissed everybody, men and women, Will Brangwen shook 
 
WEDDING AT THE MARSH 131 
 
 hands with everybody, kissed his mother, who began to cry, 
 and the whole party went surging out to the cab. 
 
 The young couple were shut up, last injunctions shouted 
 at them. 
 
 "Drive on," shouted Tom Brangwen. 
 
 The cab rolled off. They saw the light diminish under the 
 ash-trees. Then the whole party, quietened, went indoors. 
 
 " They'll have three good fires burning," said Tom Brang- 
 wen, looking at his watch. " I told Emma to make 'em up at 
 nine, an' then leave the door on th' latch. It's only half-past. 
 They'll have three fires burning, an' lamps lighted, an' Emma 
 will ha' warmed th' bed wi' th' warmin' pan. So I s'd think 
 they'll be all right." 
 
 The party was much quieter. They talked of the young 
 couple. 
 
 " She said she didn't want a servant in," said Tom Brang- 
 wen. "The house isn't big enough, she'd always have the 
 creature under her nose. Emma'll do what is wanted of her, 
 an' they'll be to themselves." 
 
 " It's best," said Lizzie, " you're more free." 
 
 The party talked on slowly. Brangwen looked at his watch. 
 
 " Let's go an' give 'em a carol," he said. " We s'll find th' 
 fiddles at the Cock an' Eobin." 
 
 " Ay, come on," said Frank. 
 
 Alfred rose in silence. The brother-in-law and one of 
 Will's brothers rose also. 
 
 The five men went out. The night was flashing with stars. 
 Sirius blazed like a signal at the side of the hill, Orion, 
 stately and magnificent, was sloping along. 
 
 Tom walked with his brother, Alfred. The men's heels 
 rang on the ground. 
 
 " It's a fine night," said Tom. 
 
 " Ay," said Alfred. 
 
 " Nice to get out." 
 
 "Ay." 
 
 The brothers walked close together, the bond of blood strong 
 between them. Tom always felt very much the junior to 
 Alfred. 
 
 " It's a long while since you left home," he said. 
 
 " Ay," said Alfred. " I thought I was getting a bit oldish 
 but I'm not. It's the things you've got as gets worn out, 
 it's not you yourself." 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 
 
 "Why, what's worn out?" 
 
 " Most folks as I've anything to do with as has anything 
 to do with me. They all break down. You've got to go on 
 by yourself, if it's only to perdition. There's nobody going 
 alongside even there." 
 
 Tom Brangwen meditated this. 
 
 " Maybe you was never broken in/' he said. 
 
 " No, I never was," said Alfred proudly. 
 
 And Tom felt his elder brother despised him a little. He 
 winced under it. 
 
 " Everybody's got a way of their own," he said, stubbornly. 
 " It's only a dog as hasn't. An' them as can't take what they 
 give an' give what they take, they must go by themselves, or 
 get a dog as'll follow 'em." 
 
 " They can do without the dog," said his brother. And 
 again Tom Brangwen was humble, thinking his brother was 
 bigger than himself. But if he was, he was. And if it were 
 finer to go alone, it was : he did not want to go for all that. 
 
 They went over the field, where a thin, keen wind blew 
 round the ball of the hill, in the starlight. They came to 
 the stile, and to the side of Anna's house. The lights were 
 out, only on the blinds of the rooms downstairs, and of a 
 bedroom upstairs, firelight flickered. 
 
 " We'd better leave 'em alone," said Alfred Brangwen. 
 
 "Nay, nay," said Tom. "We'll carol 'em, for th' last 
 time." " 
 
 And in a quarter of an hour's time, eleven silent, rather 
 tipsy men scrambled over the wall, and into the garden by 
 the yew-trees, outside the windows where faint firelight 
 glowered on the blinds. There came a shrill sound, two vio- 
 lins and a piccolo shrilling on the frosty air. 
 
 " In the fields with their flocks abiding." A commotion of 
 men's voices broke out singing in ragged unison. 
 
 Anna Brangwen had started up, listening, when the music 
 began. She was afraid. 
 
 " It's the wake," he whispered. 
 
 She remained tense, her heart beating heavily, possessed 
 with strange, strong fear. Then there came the burst of 
 men's singing, rather uneven. She strained still, listening. 
 
 "It's Dad," she said, in a low voice. They were silent, 
 listening. 
 
 " And my father," he said. 
 
 She listened still. But she was sure. She sank down 
 
WEDDING AT THE MAfcSH 
 
 again into bed, into his arms. He held her very close, kissing 
 her. The hymn rambled on outside, all the men singing their 
 best, having forgotten everything else under the spell of the 
 fiddles and the tune. The firelight glowed against the dark- 
 ness in the room. Anna could hear her father singing with 
 gusto. 
 
 " Aren't they silly," she whispered. 
 
 And they crept closer, closer together, hearts beating to 
 one another. And even as the hymn rolled on, they ceased to 
 hear it 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ANNA VICTRIX 
 
 WILL BBANGWEN had some weeks of holiday after 
 his marriage, so the two took their honeymoon in 
 full hands, alone in their cottage together. 
 
 And to him, as the days went by, it was as if the 
 heavens had fallen, and he were sitting with her among the 
 ruins, in a new world, everybody else buried, themselves two 
 blissful survivors, with everything to squander as they would. 
 At first, he could not get rid of a culpable sense of licence on 
 his part. Wasn't there some duty outside, calling him and he 
 did not come ? 
 
 It was all very well at night, when the doors were locked 
 and the darkness drawn round the two of them. Then they 
 were the only inhabitants of the visible earth, the rest were 
 under the flood. And being alone in the world, they were 
 a law unto themselves, they could enjoy and squander and 
 waste like conscienceless gods. 
 
 But in the morning, as the carts clanked by, and children 
 shouted down the lane; as the hucksters came calling their 
 wares, and the church clock struck eleven, and he and she 
 had not got up yet, even to breakfast, he could not help feeling 
 guilty, as if he were committing a breach of the law 
 ashamed that he was not up and doing. 
 
 "Doing what?" she asked. "What is there to do? You 
 will only lounge about." 
 
 Still, even lounging about was respectable. One was at 
 least in connection with the world, then. Whereas now, lying 
 so still and peacefully, while the daylight came obscurely 
 through the drawn blind, one was severed from the world, 
 one shut oneself off in tacit denial of the world. And he 
 was troubled. 
 
 But it was so sweet and satisfying lying there talking 
 desultorily with her. It was sweeter than sunshine, and not 
 so evanescent. It was even irritating the way the church- 
 clock kept on chiming: there seemed no space between the 
 
 134 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 135 
 
 hours, just a moment, golden and still, whilst she traced his 
 features with her finger-tips, utterly careless and happy, and 
 he loved her to do it. 
 
 But he was strange and unused. So suddenly, everything 
 that had been before was shed away and gone. One day, he 
 was a bachelor, living with the world. The next day, he was 
 with her, as remote from the world as if the two of them were 
 buried like a seed in darkness. Suddenly, like a chestnut 
 falling out of a burr, he was shed naked and glistening on to 
 a soft, fecund earth, leaving behind him the hard rind of 
 worldly knowledge and experience. He heard it in the huck- 
 sters' cries, the noise of carts, the calling of children. And it 
 was all like the hard, shed rind, discarded. Inside, in the 
 softness and stillness of the room, was the naked kernel, that 
 palpitated in silent activity, absorbed in reality. 
 
 Inside the room was a great steadiness, a core of living 
 eternity. Only far outside, at the rim, went on the noise and 
 the destruction. Here at the centre the great wheel was mo- 
 tionless, centred upon itself. Here was a poised, unflawed 
 stillness that was beyond time, because it remained the same, 
 inexhaustible, unchanging, unexhausted. 
 
 As they lay close together, complete and beyond the touch 
 of time or change, it was as if they were at the very centre 
 of all the slow wheeling of space and the rapid agitation of 
 life, deep, deep inside them all, at the centre where there is 
 utter radiance, and eternal being, and the silence absorbed in 
 praise: the steady core of all movements, the unawakened 
 sleep of all wakefulness. They found themselves there, and 
 they lay still, in each other's arms; for their moment they 
 were at the heart of eternity, whilst time roared far off, for- 
 ever far off, towards the rim. 
 
 Then gradually they were passed away from the supreme 
 centre, down the circles of praise and joy and gladness, 
 further and further out, towards the noise and the friction. 
 But their hearts had burned and were tempered by the inner 
 reality, they were unalterably glad. 
 
 Gradually they began to wake up, the noises outside became 
 more real. They understood and answered the call outside. 
 They counted the strokes of the bell. And when they counted 
 midday, they understood that it was midday, in the world, and 
 for themselves also. 
 
 It dawned upon her that she was hungry. She had been 
 getting hungrier for a lifetime. But even yet it was not suffi- 
 
IB6 TH RAINBOW 
 
 ciently real to rouse her. A long way off she could hear the 
 words, " I am dying of hunger." Yet she lay still, separate, 
 at peace, and the words were unuttered. There was still an- 
 other lapse. 
 
 And then, quite calmly, even a little surprised, she was in 
 the present, and was saying: 
 
 " I am dying with hunger." 
 
 " So am I" he said calmly, as if it were of not the slightest 
 significance. And they relapsed into the warm, golden still- 
 ness. And the minutes flowed unheeded past the window out- 
 Bide. 
 
 Then suddenly she stirred against him. 
 
 " My dear, I am dying of hunger," she said. 
 
 It was a slight pain to him to be brought to. 
 
 "We'll get up," he said, unmoving. 
 
 And she sank her head on to him again, and they lay still, 
 lapsing. Half consciously, he heard the clock chime the hour. 
 She did not hear. 
 
 " Do get up," she murmured at length, " and give me 
 something to eat." 
 
 " Yes," he said, and he put his arms round her, and she lay 
 with her face on him. They were faintly astonished that they 
 did not move. The minutes rustled louder at the window. 
 
 " Let me go then," he said. 
 
 She lifted her head from him, relinquishingly. With a 
 little breaking away, he moved out of bed, and was taking his 
 clothes. She stretched out her hand to him. 
 
 " You are so nice," she said, and he went back for a moment 
 or two. 
 
 Then actually he did slip into some clothes, and, looking 
 round quickly at her, was gone out of the room. She lay 
 translated again into a pale, clearer peace. As if she were 
 a spirit, she listened to the noise of him downstairs, as if 
 she were no longer of the material world. 
 
 It was half past one. He looked at the silent kitchen, 
 untouched from last night, dim with the drawn blind. And 
 he hastened to draw up the blind, so people should know 
 they were not in bed any later. Well, it was his own house, 
 it did not matter. Hastily he put wood in the grate and 
 made a fire. He exulted in himself, like an adventurer on 
 an undiscovered island. The fire blazed up, he put on the 
 kettle. How happy he felt! How still and secluded the 
 house was ! There were only he and she in the world. 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 1ST 
 
 But when he unbolted the door, and, half-dressed, looked 
 out, he felt furtive and guilty. The world was there, after 
 all. And he had felt so secure, as though this house were 
 the Ark in the flood, and all the rest was drowned. The 
 world was there: and it was afternoon. The morning had 
 vanished and gone by, the day was growing old. Where 
 was the bright, fresh morning? He was accused. Was the 
 morning gone, and he had lain with blinds drawn, let it pass 
 by unnoticed ? 
 
 He looked again round the chill, grey afternoon. And he 
 himself so soft and warm and glowing! There were two 
 sprigs of yellow jasmine in the saucer that covered the milk- 
 jug. He wondered who had been and left the sign. Taking 
 the jug, he hastily shut the door. Let the day and the day- 
 light drop out, let it go by unseen. He did not care. What 
 did one day more or less matter to him. It could fall into 
 oblivion unspent if it liked, this one course of daylight. 
 
 " Somebody has been and found the door locked," he said 
 when he went upstairs with the tray. He gave her the two 
 sprigs of jasmine. She laughed as she sat up in bed, child- 
 ishly threading the flowers in the breast of her nightdress. 
 Her brown hair stuck out like a nimbus, all fierce, round her 
 softly glowing face. Her dark eyes watched the tray eagerly. 
 
 " How good ! " she cried, sniffing the cold air. " I'm glad 
 you did a lot." And she stretched out her hands eagerly 
 for her plate " Come back to bed, quick it's cold." She 
 rubbed her hands together sharply. 
 
 He sat beside her in the bed. 
 
 "You look like a lion, with your mane sticking out, and 
 your nose pushed over your food," he said. 
 
 She tinkled with laughter, and gladly ate her breakfast. 
 
 The morning was sunk away unseen, the afternoon was 
 steadily going too, and he was letting it go. One bright transit 
 of daylight gone by unacknowledged ! There was something 
 unmanly, recusant in it. He could not quite reconcile him- 
 self to the fact. He felt he ought to get up, go out quickly into 
 the daylight, and work or spend himself energetically in the 
 open air of the afternoon, retrieving what was left to him 
 of the day. 
 
 But he did not go. Well, one might as well be hung for a 
 sheep as for a lamb. If he had lost this day of his life, he 
 had lost it. He gave it up. He was not going to count 
 his losses. She didn't care. She didn't care in the least. 
 
138 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Then why should he? Should he be behind her in reckless- 
 ness and independence ? She was superb in her indifference. 
 He wanted to be like her. 
 
 She took her responsibilities lightly. When she spilled 
 her tea on the pillow, she rubbed it carelessly with a hand- 
 kerchief, and turned over the pillow. He would have felt 
 guilty. She did not. And it pleased him. It pleased him 
 very much to see how these things did not matter to her. 
 
 When the meal was over, she wiped her mouth on her 
 handkerchief quickly, satisfied and happy, and settled down 
 on the pillow again, with her fingers in his close, strange, 
 fur-like hair. 
 
 The evening began to fall, the light was half alive, livid. 
 He hid his face against her. 
 
 " I don't like the twilight/' he said. 
 
 " I love it," she answered. 
 
 He hid his face against her, who was warm and like sun- 
 light. She seemed to have sunlight inside her. Her heart 
 beating seemed like sunlight upon him. In her was a more 
 real day than the day could give: so warm and steady and 
 restoring. He hid his face against her whilst the twilight 
 fell, whilst she lay staring out with her unseeing dark eyes, 
 as if she wandered forth untrammelled in the vagueness. 
 The vagueness gave her scope and set her free. 
 
 To him, turned towards her heart-pulse, all was very still 
 and very warm and very close, like noon-tide. He was glad 
 to know this warm, full noon. It ripened him and took away 
 his responsibility, some of his conscience. 
 
 They got up when it was quite dark. " She hastily twisted 
 her hair into a knot, and was dressed in a twinkling. Then 
 they went downstairs, drew to the fire, and sat in silence, 
 saying a few words now and then. 
 
 Her father was coming. She bundled the dishes away, 
 flew round and tidied the room, assumed another character, 
 and again seated herself. He sat thinking of his carving of 
 Eve. He loved to go over his carving in his mind, dwelling 
 on every stroke, every line. How he loved it now! When 
 he went back to his Creation-panel again, he would finish his 
 Eve, tender and sparkling. It did not satisfy him yet. The 
 Lord should labour over her in a silent passion of Creation, 
 and Adam should be tense as if in a dream of immortality, 
 and Eve should take form glimmeringly, shadowily, as if 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 139 
 
 the Lord must wrestle with His own soul for her, yet she was 
 a radiance. 
 
 " What are you thinking about ? " she asked. 
 
 He found it difficult to say. His soul became shy when 
 he tried to communicate it. 
 
 " I was thinking my Eve was too hard and lively." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I don't know. She should be more ," he made a 
 
 gesture of infinite tenderness. 
 
 There was a stillness with a little joy. He could not tell 
 her any more. Why could he not tell her any more? She 
 felt a pang of disconsolate sadness. But it was nothing. 
 She went to him. 
 
 Her father came, and found them both very glowing, like 
 an open flower. He loved to sit with them. Where there 
 was a perfume of love, any one who came must breathe it. 
 They were both very quick and alive, lit up from the other- 
 world, so that it was quite an experience for them, that 
 any one else could exist. 
 
 But still it troubled Will Brangwen a little, in his orderly, 
 conventional mind, that the established rule of things had 
 gone so utterly. One ought to get up in the morning and 
 wash oneself and be a decent social being. Instead, the 
 two of them stayed in bed till nightfall, and then got up, 
 she never washed her face, but sat there talking to her father 
 as bright and shameless as a daisy opened out of the dew. 
 Or she got up at ten o'clock, and quite blithely went to bed 
 again at three, or at half-past four, stripping him naked in 
 the daylight, and all so gladly and perfectly, oblivious quite 
 of his qualms. He let her do as she liked with him, and 
 shone with strange pleasure. She was to dispose of him as 
 she would. He was translated with gladness to be in her 
 hands. And down went his qualms, his maxims, his rules, his 
 smaller beliefs, she scattered them like an expert skittle- 
 player. He was very much astonished and delighted to see 
 them scatter. 
 
 He stood and gazed and grinned with wonder whilst his 
 Tablets of Stone went bounding and bumping and splintering 
 down the hill, dislodged for ever. Indeed, it was true as they 
 said, that a man wasn't born before he was married. What 
 a change indeed! 
 
 He surveyed the rind of the world : houses, factories, trams, 
 
140 THE RAINBOW 
 
 the discarded rind ; people scurrying about, work going on, all 
 on the discarded'surface. An earthquake had burst it all from 
 inside. It was as if the surface of the world had been broken 
 away entire: Ilkeston, streets, church, people, work, rule-of- 
 the-day, all intact ; and yet peeled away into unreality, leaving 
 here exposed the inside, the reality: one's own being, strange 
 feelings and passions and yearnings and beliefs and aspira- 
 tions, suddenly become present, revealed, the permanent bed- 
 rock, knitted one rock with the woman one loved. It was 
 confounding. Things are not what they seem ! When he was 
 a child, he had thought a woman was a woman merely by 
 virtue of her skirts and petticoats. And now, lo, the whole 
 world could be divested of its garment, the garment could lie 
 there shed away intact, and one could stand in a new world, 
 a new earth, naked in a new, naked universe. It was too 
 astounding and miraculous. 
 
 This then was marriage! The old things didn't matter 
 any more. One got up at four o'clock, and had broth at 
 teatime and made toffee in the middle of the night. One 
 didn't put on one's clothes or one did put on one's clothes. 
 He still was not quite sure it was not criminal. But it was 
 a discovery to find one might be so supremely absolved. 
 All that mattered was that he should love her and she should 
 love him and they should live kindled to one another, like 
 the Lord in two burning bushes that were not consumed. 
 And so they lived for the time. 
 
 She was less hampered than he, so she came more quickly 
 to her fulness, and was sooner ready to enjoy again a return 
 to the outside world. She was going to give a tea-party. 
 His heart sank. He wanted to go on, to go on as they were. 
 He wanted to have done with the outside world, to declare 
 it finished for ever. He was anxious with a deep desire and 
 anxiety that she should stay with him where they were in the 
 timeless universe of free, perfect limbs and immortal breast, 
 affirming that the old outward order was finished. The new 
 order was begun to last for ever, the living life, palpitating 
 from the gleaming core, to action, without crust or cover or 
 outward lie. But no, he could not keep her. She wanted the 
 dead world again she wanted to walk on the outside once 
 more. She was going to give a tea-party. It made him 
 frightened and furious and miserable. He was afraid all 
 would be lost that he had so newly come into : like the youth 
 in the fairy tale, who was king for one day in the year, and 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 141 
 
 for the rest a beaten herd : like Cinderella also, at the feast. 
 He was sullen. But she blithely began to make preparations 
 for her tea-party. His fear was too strong, he was troubled, 
 he hated her shallow anticipation and joy. Was she not for- 
 feiting the reality, the one reality, for all that was shallow and 
 worthless? Wasn't she carelessly taking off her crown to be 
 an artificial figure having other artificial women to tea : when 
 she might have been perfect with him, and kept him perfect, in 
 the land of intimate connection? Now he must be deposed, 
 his joy must be destroyed, he must put on the vulgar, shallow 
 death of an outward existence. 
 
 He ground his soul in uneasiness and fear. But she rose 
 to a real outburst of house-work, turning him away as she 
 shoved the furniture aside to her broom. He stood hanging 
 miserable near. He wanted her back. Dread, and desire 
 for her to stay with him, and shame at his own dependence 
 on her drove him to anger. He began to lose his head. The 
 wonder was going to pass away again. All the love, the 
 magnificent new order was going to be lost, she would forfeit 
 it all for the outside things. She would admit the outside 
 world again, she would throw away the living fruit for the 
 ostensible rind. He began to hate this in her. Driven by 
 fear of her departure into a state of helplessness, almost of 
 imbecility, he wandered about the house. 
 
 And she, with her skirts kilted up, flew round at her work, 
 absorbed. 
 
 " Shake the rug then, if you must hang round," she said. 
 
 And fretting with resentment, he went to shake the rug. 
 She was blithely unconscious of him. He came back, hanging 
 near to her. 
 
 " Can't you do anything ? " she said, as if to a child, im- 
 patiently. " Can't you do your wood-work ? " 
 
 " Where shall I do it ? " he asked, harsh with pain. 
 
 " Anywhere." 
 
 How furious that made him. 
 
 "Or go for a walk," she continued. "Go down to the 
 Marsh. Don't hang about as if you were only half there." 
 
 He winced and hated it. He went away to read. Never 
 had his soul felt so flayed and uncreated. 
 
 And soon he must come down again to her. His hovering 
 near her, wanting her to be with him, the futility of him, the 
 way his hands hung, irritated her beyond bearing. She turned 
 on him blindly and destructively, he became a mad creature, 
 
142 THE RAINBOW 
 
 black and electric with fury. The dark storms rose in him, his 
 eyes glowed black and evil, he was fiendish in his thwarted 
 soul. 
 
 There followed two black and ghastly days, when she was 
 set in anguish against him, and he felt as if he were in a black, 
 violent underworld, and his wrists quivered murderously. 
 And she resisted him. He seemed a dark, almost evil thing, 
 pursuing her, hanging on to her,, burdening her. She would 
 give anything to have him removed. 
 
 "You need some work to do," she said. "You ought to 
 be at work. Can't you do something ? " 
 
 His soul only grew the blacker. His condition now became 
 complete, the darkness of his soul was thorough. Every- 
 thing had gone : he remained complete in his own tense, black 
 will. He was now unaware of her. She did not exist. His 
 dark, passionate soul had recoiled upon itself, and now, 
 clinched and coiled round a centre of hatred, existed in its own 
 power. There was a curiously ugly pallor, an expressionless- 
 ness in his face. She shuddered from him. She was afraid 
 of him. His will seemed grappled upon her. 
 
 She retreated before him. She went down to the Marsh, 
 she entered again the immunity of her parents' love for her. 
 He remained at Yew Cottage, black and clinched, his mind 
 dead. He was unable to work at his wood-carving. He went 
 on working monotonously at the garden, blindly, like a mole. 
 
 As she came home, up the hill, looking away at the town 
 dim and blue on the hill, her heart relaxed and became 
 yearning. She did not want to fight him any more. She 
 wanted love oh, love. Her feet began to hurry. She 
 wanted to get back to him. Her heart became tight with 
 yearning for him. 
 
 He had been making the garden in order, cutting the edges 
 of the turf, laying the path with stones. He was a good, 
 capable workman. 
 
 "How nice you've made it," she said, approaching tenta- 
 tively down the path. 
 
 But he did not heed, he did not hear. His brain was solid 
 and dead. 
 
 " Haven't you made it nice ? " she repeated, rather plain- 
 tively. 
 
 He looked up at her, with that fixed, expressionless face 
 and unseeing eyes which shocked her, made her go dazed and 
 blind. Then he turned away. She saw his slender, stooping 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 143 
 
 figure groping. A revulsion came over her. She went in- 
 doors. 
 
 As she took off her hat in the bedroom, she found herself 
 weeping bitterly, with some of the old, anguished, childish 
 desolation. She sat still and cried on. She did not want 
 him to know. She was afraid of his hard, evil movements, the 
 head dropped a little, rigidly, in a crouching, cruel way. She 
 was afraid of him. He seemed to lacerate her sensitive fe- 
 maleness. He seemed to hurt her womb, to take pleasure in 
 torturing her. 
 
 He came into the house. The sound of his footsteps in his 
 heavy boots filled her with horror: a hard, cruel, malignant 
 sound. She was afraid he would come upstairs. But he 
 did not. She waited apprehensively. He went out. 
 
 Where she was most vulnerable, he hurt her. Oh, where 
 she was delivered over to him, in her very soft femaleness, 
 he seemed to lacerate her and desecrate her. She pressed 
 her hands over her womb in anguish, whilst the tears ran 
 down her face. And why, and why ? Why was he like this ? 
 
 Suddenly she dried her tears. She must get the tea ready. 
 She went downstairs and set the table. When the meal was 
 ready, she called to him. 
 
 " I've mashed the tea, Will, are you coming ? " 
 
 She herself could hear the sound of tears in her own voice, 
 and she began to cry again. He did not answer, but went 
 on with his work. She waited a few minutes, in anguish. 
 Fear came over her, she was panic-stricken with terror, like 
 a child; and she could not go home again to her father; she 
 was held by the power in this man who had taken her. 
 
 She turned indoors so that he should not see her tears. 
 She sat down to table. Presently he came into the scullery. 
 His movements jarred on her, as she heard them. How 
 horrible was the way he pumped, exacerbating, so cruel! 
 How she hated to hear him ! How he hated her ! How his 
 hatred was like blows upon her! The tears were coming 
 again. 
 
 He came in, his face wooden and lifeless, fixed, persistent. 
 He sat down to tea, his head dropped over his cup, uglily. 
 His hands were red from the cold water, and there were 
 rims of earth in his nails. He went on with his tea. 
 
 It was his negative insensitiveness to her that she could 
 not bear, something clayey and ugly. His intelligence was 
 self-absorbed. How unnatural it was to sit with a self-ab- 
 
144' THE RAINBOW 
 
 sorbed creature, like something negative ensconced opposite 
 one. Nothing could touch him he could only absorb things 
 into his own self. 
 
 The tears were running down her face. Something startled 
 him, and he was looking up at her with his hateful, hard, 
 bright eyes, hard and unchanging as a bird of prey. 
 
 " What are you crying for ? " came the grating voice. 
 
 She winced through her womb. She could not stop crying. 
 
 "What are you crying for?" came the question again, in 
 just the same tone. And still there was silence, with only the 
 sniff of her tears. 
 
 His eyes glittered, and as if with malignant desire. She 
 shrank and became blind. She was like a bird being beaten 
 down. A sort of swoon of helplessness came over her. She 
 was of another order than he, she had no defence against him. 
 Against such an influence, she was only vulnerable, she was 
 given up. 
 
 He rose and went out of the house, possessed by the evil 
 spirit. It tortured him and wracked him, and fought in 
 him. And whilst he worked, in the deepening twilight, it 
 left him. Suddenly he saw that she was hurt. He had 
 only seen her triumphant before. Suddenly his heart was 
 torn with compassion for her. He became alive again, in 
 an anguish of compassion. He could not bear to think of 
 her tears he could not bear it. He wanted to go to her 
 and pour out his heart's blood to her. He wanted to give 
 everything to her, all his blood, his life, to the last dregs, 
 pour everything away to her. He yearned with passionate 
 desire to offer himself to her, utterly. 
 
 The evening star came, and the night. She had not lighted 
 the lamp. His heart burned with pain and with grief. He 
 trembled to go to her. 
 
 And at last he went, hesitating, burdened with a great 
 offering. The hardness had gone out of him, his body was 
 sensitive, slightly trembling. His hand was curiously sensi- 
 tive, shrinking, as he shut the door. He fixed the latch almost 
 tenderly. 
 
 In the kitchen was only the fireglow, he could not see her. 
 He quivered with dread lest she had gone he knew not 
 where. In shrinking dread, he went through to the parlour, 
 to the foot of the stairs. 
 
 " Anna," he called. 
 
 There was no answer. He went up the stairs, in dread of 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 145 
 
 the empty house the horrible emptiness that made his heart 
 ring with insanity. He opened the bedroom door, and his 
 heart flashed with certainty that she had gone, that he was 
 alone. 
 
 But he saw her on the bed, lying very still and scarcely 
 noticeable, with her back to him. He went and put his hand 
 on her shoulder, very gently, hesitating, in a great fear and 
 self-offering. She did not move. He waited. The hand 
 that touched her shoulder hurt him, as if she were sending 
 it away. He stood dim with pain. 
 
 " Anna," he said. 
 
 But still she was motionless, like a curled up, oblivious 
 creature. His heart beat with strange throes of pain. Then, 
 by a motion under his hand, he knew she was crying, holding 
 herself hard so that her tears should not be known. He 
 waited. The tension continued perhaps she was not crying 
 then suddenly relapsed with a sharp catch of a sob. His 
 heart flamed with love and suffering for her. Kneeling care- 
 fully on the bed, so that his earthy boots should not touch it, he 
 took her in his arms to comfort her. The sobs gathered in 
 her, she was sobbing bitterly. But not to him. She was still 
 away from him. 
 
 He held her against his breast, whilst she sobbed, withheld 
 from him, and all his body vibrated against her. 
 
 "Don't cry don't cry," he said, with an odd simplicity. 
 His heart was calm and numb with a sort of innocence of 
 love, now. 
 
 She still sobbed, ignoring him, ignoring that he held her. 
 His lips were dry. 
 
 " Don't cry, my love," he said, in the same abstract way. 
 In his breast his heart burned like a torch, with suffering. 
 He could not bear the desolateness of her crying. He would 
 have soothed her with his blood. He heard the church clock 
 chime, as if it touched him, and he waited in suspense for it 
 to have gone by. It was quiet again. 
 
 " My love," he said to her, bending to touch her wet face 
 with his mouth. He was afraid to touch her. How wet her 
 face was! His body trembled as he held her. He loved 
 her till he felt his heart and all his veins would burst and 
 flood her with his hot, healing blood. He knew his blood 
 would heal and restore her. 
 
 She was becoming quieter. He thanked the God of mercy 
 that at last she was becoming quieter. His head felt so 
 
146 THE RAINBOW 
 
 strange and blazed. Still he held her close, with trembling 
 arms. His blood seemed very strong, enveloping her. 
 
 And at last she began to draw near to him, she nestled to 
 him. His .limbs, his body, took fire and beat up in flames. 
 She clung to him, she cleaved to his body. The flames swept 
 him, he held her in sinews of fire. If she would kiss him! 
 He bent his mouth down. And her mouth, soft and moist, 
 received him. He felt his veins would burst with anguish of 
 thankfulness, his heart was mad with gratefulness, he could 
 pour himself out upon her for ever. 
 
 When they came to themselves, the night was very dark. 
 Two hours had gone by. They lay still and warm and weak, 
 like the new-born, together. And there was a silence almost 
 of the unborn. Only his heart was weeping happily, after 
 the pain. He did not understand, he had yielded, given way. 
 There was no understanding. There could be only acquies- 
 cence and submission^ and tremulous wonder of consumma- 
 tion. 
 
 The next morning, when they woke up, it had snowed. He 
 wondered what was the strange pallor in the air, and the 
 unusual tang. Snow was on the grass and the window-sill, 
 it weighed down the black, ragged branches of the yews, and 
 smoothed the graves in the churchyard. 
 
 Soon, it began to snow again, and they were shut in. He 
 was glad, for then they were immune in a shadowy silence, 
 there was no world, no time. 
 
 The snow lasted for some days. On the Sunday they 
 went to church. They made a line of footprints across the 
 garden, he left a flat snowprint of his hand on the wall as 
 he vaulted over, they traced the snow across the churchyard. 
 For three days they had been immune in a perfect love. 
 
 There were very few people in church, and she was glad. 
 She did not care much for church. She had never questioned 
 any beliefs, and she was, from habit and custom, a regular 
 attendant at morning service. But she had ceased to come 
 with any anticipation. To-day, however, in the strangeness 
 of snow, after such consummation of love, she felt expectant 
 again, and delighted. She was still in the eternal world. 
 
 She used, after she went to the High School, and wanted 
 to be a lady, wanted to fulfil some mysterious ideal, always 
 to listen to the sermon and to try to gather suggestions. 
 That was all very well for a while. The vicar told her to be 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 147 
 
 good in this way and in that. She went away feeling it was 
 her highest aim to fulfil these injunctions. 
 
 But quickly this palled. After a short time, she was not 
 very much interested in being good. Her soul was in quest 
 of something, which was not just being good, and doing 
 one's best. No, she wanted something else: something that 
 was not her ready-made duty. Everything seemed to be 
 merely a matter of social duty, and never of her self. They 
 talked about her soul, but somehow never managed to rouse 
 or to implicate her soul. As yet her soul was not brought 
 in at all. 
 
 So that whilst she had an affection for Mr. Loverseed, the 
 vicar, and a protective sort of feeling for Cossethay church, 
 wanting always to help it and defend it, it counted very small 
 in her life. 
 
 Not but that she was conscious of some unsatisfaction. 
 When her husband was roused by the thought of the churches, 
 then she became hostile to the ostensible church, she hated 
 it for not fulfilling anything in her. The Church told her 
 to be good : very well, she had no idea of contradicting what 
 it said. The Church talked about her soul, about the welfare 
 of mankind, as if the saving of her soul lay in her performing 
 certain acts conducive to the welfare of mankind. Well and 
 good it was so, then. 
 
 Nevertheless, as she sat in church her face had a pathos 
 and poignancy. Was this what she had come to hear: how, 
 by doing this thing and by not doing that, she could save her 
 soul ? She did not contradict it. But the pathos of her face 
 gave the lie. There was something else she wanted to hear, 
 it was something else she asked for from the Church. 
 
 But who was she to affirm it? And what was she doing 
 with unsatisfied desires? She was ashamed. She ignored 
 them and left them out of count as much as possible, her 
 underneath yearnings. They angered her. She wanted to be 
 like other people, decently satisfied. 
 
 He angered her more than ever. Church had an irresistible 
 attraction for him. And he paid no more attention to that 
 part of the service which was Church to her, than if he had 
 been an angel or a fabulous beast sitting there. He simply 
 paid no heed to the sermon or to the meaning of the service. 
 There was something thick, dark, dense, powerful about him 
 that irritated her too deeply for her to speak of it. The 
 
148 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Church teaching in itself meant nothing to him. " And for- 
 give us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against 
 us " it simply did not touch him. It might have been mere 
 sounds, and it would have acted upon him in the same way. 
 He did not want things to be intelligible. And he did not care 
 about his trespasses, neither about the trespasses of his neigh- 
 bour, when he was in church. Leave that care for weekdays. 
 When he was in church, he took no more notice of his daily life. 
 It was weekday stuff. As for the welfare of mankind he 
 merely did not realize that there was any such thing: except 
 on weekdays, when he was good-natured enough. In church, 
 he wanted a dark, nameless emotion, the emotion of all the 
 great mysteries of passion. 
 
 He was not interested in the thought of himself or of her : 
 oh, and how that irritated her! He ignored the sermon, 
 he ignored the greatness of mankind, he did not admit the 
 immediate importance of mankind. He did not care about 
 himself as a human being. He did not attach any vital im- 
 portance to his life in the drafting office, or his life among 
 men. That was just merely the margin to the text. The 
 verity was his connection with Anna and his connection with 
 the Church, his real being lay in his dark emotional experience 
 of the Infinite, of the Absolute. And the great mysterious, 
 illuminated capitals to the text, were his feelings with the 
 Church. 
 
 It exasperated her beyond measure. She could not get 
 out of the Church the satisfaction he got. The thought of 
 her soul was intimately mixed up with the thought of her 
 own self. Indeed, her soul and her own self were one and 
 the same in her. Whereas he seemed simply to ignore the 
 fact of his own self, almost to refute it. He had a soul a 
 dark, inhuman thing caring nothing for humanity. So she 
 conceived it. And in the gloom and the mystery of the 
 Church his soul lived and ran free, like some strange, under- 
 ground thing, abstract. 
 
 He was very strange to her, and, in this church spirit, in 
 conceiving himself as a soul, he seemed to escape and run 
 free of her. In a way, she envied it him, this dark freedom 
 and jubilation of the soul, some strange entity in him. It 
 fascinated her. Again she hated it. And again, she despised 
 him, wanted to destroy it in him. 
 
 This snowy morning, he sat with a dark-bright face beside 
 her, not aware of her, and somehow, she felt he was con- 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 
 
 veying to strange, secret places the love that sprang in him 
 for her. He sat with a dark-rapt, half-delighted face, looking 
 at a little stained window. She saw the ruby-coloured glass, 
 with the shadow heaped along the bottom from the snow out- 
 side, and the familiar yellow figure of the lamb holding the 
 banner, a little darkened now, but in the murky interior 
 strangely luminous, pregnant. 
 
 She had always liked the little red and yellow window. 
 The lamb, looking very silly and self-conscious, was holding 
 up a forepaw, in the cleft of which was dangerously perched 
 a little flag with a red cross. Very pale yellow, the lamb, 
 with greenish shadows. Since she was a child she had liked 
 this creature, with the same feeling she felt for the little woolly 
 lambs on green legs that children carried home from the fair 
 every year. She had always liked those toys, and she had the 
 same amused, childish liking for this church lamb. Yet she 
 had always been uneasy about it. She was never sure that this 
 Lamb with a flag did not want to be more than it appeared. 
 So she half mistrusted it, there was a mixture of dislike in her 
 attitude to it. 
 
 Now, by a curious gathering, knitting of his eyes, the faintest 
 tension of ecstasy on his face, he gave her the uncomfortable 
 feeling that he was in correspondence with the creature, the 
 lamb in the window. A cold wonder came over her her 
 soul was perplexed. There he sat, motionless, timeless, with 
 the faint, bright tension on his face. What was he doing? 
 What connection was there between him and the lamb in the 
 glass? 
 
 Suddenly it gleamed to her dominant, this lamb with the 
 flag. Suddenly she had a powerful mystic experience, the 
 power of the tradition seized on her, she was transported to 
 another world. And she hated it, resisted it. 
 
 Instantly, it was only a silly lamb in the glass again. And 
 dark, violent hatred of her husband swept up in her. What 
 was he doing, sitting there gleaming, carried away, soulful ? 
 
 She shifted sharply, she knocked him as she pretended to 
 pick up her glove, she groped among his feet. 
 
 He came to, rather bewildered, exposed. Anybody but her 
 would have pitied him. She wanted to rend him. He did 
 not know what was amiss, what he had been doing. 
 
 As they sat at dinner, in their cottage, he was dazed by 
 the chill of antagonism from her. She did not know why 
 she was so angry. But she was incensed. 
 
150 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "Why do you never listen to the sermon?" she asked, 
 seething with hostility and violation. 
 
 " I do," he said. 
 
 " You don't you don't hear a single word." 
 
 He retired into himself, to enjoy his own sensation. There 
 was something subterranean about him, as if he had an under- 
 world refuge. The young girl hated to be in the house with 
 him when he was like this. 
 
 After dinner, he retired into the parlour, continuing in the 
 same state of abstraction, which was a burden intolerable 
 to her. Then he went to the book-shelf and took down books 
 to look at, that she had scarcely glanced over. 
 
 He sat absorbed over a book on the illuminations in old 
 missals, and then over a book on paintings in churches: 
 Italian, English, French and German. He had, when he was 
 sixteen, discovered a Roman Catholic bookshop where he 
 could find such things. 
 
 He turned the leaves in absorption, absorbed in looking, 
 not thinking. He was like a man whose eyes were in his 
 chest, she said of him later. 
 
 She came to look at the things with him. Half they 
 fascinated her. She was puzzled, interested, and antagonistic. 
 
 It was when she came to pictures of the Pieta that she 
 burst out. 
 
 " I do think they're loathsome," she cried. 
 
 " What ? " he said, surprised, abstracted. 
 
 " Those bodies with slits in them, posing to be worshipped." 
 
 "You see, it means the Sacraments, the Bread," he said, 
 slowly. 
 
 " Does it ! " she cried. " Then it's worse. I don't want 
 to see your chest slit, nor to eat your dead body, even if you 
 offer it me. Can't you see it's horrible ? " 
 
 " It isn't me, it's Christ." 
 
 " What if it is, it's you ! And it's horrible, you wallowing 
 in your own dead body, and thinking of eating it in the 
 Sacrament." 
 
 " You've to take it for what it means." 
 
 "It means your human body put up to be slit and killed 
 and then worshipped what else ? " 
 
 They lapsed into silence. His soul grew angry and aloof. 
 
 "And I think that Lamb in Church," she said, "is the 
 biggest joke in the parish " 
 
 She burst into a " Pouf " of ridiculing laughter. 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 151 
 
 "It might be, to those that see nothing in it/' he said. 
 "You know it's the symbol of Christ, of His innocence and 
 sacrifice." 
 
 "Whatever it means, it's a lamb," she said. "And I like 
 lambs too much to treat them as if they had to mean some- 
 thing. As for the Christmas-tree flag no --" 
 
 And again she poufed with mockery. 
 
 "It's because you don't know anything," he said violently, 
 harshly. " Laugh at what you know, not at what you don't 
 know." 
 
 "What don't I know?" 
 
 " What things mean." 
 
 " And what does it mean ? " 
 
 He was reluctant to answer her. He found it difficult, 
 
 " W hat does it mean ? " she insisted. 
 
 " It means the triumph of the Resurrection." 
 
 She hesitated, baffled, a fear came upon her. What were 
 these things ? Something dark and powerful seemed to extend 
 before her. Was it wonderful after all ? 
 
 But no she refused it. 
 
 "Whatever it may pretend to mean, what it is is a silly 
 absurd toy-lamb with a Christmas-tree flag ledged on its paw 
 and if it wants to mean anything else, it must look different 
 from that." 
 
 He was in a state of violent irritation against her. Partly 
 he was ashamed of his love for these things; he hid his 
 passion for them. He was ashamed of the ecstasy into which 
 he could throw himself with these symbols. And for a few 
 moments he hated the lamb and the mystic pictures of the 
 Eucharist, with a violent, ashy hatred. His fire was put out, 
 she had thrown cold water on it. The whole thing was dis- 
 tasteful to him, his mouth was full of ashes. He went out 
 cold with corpse-like anger, leaving her alone. He hated her. 
 He walked through the white snow, under a sky of lead. 
 
 And she wept again, in bitter recurrence of the previous 
 gloom. But her heart was easy oh, much more easy. 
 
 She was quite willing to make it up with him when he 
 came home again. He was black and surly, but abated. 
 She had broken a little of something in him. And at length 
 he was glad to forfeit from his soul all his symbols, to have 
 her making love to him. He loved it when she put her 
 head on his knee, and he had not asked her to or wanted 
 her to, he loved her when she put her arms round him and 
 
152 THE RAINBOW 
 
 made bold love to him, and lie did not make love to her. 
 He felt a strong blood in his limbs again. 
 
 And she loved the intent, far look of his eyes when they 
 rested on her: intent, yet far, not near, not with her. And 
 she wanted to bring them near. She wanted his eyes to 
 come to hers, to know her. And they would not. They re- 
 mained intent, and far, and proud, like a hawk's, naive and 
 inhuman as a hawk's. So she loved him and caressed him and 
 roused him like a hawk, till he was keen and instant, but with- 
 out tenderness. He came to her fierce and hard, like a hawk 
 striking and taking her. He was no mystic any more, she was 
 his aim and object, his prey. And she was carried off, and he 
 was satisfied, or satiated at last. 
 
 Then immediately she began to retaliate on him. She too 
 was a hawk. If she imitated the pathetic plover running 
 plaintive to him, that was part of the game. When he, satis- 
 fied, moved with a proud, insolent slouch of the body and a 
 half-contemptuous drop of the head, unaware of her, ignoring 
 her very existence, after taking his fill of her and getting his 
 satisfaction of her, her soul roused, its pinions became like 
 steel, and she struck at him. When he sat on his perch glanc- 
 ing sharply round with solitary pride, pride eminent and fierce, 
 she dashed at him and threw him from his station savagely, she 
 goaded him from his keen dignity of a male, she harassed him 
 from his unperturbed pride, till he was mad with rage, his 
 light brown eyes burned with fury, they saw her now, like 
 flames of anger they flared at her and recognized her as the 
 enemy. 
 
 Very good, she was the enemy, very good. As he prowled 
 round her, she watched him. As he struck at her, she struck 
 back. 
 
 He was angry because she had carelessly pushed away his 
 tools so that they got rusty. 
 
 " Don't leave them littering in my way, then/' she said. 
 
 " I shall leave them where I like," he cried. 
 
 " Then I shall throw them where I like." 
 
 They glowered at each other, he with rage in his hands, 
 she with her soul fierce with victory. They were very well 
 matched. They would fight it out. 
 
 She turned to her sewing. Immediately the tea-things were 
 cleared away, she fetched out the stuff, and his soul rose in 
 rage. He hated beyond measure to hear the shriek of calico 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 153 
 
 as she tore the web sharply, as if with pleasure. And the run 
 of the sewing-machine gathered a frenzy in him at last. 
 
 " Aren't you going to stop that row ? " he shouted. " Can't 
 you do it in the daytime ? " 
 
 She looked up sharply, hostile from her work. 
 
 "No, I can't do it in the daytime, I have other things to 
 do. Besides, I like sewing, and you're not going to stop me 
 doing it." 
 
 Whereupon she turned back to her arranging, fixing, stitch- 
 ing, his nerves jumped with anger as the sewing-machine 
 started and stuttered and buzzed. 
 
 But she was enjoying herself, she was triumphant and happy 
 as the darting needle danced ecstatically down a hem, draw- 
 ing the stuff along under its vivid stabbing, irresistibly. She 
 made the machine hum. She stopped it imperiously, her 
 fingers were deft and swift and mistress. 
 
 If he sat behind her stiff with impotent rage it only made 
 a trembling vividness come into her energy. On she worked. 
 At last he went to bed in a rage, and lay stiff, away from 
 her. And she turned her back on him. And in the morning 
 they did not speak, except in mere cold civilities. 
 
 And when he came home at night, his heart relenting and 
 growing hot for love of her, when he was just ready to feel 
 he had been wrong, and when he was expecting her to feel 
 the same, there she sat at the sewing-machine, the whole 
 house was covered with clipped calico, the kettle was not even 
 on the fire. 
 
 She started up, affecting concern. 
 
 "Is it so late? "she cried. 
 
 But his face had gone stiff with rage. He walked through 
 to the parlour, then he walked back and out of the house 
 again. Her heart sank. Very swiftly she began to make his 
 tea. 
 
 He went black-hearted down the road to Ilkeston. When 
 he was in this state he never thought. A bolt shot across 
 the doors of his mind and shut him in, a prisoner. He went 
 back to Ilkeston, and drank a glass of beer. What was he 
 going to do ? He did not want to see anybody. 
 
 He would go to Nottingham, to his own town. He went to 
 the station and took a train. When he got to Nottingham, still 
 he had nowhere to go. However, it was more agreeable to walk 
 familiar streets. He paced them with a mad restlessness, as if 
 
154 THE RAINBOW 
 
 he were running amok. Then he turned to a book-shop and 
 found a book on Bamberg Cathedral. Here was a discovery ! 
 here was something for him ! He went into a quiet restaurant 
 to look at his treasure. He lit up with thrills of bliss as he 
 turned from picture to picture. He had found something at 
 last, in these carvings. His soul had great satisfaction. Had 
 he not come out to seek, and had he not found ! He was in a 
 passion of fulfilment. These were the finest carvings, statues, 
 he had ever seen. The book lay in his hands like a doorway. 
 The world around was only an enclosure, a room. But he was 
 going away. He lingered over the lovely statues of women. 
 A marvellous, finely-wrought universe crystallized out around 
 him as he looked again, at the crowns, the twining hair, the 
 woman-faces. He liked all the better the unintelligible text of 
 the German. He preferred things he could not understand 
 with the mind. He loved the undiscovered and the undiscover- 
 able. He pored over the pictures intensely. And these were 
 wooden statues, "Holz" he believed that meant wood. 
 Wooden statues so shapen to his soul ! He was a million times 
 gladdened. How undiscovered the world was, how it revealed 
 itself to his soul ! What a fine, exciting thing his life was, at 
 his hand! Did not Bamberg Cathedral make the world his 
 own? He celebrated his triumphant strength and life and 
 verity, and embraced the vast riches he was inheriting. 
 
 But it was about time to go home. He had better catch a 
 train. All the time there was a steady bruise at the bottom of 
 his soul, but so steady as to be forgettable. He caught a train 
 for Ilkeston. 
 
 It was ten o'clock as he was mounting the hill to Cossethay, 
 carrying his limp book on Bamberg Cathedral. He had not 
 yet thought of Anna, not definitely. The dark finger pressing 
 a bruise controlled him thoughtlessly. 
 
 Anna had started guiltily when he left the house. She had 
 hastened preparing the tea, hoping he would come back. She 
 had made some toast, and got all ready. Then he didn't come. 
 She cried with vexation and disappointment. Why had he 
 gone ? Why couldn't he come back now ? Why was it such a 
 battle between them ? She loved him she did love him 
 why couldn't he be kinder to her, nicer to her ? 
 
 She waited in distress then her mood grew harder. He 
 passed out of her thoughts. She had considered indignantly, 
 what right he had to interfere with her sewing? She had 
 indignantly refuted his right to interfere with her at all. She 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 155 
 
 was not to be interfered with. Was she not herself, and he 
 the outsider ? 
 
 Yet a quiver of fear went through her. If he should leave 
 her ? She sat conjuring fears and sufferings, till she wept with 
 very self-pity. She did not know what she would do if he left 
 her, or if he turned against her. The thought of it chilled her, 
 made her desolate and hard. And against him, the stranger, 
 the outsider, the being who wanted to arrogate authority, she 
 remained steadily fortified. Was she not herself ? How could 
 one who was not of her own kind presume with authority? 
 She knew she was immutable, unchangeable, she was not afraid 
 for her own being. She was only afraid of all that was not 
 herself. It pressed round her, it came to her and took part in 
 her, in form of her man, this vast, resounding, alien world 
 which was not herself. And he had so many weapons, he 
 might strike from so many sides. 
 
 When he came in at the door, his heart was blazed with 
 pity and tenderness, she looked so lost and forlorn and young. 
 She glanced up, afraid. And she was surprised to see him, 
 shining-faced, clear and beautiful in his movements, as if he 
 were clarified. And a startled pang of fear, and shame of her- 
 self went through her. 
 
 They waited for each other to speak. 
 
 " Do you want to eat anything ? " she said. 
 
 " I'll get it myself," he answered, not wanting her to serve 
 him. But she brought out food. And it pleased him she did 
 it for him. He was again a bright lord. 
 
 " I went to Nottingham," he said mildly. 
 
 " To your mother? " she asked, in a flash of contempt. 
 
 No I didn't go home." 
 
 " Who did you go to see ? " 
 
 " I went to see nobody." 
 
 " Then why did you go to Nottingham ? " 
 
 " I went because I wanted to go." 
 
 He was getting angry that she again rebuffed him when 
 he was so clear and shining. 
 
 " And who did you see ? " 
 
 " I saw nobody." 
 
 "Nobody?" 
 
 NO who should I see ? " 
 
 " You saw nobody you knew ? " 
 
 " No, I didn't," he replied irritably. 
 
 She believed him, and her mood became cold. 
 
156 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " I bought a book/' he said, handing her the propitiatory 
 volume. 
 
 She idly looked at the pictures. Beautiful, the pure women, 
 with their clear-dropping gowns. Her heart became colder. 
 What did they mean to him? 
 
 He sat and waited for her. She bent over the book. 
 
 "Aren't they nice?" he said, his voice roused and glad. 
 Her blood flushed, but she did not lift her head. 
 
 " Yes," she said. In spite of herself, she was compelled by 
 him. He was strange, attractive, exerting some power over 
 her. 
 
 He came over to her, and touched her delicately. Her 
 heart beat with wild passion, wild raging passion. But she 
 resisted as yet. It was always the unknown, always the un- 
 known, and she clung fiercely to her known self. But the 
 rising flood carried her away. 
 
 They loved each other to transport again, passionately and 
 fully. 
 
 " Isn't it more wonderful than ever ? " she asked him, ra- 
 diant like a newly opened flower, with tears like dew. 
 
 He held her closer. He was strange and abstracted. 
 
 " It is always more wonderful," she asseverated, in a glad, 
 child's voice, remembering her fear, and not quite cleared of 
 it yet. 
 
 So it went on continually, the recurrence of love and con- 
 flict between them. One day it seemed as if everything was 
 shattered, all life spoiled, ruined, desolate and laid waste. 
 The next day it was all marvellous again, just marvellous. 
 One day she thought she would go mad from his very pres- 
 ence, the sound of his drinking was detestable to her. The 
 next day she loved and rejoiced in the way he crossed the 
 floor, he was sun, moon and stars in one. 
 
 She fretted, however, at last, over the lack of stability. 
 When the perfect hours came back, her heart did not forget 
 that they would pass away again. She was uneasy. The 
 surety, the surety, the inner surety, the confidence in the 
 abidingness of love: that was what she wanted. And that 
 she did not get. She knew also that he had not got it. 
 
 Nevertheless it was a marvellous world, she was for the 
 most part lost in the marvellousness of it. Even her great 
 woes were marvellous to her. 
 
 She could be very happy. And she wanted to be happy. 
 She resented it when he made her unhappy. Then she could 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 157 
 
 kill him, cast him out. Many days, she waited for the hour 
 when he would be gone to work. Then the flow of her life, 
 which he seemed to dam up, was let loose, and she was free. 
 She was free, she was full of delight. Everything delighted 
 her. She took up the rug and went to shake it in the garden. 
 Patches of snow were on the fields, the air was light. She 
 heard the ducks shouting on the pond, she saw them charge and 
 sail across the water as if they were setting off on an invasion 
 of the world. She watched the rough horses, one of which was 
 clipped smooth on the belly, so that he wore a jacket and long 
 stockings of brown fur, stand kissing each other in the wintry 
 morning by the church-yard wall. Everything delighted her, 
 now he was gone, the insulator, the obstruction removed, the 
 world all hers, in connection with her. 
 
 She was joyfully active. Nothing pleased her more than to 
 hang out the washing in a high wind that came full-butt over 
 the round of the hill, tearing the wet garments out of her 
 hands, making flap-flap-flap of the waving stuff. She laughed 
 and struggled and grew angry. But she loved her solitary 
 days. 
 
 Then he came home at night, and she knitted her brows be- 
 cause of some endless contest between them. As he stood in 
 the doorway her heart changed. It steeled itself. The laugh- 
 ter and zest of the day disappeared from her. She was 
 stiffened. 
 
 They fought an unknown battle, unconsciously. Still they 
 were in love with each other, the passion was there. But the 
 passion was consumed in a battle. And the deep, fierce, un- 
 named battle went on. Everything glowed intensely about 
 them, the world had put off its clothes and was awful, with 
 new, primal nakedness. 
 
 Sunday came, when the strange spell was cast over her by 
 him. Half she loved it. She was becoming more like him. 
 All the week-days, there was a glint of sky and fields, the 
 little church seemed to babble away to the cottages the morn- 
 ing through. But on Sundays, when he stayed at home, a 
 deeply-coloured, intense gloom seemed to gather on the face of 
 the earth, the church seemed to fill itself with shadow, to be- 
 come big, a universe to her, there was a burning of blue and 
 ruby, a sound of worship about her. And when the doors were 
 opened, and she came out into the world, it was a world new- 
 created, she stepped into the resurrection of the world, her 
 heart beating to the memory of the darkness and the Passion^ 
 
158 THE RAINBOW 
 
 If, as very often, they went to the Marsh for tea on Sundays, 
 then she regained another, lighter world, that had never known 
 the gloom and the stained glass and the ecstasy of chanting. 
 Her husband was obliterated, she was with her father again, 
 who was so fresh and free and all daylight. Her husband, 
 with his intensity and his darkness, was obliterated. She left 
 him, she forgot him, she accepted her father. 
 
 Yet, as she went home again with the young man, she put 
 her hand on his arm tentatively, a little bit ashamed, her hand 
 pleaded that he would not hold it against her, her recusancy. 
 But he was obscured. He seemed to become blind, as if he 
 were not there with her. 
 
 Then she was afraid. She wanted him. When he was 
 oblivious of her, she almost went mad with fear. For she 
 had become so vulnerable, so exposed. She was in touch so 
 intimately. All things about her had become intimate, she had 
 known them near and lovely, like presences hovering upon her. 
 What if they should all go hard and separate again, standing 
 back from her terrible and distinct, and she, having known 
 them, should be at their mercy ? 
 
 This frightened her. Always, her husband was to her the 
 unknown to which she was delivered up. She was a flower 
 that has been tempted forth into blossom, and has no retreat. 
 He had her nakedness in his power. And who was he, what 
 was he? A blind thing, a dark force, without knowledge. 
 She wanted to preserve herself. 
 
 Then she gathered him to herself again and was satisfied 
 for a moment. But as time went on, she began to realize 
 more and more that he did not alter, that he was something 
 dark, alien to herself. She had thought him just the bright 
 reflex of herself. As the weeks and months went by she real- 
 ized that he was a dark opposite to her, that they were op- 
 posites, not complements. 
 
 He did not alter, he remained separately himself, and he 
 seemed to expect her to be part of himself, the extension of 
 his will. She felt him trying to gain power over her, with- 
 out knowing her. What did he want? Was he going to 
 bully her? 
 
 What did she want herself? She answered herself, that 
 she wanted to be happy, to be natural, like the sunlight and 
 the busy daytime. And, at the bottom of her soul, she felt 
 he wanted her to be dark, unnatural. Sometimes, when he 
 seemed like the darkness covering and snaothering her, sh 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 159 
 
 revolted almost in horror, and struck at him. She struck at 
 him, and made him bleed, and he became wicked. Because 
 she dreaded him and held him in horror, he became wicked, 
 he wanted to destroy. And then the fight between them was 
 cruel. 
 
 She began to tremble. He wanted to impose himself on 
 her. And he began to shudder. She wanted to desert him, 
 to leave him a prey to the open, with the unclean dogs of 
 the darkness setting on to devour him. He must beat her, and 
 make her stay with him. Whereas she fought to keep her- 
 self free of him. 
 
 They went their ways now shadowed and stained with blood, 
 feeling the world far off, unable to give help. Till she began 
 to get tired. After a certain point, she became impassive, 
 detached utterly from him. He was always ready to burst out 
 murderously against her. Her soul got up and left him, she 
 went her way. Nevertheless in her apparent blitheness, that 
 made his soul black with opposition, she trembled as if she 
 bled. 
 
 And ever and again, the pure love came in sunbeams be- 
 tween them, when she was like a flower in the sun to him, so 
 beautiful, so shining, so intensely dear that he could scarcely 
 bear it. Then as if his soul had six wings of bliss he stood 
 absorbed in praise, feeling the radiance from the Almighty 
 beat through him like a pulse, as he stood in the upright flame 
 of praise, transmitting the pulse of Creation. 
 
 And ever and again he appeared to her as the dread flame 
 of power. Sometimes, when he stood in the doorway, his face 
 lit up, he seemed like an Annunciation to her, her heart beat 
 fast. And she watched him, suspended. He had a dark, 
 burning being that she dreaded and resisted. She was subject 
 to him as to the Angel of the Presence. She waited upon him 
 and heard his will, and she trembled in his service. 
 
 Then all this passed away. Then he loved her for her child- 
 ishness and for her strangeness to him, for the wonder of her 
 soul which was different from his soul, and which made him 
 genuine when he would be false. And she loved him for the 
 way he sat loosely in a chair, or for the way he came through 
 a door with his face open and eager. She loved his ringing, 
 eager voice, and the touch of the unknown about him, his abso- 
 lute simplicity. 
 
 Yet neither of them was quite satisfied. He felt, some- 
 where, that she did not respect him. She only respected Mm 
 
160 THE RAINBOW 
 
 as far as he was related to herself. For what he was, beyond 
 her, she had no care. She did not care for what he represented 
 in himself. It is true, he did not know himself what he repre- 
 sented. But whatever it was she did not really honour it. 
 She did no service to his work as a lace-designer, nor to him- 
 self as bread-winner. Because he went down to the office and 
 worked every day that entitled him to no respect or regard 
 from her, he knew. Eather she despised him for it. And he 
 almost loved her for this, though at first it maddened him like 
 an insult. 
 
 What was much deeper, she soon came to combat his deepest 
 feelings. What he thought about life and about society and 
 mankind did not matter very much to her : he was right enough 
 to be insignificant. This was again galling to him. She 
 would judge beyond him on these things. But at length he 
 came to accept her judgments, discovering them as if they were 
 his own. It was not here the deep trouble lay. The deep root 
 of his enmity lay in the fact that she jeered at his soul. He 
 was inarticulate and stupid in thought. But to some things 
 he clung passionately. He loved the Church. If she tried to 
 get out of him, what he believed, then they were both soon in a 
 white rage. 
 
 Did he believe the water turned to wine at Cana? She 
 would drive him to the thing as a historical fact: so much 
 rain-water look at it can it become grape-juice, wine? 
 For an instant, he saw with the clear eyes of the mind and 
 said no, his clear mind, answering her for a moment, rejected 
 the idea. And immediately his whole soul was crying in a 
 mad, inchoate hatred against this violation of himself. It 
 was true for him. His mind was extinguished again at once, 
 his blood was up. In his blood and bones, he wanted the 
 scene, the wedding, the water brought forward from the firkins 
 as red wine: and Christ saying to His mother: "Woman, 
 what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not yet come." 
 
 And then : 
 
 " His mother saith unto the servants, * Whatsoever he saith 
 unto you, do it/ * 
 
 Brangwen loved it, with his bones and blood he loved it, 
 he could not let it go. Yet she forced him to let it go. She 
 hated his blind attachments. 
 
 Water, natural water, could it suddenly and unnaturally 
 turn into wine, depart from its being and at hap-hazard take 
 on another being ? Ah no, he knew it was wrong. 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 161 
 
 She became again the palpitating, hostile child, hateful, 
 putting things to destruction. He became mute and dead. 
 His own being gave him the lie. He knew it was so: wine 
 was wine, water was water, for ever : the water had not become 
 wine. The miracle was not a real fact. She seemed to be 
 destroying him. He went out, dark and destroyed, his soul 
 running its blood. And he tasted of death. Because his life 
 was formed in these unquestioned concepts. 
 
 She, desolate again as she had been when she was a child, 
 went away and sobbed. She did not care, she did not care 
 whether the water had turned to wine or not. Let him believe 
 it if he wanted to. But she knew she had won. And an ashy 
 desolation came over her. 
 
 They were ashenly miserable for some time. Then the life 
 began to come back. He was nothing if not dogged. He 
 thought again of the chapter of St. John. There was a great 
 biting pang. " But thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
 " The best wine ! " The young man's heart responded in 
 a craving, in a triumph, although the knowledge that it was 
 not true in fact bit at him like a weasel in his heart. Which 
 was stronger, the pain of the denial, or the desire for affirma- 
 tion? He was stubborn in spirit, and abode by his desire. 
 But he would not any more affirm the miracles as true. 
 
 Very well, it was not true, the water had not turned into 
 wine. The water had not turned into wine. But for all that 
 he would live in his soul as if the water had turned into wine. 
 For truth of fact, it had not. But for his soul, it had. 
 
 " Whether it turned into wine or whether it didn't/' he said, 
 " it doesn't bother me. I take it for what it is." 
 
 " And what is it ? " she asked, quickly, hopefully. 
 
 " It's the Bible," he said. 
 
 That answer enraged her, and she despised him. She did 
 not actively question the Bible herself. But he drove her to 
 contempt. 
 
 And yet he did not care about the Bible, the written letter. 
 Although he could not satisfy her, yet she knew of herself 
 that he had something real. He was not a dogmatist. He 
 did not believe in fact that the water turned into wine. He 
 did not want to make a fact out of it. Indeed, his attitude 
 was without criticism. It was purely individual. He took 
 that which was of value to him from the Written Word, he 
 added to his spirit. His mind he let sleep. 
 
 And she was bitter against him, that he let his mind sleep. 
 
162 THE RAINBOW 
 
 That which was human, belonged to mankind, he would not 
 exert. He cared only for himself. He was no Christian. 
 Above all, Christ had asserted the brotherhood of man. 
 
 She, almost against herself, clung to the worship of the 
 human knowledge. Man must die in the body, but in his 
 knowledge he was immortal. Such, somewhere, was her belief, 
 quite obscure and unformulated. She believed in the omnip- 
 otence of the human mind. 
 
 He, on the other hand, blind as a subterranean thing, just 
 ignored the human mind and ran after his own dark-souled 
 desires, following his own tunnelling nose. She felt often she 
 must suffocate. And she fought him off. 
 
 Then he, knowing he was blind, fought madly back again, 
 frantic in sensual fear. He did foolish things. He asserted 
 himself on his rights, he arrogated the old position of master 
 of the house. 
 
 " You've a right to do as I want," he cried. 
 
 " Pool ! " she answered. " Fool ! " 
 
 " I'll let you know who's master," he cried. 
 
 " Fool ! " she answered. " Fool ! I've known my own 
 father, who could put a dozen of you in his pipe and push 
 them down with his finger-end. Don't I know what a fool 
 you are ! " 
 
 He knew himself what a fool he was, and was flayed by the 
 knowledge. Yet he went on trying to steer the ship of their 
 dual life. He asserted his position as the captain of the ship. 
 And captain and ship bored her. He wanted to loom im- 
 portant as master of one of the innumerable domestic craft that 
 make up the great fleet of society. It seemed to her a ridicu- 
 lous armada of tubs jostling in futility. She felt no belief in 
 it. She jeered at him as master of the house, master of their 
 dual life. And he was black with shame and rage. He knew, 
 with shame, how her father had been a man without arrogating 
 any authority. 
 
 He had gone on the wrong tack, and he felt it hard to give 
 up the expedition. There was great surging and shame. 
 Then he yielded. He had given up the master-of-the-house 
 idea. 
 
 There was something he wanted, nevertheless, some form 
 of mastery. Ever and anon, after his collapses into the petty 
 and the shameful, he rose up again, and, stubborn in spirit, 
 strong in his power to start afresh, set out once more in hi$ 
 male pride of being to fulfil the hidden passion of his spirit, 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 163 
 
 It began well, but it ended always in war between them, 
 till they were both driven almost to madness. He said, she 
 did not respect him. She laughed in hollow scorn of this. 
 For her it was enough that she loved him. 
 
 " Respect what ? " she asked. 
 
 But he always answered the wrong thing. And though she 
 cudgelled her brains, she could not come at it. 
 
 " Why don't you go on with your wood-carving ? " she said. 
 " Why don't you finish your Adam and Eve ? " 
 
 But she did not care for the Adam and Eve, and he never 
 put another stroke to it. She jeered at the Eve, saying, " She 
 is like a little marionette. Why is she so small? You've 
 made Adam as big as God, and Eve like a doll." 
 
 " It is impudence to say that Woman was made out of Man'a 
 body," she continued, "when every man is born of woman. 
 What impudence men have, what arrogance ! " 
 
 In a rage one day, after trying to work on the board, and 
 failing, so that his belly was a flame of nausea, he chopped up 
 the whole panel and put it on the fire. She did not know. 
 He went about for some days very quiet and subdued 
 after it. 
 
 " Where is the Adam and Eve board ? " she asked him. 
 
 Burnt." 
 
 She looked at him. 
 
 "But your carving?" 
 
 " I burned it." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 She did not believe him. 
 
 " On Friday night." 
 
 " When I was at the Marsh ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She said no more. 
 
 Then, when he had gone to work, she wept for a whole day, 
 and was much chastened in spirit. So that a new, fragile 
 flame of love came out of the ashes of this last pain. 
 
 Directly, it occurred to her that she was with child. There 
 was a great trembling of wonder and anticipation through 
 her soul. She wanted a child. Not that she loved babies so 
 much, though she was touched by all young things. But she 
 wanted to bear children. And a certain hunger in her heart 
 wanted to unite her husband with herself, in a child. 
 
 She wanted a son. She felt, a son would be everything. 
 She wanted to tell her husband. But it was such a trembling, 
 
164 THE RAINBOW 
 
 intimate thing to tell him, and he was at this time hard and 
 unresponsive. So that she went away and wept. It was such 
 a waste of a beautiful opportunity, such a frost that nipped in 
 .the bud one of the beautiful moments of her life. She went 
 about heavy and tremulous with her secret, wanting to touch 
 him, oh, most delicately, and see his face, dark and sensitive, 
 attend to her news. She waited and waited for him to become 
 gentle and still towards her. But he was always harsh and he 
 bullied her. 
 
 So that the buds shrivelled from her confidence, she was 
 chilled. She went down to the Marsh. 
 
 "Well/' said her father, looking at her and seeing her at 
 the first glance, " what's amiss wi' you now ? " 
 
 The tears came at the touch of his careful love. 
 
 " Nothing," she said. 
 
 " Can't you hit it off, you two ? " he said. 
 
 " He's so obstinate," she quivered ; but her soul was obdurate 
 itself. 
 
 "Ay, an' I know another who's all that," said her father. 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 "You don't want to make yourselves miserable," said her 
 father ; " all about nowt." 
 
 ff He isn't miserable," she said. 
 
 " I'll back my life, if you can do nowt else, you can make 
 him as miserable as a dog. You'd be a dab hand at that, 
 my lass." 
 
 " I do nothing to make him miserable," she retorted. 
 
 " Oh no oh no ! A packet o' butterscotch, you are." . 
 
 She laughed a little. 
 
 " You mustn't think I want to be miserable," she cried. " I 
 don't." 
 
 "We quite readily believe it," retorted Brangwen. "Nei- 
 ther do you intend him to be hopping for joy like a fish in a 
 pond." 
 
 This made her think. She was rather surprised to find that 
 she did not intend her husband to be hopping for joy like a 
 fish in a pond. 
 
 Her mother came, and they all sat down to tea, talking 
 casually. 
 
 "Remember, child," said her mother, "that everything is 
 not waiting for your hand just to take or leave. You mustn't 
 expect it. Between two people, the love itself is the important 
 thing, and that is neither you nor him. It is a third thing 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 165 
 
 yon must create. You mustn't expect it to be just your way." 
 
 " Ha nor do I. If I did I should soon find my mistake 
 out. If I put my hand out to take anything, my hand is very 
 soon bitten, I can tell you." 
 
 " Then you must mind where you put your hand," said her 
 father. 
 
 Anna was rather indignant that they took the tragedy of 
 her young married life with such equanimity. 
 
 "You love the man right enough," said her father, wrin- 
 kling his forehead in distress. " That's all as counts." 
 
 " I do love him, more shame to him," she cried. " I want 
 to tell him I've been waiting for four days now to tell 
 
 him " her face began to quiver, the tears came. Her 
 
 parents watched her in silence. She did not go on. 
 
 " Tell him what ? " said her father. 
 
 " That we're going to have an infant," she sobbed, " and 
 he's never, never let me, not once, every time I've come to 
 him, he's been horrid to me, and I wanted to tell him, I did. 
 And he won't let me he's cruel to me." 
 
 She sobbed as if her heart would break. Her mother went 
 and comforted her, put her arms round her, and held her 
 close. Her father sat with a queer, wrinkled brow, and was 
 rather paler than usual. His heart went tense with hatred of 
 his son-in-law. 
 
 So that, when the tale was sobbed out, and comfort ad- 
 ministered and tea sipped, and something like calm restored 
 to the little circle, the thought of Will Brangwen's entry was 
 not pleasantly entertained. 
 
 Tilly was set to watch out for him as he passed by on his 
 way home. The little party at table heard the woman-serv- 
 ant's shrill call : 
 
 " You've got to come in, Will. Anna's here." 
 
 After a few moments, the youth entered. 
 
 "Are you stopping?" he asked in his hard, harsh voice. 
 
 He seemed like a blade of destruction standing there. She 
 quivered to tears. 
 
 " Sit you down," said Tom Brangwen, " an' take a bit off 
 your length." 
 
 Will Brangwen sat down. He felt something strange in 
 the atmosphere. He was dark browed, but his eyes had the 
 keen, intent, sharp look, as if he could only see in the dis- 
 tance; which was a beauty in him, and which made Anna BO 
 angry. 
 
166 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "Why does he always deny me?" she said to herself. 
 " Why is it nothing to him, what I am ? " 
 
 And Tom Brangwen, blue-eyed and warm, sat in opposition 
 to the youth. 
 
 "How long are you stopping?" the young husband asked 
 liis wife. 
 
 " Not very long/' she said. 
 
 " Get your tea, lad," said Tom Brangwen. " Are you 
 itchin' to be off the moment you enter ? " 
 
 They talked of trivial things. Through the open door the 
 level rays of sunset poured in, shining on the floor. A grey 
 hen appeared stepping swiftly in the doorway, pecking, and 
 the light through her comb and her wattles made an ori- 
 flamme tossed here and there, as she went, her grey body was 
 like a ghost. 
 
 Anna, watching, threw scraps of bread, and she felt the 
 child flame within her. She seemed to remember again for- 
 gotten, burning, far-off things. 
 
 " Where was I born, mother ? " she asked. 
 
 " In London." 
 
 "And was my father" she spoke of him as if he were 
 merely a strange name : she could never connect herself with 
 him "was he dark?" 
 
 "He had dark-brown hair and dark eyes and a fresh col- 
 ouring. He went bald, rather bald, when he was quite 
 young," replied the mother, also as if telling a tale which was 
 just old imagination. 
 
 " Was he good-looking ? " 
 
 " Yes he was very good-looking rather small. I have 
 never seen an Englishman who looked like him." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " He was " the mother made a quick, running movement 
 with her hands " his figure was alive and changing it was 
 never fixed. He was not in the least steady like a running 
 stream." 
 
 It flashed over the youth Anna too was like a running 
 stream. Instantly he was in love with her again. 
 
 Tom Brangwen was frightened. His heart always filled 
 with fear, fear of the unknown, when he heard his women 
 speak of their bygone men as of strangers they had known 
 in passing and had taken leave of again. 
 
 In the room, there came a silence and a singleness over all 
 
ANNA VICTHIX 167 
 
 their hearts. They were separate people with separate desti- 
 nies. Why should they seek each to lay violent hands of 
 claim on the other? 
 
 The young people went home as a sharp little moon was 
 setting in a dusk of spring. Tufts of trees hovered in the 
 upper air, the little church pricked up shadowily at the top 
 of the hill, the earth was a dark blue shadow. 
 
 She put her hand lightly on his arm, out of her far dis- 
 tance. And out of the distance, he felt her touch him. They 
 walked on, hand in hand, along opposite horizons, touching 
 across the dusk. There was a sound of thrushes calling in 
 the dark blue twilight. 
 
 " I think we are going to have an infant, Bill," she said, 
 from far off. 
 
 He trembled, and his fingers tightened on hers. 
 
 " Why ? " he asked, his heart beating. " You don't know ? " 
 
 "I do," she said. 
 
 They continued without saying any more, walking along 
 opposite horizons, hand in hand across the intervening space, 
 two separate people. And he trembled as if a wind blew 
 on to him in strong gusts, out of the unseen. He was afraid. 
 He was afraid to know he was alone. For she seemed ful- 
 filled and separate and sufficient in her half of the world. 
 He could not bear to know that he was cut off. Why could 
 he not be always one with her? It was he who had given 
 her the child. Why could she not be with him, one with 
 him? Why must he be set in this separateness, why could 
 she not be with him, close, close, as one with him? She 
 must be one with him. 
 
 He held her fingers tightly in his own. She did not know 
 what he was thinking. The blaze of light on her heart was 
 too beautiful and dazzling, from the conception in her womb. 
 She walked glorified, and the sound of the thrushes, of the 
 trains in the valley, of the far-off, faint noises of the town, 
 were her " Magnificat." 
 
 But he was struggling in silence. It seemed as though 
 there were before him a solid wall of darkness that impeded 
 him and suffocated him and made him mad. He wanted her 
 to come to him, to complete him, to stand before him so that 
 his eyes did not, should not meet the naked darkness. Noth- 
 ing mattered to him but that she should come and complete 
 him. For he was ridden by the awful sense of his own limi- 
 
168 THE RAINBOW 
 
 tation. It was as if he ended uncompleted, as yet uncreated 
 on the darkness, and he wanted her to come and liberate him 
 into the whole. 
 
 But she was complete in herself, and he was ashamed of 
 his need, his helpless need of her. His need, and his shame 
 of need, weighed on him like a madness. Yet still he was 
 quiet and gentle, in reverence of her conception, and because 
 she was with child by him. 
 
 And she was happy in showers of sunshine. She loved 
 her husband, as a presence, as a grateful condition. But for 
 the moment her need was fulfilled, and now she wanted only 
 to hold her husband by the hand in sheer happiness, without 
 taking thought, only being glad. 
 
 He had various folios of reproductions, and among them a 
 cheap print from Fra Angelico's " Entry of the Blessed into 
 Paradise/' This filled Anna with bliss. The beautiful, in- 
 nocent way in which the Blessed held each other by the hand 
 as they moved towards the radiance, the real, real, angelic 
 melody, made her weep with happiness. The floweriness, the 
 beams of light, the linking of hands, was almost too much for 
 her, too innocent. 
 
 Day after day came shining through the door of Para- 
 dise, day after day she entered into the brightness. The child 
 in her shone till she herself was a beam of sunshine ; and how 
 lovely was the sunshine that loitered and wandered out of 
 doors, where the catkins on the big hazel bushes at the end 
 of the garden hung in their shaken, floating aureole, where 
 little fumes like fire burst out from the black yew-trees as a 
 bird settled clinging to the branches. One day bluebells were 
 along the hedge-bottoms, then cowslips twinkled like manna, 
 golden and evanescent on the meadows. She was full of a 
 rich drowsiness and loneliness. How happy she was, how 
 gorgeous it was to live: to have known herself, her husband, 
 the passion of love and begetting; and to know that all this 
 lived and waited and burned on around her, a terrible puri- 
 fying fire, through which she had passed for once to come to 
 this peace of golden radiance, when she was with child, and 
 innocent, and in love with her husband and with all the many 
 angels hand in hand. She lifted her throat to the breeze that 
 came across the fields, and she felt it handling her like sisters 
 fondling her, she drank it in perfume of cowslips and of 
 appleblossoms. 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 169 
 
 And in all the happiness a black shadow, shy, wild, a beast 
 of prey, roamed and vanished from sight, and like strands 
 of gossamer blown across her eyes, there was a dread for 
 her. 
 
 She was afraid when he came home at night. As yet, her 
 fear never spoke, the shadow never rushed upon her. He 
 was gentle, humble, he kept himself withheld. His hands 
 were delicate upon her, and she loved them. But there ran 
 through her the thrill, crisp as pain, for she felt the darkness 
 and other-world still in his soft, sheathed hands. 
 
 But the summer drifted in with the silence of a miracle, 
 she was almost always alone. All the while, went on the 
 long, lovely drowsiness, the maidenblush roses in the garden 
 were all shed, washed away in a pouring rain, summer drifted 
 into autumn, and the long, vague, golden day began to close. 
 Crimson clouds fumed about the west, and as night came on, 
 all the sky was fuming and steaming, and the moon, far above 
 the swiftness of vapours, was white, bleared, the night was 
 uneasy. Suddenly the moon would appear at a clear window 
 in the sky, looking down from far above, like a captive. And 
 Anna did not sleep. There was a strange, dark tension about 
 her husband. 
 
 She became aware that he was trying to force his will upon 
 her, something, there was something he wanted, as he lay 
 there dark and tense. And her soul sighed in weariness. 
 
 Everything was so vague and lovely, and he wanted to wake 
 her up to the hard, hostile reality. She drew back in resist- 
 ance. Still he said nothing. But she felt his power per- 
 sisting on her, till she became aware of the strain, she cried 
 out against the exhaustion. He was forcing her, he was 
 forcing her. And she wanted so much the joy and the vague- 
 ness and the innocence of her pregnancy. She did not want 
 his bitter-corrosive love, she did not want it poured into her, 
 to burn her. Why must she have it ? Why, oh, why was he 
 not content, contained? 
 
 She sat many hours by the window, in those days when he 
 drove her most with the black constraint of his will, and she 
 watched the rain falling on the yew-trees. She was not sad, 
 only wistful, blanched. The child under her heart was a per- 
 petual warmth. And she was sure. The pressure was only 
 upon her from the outside, her soul had no stripes. 
 
 Yet in her heart itself was always this same strain, tense, 
 
170 THE RAINBOW 
 
 anxious. She was not safe, she was always exposed, she was 
 always attacked. There was a yearning in her for a fulness 
 of peace and blessedness. What a heavy yearning it was 
 so heavy. 
 
 She knew, vaguely, that all the time he was not satisfied, 
 all the time he was trying to force something from her. Ah, 
 how she wished she could succeed with him, in her own way ! 
 He was there, so inevitable. She lived in him also. And 
 how she wanted to be at peace with him, at peace. She 
 loved him. She would give him love, pure love. With a 
 strange, rapt look on her face, she awaited his homecoming 
 that night. 
 
 Then, when he came, she rose with her hands full of love, 
 as of flowers, radiant, innocent. A dark spasm crossed his 
 face. As she watched, her face shining and flower-like with 
 innocent love, his face grew dark and tense, the cruelty gath- 
 ered in his brows, his eyes turned aside, she saw the whites of 
 his eyes as he looked aside from her. She waited, touching 
 him with her hands. But from his body through her hands 
 came the bitter-corrosive shock of his passion upon her, de- 
 stroying her in blossom. She shrank. She rose from her 
 knees and went away from him, to preserve herself. And it 
 was great pain to her. 
 
 To him also it was agony. He saw the glistening, flower- 
 like love in her face, and his heart was black because he did 
 not want it. Not this not this. He did not want flowery 
 innocence. He was unsatisfied. The rage and storm of un- 
 satisfaction tormented him ceaselessly. Why had she not 
 satisfied him? He had satisfied her. She was satisfied, at 
 peace, innocent round the doors of her own paradise. 
 
 And he was unsatisfied, unfulfilled, he raged in torment, 
 wanting, wanting. It was for her to satisfy him: then let 
 her do it. Let her not come with flowery handfuls of inno- 
 cent love. He would throw these aside and trample the flow- 
 ers to nothing. He would destroy her flowery, innocent bliss. 
 Was he not entitled to satisfaction from her, and was not his 
 heart all raging desire, his soul a black torment of unfulfil- 
 ment. Let it be fulfilled in him, then, as it was fulfilled in 
 her. He had given her her fulfilment. Let her rise up and 
 do her part. 
 
 He was cruel to her. But all the time he was ashamed. 
 And being ashamed, he was more cruel. For he was ashamed 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 171 
 
 that he could not come to fulfilment without her. And he 
 could not. And she would not heed him. He was shackled 
 and in darkness of torment. 
 
 She beseeched him to work again, to do his wood-carving. 
 But his soul was too black. He had destroyed his panel of 
 Adam and Eve. He could not begin again, least of all now, 
 whilst he was in this condition. 
 
 For her there was no final release, since he could not be 
 liberated from himself. Strange and amorphous, she must 
 go yearning on through the trouble, like a warm, glowing 
 cloud blown in the middle of a storm. She felt so rich, in 
 her warm vagueness, that her soul cried out on him, because 
 he harried her and wanted to destroy her. 
 
 She had her moments of exaltation still, re-births of old 
 exaltations. As she sat by her bedroom window, watching 
 the steady rain, her spirit was somewhere far off. 
 
 She sat in pride and curious pleasure. When there was 
 no one to exult with, and the unsatisfied soul must dance and 
 play, then one danced before the Unknown. 
 
 Suddenly she realized that this was what she wanted to 
 do. Big with child as she was, she danced there in the bed- 
 room by herself, lifting her hands and her body to the Unseen, 
 to the unseen Creator who had chosen her, to Whom she be- 
 longed. 
 
 She would not have had any one know. She danced in 
 secret, and her soul rose in bliss. She danced in secret before 
 the Creator, she took off her clothes and danced in the pride 
 of her bigness. 
 
 It surprised her, when it was over. She was shrinking and 
 afraid. To what was she now exposed? She half wanted to 
 tell her husband. Yet she shrank from him. 
 
 All the time she ran on by herself. She liked the story of 
 David, who danced before the Lord, and uncovered himself 
 exultingly. Why should he uncover himself to Michal, a 
 common woman ? He uncovered himself to the Lord. 
 
 " Thou comest to me with a sword and a spear and a shield, 
 but I come to thee in the name of the Lord : for the battle is 
 the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands." 
 
 Her heart rang to the words. She walked in her pride. 
 And her battle was her own Lord's, her husband was delivered 
 over. 
 
 In these days she was oblivious of him. Who was he, to 
 
172 THE RAINBOW 
 
 come against her? No, he was not even tHe Philistine, the 
 Giant. He was like Saul proclaiming his own kingship. She 
 laughed in her heart. Who was he, proclaiming his king- 
 ship? She laughed in her heart with pride. 
 
 And she had to dance in exultation beyond him. Because 
 he was in the house, she had to dance before her Creator in 
 exemption from the man. On a Saturday afternoon, when 
 she had a fire in the bedroom, again she took off her things 
 and danced, lifting her knees and her hands in a slow, 
 rhythmic exulting. He was in the house, so her pride was 
 fiercer. She would dance his nullification, she would dance 
 to her unseen Lord. She was exalted over him, before the 
 Lord. 
 
 She heard him coming up the stairs, and she flinched. She 
 stood with the firelight on her ankles and feet, naked in the 
 shadowy, late afternoon, fastening up her hair. He was 
 startled. He stood in the doorway, his brows black and lower- 
 ing. 
 
 " What are you doing ? " he said, gratingly. " You'll catch 
 a cold." 
 
 And she lifted her hands and danced again, to annul him, 
 the light glanced on her knees as she made her slow, fine move- 
 ments down the far side of the room, across the firelight. He 
 stood away near the door in blackness of shadow, watching, 
 transfixed. And with slow, heavy movements she swayed 
 backwards and forwards, like a full ear of corn, pale in the 
 dusky afternoon, threading before the firelight, dancing his 
 non-existence, dancing herself to the Lord, to exultation. 
 
 He watched, and his soul burned in him. He turned aside, 
 he could not look, it hurt his eyes. Her fine limbs lifted and 
 lifted, her hair was sticking out all fierce, and her belly, big, 
 strange, terrifying, uplifted to the Lord. Her face was rapt 
 and beautiful, she danced exulting before her Lord, and knew 
 no man. 
 
 It hurt him as he watched as if he were at the stake. He 
 felt he was being burned alive. The strangeness, the power 
 of her in her dancing consumed him, he was burned, he could 
 not grasp, he could not understand. He waited obliterated. 
 Then his eyes became blind to her, he saw her no more. And 
 through the unseeing veil between them he called to her, in 
 his jarring voice : 
 
 "What are you doing that for?" 
 
 " Go away," she said. " Let me dance by myself." 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 173 
 
 "That isn't dancing/' he said harshly. "What do you 
 want to do that for?" 
 
 " I don't do it for you," she said. " You go away." 
 
 Her strange, lifted belly, big with his child! Had he no 
 right to be there? He felt his presence a violation. Yet he 
 had his right to be there. He went and sat on the bed. 
 
 She stopped dancing, and confronted him, again lifting her 
 slim arms and twisting at her hair. Her nakedness hurt her, 
 opposed to him. 
 
 " I can do as I like in my bedroom/' she cried. " Why do 
 you interfere with me ? " 
 
 And she slipped on a dressing-gown and crouched before 
 the fire. He was more at ease now she was covered up. The 
 vision of her tormented him all the days of his life, as she 
 had been then, a strange, exalted thing having no relation to 
 himself. 
 
 After this day, the door seemed to shut on his mind. His 
 brow shut and became impervious. His eyes ceased to see, 
 his hands were suspended. Within himself his will was 
 coiled like a beast, hidden under the darkness, but always 
 potent, working. 
 
 At first she went on blithely enough with him shut down 
 beside her. But then his spell began to take hold of her. 
 The dark, seething potency of him, the power of a creature 
 that lies hidden and exerts its will to the destruction of the 
 free-running creature, as the tiger lying in the darkness of 
 the leaves steadily enforces the fall and death of the light 
 creatures that drink by the waterside in the morning, grad- 
 ually began to take effect on her. Though he lay there in his 
 darkness and did not move, yet she knew he lay waiting for 
 her. She felt his will fastening on her and pulling her down, 
 even whilst he was silent and obscure. 
 
 She found that, in all her outgoings and her incomings, he 
 prevented her. Gradually she realized that she was being 
 borne down by him, borne down by the clinging, heavy weight 
 of him, that he was pulling her down as a leopard clings to a 
 wild cow and exhausts her and pulls her down. 
 
 Gradually she realized that her life, her freedom, was sink- 
 ing under the silent grip of his physical will. He wanted her 
 in his power. He wanted to devour her at leisure, to have 
 her. At length she realized that her sleep was a long ache 
 and a weariness and exhaustion, because of his will fastened 
 upon her, as he lay there beside her, during the night. 
 
174- THE RAINBOW 
 
 She realized it all, and there came a momentous pause, a 
 pause in her swift running, a moment's suspension in her life, 
 when she was lost. 
 
 Then she turned fiercely on him, and fought him. He was 
 not to do this to her, it was monstrous. What horrible hold 
 did he want to have over her body? Why did he want to 
 drag her down, and kill her spirit ? Why did he want to deny 
 her spirit ? Why did he deny her spirituality, hold her for a 
 body only ? And was he to claim her carcase ? 
 
 Some vast, hideous darkness he seemed to represent to her. 
 
 "What do you do to me?" she cried. "What beastly 
 thing do you do to me? You put a horrible pressure on my 
 head, you don't let me sleep, you don't let me live. Every 
 moment of your life you are doing something to me, some- 
 thing horrible, that destroys me. There is something horrible 
 in you, something dark and beastly in your will. What do 
 you want of me ? What do you want to do to me ? " 
 
 All the blood in his body went black and powerful and 
 corrosive as he heard her. Black and blind with hatred of 
 her he was. He was in a very black hell, and could not escape. 
 
 He hated her for what she said. Did he not give her 
 everything, was she not everything to him? And the shame 
 was a bitter fire in him, that she was everything to him, that 
 he had nothing but her. And then that she should taunt him 
 with it, that he could not escape ! The fire went black in his 
 veins. For try as he might, he could not escape. She was 
 everything to him, she was his life and his derivation. He 
 depended on her. If she were taken away, he would collapse 
 as a house from which the central pillar is removed. 
 
 And she hated him, because he depended on her so utterly. 
 He was horrible to her. She wanted to thrust him off, to 
 set him apart. It was horrible that he should cleave to her, 
 so close, so close, like a leopard that had leapt on her, and 
 fastened. 
 
 He went on from day to day in a blackness of rage and 
 shame and frustration. How he tortured himself, to be able 
 to get away from her. But he could not. She was as the 
 rock on which he stood, with deep, heaving water all round, 
 and he was unable to swim. He must take his stand on her, 
 he must depend on her. 
 
 What had he in life, save her? Nothing. The rest was a 
 great heaving flood. The terror of the night of heaving, over- 
 whelming flood, which was his vision of life without her, was 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 175 
 
 too much for him. He clung to her fiercely and abjectly. 
 
 And she beat him off, she beat him off. Where could he 
 turn, like a swimmer in a dark sea, beaten off from his hold, 
 whither could he turn? He wanted to leave her, he wanted 
 to be able to leave her. For his soul's sake, for his manhood's 
 sake, he must be able to leave her. 
 
 But for what? She was the ark, and the rest of the world 
 was flood. The only tangible, secure thing was the woman. 
 He could leave her only for another woman. And where was 
 the other woman, and who was the other woman? Besides, 
 he would be just in the same state. Another woman would be 
 woman, the case would be the same. 
 
 Why was she the all, the everything, why must he live only 
 through her, why must he sink if he were detached from her ? 
 Why must he cleave to her in a frenzy as for his very life? 
 
 The only othei 1 way to leave her was to die. The only 
 straight way to leave her was to die. His dark, raging soul 
 knew that. But he had no desire for death. 
 
 Why could he not leave her? Why could he not throw 
 himself into the hidden water to live or die, as might be? 
 He could not, he could not. But supposing he went away, 
 right away, and found work, and had a lodging again. He 
 could be again as he had been before. 
 
 But he knew he could not. A woman, he must have a 
 woman. And having a woman, he must be free of her. It 
 would be the same position. For he could not be free of her. 
 
 For how can a man stand, unless he have something sure 
 under his feet. Can a man tread the unstable water all his 
 life, and call that standing? Better give in and drown at 
 once. 
 
 And upon what could he stand, save upon a woman ? Was 
 he then like the old man of the seas, impotent to move save 
 upon the back of another life? Was he impotent, or a crip- 
 ple, or a defective, or a fragment? 
 
 It was black, mad, shameful torture, the frenzy of fear, the 
 frenzy of desire, and the horrible, grasping back-wash of 
 shame. 
 
 What was he afraid of ? Why did life, without Anna, seem 
 to him just a horrible welter, everything jostling in a mean- 
 ingless, dark, fathomless flood ? Why, if Anna left him even 
 for a week, did he seem to be clinging like a madman to the 
 edge of reality, and slipping surely, surely into the flood of 
 unreality that would drown him. This horrible slipping into 
 
176 THE RAINBOW 
 
 unreality drove him mad, his soul screamed with fear and 
 agony. 
 
 Yet she was pushing him off from her, pushing him away, 
 breaking his fingers from their hold on her, persistently, ruth- 
 lessly. He wanted her to have pity. And sometimes for a 
 moment she had pity. But she always began again, thrusting 
 him off, into the deep water, into the frenzy and agony of 
 uncertainty. 
 
 She became like a fury to him, without any sense of him. 
 Her eyes were bright with a cold, unmoving hatred. Then 
 his heart seemed to die in its last fear. She might push him 
 off into the deeps. 
 
 She would not sleep with him any more. She said he de- 
 stroyed her sleep. Up started all his frenzy and madness of 
 fear and suffering. She drove him away. Like a cowed, 
 lurking devil he was driven off, his mind working cunningly 
 against her, devising evil for her. But she drove him off. 
 In his moments of intense suffering, she seemed to him incon- 
 ceivable, a monster, the principle of cruelty. 
 
 However her pity might give way for moments, she was 
 hard and cold as a jewel. He must be put off from her, she 
 must sleep alone. She made him a bed in the small room. 
 
 And he lay there whipped, his soul whipped almost to death, 
 yet unchanged. He lay in agony of suffering, thrown back 
 into unreality, like a man thrown overboard into a sea, to swim 
 till he sinks, because there is no hold, only a wide, weltering 
 sea. 
 
 He did not sleep, save for the white sleep when a thin veil 
 is drawn over the mind. It was not sleep. He was awake, 
 and he was not awake. He could not be alone. He needed 
 to be able to put his arms round her. He could not bear the 
 empty space against his breast, where she used to be. He 
 could not bear it. He felt as if he were suspended in space, 
 held there by the grip of his will. If he relaxed his will 
 would fall, fall through endless space, into the bottomless pit, 
 always falling, will-less, helpless, non-existent, just dropping 
 to extinction, falling till the fire of friction had burned out, 
 like a falling star, then nothing, nothing, complete nothing. 
 
 He rose in the morning grey and unreal. And she seemed 
 fond of him again, she seemed to make up to him a little. 
 
 " I slept well," she said, with her slightly false brightness. 
 "Did you?" 
 
 " All right," he answered. 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 177 
 
 He would never tell her. 
 
 For three or four nights he lay alone through the white 
 sleep, his will unchanged, unchanged, still tense, fixed in its 
 grip. Then, as if she were revived and free to be fond of him 
 again, deluded by his silence and seeming acquiescence, moved 
 also by pity, she took him back again. 
 
 Each night, in spite of all the shame, he had waited with 
 agony for bedtime, to see if she would shut him out. And 
 each night, as, in her false brightness, she said Good-night, 
 he felt he must kill her or himself. But she asked for her 
 kiss, so pathetically, so prettily. So he kissed her, whilst his 
 heart was ice. 
 
 And sometimes he went out. Once he sat for a long time 
 in the church porch, before going in to bed. It was dark with 
 a wind blowing. He sat in the church porch and felt some 
 shelter, some security. But it grew cold, and he must go in 
 to bed. 
 
 Then came the night when she said, putting, her arms 
 round him and kissing him fondly : 
 
 " Stay with me to-night, will you ? " 
 
 And he had stayed without demur. But his will had not 
 altered. He would have her fixed to him. 
 
 So that soon she told him again she must be alone. 
 
 " I don't want to send you away. I want to sleep with you. 
 But I can't sleep, you don't let me sleep." 
 
 His blood turned black in his veins. 
 
 " What do you mean by such a thing ? It's an arrant lie. 
 7 don't let you sleep " 
 
 " But you don't. I sleep so well when I'm alone. And I 
 can't sleep when you're there. You do something to me, 
 you put a pressure on my head. And I must sleep, now the 
 child is coming/' 
 
 " It's something in yourself," he replied, " something wrong 
 in you." 
 
 Horrible in the extreme were these nocturnal combats, 
 when all the world was asleep, and they two were alone, alone 
 in the world, and repelling each other. It was hardly to be 
 borne. 
 
 He went and lay down alone. And at length, after a grey 
 and livid and ghastly period, he relaxed, something gave way 
 in him. He let go, he did not care what became of him. 
 Strange and dim he became to himself, to her, to everybody. 
 A vagueness had come over everything, like a drowning. And 
 
178 THE RAINBOW 
 
 it was an infinite relief to drown, a relief, a great, great relief. 
 
 He would insist no more, he would force her no more. He 
 would force himself upon her no more. He would let go, 
 relax, lapse, and what would be, should be. 
 
 Yet he wanted her still, he always, always wanted her. In 
 his soul, he was desolate as a child, he was so helpless. Like 
 a child on its mother, he depended on her for his living. He 
 knew it, and he knew he could hardly help it. 
 
 Yet he must be able to be alone. He must be able to lie 
 down alongside the empty space, and let be. He must be 
 able to leave himself to the flood, to sink or live as might be. 
 For he recognized at length his own limitation, and the limi- 
 tation of his power. He had to give in. 
 
 There was a stillness, a wanness between them. Half at 
 least of the battle was over. Sometimes she wept as she went 
 about, her heart was very heavy. But the child was always 
 warm in her womb. 
 
 They were friends again, new, subdued friends. But there 
 was a wanness between them. They slept together once more, 
 very quietly, and distinct, not one together as before. And 
 she was intimate with him as at first. But he was very quiet, 
 and not intimate. He was glad in his soul, but for the time 
 being he was not alive. 
 
 He could sleep with her, and let her be. He could be alone 
 now. He had just learned what it was to be able to be alone. 
 It was right and peaceful. She had given him a new, deeper 
 freedom. The world might be a welter of uncertainty, but he 
 was himself now. He had come into his own existence. He 
 was born for a second time, born at last unto himself, out of 
 the vast body of humanity. Now at last he had a separate 
 identity, he existed alone, even if he were not quite alone. 
 Before he had only existed in so far as he had relations with 
 another being. Now he had an absolute self as well as a 
 relative self. 
 
 But it was a very dumb, weak, helpless self, a crawling 
 nursling. He went about very quiet, and in a way, submis- 
 sive. He had an unalterable self at last, free, separate, inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 She was relieved, she was free of him. She had given him 
 to himself. She wept sometimes with tiredness and helpless- 
 ness. But he was a husband. And she seemed, in the child 
 that was coming, to forget. It seemed to make her warm and 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 176 
 
 drowsy. She lasped into a long muse, indistinct, warm, 
 vague, unwilling to be taken out of her vagueness. And she 
 rested on him also. 
 
 Sometimes she came to him with a strange light in her eyes, 
 poignant, pathetic, as if she were asking for something. He 
 looked and he could not understand. She was so beautiful, 
 so visionary, the rays seemed to go out of his breast to her, 
 like a shining. He was there for her, all for her. And she 
 would hold his breast, and kiss it, and kiss it, kneeling beside 
 him, she who was waiting for the hour of her delivery. And 
 he would lie looking down at his breast, till it seemed that his 
 breast was not himself, that he had left it lying there. Yet 
 it was himself also, and beautiful and bright with her kisses. 
 He was glad with a strange, radiant pain. Whilst she kneeled 
 beside him, and kissed his breast with a slow, rapt, half-devo- 
 tional movement. 
 
 He knew she wanted something, his heart yearned to give it 
 her. His heart yearned over her. And as she lifted her face, 
 that was radiant and rosy as a little cloud, his heart still 
 yearned over her, and, now from the distance, adored her. 
 She had a flower-like presence which he adored as he stood far 
 off, a stranger. 
 
 The weeks passed on, the time drew near, they were very 
 gentle, and delicately happy. The insistent, passionate, dark 
 soul, the powerful unsatisfaction in him seemed stilled and 
 tamed, the lion lay down with the lamb in him. 
 
 She loved him very much indeed, and he waited near her. 
 She was a precious, remote thing to him at this time, as she 
 waited for her child. Her soul was glad with an ecstasy be- 
 cause of the coming infant. She wanted a boy : oh, very much 
 she wanted a boy. 
 
 But she seemed so young and so frail. She was indeed only 
 a girl. As she stood by the fire washing herself she was 
 proud to wash herself at this time and he looked at her, his 
 heart was full of extreme tenderness for her. Such fine, fine 
 limbs, her slim, round arms like chasing lights, and her legs so 
 simple and childish, yet so very proud. Oh, she stood on 
 proud legs, with a lovely reckless balance of her full belly, and 
 the adorable little roundnesses, and the breasts becoming im- 
 portant. Above it all, her face was like a rosy cloud shining. 
 
 How proud she was, what a lovely proud thing her young 
 body ! And she loved him to put his hand on her ripe fulness, 
 
180 THE RAINBOW 
 
 so that he should thrill also with the stir and the quickening 
 there. He was afraid and silent, but she flung her arms 
 round his neck with proud, impudent joy. 
 
 The pains came on, and Oh how she cried! She would 
 have him stay with her. And after her long cries she would 
 look at him, with tears in her eyes and a sobbing laugh on 
 her face, saying: 
 
 "I don't mind it really/' 
 
 It was bad enough. But to her it was never deathly. 
 Even the fierce, tearing pain was exhilarating. She screamed 
 and suffered, but was all the time curiously alive and vital. 
 She felt so powerfully alive and in the hands of such a mas- 
 terly force of life, that her bottom-most feeling was one of 
 exhilaration. She knew she was winning, winning, she was 
 always winning, with each onset of pain she was nearer to 
 victory. 
 
 Probably he suffered more than she did. He was not 
 shocked or horrified. But he was screwed very tight in the 
 vise of suffering. 
 
 It was a girl. The second of silence on her face when they 
 said so showed him she was disappointed. And a great 
 blazing passion of resentment and protest sprang up in his 
 heart. In that moment he claimed the child. 
 
 But when the milk came, and the infant sucked her breast, 
 she seemed to be leaping with extravagant bliss. 
 
 " It sucks me, it sucks me, it likes me oh, it loves it ! " 
 she cried, holding the child to her breast with her two hands 
 covering it, passionately. 
 
 And in a few moments, as she became used to her bliss, she 
 looked at the youth with glowing, unseeing eyes, and said : 
 
 " Anna Victrix." 
 
 He went away, trembling, and slept. To her, her pains 
 were the wound-smart of a victor, she was the prouder. 
 
 When she was well again she was very happy. She called 
 the baby Ursula. Both Anna and her husband felt they must 
 have a name that gave them private satisfaction. The baby 
 was tawny skinned, it had a curious downy skin, and wisps 
 of bronze hair, and the yellow grey eyes that wavered, and 
 then became golden-brown like the father's. So they called 
 her Ursula because of the picture of the saint. 
 
 It was a rather delicate baby at first, but soon it became 
 stronger, and was restless as a young eel. Anna was worn 
 out with the day-long wrestling with its young vigour. 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 181 
 
 As a little animal, she loved and adored it and was happy. 
 She loved her husband, she kissed his eyes and nose and 
 mouth, and made much of him, she said his limbs were 
 beautiful, she was fascinated by the physical form of 
 him. 
 
 And she was indeed Anna Victrix. He could not combat 
 her any more. He was out in the wilderness, alone with her. 
 Having occasion to go to London, he marvelled, as he re- 
 turned, thinking of naked, lurking savages on an island, how 
 these had built up and created the great mass of Oxford Street 
 or Piccadilly. How had helpless savages, running with their 
 spears on the riverside, after fish, how had they come to rear 
 up this great London, the ponderous, massive, ugly super- 
 structure of a world of man upon a world of nature! It 
 frightened and awed him. Man was terrible, awful in his 
 works. The works of man were more terrible than man him- 
 self, almost monstrous. 
 
 And yet, for his own part, for his private being, Brangwen 
 felt that the whole of the man's world was exterior and 
 extraneous to his own real life with Anna. Sweep away the 
 whole monstrous superstructure of the world of to-day, cities 
 and industries and civilization, leave only the bare earth with 
 plants growing and waters running, and he would not mind, 
 so long as he were whole, had Anna and the child and the new, 
 strange certainty in his soul. Then, if he were naked, he 
 would find clothing somewhere, he would make a shelter and 
 bring food to his wife. 
 
 And what more? What more would be necessary? The 
 great mass of activity in which mankind was engaged meant 
 nothing to him. By nature, he had no part in it. What did 
 he live for, then ? For Anna only, and for the sake of living ? 
 What did he want on this earth? Anna only, and his chil- 
 dren, and his life with his children and her? Was there no 
 more? 
 
 He was attended by a sense of something more, something 
 further, which gave him absolute being. It was as if now he 
 existed in Eternity, let Time be what it might. What was 
 there outside ? The fabricated world, that he did not believe 
 in? What should he bring to her, from outside? Nothing? 
 Was it enough, as it was? He was troubled in his acquies- 
 cence. She was not with him. Yet he scarcely believed in 
 himself, apart from her, though the whole Infinite was with 
 him. Let the whole world slide down and over the edge of 
 
182 THE RAINBOW 
 
 oblivion, he would stand alone. But he was unsure of her. 
 And he existed also in her. So he was unsure. 
 
 He hovered near to her, never quite able to forget the vague, 
 haunting uncertainty, that seemed to challenge him, and which 
 he would not hear. A pang of dread, almost guilt, as of in- 
 sufficiency, would go over him as he heard her talking to the 
 baby. She stood before the window, with the month-old child 
 in her arms, talking in a musical, young sing-song that he 
 had not heard before, and which rang on his heart like a 
 claim from the distance, or the voice of another world sound- 
 ing its claim on him. He stood near, listening, and his heart 
 surged, surged to rise and submit. Then it shrank back and 
 stayed aloof. He could not move, a denial was upon him, as 
 if he could not deny himself. He must, he must be himself. 
 
 "Look at the silly blue-caps, my beauty," she crooned, 
 holding up the infant to the window, where shone the white 
 garden, and the blue-tits scuffling in the snow: "look at the 
 silly blue-caps, my darling, having a fight in the snow ! Look 
 at them, my bird beating the snow about with their wings, 
 and shaking their heads. Oh, aren't they wicked things, 
 wicked things! Look at their yellow feathers on the snow 
 there! They'll miss them, won't they, when they're cold 
 later on. 
 
 " Must we tell them to stop, must we say ' stop it ' to them, 
 my bird ? But they are naughty, naughty ! Look at them ! " 
 Suddenly her voice broke loud and fierce, she rapped the pane 
 sharply : 
 
 " Stop it," she cried, " stop it, you little nuisances. Stop 
 it ! " She called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. 
 Her voice was fierce and imperative. 
 
 "Have more sense," she cried. 
 
 " There, now they're gone. Where have they gone, the silly 
 things? What will they say to each other? What will they 
 say, my lambkin? They'll forget, won't they, they'll forget 
 all about it, out of their silly little heads, and their blue caps." 
 
 After a moment, she turned her bright face to her husband. 
 
 " They were really fighting, they were really fierce with 
 each other ! " she said, her voice keen with excitement and 
 wonder, as if she belonged to the birds' world, were identified 
 with the race of birds. 
 
 " Ay, they'll fight, will blue-caps," he said, glad when she 
 turned to him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and 
 stood beside her and looked out at the marks on the snow 
 
ANNA VICTRIX 
 
 where the birds had scuffled, and at the yew-trees' burdened, 
 white and black branches. What was the appeal it made to 
 him, what was the question of her bright face, what was the 
 challenge he was called to answer? He did not know. But 
 as he stood there he felt some responsibility which made him 
 glad, but uneasy, as if he must put out his own light. And 
 he could not move as yet. 
 
 Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still 
 she was not quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feel- 
 ing, as of a door half opened. Here she was, safe and still 
 in Cossethay. But she felt as if she were not in Cossethay at 
 all. She was straining her eyes to something beyond. And 
 from her Pisgah mount, which she had attained, what could 
 she see? A faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a 
 rainbow like an archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured 
 coping above it. Must she be moving thither? 
 
 Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could 
 not arrive at. There was something beyond her. But why 
 must she start on the journey? She stood so safely on the 
 Pisgah mountain. 
 
 In the winter, when she rose with the sunrise, and out of 
 the back windows saw the east flaming yellow and orange 
 above the green, glowing grass, while the great pear-tree in 
 between stood dark and magnificent as an idol, and under 
 the dark pear-tree, the little sheet of water spread smooth in 
 burnished, yellow light, she said, "It is here." And when, 
 at evening, the sunset came in a red glare through the big 
 opening in the clouds, she said again, " It is beyond." 
 
 Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned 
 the day, and she saw the hope, the promise. Why should she 
 travel any further? 
 
 Yet she always asked the question. As the sun went down 
 in his fiery winter haste, she faced the blazing close of the 
 affair, in which she had not played her fullest part, and she 
 made her demand still : " What are you doing, making this 
 big shining commotion? What is it that you keep so busy 
 about, that you will not let us alone ? " 
 
 She did not turn to her husband, for him to lead her. He 
 was apart from her, with her, according to her different con- 
 ceptions of him. The child she might hold up, she might 
 toss the child forward into the furnace, the child might walk 
 there, amid the burning coals and the incandescent roar of 
 heat, as the three witnesses walked with the angel in the fire. 
 
184 HE RAINBOW 
 
 Soon, she felt sure of her husband. She knew his dark 
 face and the extent of its passion. She knew his slim, vigor- 
 ous body, she said it was hers. Then there was no denying 
 her. She was a rich woman enjoying her riches. 
 
 And soon again she was with child. Which made her satis- 
 fied and took away her discontent. She forgot that she had 
 watched the sun climb up and pass his way, a magnificent 
 traveller surging forward. She forgot that the moon had 
 looked through a window of the high, dark night, and nodded 
 like a magic recognition, signalled to her to follow. Sun 
 and moon travelled on, and left her, passed her by, a rich 
 woman enjoying her riches. She should go also. But she 
 could not go, when they called, because she must stay at home 
 now. With satisfaction she relinquished the adventure to the 
 unknown. She was bearing her children. 
 
 There was another child coming, and Anna lapsed into 
 vague content. If she were not the wayfarer to the unknown, 
 if she were arrived now, settled in her builded house, a rich 
 woman, still her doors opened under the arch of the rainbow, 
 her threshold reflected the passing of the sun and moon, the 
 great travellers, her house was full of the echo of journeying. 
 
 She was a door and a threshold, she herself. Through her 
 another soul was coming, to stand upon her as upon the 
 threshold, looking out, shading its eyes for the direction to 
 take. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL 
 
 DURING the first year of her marriage, before Ursula 
 was born, Anna Brangwen and her husband went to 
 visit her mother's friend, the Baron Skrebensky. 
 The latter had kept a slight connection with Anna's 
 mother, and had always preserved some officious interest in 
 the young girl, because she was a pure Pole. 
 
 When Baron Skrebensky was about forty years old, his 
 wife died, and left him raving, disconsolate. Lydia had 
 visited him then, taking Anna with her. It was when the 
 
 firl was fourteen years old. Since then she had not seen him. 
 he remembered him as a small sharp clergyman who cried 
 and talked and terrified her, whilst her mother was most 
 strangely consoling, in a foreign language. 
 
 The little Baron never quite approved of Anna, because she 
 spoke no Polish. Still, he considered himself in some way her 
 guardian, on Lensky's behalf, and he presented her with some 
 old, heavy Russian jewellery, the least valuable of his wife's 
 relics. Then he lapsed out of the Brangwen life again, 
 though he lived only about thirty miles away. 
 
 Three years later came the startling news that he had mar- 
 ried a young English girl of good family. Everybody mar- 
 velled. Then came a copy of " The History of the Parish of 
 Briswell, by Rudolph, Baron Skrebensky, Vicar of Briswell." 
 It was a curious book, incoherent, full of interesting exhuma- 
 tions. It was dedicated: "To my wife, Millicent Maud 
 Pearse, in whom I embrace the generous spirit of England." 
 
 " If he embraces no more than the spirit of England," said 
 Tom Brangwen, " it's a bad look-out for him." 
 
 But paying a formal visit with his wife, he found the new 
 Baroness a little, creamy-skinned, insidious thing with red- 
 brown hair and a mouth that one must always watch, because 
 it curved back continually in an incomprehensible, strange 
 laugh that exposed her rather prominent teeth. She was not 
 beautiful, yet Tom Brangwen was immediately under her 
 
 185 
 
186 THE RAINBOW 
 
 spell. She seemed to snuggle like a kitten within his warmth, 
 whilst she was at the same time elusive and ironical, suggest- 
 ing the fine steel of her claws. 
 
 The Baron was almost dotingly courteous and attentive to 
 her. She, almost mockingly, yet quite happy, let him dote. 
 Curious little thing she was, she had the soft, creamy, elusive 
 beauty of a ferret. Tom Brangwen was quite at a loss, at 
 her mercy, and she laughed, a little breathlessly, as if tempted 
 to cruelty. She did put fine torments on the elderly Baron. 
 
 When some months later she bore a son, the Baron Skre- 
 bensky was loud with delight. 
 
 Gradually she gathered a circle of acquaintances in the 
 county. For she was of good family, half Venetian, educated 
 in Dresden. The little foreign vicar attained to a social 
 status which almost satisfied his maddened pride. 
 
 Therefore the Brangwens were surprised when the invita- 
 tion came for Anna and her young husband to pay a visit to 
 Briswell vicarage. For the Skrebenskys were now moder- 
 ately well off, Millicent Skrebensky having some fortune of 
 her own. 
 
 Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school 
 manner, and arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, 
 ruddy, bright, with long limbs and a small head, like some 
 uncouth bird, was not changed in the least. The little 
 Baroness was smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real 
 charm, a kind of joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like 
 some weasel. Anna at once respected her, and was on her 
 guard before her, instinctively attracted by the strange, child- 
 like surety of the Baroness, yet mistrusting it, fascinated. 
 The little baron was now quite white-haired, very brittle. 
 He was wizened and wrinkled, yet fiery, unsubdued. Anna 
 looked at his lean body, at his small, fine, lean legs and lean 
 hands as he sat talking, and she flushed. She recognized the 
 quality of the male in him, his lean, concentrated age, his 
 informed fire, his faculty for sharp, deliberate response. He 
 was so detached, so purely objective. A woman was thor- 
 oughly outside him. There was no confusion. So he could 
 give that fine, deliberate response. 
 
 He was something separate and interesting; his hard, in- 
 trinsic being, whittled down by age to an essentiality and a 
 directness almost death-like, cruel, was yet so unswervingly 
 sure in its action, so distinct in its surety, that she was at- 
 tracted to him. She watched his cool, hard, separate fire, 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 187 
 
 fascinated by it. Would she rather have it than her hus- 
 band's diffuse heat, than his blind, hot youth? 
 
 She seemed to be breathing high, sharp air, as if she had 
 just come out of a hot room. These strange Skrebenskys 
 made her aware of another, freer element, in which each per- 
 son was detached and isolated. Was not this her natural ele- 
 ment ? Was not the close Brangwen life stifling to her ? 
 
 Meanwhile the little baroness, with always a subtle light 
 stirring in her full, lustrous, hazel eyes, was playing with 
 Will Brangwen. He was not quick enough to see all her 
 movements. Yet he watched her steadily, with unchanging, 
 lit-up eyes. She was a strange creature to him. But she 
 had no power over him. She flushed, and was irritated. Yet 
 she glanced again and again at his dark, living face, curiously, 
 as if she despised him. She despised his uncritical, unironi- 
 cal nature, it had nothing for her. Yet it angered her as if 
 she were jealous. He watched her with deferential interest 
 as he would watch a stoat playing. But he himself was not 
 implicated. He was different in kind. She was all lambent, 
 biting flames, he was a red fire glowing steadily. She could 
 get nothing out of him. So she made him flush darkly by 
 assuming a biting, subtle class-superiority. He flushed, but 
 still he did not object. He was too different. 
 
 Her little boy came in with the nurse. He was a quick, 
 slight child, with fine perceptiveness, and a cool transitoriness 
 in his interest. At once he treated Will Brangwen as an out- 
 sider. He stayed by Anna for a moment, acknowledged her, 
 then was gone again, quick, observant, restless, with a glance 
 of interest at everything. 
 
 The father adored him, and spoke to him in Polish. It 
 was queer, the stiff, aristocratic manner of the father with 
 the child, the distance in the relationship, the classic father- 
 hood on the one hand, the filial subordination on the other. 
 They played together, in their different degrees very separate, 
 two different beings, differing as it were in rank rather than 
 in relationship. And the baroness smiled, smiled, smiled, 
 always smiled, showing her rather protruding teeth, having 
 always a mysterious attraction and charm. 
 
 Anna realized how different her own life might have been, 
 how different her own living. Her soul stirred, she became 
 as another person. Her intimacy with her husband passed 
 away, the curious enveloping Brangwen intimacy, so warm, 
 so close, so stifling, when one seemed always to be in contact 
 
188 THE RAINBOW 
 
 with the other person, like a blood-relation, was annulled. 
 She denied it, this close relationship with her young husband. 
 He and she were not one. His heat was not always to suffuse 
 her, suffuse her, through her mind and her individuality, till 
 she was of one heat with him, till she had not her own self 
 apart. She wanted her own life. He seemed to lap her and 
 suffuse her with his being, his hot life, till she did not know 
 whether she were herself, or whether she were another crea- 
 ture, united with him in a world of close blood-intimacy that 
 closed over her and excluded her from all the cool outside. 
 
 She wanted her own, old, sharp self, detached, detached, 
 active but not absorbed, active for her own part, taking and 
 giving, but never absorbed. Whereas he wanted this strange 
 absorption with her, which still she resisted. But she was 
 partly helpless against it. She had lived so long in Tom 
 Brangwen's love, beforehand. 
 
 From the Skrebenskys', they went to Will Brangwen's be- 
 loved Lincoln Cathedral, because it was not far off. He had 
 promised her, that one by one, they should visit all the cathe- 
 drals of England. They began with Lincoln, which he knew 
 well. 
 
 He began to get excited as the time drew near to set off. 
 What was it that changed him so much? She was almost 
 angry, coming as she did from the Skrebenskys'. But now 
 he ran on alone. His very breast seemed to open its doors to 
 watch for the great church brooding over the town. His soul 
 ran ahead. 
 
 When he saw the cathedral in the distance, dark blue lifted 
 watchful in the sky, his heart leapt. It was the sign in 
 heaven, it was the Spirit hovering like a dove, like an eagle 
 over the earth. He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, 
 his mouth opened with a strange, ecstatic grin. 
 
 " There she is," he said. 
 
 The "she" irritated her. Why "she"? It was "it." 
 What was the cathedral, a big building, a thing of the past, 
 obsolete, to excite him to such a pitch? She began to stir 
 herself to readiness. 
 
 They passed up the steep hill, he eager as a pilgrim arriving 
 at the shrine. As they came near the precincts, with castle 
 on one side and cathedral on the other, his veins seemed to 
 break into fiery blossom, he was transported. 
 
 They had passed through the gate, and the great west front 
 was before them, with all its breadth and ornament. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 189 
 
 "It is a false front," he said, looking at the golden stone 
 and the twin towers, and loving them just the same. In a 
 little ecstasy he found himself in the porch, on the brink of 
 the unrevealed. He looked up to the lovely unfolding of the 
 stone. He was to pass within to the perfect womb. 
 
 Then he pushed open the door, and the great, pillared 
 gloom was before him, in which his soul shuddered and rose 
 from her nest. His soul leapt, soared up into the great 
 church. His body stood still, absorbed by the height. His 
 soul leapt up into the gloom, into possession, it reeled, il 
 swooned with a great escape, it quivered in the womb, in the 
 hush and the gloom of fecundity, like seed of procreation in 
 ecstasy. 
 
 She too was overcome with wonder and awe. She followed 
 him in his progress. Here, the twilight was the very essence 
 of life, the coloured darkness was the embryo of all light, and 
 the day. Here, the very first dawn was breaking, the very 
 last sunset sinking, and the immemorial darkness, whereof 
 life's day would blossom and fall away again, re-echoed peace 
 and profound immemorial silence. 
 
 Away from time, always outside of time ! Between east 
 and west, between dawn and sunset, the church lay like a seed 
 in silence, dark before germination, silenced after death. 
 Containing birth and death, potential with all the noise and 
 translation of life, the cathedral remained hushed, a great, 
 involved seed, whereof the flower would be radiant life incon- 
 ceivable, but whose beginning and whose end were the circle of 
 silence. Spanned round with the rainbow, the jewelled gloom 
 folded music upon silence, light upon darkness, fecundity 
 upon death, as a seed folds leaf upon leaf and silence upon 
 the root and the flower, hushing up the secret of all between 
 its parts, the death out of which it fell, the life into which it 
 has dropped, the immortality it involves, and the death it will 
 embrace again. 
 
 Here in the church, " before " and " after " were folded 
 together, all was contained in oneness. Brangwen came to 
 his consummation. Out of the doors of the womb he had 
 come, putting aside the wings of the womb, and proceeding 
 into the light. Through daylight and day-after-day he had 
 come, knowledge after knowledge, and experience after experi- 
 ence, remembering the darkness of the womb, having pre- 
 science of the darkness after death. Then between-while he 
 had pushed open the dpors of! the cathedral, and entered the. 
 
190 THE RAINBOW 
 
 twilight of both darknesses, the hush of the two-fold silence, 
 where dawn was sunset, and the beginning and the end were 
 one. 
 
 Here the stone leapt up from the plain of earth, leapt up 
 in a manifold, clustered desire each time, up, away from the 
 horizontal earth, through twilight and dusk and the whole 
 range of desire, through the swerving, the declination, ah, to 
 the ecstasy, the touch, to the meeting and the consummation, 
 the meeting, the clasp, the close embrace, the neutrality, the 
 perfect, swooning consummation, the timeless ecstasy. There 
 his soul remained, at the apex of the arch, clinched in the 
 timeless ecstasy, consummated. 
 
 And there was no time nor life nor death, but only this, 
 this timeless consummation, where the thrust from earth met 
 the thrust from earth and the arch was locked on the keystone 
 of ecstasy. This was all, this was everything. Till he came 
 to himself in the world below. Then again he gathered him- 
 self together, in transit, every jet of him strained and leaped, 
 leaped clear into the darkness above, to the fecundity and the 
 unique mystery, to the touch, the clasp, the consummation, 
 the climax of eternity, the apex of the arch. 
 
 She too was overcome, but silenced rather than tuned to 
 the place. She loved it as a world not quite her own, she 
 resented his transports and ecstasies. His passion in the 
 cathedral at first awed her, then made her angry. After all, 
 there was the sky outside, and in here, in this mysterious 
 half-night, when his soul leapt with the pillars upwards, it 
 was not to the stars and the crystalline dark space, but to 
 meet and clasp with the answering impulse of leaping stone, 
 there in the dusk and secrecy of the roof. The far-off clinch- 
 ing and mating of arches, the leap and thrust of the stone, 
 carrying a great roof overhead, awed and silenced her. 
 
 But yet yet she remembered that the open sky was no 
 blue vault, no dark dome hung with many twinkling lamps, 
 but a space where stars were wheeling in freedom, with free- 
 dom above them always higher. 
 
 The cathedral roused her too. But she would never con- 
 sent to the knitting of all the leaping stone in a great roof 
 that closed her in, and beyond which was nothing, nothing, 
 it was the ultimate confine. His soul would have liked it to 
 be so: here, here is all, complete, eternal: motion, meeting, 
 ecstasy, and no illusion of time, of night and day passing by, 
 but only perfectly proportioned space and movement clinching 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 191 
 
 and renewing, and passion surging its way in great waves to 
 the altar, recurrence of ecstasy. 
 
 Her soul too was carried forward to the altar, to the 
 threshold of Eternity, in reverence and fear and joy. But 
 ever she hung back in the transit, mistrusting the culmina- 
 tion of the altar. She was not to be flung forward on the 
 lift and lift of passionate flights, to be cast at last upon the 
 altar steps as upon the shore of the unknown. There was a 
 great joy and a verity in it. But even in the dazed swoon of 
 the cathedral, she claimed another right. The altar was bar- 
 ren, its lights gone out. God burned no more in that bush. 
 It was dead matter lying there. She claimed the right to 
 freedom above her, higher than the roof. She had always a 
 sense of being roofed in. 
 
 So that she caught at little things, which saved her from 
 being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps 
 on into the Infinite in a great mass, triumphant and flinging 
 its own course. She wanted to get out of this fixed, leaping, 
 forward-travelling movement, to rise from it as a bird rises 
 with wet, limp feet from the sea, to lift herself as a bird lifts 
 its breast and thrusts its body from the pulse and heave of a 
 sea that bears it forward to an unwilling conclusion, tear her- 
 self away like a bird on wings, and in the open space where 
 there is clarity, rise up above the fixed, surcharged motion, a 
 separate speck that hangs suspended, moves this way and that, 
 seeing and answering before it sinks again, having chosen or 
 found the direction in which it shall be carried forward. 
 
 And it was as if she must grasp at something, as if her 
 wings were too weak to lift her straight off the heaving mo- 
 tion. So she caught sight of the wicked, odd little faces 
 carved in stone, and she stood before them arrested. 
 
 These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the 
 cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite 
 well, these little imps that retorted on man's own illusion, 
 that the cathedral was not absolute. They winked and leered, 
 giving suggestion of the many things that had been left out 
 of the great concept of the church. " However much there is 
 inside here, there's a good deal they haven't got in," the little 
 faces mocked. 
 
 Apart from the lift and spring of the great impulse towards 
 the altar, these little faces had separate wills, separate motions, 
 separate knowledge, which rippled back in defiance of the 
 tide, and laughed in triumph of their own very littleness. 
 
192 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Oh, look ! " cried Anna. " Oh, look, how adorable, the 
 faces ! Look at her." 
 
 Brangwen looked unwillingly. This was the voice of the 
 serpent in his Eden. She pointed him to a plump, sly, ma- 
 licious little face carved in stone. 
 
 " He knew her, the man who carved her/' said Anna. " I'm 
 sure she was his wife." 
 
 " It isn't a woman at all, it's a man," said Brangwen curtly. 
 
 " Do you think so ? No ! That isn't a man. That is no 
 man's face." 
 
 Her voice sounded rather jeering. He laughed shortly, and 
 went on. But she would not go forward with him. She loi- 
 tered about the carvings. And he could not go forward with- 
 out her. He waited impatient of this counteraction. She 
 was spoiling his passionate intercourse with the cathedral. 
 His brows began to gather. 
 
 " Oh, this is good ! " she cried again. " Here is the same 
 woman look ! only he's made her cross ! Isn't it lovely ! 
 Hasn't he made her hideous to a degree ? " She laughed with 
 pleasure. " Didn't he hate her ? He must have been a nice 
 man ! Look at her isn't it awfully good just like a 
 shrewish woman. He must have enjoyed putting her in like 
 that. He got his own back on her, didn't he ? " 
 
 " It's a man's face, no woman's at all a monk's clean 
 shaven," he said. 
 
 She laughed with a pouf ! of laughter. 
 
 " You hate to think he put his wife in your cathedral, don't 
 you ? " she mocked, with a tinkle of profane laughter. And 
 she laughed with malicious triumph. 
 
 She had got free from the cathedral, she had even destroyed 
 the passion he had. She was glad. He was bitterly angry. 
 Strive as he would, he could not keep the cathedral wonderful 
 to him. He was disillusioned. That which had been his ab- 
 solute, containing all heaven and earth, was become to him 
 as to her, a shapely heap of dead matter but dead, dead. 
 
 His mouth was full of ash, his soul was furious. He hated 
 her for having destroyed another of his vital illusions. Soon 
 he would be stark, stark, without one place wherein to stand, 
 without one belief in which to rest. 
 
 Yet somewhere in him he responded more deeply to the sly 
 little face that knew better, than he had done before to the 
 perfect surge of his cathedral. 
 
 Nevertheless, for the time being his soul was wretched and 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 193 
 
 homeless, and he could not bear to think of Anna's ousting 
 him from his beloved realities. He wanted his cathedral; he 
 wanted to satisfy his blind passion. And he could not any 
 more. Something intervened. 
 
 They went home again, both of them altered. She had 
 some new reverence for that which he wanted, he felt that his 
 cathedrals would never again be to him as they had been. 
 Before, he had thought them absolute. But now he saw them 
 crouching under the sky, with still the dark, mysterious world 
 of reality inside, but as a world within a world, a sort of 
 side show, whereas before they had been as a world to him 
 within a chaos : a reality, an order, an absolute, within a mean- 
 ingless confusion. 
 
 He had felt, before, that could he but go through the great 
 door and look down the gloom towards the far-off, concluding 
 wonder of the altar, that then, with the windows suspended 
 around like tablets of jewels emanating their own glory, then 
 he had arrived. Here the satisfaction he had yearned after 
 came near, towards this, the porch of the great Unknown, all 
 reality gathered, and there, the altar was the mystic door, 
 through which all and everything must move on to eternity. 
 
 But now, somehow, sadly and disillusioned, he realized that 
 the doorway was no doorway. It was too narrow, it was false. 
 Outside the cathedral were many flying spirits that could 
 never be sifted through the jewelled gloom. He had lost his 
 absolute. 
 
 He listened to the thrushes in the gardens and heard a note 
 which the cathedrals did not include: something free and 
 careless and joyous. He crossed a field that was all yellow 
 with dandelions, on his way to work, and the bath of yellow 
 glowing was something at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that 
 he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral. 
 
 There was life outside the church. There was much that 
 the church did not include. He thought of God, and of the 
 whole blue rotunda of the day. That was something great 
 and free. He thought of the ruins of the Grecian worship, 
 and it seemed, a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it 
 was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the 
 herbs. 
 
 Still he loved the church. As a symbol, he loved it. He 
 tended it for what it tried to represent, rather than for that 
 which it did represent. Still he loved it. The little church 
 across his garden-wall drew him, he gave it loving attention. 
 
194. THE RAINBOW 
 
 But he went to take charge of it, to preserve it. It was as an 
 old, sacred thing to him. He looked after the stone and wood- 
 work, mending the organ and restoring a piece of broken carv* 
 ing, repairing the church furniture. Later, he became choir- 
 master also. 
 
 His life was shifting its centre, becoming more superficial. 
 He had failed to become really articulate, failed to find real 
 expression. He had to continue in the old form. But in 
 spirit, he was uncreated. 
 
 Anna was absorbed in the child now, she left her husband 
 to take his own way. She was willing now to postpone all 
 adventure into unknown realities. She had the child, her 
 palpable and immediate future was the child. If her soul 
 had found no utterance, her womb had. 
 
 The church that neighboured with his house became very 
 intimate and dear to him. He cherished it, he had it entirely 
 in his charge. If he could find no new activity, he would be 
 happy cherishing the old, dear form of worship. He knew 
 this little, whitewashed church. In its shadowy atmosphere 
 he sank back into being. He liked to sink himself in its hush 
 as a stone sinks into water. 
 
 He went across his garden, mounted the wall by the little 
 steps, and entered the hush and peace of the church. As the 
 heavy door clanged to behind him, his feet re-echoed in the 
 aisle, his heart re-echoed with a little passion of tenderness 
 and mystic peace. He was also slightly ashamed, like a man 
 who has failed, who lapses back for his fulfilment. 
 
 He loved to light the candles at the organ, and sitting there 
 alone in the little glow, practise the hymns and chants for 
 the service. The whitewashed arches retreated into darkness, 
 the sound of the organ and the organ-pedals died away upon 
 the unalterable stillness of the church, there were faint, 
 ghostly noises in the tower, and then the music swelled out 
 again, loudly, triumphantly. 
 
 He ceased to fret about his life. He relaxed his will, and 
 let everything go. What was between him and his wife was 
 a great thing, if it was not everything. She had conquered, 
 really. Let him wait, and abide, wait and abide. She and 
 the baby and himself, they were one. The organ rang out his 
 protestation. His soul lay in the darkness as he pressed the 
 keys of the organ. 
 
 To Anna, the baby was a complete bliss and fulfilment. 
 Her desires sank into abeyance, her soul was in bliss over the 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 195 
 
 baby. It was rather a delicate child, she had trouble to rear 
 it. She never for a moment thought it would die. It was a 
 delicate infant, therefore it behoved her to make it strong. 
 She threw herself into the labour, the child was everything. 
 Her imagination was all occupied here. She was a mother. 
 It was enough to handle the new little limbs, the new little 
 body, hear the new little voice crying in the stillness. All the 
 future rang to her out of the sound of the baby's crying and 
 cooing, she balanced the coming years of life in her hands, as 
 she nursed the child. The passionate sense of fulfilment, of 
 the future germinated in her, made her vivid and powerful. 
 All the future was in her hands, in the hands of the woman. 
 And before this baby was ten months old, she was again with 
 child. She seemed to be in the fecund of storm life, every 
 moment was full and busy with productiveness to her. She 
 felt like the earth, the mother of everything. 
 
 Brangwen occupied himself with the church, he played the 
 organ, he trained the choir-boys, he taught a Sunday-school 
 class of youths. He was happy enough. There was an eager, 
 yearning kind of happiness in him as he taught the boys on 
 Sundays. He was all the time exciting himself with the 
 proximity of some secret that he had not yet fathomed. 
 
 In the house, he served his wife and the little matriarchy. 
 She loved him because he was the father of her children. And 
 she always had a physical passion for him. So he gave up 
 trying to have the spiritual superiority and control, or even 
 her respect for his conscious or public life. He lived simply 
 by her physical love for him. And he served the little matri- 
 archy, nursing the child and helping with the housework, in- 
 different any more of his own dignity and importance. But 
 his abandoning of claims, his living isolated upon his own 
 interest, made him seem unreal, unimportant. 
 
 Anna was not publicly proud of him. But very soon she 
 learned to be indifferent to public life. He was not what is 
 called a manly man: he did not drink or smoke or arrogate 
 importance. But he was her man, and his very indifference to 
 all claims of manliness set her supreme in her own world with 
 him. Physically, she loved him and he satisfied her. He 
 went alone and subsidiary always. At first it had irritated 
 her, the outer world existed so little to him. Looking at him 
 with outside eyes, she was inclined to sneer at him. But her 
 sneer changed to a sort of respect. She respected him, that 
 he could serve her so simply and completely. Above all, she 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 loved to bear his children. She loved to be the source of 
 children. 
 
 She could not understand him, his strange, dark rages and 
 his devotion to the church. It was the church building he 
 cared for; and yet his soul was passionate for something. 
 He laboured cleaning the stonework, repairing the woodwork, 
 restoring the organ, and making the singing as perfect as 
 possible. To keep the church fabric and the church-ritual 
 intact was his business; to have the intimate sacred building 
 utterly in his own hands, and to make the form of service 
 complete. There was a little bright anguish and tension on 
 his face, and in his intent movements. He was like a lover 
 who knows he is betrayed, but who still loves, whose love is 
 only the more tense. The church was false, but he served it 
 the more attentively. 
 
 During the day, at his work in the office, he kept himself 
 suspended. He did not exist. He worked automatically till 
 it was time to go home. 
 
 He loved with a hot heart the dark-haired little Ursula, 
 and he waited for the child to come to consciousness. Now 
 the mother monopolized the baby. But his heart waited in 
 its darkness. His hour would come. 
 
 In the long run, he learned to submit to Anna. She forced 
 him to the spirit of her laws, whilst leaving him the letter of 
 his own. She combated in him his devils. She suffered very 
 much from his inexplicable and incalculable dark rages, when 
 a blackness filled him, and a black wind seemed to sweep out 
 of existence everything that had to do with him. She could 
 feel herself, everything, being annihilated by him. 
 
 At first she fought him. At night, in this state, he would 
 kneel down to say his prayers. She looked at his crouching 
 figure. 
 
 "Why are you kneeling there, pretending to pray?" she 
 said, harshly. " Do you think anybody can pray, when they 
 are in the vile temper you are in ? " 
 
 He remained crouching by the bedside, motionless. 
 
 " It's horrible," she continued, " and such a pretence ! 
 What do you pretend you are saying? Who do you pretend 
 you are praying to ? " 
 
 He still remained motionless, seething with inchoate rage, 
 when his whole nature seemed to disintegrate. He seemed 
 to live with a strain upon himself, and occasionally came these 
 dark, chaotic rages, the lust for destruction. She then fought 
 
THE CATHEDRAL If 
 
 with him, and their fights were horrible, murderous. And 
 then the passion between them came just as black and awful. 
 
 But little by little, as she learned to love him better, she 
 would put herself aside, and when she felt one of his fits upon 
 him, would ignore him, successfully leave him in his world, 
 whilst she remained in her own. He had a black struggle with 
 himself, to come back to her. For at last he learned that he 
 would be in hell until he came back to her. So he struggled 
 to submit to her, and she was afraid of the ugly strain in his 
 eyes. She made love to him, and took him. Then he was 
 grateful to her love, humble. 
 
 He made himself a woodwork shed, in which to restore 
 things which were destroyed in the church. So he had plenty 
 to do : his wife, his child, the church, the woodwork, and his 
 wage-earning, all occupying him. If only there were not some 
 limit to him, some darkness across his eyes ! He had to give 
 in to it at last himself. He must submit to his own in- 
 adequacy, the limitation of his being. He even had to know 
 of his own black, violent temper, and to reckon with it. But 
 as she was more gentle with him, it became quieter. 
 
 As he sat sometimes very still, with a bright, vacant face, 
 Anna could see the suffering among the brightness. He was 
 aware of some limit to himself, of something unformed in his 
 very being, of some buds which were not ripe in him, some 
 folded centres of darkness which would never develop and 
 unfold whilst he was alive in the body. He was unready for 
 fulfilment. Something undeveloped in him limited him, 
 there was a darkness in him which he could not unfold, which 
 would never unfold in him. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CHILD 
 
 FROM the first, the baby stirred in the young father 
 a deep, strong emotion he dared scarcely acknowledge, 
 it was so strong and came out of the dark of him. 
 When he heard the child cry, a terror possessed him, 
 because of the answering echo from the unfathomed distances 
 in himself. Must he know in himself such distances, perilous 
 and imminent ? 
 
 He had the infant in his arms, he walked backwards and 
 forwards troubled by the crying of his own flesh and blood. 
 This was his own flesh and blood crying! His soul rose 
 against the voice suddenly breaking out from him, from the 
 distances in him. 
 
 Sometimes in the night, the child cried and cried, when 
 the night was heavy and sleep oppressed him. And half 
 asleep, he stretched out his hand to put it over the baby's 
 face to stop the crying. But something arrested his hand: 
 the very inhumanness of the intolerable, continuous crying 
 arrested him. It was so impersonal, without cause or object. 
 Yet he echoed to it directly, his soul answered its madness. 
 It filled him with terror, almost with frenzy. 
 
 He learned to acquiesce to this, to submit to the awful, 
 obliterated sources which were the origin of his living tissue. 
 He was not what he conceived himself to be! Then he was 
 what he was, unknown, potent, dark. 
 
 He became accustomed to the child, he knew how to lift 
 and balance the little body. The baby had a beautiful, rounded 
 head that moved him passionately. He would have fought to 
 the last drop to defend that exquisite, perfect round head. 
 
 He learned to know the little hands and feet, the strange, 
 unseeing, golden-brown eyes, the mouth that opened only to 
 cry, or to suck, or to show a queer, toothless laugh. He 
 could almost understand even the dangling legs, which at first 
 had created in him a feeling of aversion. They could kick in 
 their queer little way, they had their own softness. 
 
 198 
 
THE CHILD 199 
 
 One evening, suddenly, he saw the tiny, living thing rolling 
 naked in the mother's lap, and he was sick, it was so utterly 
 helpless and vulnerable and extraneous; in a world of hard 
 surfaces and varying altitudes, it lay vulnerable and naked 
 at every point. Yet it was quite blithe. And yet, in its blind, 
 awful crying, was there not the blind, far-off terror of its own 
 vulnerable nakedness, the terror of being so utterly delivered 
 over, helpless at every point. He could not bear to hear it 
 crying. His heart strained and stood on guard against the 
 whole universe. 
 
 But he waited for the dread of these days to pass; he saw 
 the joy coming. He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear 
 of the baby, a bit of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like 
 bronze-dust. And he waited, for the child to become his, to 
 look at him and answer him. 
 
 It had a separate being, but it was his own child. His 
 flesh and blood vibrated to it. He caught the baby to his 
 breast with his passionate, clapping laugh. And the infant 
 knew him. 
 
 As the newly-opened, newly-dawned eyes looked at him, 
 he wanted them to perceive him, to recognize him. Then he 
 was verified. The child knew him, a queer contortion of 
 laughter came on its face for him. He caught it to his breast, 
 clapping with a triumphant laugh. 
 
 The golden-brown eyes of the child gradually lit up and 
 dilated at the sight of the dark-glowing face of the youth. 
 It knew its mother better, it wanted its mother more. But 
 the brightest, sharpest little ecstasy was for the father. 
 
 It began to be strong, to move vigorously and freely, to 
 make sounds like words. It was a baby girl now. Already 
 it knew his strong hands, it exulted in his strong clasp, it 
 laughed and crowed when he played with it. 
 
 And his heart grew red-hot with passionate feeling for the 
 child. She was not much more than a year old when the 
 second baby was born. Then he took Ursula for his own. 
 She his first little girl. He had set his heart on her. 
 
 The second had dark blue eyes and a fair skin : it was more 
 a Brangwen, people said. The hair was fair. But they 
 forgot Anna's stiff blond fleece of childhood. They called 
 the newcomer Gudrun. 
 
 This time, Anna was stronger, and not so eager. She did 
 not mind that the baby was not a boy. It was enough that 
 she had milk and could suckle her child : Oh, oh, the bliss of 
 
200 THE RAINBOW 
 
 the little life sucking the milk of her body! Oh, oh, oh the 
 bliss, as the infant grew stronger, of the two tiny hands clutch- 
 ing, catching blindly yet passionately at her breast, of the tiny 
 mouth seeking her in blind, sure, vital knowledge, of the sud- 
 den consummate peace as the little body sank, the mouth and 
 throat sucking, sucking, sucking, drinking life from her to 
 make a new life, almost sobbing with passionate joy of receiv- 
 ing its own existence, the tiny hands clutching frantically as 
 the nipple was drawn back, not to be gainsaid. This was 
 enough for Anna. She seemed to pass off into a kind of rap- 
 ture of motherhood, her rapture of motherhood was everything. 
 
 So that the father had the elder baby, the weaned child, the 
 golden-brown, wondering vivid eyes of the little Ursula were 
 for him, who had waited behind the mother till the need was 
 for him. The mother felt a sharp stab of jealousy. But she 
 was still more absorbed in the tiny baby. It was entirely hers, 
 its need was direct upon her. 
 
 So Ursula became the child of her father's heart. She 
 was the little blossom, he was the sun. He was patient, ener- 
 getic, inventive for her. He taught her all the funny little 
 things, he filled her and roused her to her fullest tiny measure. 
 She answered him with her extravagant infant's laughter and 
 her call of delight. 
 
 Now there were two babies, a v, r oman came in to do the 
 housework. Anna was wholly nurse. Two babies were not 
 loo much for her. But she hated any form of work, now her 
 children had come, except the charge of them. 
 
 When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy 
 child, always amusing herself, needing not much attention 
 from other people. At evening, towards six o'clock, Anna 
 very often went across the lane to the stile, lifted Ursula over 
 into the field, with a : "Go and meet Daddy." Then Brang- 
 wen, coming up the steep round of the hill, would see before 
 him on the brow of the path a tiny, tottering, wind-blown little 
 mite with a dark head, who, as soon as she saw him, would 
 come running in tiny, wild, windmill fashion, lifting her arms 
 up and down to him, down the steep hill. His heart leapt up, 
 he ran his fastest to her, to catch her, because he knew she 
 would fall. She came fluttering on, wildly, with her little 
 limbs flying. And he was glad when he caught her up in his 
 arms. Once she fell as she came flying to him, he saw her 
 pitch forward suddenly as she was running with her hands 
 lifted to him; and when he picked her up, her mouth was 
 
THE CHILD 201 
 
 bleeding. He could never bear to think of it, he always wanted 
 to cry, even when he was an old man and she had become a 
 stranger to him. How he loved that little Ursula! his 
 heart had been sharply seared for her, when he was a youth, 
 first married. 
 
 When she was a little older, he would see her recklessly 
 climbing over the bars of the stile, in her red pinafore, swing- 
 ing in peril and tumbling over, picking herself up and flitting 
 towards him. Sometimes she liked to ride on his shoulder, 
 sometimes she preferred to walk with his hand, sometimes 
 she would fling her arms round his legs for a moment, then 
 race free again, whilst he went shouting and calling to her, 
 a child along with her. He was still only a tall, thin, un- 
 settled lad of twenty-two. 
 
 It was he who had made her her cradle, her little chair, 
 her little stool, her high chair. It was he who would swing 
 her up to table or who would make for her a doll out of an 
 old table-leg, whilst she watched him, saying : 
 
 " Make her eyes, Daddy, make her eyes ! " 
 
 And he made her eyes with his knife. 
 
 She was very fond of adorning herself, so he would tie a 
 piece of cotton round her ear, and hang a blue bead on it 
 underneath for an ear-ring. The ear-rings varied with a red 
 bead, and a golden bead, and a little pearl bead. And as 
 he came home at night, seeing her bridling and looking very 
 self-conscious, he took notice and said: 
 
 " So you're wearing your best golden and pearl ear-rings, 
 to-day?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I suppose you've been to see the queen ? " 
 
 "Yes, I have." 
 
 " Oh, and what had she to say ? " 
 
 " She said she said < You won't dirty your nice white 
 frock.' '- 
 
 He gave her the nicest bits from his plate, putting them 
 into her red, moist mouth. And he would make on a piece 
 of bread-and-butter a bird, out of jam: which she ate with 
 extraordinary relish. 
 
 After the tea-things were washed up, the woman went away, 
 leaving the family free. Usually Brangwen helped in the 
 bathing of the children. He held long discussions with his 
 child as she sat on his knee and he unfastened her clothes. 
 And he seemed to be talking really of momentous things, deep 
 
202 THE RAINBOW 
 
 moralities. Then suddenly she ceased to hear, having Caught 
 sight of a glassie rolled into a corner. She slipped away, and 
 was in no hurry to return. 
 
 " Come back here/' he said, waiting. She became absorbed, 
 taking no notice. 
 
 " Come on," he repeated, with a touch of command. 
 
 An excited little chuckle came from her, but she pretended 
 to be absorbed. 
 
 " Do you hear, Milady ? " 
 
 She turned with a fleeting, exulting laugh. He rushed on 
 her, and swept her up. 
 
 " Who was it that didn't come ! " he said, rolling her between 
 his strong hands, tickling her. And she laughed heartily, 
 heartily. She loved him that he compelled her with his 
 strength and decision. He was all-powerful, the tower of 
 strength which rose out of her sight. 
 
 When the children were in bed, sometimes Anna and he 
 sat and talked, desultorily, both of them idle. He read very 
 little. Anything he was drawn to read became a burning 
 reality to him, another scene outside his window. Whereas 
 Anna skimmed through a book to see what happened, then 
 she had enough. 
 
 Therefore they would often sit together, talking desultorily. 
 What was really between them they could not utter. Their 
 words were only accidents in the mutual silence. When they 
 talked, they gossiped. She did not care for sewing. 
 
 She had a beautiful way of sitting musing, gratefully, as 
 if her heart were lit up. Sometimes she would turn to him, 
 laughing, to tell him some little thing that had happened 
 during the day. Then he would laugh, they would talk awhile, 
 before the vital, physical silence was between them again. 
 
 She was thin but full of colour and life. She was per- 
 fectly happy to do just nothing, only to sit with a curious, 
 languid dignity, so careless as to be almost regal, so utterly 
 indifferent, so confident. The bond between them was unde- 
 finable, but very strong. It kept every one else at a distance. 
 
 His face never changed whilst she knew him, it only became 
 more intense. It was ruddy and dark in its abstraction, not 
 very human, it had a strong, intent brightness. Sometimes, 
 when his eyes met hers, a yellow flash from them caused a 
 darkness to swoon over her consciousness, electric, and a slight 
 strange laugh came on his face. Her eyes would turn lan- 
 guidly, then close, as if hypnotized. And they lapsed into the 
 
THE CHILD 203 
 
 same potent darkness. He had the quality of a young black 
 cat, intent, unnoticeable, and yet his presence gradually made 
 itself felt, stealthily and powerfully took hold of her. He 
 called, not to her, but to something in her, which responded 
 subtly, out of her unconscious darkness. 
 
 So they were together in a darkness, passionate, electric, 
 forever haunting the back of the common day, never in the 
 light. In the light, he seemed to sleep, unknowing. Only 
 she knew him when the darkness set him free, and he could 
 see with his gold-glowing eyes his intention and his desires 
 in the dark. Then she was in a spell, then she answered his 
 harsh, penetrating call with a soft leap of her soul, the darkness 
 woke up, electric, bristling with an unknown, overwhelming 
 insinuation. 
 
 By now they knew each other; she was the daytime, the 
 daylight, he was the shadow, put aside, but in the darkness 
 potent with an overwhelming voluptuousness. 
 
 She learned not to dread and to hate him, but to fill her- 
 self with him, to give herself to his black, sensual power, that 
 was hidden ail the daytime. And the curious rolling of the 
 eyes, as if she were lapsing in a trance away from her ordinary 
 consciousness became habitual with her, when something 
 threatened and opposed her in life, the conscious life. 
 
 So they remained as separate in the light, and in the thick 
 darkness, married. He supported her daytime authority, kept 
 it inviolable at last. And she, in all the darkness, belonged 
 to him, to his close, insinuating, hypnotic familiarity. 
 
 All his daytime activity, all his public life, was a kind of 
 sleep. She wanted to be free, to belong to the day. And 
 he ran avoiding the day in work. After tea, he went to the 
 shed to his carpentry or his wood-carving. He was restoring 
 the patched, degraded pulpit to its original form. 
 
 But he loved to have the child near him, playing by his 
 feet. She was a piece of light that really belonged to him, 
 that played within his darkness. He left the shed door on 
 the latch. And when, with his second sense of another pres- 
 ence, he knew she was coming, he was satisfied, he was at rest. 
 When he was alone with her, he did not want to take notice, to 
 talk. He wanted to live unthinking, with her presence flicker- 
 ing upon him. 
 
 He always went in silence. The child would push open 
 the shed door, and see him working by lamplight, his sleeves 
 rolled back. His clothes hung about him, carelessly, like 
 mere wrapping. Inside, his body was concentrated with a 
 
204 THE RAINBOW 
 
 flexible, charged power all of its own, isolated. From when 
 she was a tiny child Ursula could remember his forearm, with 
 its fine black hairs and its electric flexibility, working at the 
 bench through swift, unnoticeable movements, always am- 
 bushed in a sort of silence. 
 
 She hung a moment in the door of the shed, waiting for 
 him to notice her. He turned, his black, curved eyebrows 
 arching slightly. 
 
 "Hullo, Twittermiss!" 
 
 And he closed the door behind her. Then the child was 
 happy in the shed that smelled of sweet wood and resounded 
 to the noise of the plane or the hammer or the saw, yet was 
 charged with the silence of the worker. She played on, intent 
 and absorbed, among the shavings and the little nogs of wood. 
 She never touched him : his feet and legs were near, she did not 
 approach them. 
 
 She liked to flit out after him when he was going to church 
 at night. If he were going to be alone, he swung her over 
 the wall, and let her come. 
 
 Again she was transported when the door was shut behind 
 them, and they two inherited the big, pale, void place. She 
 would watch him as he lit the organ candles, wait whilst he 
 began his practising his tunes, then she ran foraging here and 
 there, like a kitten playing by herself in the darkness with eyes 
 dilated. The ropes hung vaguely, twining on the floor, from 
 the bells in the tower, and Ursula always wanted the fluffy, 
 red-and-white, or blue-and-white rope-grips. But they were 
 above her. 
 
 Sometimes her mother came to claim her. Then the child 
 was seized with resentment. She passionately resented her 
 mother's superficial authority. She wanted to assert her own 
 detachment. 
 
 He, however, also gave her occasional cruel shocks. He 
 let her play about in the church, she rifled foot-stools and 
 hymn-books and cushions, like a bee among flowers, whilst 
 the organ echoed away. This continued for some weeks. 
 Then the charwoman worked herself up into a frenzy of rage, 
 to dare to attack Brangwen, and one day descended on him 
 like a harpy. He wilted away, and wanted to break the old 
 beast's neck. 
 
 Instead he came glowering in fury to the house, and turned 
 on Ursula. 
 
THE CHILD 205 
 
 "Why, you tiresome little monkey, can't you even come 
 to church without pulling the place to bits ? " 
 
 His voice was harsh and cat-like, he was blind to the child. 
 She shrank away in childish anguish and dread. What was 
 it, what awful thing was it ? 
 
 The mother turned with her calm, almost superb manner. 
 
 " What has she done, then? " 
 
 "Done? She shallgo in the church no more, pulling and 
 littering and destroying." 
 
 The wife slowly rolled her eyes and lowered her eyelids. 
 
 " What has she destroyed, then ? " 
 
 He did not know. 
 
 " I've just had Mrs. Wilkinson at me," he cried, " with a 
 list of things she's done." 
 
 Ursula withered under the contempt and anger of the " she," 
 as he spoke of her. 
 
 " Send Mrs. Wilkinson here to me with a list of the things 
 she's done," said Anna. " I am the one to hear that. 
 
 "It's not the things the child has done," continued the 
 mother, " that have put you out so much, it's because you can't 
 bear being spoken to by that old woman. But you haven't the 
 courage to turn on her when she attacks you, you bring your 
 rage here." 
 
 He relapsed into silence. Ursula knew that he was wrong. 
 In the outside, upper world, he was wrong. Already came 
 over the child the cold sense of the impersonal world. There 
 she knew her mother was right. But still her heart clamoured 
 after her father, for him to be right, in his dark, sensuous 
 underworld. But he was angry, and went his way in black- 
 ness and brutal silence again. 
 
 The child ran about absorbed in life, quiet, full of amuse- 
 ment. She did not notice things, nor changes nor alterations. 
 One day she would find daisies in the grass, another day, 
 apple-blossoms would be sprinkled white on the ground, and 
 she would run among it, for pleasure because it was there. 
 Yet again birds would be pecking at the cherries, her father 
 would throw cherries down from the tree all round her on the 
 garden. Then the fields were full of hay. 
 
 She did not remember what had been nor what would be, 
 the outside things were there each day. She was always her- 
 self, the world outside was accidental. Even her mother was 
 accidental to her : a condition that happened to endure. 
 
206 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Only her father occupied any permanent position in the 
 childish consciousness. When he came back she remembered 
 vaguely how he had gone away, when he went away she knew 
 vaguely that she must wait for his coming back. Whereas 
 her mother, returning from an outing, merely became present, 
 there was no reason for connecting her with some previous 
 departure. 
 
 The return or the departure of the father was the one event 
 which the child remembered. When he came, something woke 
 up in her, some yearning. She knew when he was out of joint 
 or irritable or tired : then she was uneasy, she could not rest. 
 
 When he was in the house, the child felt full and warm, 
 rich like a creature in the sunshine. When he was gone, she 
 was vague, forgetful. When he scolded her even, she was often 
 more aware of him than of herself. He was her strength and 
 her greater self. 
 
 Ursula was three years old when another baby girl was born. 
 Then the two small sisters were much together, Gudrun and 
 Ursula. Gudrun was a quiet child who played for hours alone, 
 absorbed in her fancies. She was brown-haired, fair-skinned, 
 strangely placid, almost passive. Yet her will was indomita- 
 ble, once set. From the first she followed Ursula's lead. Yet 
 she was a thing to herself, so that to watch the two together 
 was strange. They were like two young animals playing to- 
 gether but not taking real notice of each other. Gudrun was 
 the mother's favourite except that Anna always lived in her 
 latest baby. 
 
 The burden of so many lives depending on him wore the 
 youth down. He had his work in the office, which was done 
 purely by effort of will : he had his barren passion for the 
 church; he had three young children. Also at this time his 
 health was not good. So he was haggard and irritable, often 
 a pest in the house. Then he was told to go to his wood-work, 
 or to the church. 
 
 Between him and the little Ursula there came into being 
 a strange alliance. They were aware of each other. He knew 
 the child was always on his side. But in his consciousness he 
 counted it for nothing. She was always for him. He took it 
 for granted. Yet his life was based on her, even whilst she 
 was a tiny child, on her support and her accord. 
 
 Anna continued in her violent trance of motherhood, always 
 busy, often harassed, but always contained in her trance of 
 motherhood. She seemed to exist in her own violent fruit- 
 
THE CHILD 207 
 
 fulness, and it was as if the sun shone tropically on her. Her 
 colour was bright, her eyes full of a fecund gloom, her brown 
 hair tumbled loosely over her ears. She had a look of rich- 
 ness. No responsibility, no sense of duty troubled her. The 
 outside, public life was less than nothing to her, really. 
 
 Whereas when, at twenty-six, he found himself father of 
 four children, with a wife who lived intrinsically like the 
 ruddiest lilies of the field, he let the weight of responsibility 
 press on him and drag him. It was then that his child Ursula 
 strove to be with him. She was with him, even as a baby of 
 four, when he was irritable and shouted and made the house- 
 hold unhappy. She suffered from his shouting, but somehow 
 it was not really him. She wanted it to be over, she wanted 
 to resume her normal connection with him. When he was dis- 
 agreeable, the child echoed to the crying of some need in him, 
 and she responded blindly. Her heart followed him as if he 
 had some tie with her, and some love which he could not 
 deliver. Her heart followed him persistently, in its love. 
 
 But there was the dim, childish sense of her own smallness 
 and inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not 
 do anything, she was not enough. She could not be important 
 to him. This knowledge deadened her from the first. 
 
 Still she set towards him like a quivering needle. All her 
 life was directed by her awareness of him, her wakefulness 
 to his being. And she was against her mother. 
 
 Her father was the dawn wherein her consciousness woke 
 up. But for him, she might have gone on like the other 
 children, Gudrun and Theresa and Catherine, one with the 
 flowers and insects and playthings, having no existence apart 
 from the concrete object of her attention. But her father 
 came too near to her. The clasp of his hands and the power 
 of his breast woke her up almost in pain from the transient 
 unconsciousness of childhood. Wide-eyed, unseeing, she was 
 awake before she knew how to see. She was wakened too soon. 
 Too soon the call had come to her, when she was a small baby, 
 and her father held her close to his breast, her sleep-living 
 heart was beaten into wakefulness by the striving of his bigger 
 heart, by his clasping her to his body for love and for fulfil- 
 ment, asking as a magnet must always ask. From her the 
 response had struggled dimly, vaguely into being. 
 
 The children were dressed roughly for the country. When 
 she was little, Ursula pattered about in little wooden clogs, a 
 blue overall over her thick red dress, a red shawl crossed on 
 
208 THE RAINBOW 
 
 her breast and tied behind again. So she ran with her father 
 to the garden. 
 
 The household rose early. He was out digging by six 
 o'clock in the morning, he went to his work at half -past eight. 
 And Ursula was usually in the garden with him, though not 
 near at hand. 
 
 At Eastertime one year, she helped him to set potatoes. 
 It was the first time she had ever helped him. The occasion 
 remained as a picture, one of her earliest memories. They 
 had gone out soon after dawn. A cold wind was blowing. 
 He had his old trousers tucked into his boots, he wore no 
 coat nor waistcoat, his shirt-sleeves fluttered in the wind, his 
 face was ruddy and intent, in a kind of sleep. When he was 
 at work he neither heard nor saw. A long, thin man, looking 
 still a youth, with a line of black moustache above his thick 
 mouth, and his fine hair blown on his forehead, he worked 
 away at the earth in the grey first light, alone. His solitari- 
 ness drew the child like a spell. 
 
 The wind came chill over the dark-green fields. Ursula 
 ran up and watched him push the setting-peg in at one side 
 of his ready earth, stride across, and push it in the other 
 side, pulling the line taut and clear upon the clods interven- 
 ing. Then with a sharp cutting noise the bright spade came 
 towards her, cutting a grip into the new, soft earth. 
 
 He struck his spade upright and straightened himself. 
 
 " Do you want to help me ? " he said. 
 
 She looked up at him from out of her little woollen bonnet. 
 
 " Ay," he said, " you can put some taters in for me. Look 
 like that these little sprits standing up so much apart, 
 you see." 
 
 And stooping down he quickly, surely placed the spritted 
 potatoes in the soft grip, where they rested separate and 
 pathetic on the heavy cold earth. 
 
 He gave her a little basket of potatoes, and strode himself 
 to the other end of the line. She saw him stooping, working 
 towards her. She was excited, and unused. She put in one 
 potato, then rearranged it, to make it sit nicely. Some of 
 the sprits were broken, and she was afraid. The responsi- 
 bility excited her like a string tying her up. She could not 
 help looking with dread at the string buried under the heaped- 
 back soil. Her father was working nearer, stooping, working 
 nearer. She was overcome by her responsibility. She put 
 potatoes quickly into the cold earth. 
 
THE CHILD 209 
 
 He came near. 
 
 " Not so close," he said, stooping over her potatoes, taking 
 some out and rearranging the others. She stood by with the 
 painful terrified helplessness of childhood. He was so unsee- 
 ing and confident, she wanted to do the thing and yet she could 
 not. She stood by looking on, her little blue overall fluttering 
 in the wind, the red woollen ends of her shawl blowing gustily. 
 Then he went down the row, relentlessly, turning the potatoes 
 in with his sharp spade-cuts. He took no notice of her, only 
 worked on. He had another world from hers. 
 
 She stood helplessly stranded on his world. He continued 
 his work. She knew she could not help him. A little bit 
 forlorn, at last she turned away, and ran down the garden, 
 away from him, as fast as she could go away from him, to 
 forget him and his work. 
 
 He missed her presence, her face in her red woollen bonnet, 
 her blue overall fluttering. She ran to where a little water 
 ran trickling between grass and stones. That she loved. 
 
 .When he came by he said to her : 
 
 " You didn't help me much." 
 
 The child looked at him dumbly. Already her heart was 
 heavy because of her own disappointment. Her mouth was 
 dumb and pathetic. But he did not notice, he went his way. 
 
 And she played on, because of her disappointment persisting 
 even the more in her play. She dreaded work, because she 
 could not do it as he did it. She was conscious of the great 
 breach between them. She knew she had no power. The 
 grown-up power to work deliberately was a mystery to her. 
 
 He would smash into her sensitive child's world destruc- 
 tively. Her mother was lenient, careless. The children 
 played about as they would all day. Ursula was thoughtless 
 why should she remember things? If across the garden 
 she saw the hedge had budded, and if she wanted these greeny- 
 pink, tiny buds for bread-and-cheese, to play at tea-party with, 
 over she went for them. 
 
 Then suddenly, perhaps the next day, her soul would almost 
 start out of her body as her father turned on her, shouting: 
 
 "Who's been tramplin' an' dancin' across where I've just 
 sowed seed? I know it's you, nuisance! Can you find no- 
 where else to walk, but just over my seed beds ? But it's like 
 you, that is no heed but to follow your own greedy nose." 
 
 It had shocked him in his intent world to see the zig-zagging 
 lines of deep little foot-prints across his work. The child 
 
210 THE RAINBOW 
 
 was infinitely more shocked. Her vulnerable little soul was 
 flayed and trampled. Why were the foot-prints there? She 
 had not wanted to make them. She stood dazzled with pain 
 and shame and unreality. 
 
 Her soul, her consciousness seemed to die away. She be- 
 came shut off and senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul 
 had gone hard and unresponsive. The sense of her own un- 
 reality hardened her like a frost. She cared no longer. 
 
 And the sight of her face, shut and superior with self -assert- 
 ing indifference, made a flame of rage go over him. He 
 wanted to break her. 
 
 " I'll break your obstinate little face," he said, through shut 
 teeth, lifting his hand. 
 
 The child did not alter in the least. The look of indiffer- 
 ence, complete glancing indifference, as if nothing but herself 
 existed to her, remained fixed. 
 
 Yet far away in her, the sobs were tearing her soul. And 
 when he had gone, she would go and creep under the parlour 
 sofa, and lie clinched in the silent, hidden misery of child- 
 hood. 
 
 When she crawled out, after an hour or so, she went rather 
 stiffly to play. She willed to forget. She cut off her childish 
 soul from memory, so that the pain, and the insult should 
 not be real. She asserted herself only. There was now noth- 
 ing in the world but her own self. So very soon, she came 
 to believe in the outward malevolence that was against her. 
 And very early, she learned that even her adored father was 
 part of this malevolence. And very early she learned to harden 
 her soul in resistance and denial of all that was outside her, 
 harden herself upon her own being. 
 
 She never felt sorry for what she had done, she never for- 
 gave those who had made her guilty. If he had said to her, 
 " Why, Ursula, did you trample my carefully-made bed ? " 
 that would have hurt her to the quick, and she would have 
 done anything for him. But she was always tormented by 
 the unreality of outside things. The earth was to walk on. 
 Why must she avoid a certain patch, just because it was 
 called a seed-bed? It was the earth to walk on. This was 
 her instinctive assumption. And when he bullied her, she 
 became hard, cut herself off from all connection, lived in the 
 little separate world of her own violent will. 
 
 As she grew older, five, six, seven, the connection between 
 her and her father was even stronger. Yet it was always 
 
THE CHILD 211 
 
 straining to break. She was always relapsing on her own 
 violent will into her own separate world of herself. This 
 made him grind his teeth with bitterness, for he still wanted 
 her. But she could harden herself into her own self's universe, 
 impregnable. 
 
 He was very fond of swimming, and in warm weather would 
 take her down to the canal, to a silent place, or to a big pond 
 or reservoir, to bathe. He would take her on his back as he 
 went swimming, and she clung close, feeling his strong move- 
 ment under her, so strong, as if it would uphold all the world. 
 Then he taught her to swim. 
 
 She was a fearless little thing, when he dared her. And 
 he had a curious craving to frighten her, to see what she 
 would do with him. He said, would she ride on his back 
 whilst he jumped off the canal bridge down into the water 
 beneath. 
 
 She would. He loved to feel the naked child clinging on 
 to his shoulders. There was a curious fight between their 
 two wills. He mounted the parapet of the canal bridge. 
 The water was a long way down. But the child had a de- 
 liberate will set upon his. She held herself fixed to him. 
 
 He leapt, and down they went. The crash of the water 
 as they went under struck through the child's small body, 
 with a sort of unconsciousness. But she remained fixed. 
 And when they came up again, and when they went to the 
 bank, and when they sat on the grass side by side, he laughed, 
 and said it was fine. And the dark-dilated eyes of the child 
 looked at him wonderingly, darkly, wondering from the shock, 
 yet reserved and unfathomable, so he laughed almost with a sob. 
 
 In a moment she was clinging safely on his back again, 
 and he was swimming in deep water. She was used to his 
 nakedness, and to her mother's nakedness, ever since she 
 was born. They were clinging to each other, and making 
 up to each other for the strange blow that had been struck 
 at them. Yet still, on other days, he would leap again with 
 her from the bridge, daringly, almost wickedly. Till at length, 
 as he leapt, once, she dropped forward on to his head, and 
 nearly broke his neck, so that they fell into the water in a 
 heap, and fought for a few moments with death. He saved 
 her, and sat on the bank, quivering. But his eyes were full 
 of the blackness of death, it was as if death had cut between 
 their two lives, and separated them. 
 
 Still they were not separate. There was this curious 
 
THE RAINBOW, 
 
 taunting intimacy between them. When the fair came, she 
 wanted to go in the swingboats. He took her, and, standing 
 up in the boat, holding on to the irons, began to drive higher, 
 perilously higher. The child clung fast on her seat. 
 
 " Do you want to go any higher ? " he said to her, and 
 she laughed with her mouth, her eyes wide and dilated. 
 They were rushing through the air. 
 
 " Yes," she said, feeling as if she would turn into vapour, 
 lose hold of everything, and melt away. The boat swung 
 far up, then down like a stone, only to be caught sickeningly 
 up again. 
 
 " Any higher ? " he called, looking at her over his shoulder, 
 his face evil and beautiful to her. 
 
 She laughed with white lips. 
 
 He sent the swingboat sweeping through the air in a great 
 semicircle, till it jerked and swayed at the high horizontal. 
 The child clung on, pale, her eyes fixed on him. People 
 below were calling. The jerk at the top had almost shaken 
 them both out. He had done what he could and he was 
 attracting censure. He sat down, and let the swingboat swing 
 itself out. 
 
 People in the crowd cried shame on him as he came out 
 of the swingboat. He laughed. The child clung to his 
 hand, pale and mute. In a while she was violently sick. 
 He gave her lemonade, and she gulped a little. 
 
 " Don't tell your mother you've been sick/' he said. There 
 was no need to ask that. When she got home, the child crept 
 away under the parlour sofa, like a sick little animal, and was 
 a long time before she crawled out. 
 
 But Anna got to know of this escapade, and was passionately 
 angry and contemptuous of him. His golden-brown eyes glit- 
 tered, he had a strange, cruel little smile. And as the child 
 watched him, for the first time in her life a disillusion came 
 over her, something cold and isolating. She went over to her 
 mother. Her soul was dead towards him. It made her sick. 
 
 Still she forgot and continued to love him, but ever more 
 coldly. He was at this time, when he was about twenty-eight 
 years old, strange and violent in his being, sensual. He ac- 
 quired some power over Anna, over everybody he came into 
 contact with. 
 
 After a long bout of hostility, Anna at last closed with 
 him. She had now four children, all girls. For seven years 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 she had been absorbed in wifehood and motherhood. For 
 years he had gone on beside her, never really encroaching 
 upon her. Then gradually another self seemed to assert its 
 being within him. He was still silent and separate. But she 
 could feel him all the while coming near upon her, as if his 
 breast and his body were threatening her, and he was always 
 coming closer. Gradually he became indifferent of responsi- 
 bility. He would do what pleased him, and no more. 
 
 He began to go away from home. He went to Nottingham 
 on Saturdays, always alone, to the football match and to the 
 music-hall, and all the time he was watching, in readiness. 
 He never cared to drink. But with his hard, golden-brown 
 eyes, so keen seeing with their tiny black pupils, he watched all 
 the people, everything that happened, and he waited. 
 
 In the Empire one evening he sat next to two girls. He 
 was aware of the one beside him. She was rather small, 
 common, with a fresh complexion and an upper lip that lifted 
 from her teeth, so that, when she was not conscious, her mouth 
 was slightly open and her lips pressed outwards in a kind of 
 blind appeal. She was strongly aware of the man next to her, 
 so that all her body was still, very still. Her face watched the 
 stage. Her arms went down into her lap, very self-conscious 
 and still. 
 
 A gleam lit up in him : should he begin with her ? Should 
 he begin with her to live the other, the unadmitted life of his 
 desire? Why not? He had always been so good. Save for 
 his wife, he was virgin. And why, when all women were 
 different? Why, when he would only live once? He wanted 
 the other life. His own life was barren, not enough. He 
 wanted the other. 
 
 Her open mouth, showing the small, irregular, white teeth, 
 appealed to him. It was open and ready. It was so vulner- 
 able. Why should he not go in and enjoy what was there? 
 The slim arm that went down so still and motionless to the 
 lap, it was pretty. She would be small, he would be able 
 almost to hold her in his two hands. She would be small, al- 
 most like a child, and pretty. Her childishness whetted him 
 keenly. She would be helpless between his hands. 
 
 " That was the best turn we've had," he said to her, leaning 
 over as he clapped his hands. He felt strong and unshakeable 
 in himself, set over against all the world. His soul was keen 
 and watchful, glittering with a kind of amusement. He was 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 perfectly self-contained. He was himself, the absolute, the 
 rest of the world was the object that should contribute to his 
 being. 
 
 The girl started, turned round, her eyes lit up with an 
 almost painful flash of a smile, the colour came deeply in her 
 cheeks. 
 
 "Yes, it was/ 9 she said, quite meaninglessly, and she 
 covered her rather prominent teeth with her lips. Then she 
 sat looking straight before her, seeing nothing, only conscious 
 of the colour burning in her cheeks. 
 
 It pricked him with a pleasant sensation. His veins and 
 his nerves attended to her, she was so young and palpitating. 
 
 " It's not such a good programme as last week's/' he said. 
 
 Again she half turned her face to him, and her clear, bright 
 eyes, bright like shallow water, filled with light, frightened, 
 yet involuntarily lighting and shaking with response. 
 
 " Oh, isn't it ! I wasn't able to come last week." 
 
 He noted the common accent. It pleased him. He knew 
 what class she came of. Probably she was a warehouse-lass. 
 He was glad she was a common girl. 
 
 He proceeded to tell her about the last week's programme. 
 She answered at random, very confusedly. The colour burned 
 in her cheek. Yet she always answered him. The girl on the 
 other side sat remotely, obviously silent. He ignored her. 
 All his address was for his own girl, with her bright, shallow 
 eyes and her vulnerably opened mouth. 
 
 The talk went on, meaningless and random on her part, 
 quite deliberate and purposive on his. It was a pleasure to 
 him to make this conversation, an activity pleasant as a fine 
 game of chance and skill. He was very quiet and pleasant- 
 humoured, but so full of strength. She fluttered beside his 
 steady pressure of warmth and his surety. 
 
 He saw the performance drawing to a close. His senses 
 were alert and wilful. He would press his advantages. He 
 followed her and her plain friend down the stairs to the street. 
 It was raining. 
 
 " It's a nasty night/' he said. " Shall you come and have 
 a drink of something a cup of coffee it's early yet." 
 
 " Oh, I don't think so," she said, looking away into the 
 night. 
 
 66 1 wish you would," he said, putting himself as it were at 
 her mercy. There was a moment's pause. 
 
 " Come to Rollins ? " he said. 
 
THE CHILD 
 
 "No not there." 
 
 " To Carson's, then? " 
 
 There was a silence. The other girl hung on. The man 
 was the centre of positive force. 
 
 " Will your friend come as well ? " 
 
 There was another moment of silence, while the other girl 
 felt her ground. 
 
 " No, thanks/' she said. " I've promised to meet a friend." 
 
 " Another time, then ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, thanks," she replied, very awkward. 
 
 " Good night," he said. 
 
 " See you later," said his girl to her friend. 
 
 "Where?" said the friend. 
 
 " You know, Gertie," replied his girl. 
 
 " All right, Jennie." 
 
 The friend was gone into the darkness. He turned with 
 his girl to the tea-shop. They talked all the time. He made 
 his sentences in sheer, almost muscular pleasure of exercising 
 himself with her. He was looking at her all the time, per- 
 ceiving her, appreciating her, finding her out, gratifying him- 
 self with her. He could see distinct attractions in her; her 
 eyebrows, with their particular curve, gave him keen aesthetic 
 pleasure. Later on he would see her bright, pellucid eyes, 
 like shallow water, and know those. And there remained the 
 open, exposed mouth, red and vulnerable. That he reserved as 
 yet. And all the while his eyes were on the girl, estimating 
 and handling with pleasure her young softness. About the 
 girl herself, who or what she was, he cared nothing, he was 
 quite unaware that she was anybody. She was just the sensual 
 object of his attention. 
 
 "Shall we go, then?" he said. 
 
 She rose in silence, as if acting without a mind, merely 
 physically. He seemed to hold her in his will. Outside it was 
 still raining. 
 
 "Let's have a walk," he said. "I don't mind the rain, 
 do you?" 
 
 " No, I don't mind it," she said. 
 
 He was alert in every sense and fibre, and yet quite sure 
 and steady, and lit up, as if transfused. He had a free sensa- 
 tion of walking in his own darkness, not in anybody else's 
 world at all. He was purely a world to himself, he had noth- 
 ing to do with any general consciousness. Just his own senses 
 were supreme. All the rest was external, insignificant, leav- 
 
21C THE RAINBOW 
 
 ing him alone with this girl whom he wanted to absorb, whose 
 properties he wanted to absorb into his own senses. He did 
 not care about her, except that he wanted to overcome her 
 resistance, to have her in his power, fully and exhaustively to 
 enjoy her. 
 
 They turned into the dark streets. He held her umbrella 
 over her, and put his arm round her. She walked as if she 
 were unaware. But gradually, as he walked, he drew her a 
 little closer, into the movement of his side and hip. She fitted 
 in there very well. It was a real good fit, to walk with her 
 like this. It made him exquisitely aware of his own muscular 
 self. And his hand that grasped her side felt one curve of her, 
 and it seemed like a new creation to him, a reality, an abso- 
 lute, an existing tangible beauty of the absolute. It was like a 
 star. Everything in him was absorbed in the sensual delight 
 of this one small, firm curve in her body, that his hand, and 
 his whole being, had lighted upon. 
 
 He led her into the Park, where it was almost dark. He 
 noticed a corner between two walls, under a great overhanging 
 bush of ivy. 
 
 " Let us stand here a minute," he said. 
 
 He put down the umbrella, and followed her into the corner, 
 retreating out of the rain. He needed no eyes to see. All he 
 wanted was to know through touch. She was like a piece of 
 palpable darkness. He found her in the darkness, put his 
 arms round her and his hands upon her. She was silent and 
 inscrutable. But he did not want to know anything about 
 her, he only wanted to discover her. And through her cloth- 
 ing, what absolute beauty he touched. 
 
 " Take your hat off/' he said. 
 
 Silently, obediently, she took off her hat and gave herself 
 to his arms again. He liked her he liked the feel of her 
 he wanted to know her more closely. He let his fingers subtly 
 seek out her cheek and neck. What amazing beauty and pleas- 
 ure, in the dark ! His fingers had often touched Anna on the 
 face and neck like that. What matter ! It was one man who 
 touched Anna, another who now touched this girl. He liked 
 best his new self. He was given over altogether to the sensu- 
 ous knowledge of this woman, and every moment he seemed to 
 be touching absolute beauty, something beyond knowledge. 
 
 Very close, marvelling and exceedingly joyful in their dis- 
 coveries, his hands pressed upon her, so subtly, so seekingly, so 
 
THE CHILD 217 
 
 finely and desirously searching her out, that she too was almost 
 swooning in the absolute of sensual knowledge. In utter sen- 
 sual delight she clenched her knees, her thighs, her loins to- 
 gether ! It was an added beauty to him. 
 
 But he was patiently working for her relaxation, patiently, 
 his whole being fixed in the smile of latent gratification, his 
 whole body electric with a subtle, powerful, reducing force 
 upon her. So he came at length to kiss her, and she was almost 
 betrayed by his insidious kiss. Her open mouth was too help- 
 less and unguarded. He knew this, and his first kiss was very 
 gentle, and soft, and assuring, so assuring. So that her soft, 
 defenceless mouth became assured, even bold, seeking upon 
 his mouth. And he answered her gradually, gradually, his 
 soft kiss sinking in softly, softly, but ever more heavily, more 
 heavily yet, till it was too heavy for her to meet, and she 
 began to sink under it. She was sinking, sinking, his smile 
 of latent gratification was becoming more tense, he was sure of 
 her. He let the whole force of his will sink upon her to sweep 
 her away. But it was too great a shock for her. With a sud- 
 den horrible movement she ruptured the state that contained 
 them both. 
 
 "Don't don't I" 
 
 It was a rather horrible cry that seemed to come out of her, 
 not to belong to her. It was some strange agony of terror 
 crying out the words. There was something vibrating and 
 beside herself in the noise. His nerves ripped like silk. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " he said, as if calmly. " What's the 
 matter?" 
 
 She came back to him, but trembling, reservedly this time. 
 
 Her cry had given him gratification. But he knew he had 
 been too sudden for her. He was now careful. For a while 
 he merely sheltered her. Also there had broken a flaw into 
 his perfect will. He wanted to persist, to begin again, to lead 
 up to the point where he had let himself go on her, and then 
 manage more carefully, successfully. So far she had won. 
 And the battle was not over yet. But another voice woke in 
 him and prompted him to let her go let her go in contempt. 
 
 He sheltered her, and soothed her, and caressed her, and 
 kissed her, and again began to come nearer, nearer. He 
 gathered himself together. Even if he did not take her, he 
 would make her relax, he would fuse away her resistance. 
 So softly, softly, with infinite caressiveness he kissed her, 
 
218 THE RAINBOW 
 
 and the whole of his being seemed to fondle her. Till, at the 
 verge, swooning at the breaking point, there came from her 
 a beaten, inarticulate, moaning cry : 
 
 "Don't oh, don't!" 
 
 His veins fused with extreme voluptuousness. For a mo- 
 ment he almost lost control of himself, and continued auto- 
 matically. But there was a moment of inaction, of cold sus- 
 pension. He was not going to take her. He drew her to him 
 and soothed her, and caressed her. But the pure zest had gone. 
 She struggled to herself and realized he was not going to take 
 her. And then, at the very last moment, when his fondling 
 had come near again, his hot living desire despising her, 
 against his cold sensual desire, she broke violently away from 
 him. 
 
 " Don't," she cried, harsh now with hatred, and she flung 
 her hand across and hit him violently. " Keep off of me." 
 
 His blood stood still for a moment. Then the smile came 
 again within him, steady, cruel. 
 
 "Why, what's the matter?" he said, with suave irony. 
 "Nobody's going to hurt you." 
 
 " I know what you want," she said. 
 
 " I know what I want," he said. " What's the odds ? " 
 
 " Well, you're not going to have it off me." 
 
 " Aren't I ? Well, then I'm not. It's no use crying about 
 it, is it?" 
 
 " No, it isn't," said the girl, rather disconcerted by his irony. 
 
 " But there's no need to have a row about it. We can kiss 
 goodnight just the same, can't we ? " 
 
 She was silent in the darkness. 
 
 " Or do you want your hat and umbrella to go home this 
 minute?" 
 
 Still she was silent. He watched her dark figure as she 
 etood there on the edge of the faint darkness, and he waited. 
 
 " Come and say goodnight nicely, if we're going to say it," 
 he said. 
 
 Still she did not stir. He put his hand out and drew her 
 into the darkness again. 
 
 " It's warmer in here," he said ; " a lot cosier." 
 
 His will yet had not relaxed from her. The moment of 
 hatred exhilarated him. 
 
 "I'm going now," she muttered, as he closed his hand 
 over her. 
 
 " See how well you fit your place/' he said, as he drew her 
 
THE CHILD 219 
 
 to her previous position, close upon him. " What do you want 
 to leave it for?" 
 
 And gradually the intoxication invaded him again, the zest 
 came back. After all, why should he not take her ? 
 
 But she did not yield to him entirely. 
 
 " Are you a married man ? " she asked at length. 
 
 "What if lam? " he said. 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " I don't ask you whether you're married or not/' he said. 
 
 "You know jolly well I'm not" she answered hotly. Oh, 
 if she could only break away from him, if only she need not 
 yield to him. 
 
 At length her will became cold against him. She had 
 escaped. But she hated him for her escape more than for 
 her danger. Did he despise her so coldly? And she was in 
 torture of adherence to him still. 
 
 " Shall I see you next week next Saturday ? " he said, as 
 they returned to the town. She did not answer. 
 
 " Come to the Empire with me you and Gertie," he said. 
 
 " I should look well, going with a married man," she said. 
 
 " I'm no less of a man for being married, am I ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, it's a different matter altogether with a married man," 
 she said, in a ready-made speech that showed her chagrin. 
 
 "How's that? "he asked. 
 
 But she would not enlighten him. Yet she promised, with- 
 out promising, to be at the meeting-place next Saturday even- 
 ing. 
 
 So he left her. He did not know her name. He caught a 
 train and went home. 
 
 It was the last train, he was very late. He was not home 
 till midnight. But he was quite indifferent. He had no real 
 relation with his home, not this man which he now was. 
 Anna was sitting up for him. She saw the queer, absolved 
 look on his face, a sort of latent, almost sinister smile, as if 
 he were absolved from his " good " ties. 
 
 "Where have you been?" she asked, puzzled, interested. 
 
 "To the Empire." 
 
 "Who with?" 
 
 " By myself. I came home with Tom Cooper." 
 
 She looked at him, and wondered what he had been doing. 
 She was indifferent as to whether he lied or not. 
 
 " You have come home very strange," she said. And there 
 was an appreciative inflexion in the speech. 
 
220 THE RAINBOW 
 
 He was not affected. As for his humble, good self, he was 
 absolved from it. He sat down and ate heartily. He was not 
 tired. He seemed to take no notice of her. 
 
 For Anna the moment was critical. She kept herself aloof, 
 and watched him. He talked to her, but with a little indiffer- 
 ence, since he was scarcely aware of her. So, then she did not 
 affect him ? Here was a new turn of affairs ! He was rather 
 attractive, nevertheless. She liked him better than the ordi- 
 nary mute, half-effaced, half-subdued man she usually knew 
 him to be. So, he was blossoming out into his real self ! It 
 piqued her. Very good, let him blossom! She liked a new 
 turn of affairs. He was a strange man come home to her. 
 Glancing at him, she saw she could not reduce him to what he 
 had been before. In an instant she gave it up. Yet not with- 
 out a pang of rage, which would insist on their old, beloved 
 love, their old, accustomed intimacy and her old, established 
 supremacy. She almost rose up to fight for them. And look- 
 ing at him, and remembering his father, she was wary. This 
 was the new turn of affairs ! 
 
 Very good, if she could not influence him in the old way, 
 she would be level with him in the new. Her old defiant 
 hostility came up. Very good, she too was out on her own 
 adventure. Her voice, her manner changed, she was ready 
 for the game. Something was liberated in her. She liked 
 him. She liked this strange man come home to her. He 
 was very welcome, indeed! She was very glad to welcome 
 a stranger. She had been bored by the old husband. To 
 his latent, cruel smile she replied with brilliant challenge. 
 He expected her to keep the moral fortress. Not she! It 
 was much too dull a part. She challenged him back with a 
 sort of radiance, very bright and free, opposite to him. He 
 looked at her, and his eyes glinted. She too was out in the 
 field. 
 
 His senses pricked up and keenly attended to her. She 
 laughed, perfectly indifferent and loose as he was. He came 
 towards her. She neither rejected him nor responded to him. 
 In a kind of radiance, superb in her inscrutability, she laughed 
 before him. She too could throw everything overboard, love, 
 intimacy, responsibility. What were her four children to her 
 now ? What did it matter that this man was the father of her 
 four children? 
 
 He was the sensual male seeking his pleasure, she was the 
 female ready to take hers : but in her own way. A man could 
 
THE CHILD 221 
 
 turn into a free lance : so then could a woman. She adhered 
 as little as he to the moral world. All that had gone before 
 was nothing to her. She was another woman, under the in- 
 stance of a strange man. He was a stranger to her, seeking his 
 own ends. Very good. She wanted to see what this stranger 
 would do now, what he was. 
 
 She laughed, and kept him at arms' length, whilst appar- 
 ently ignoring him. She watched him undress as if he were 
 a stranger. Indeed he was a stranger to her. 
 
 And she roused him profoundly, violently, even before he 
 touched her. The little creature in Nottingham had but been 
 leading up to this. They abandoned in one motion the moral 
 position, each was seeking gratification pure and simple. 
 
 Strange his wife was to him. It was as if he were a perfect 
 stranger, as if she were infinitely and essentially strange to 
 him, the other half of the world, the dark half of the moon. 
 She waited for his touch as if he were a marauder who had 
 come in, infinitely unknown and desirable to her. And he 
 began to discover her. He had an inkling of the vastness of 
 the unknown sensual store of delights she was. With a pas- 
 sion of voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny 
 beauty, in a kind of frenzy of enjoyment, he lit upon her : her 
 beauty, the beauties, the separate, several beauties of her body. 
 
 He was quite ousted from himself, and sensually trans- 
 ported by that which he discovered in her. He was another 
 man revelling over her. There was no tenderness, no love 
 between them any more, only the maddening, sensuous lust 
 for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the 
 sensual beauties of her body. And she was a store, a store of 
 absolute beauties that it drove him mad to contemplate. There 
 was such a feast to enjoy, and he with only one man's capacity. 
 
 He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some 
 time it was a duel : no love, no words, no kisses even, only 
 the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute 
 through touch. He wanted to touch her, to discover her, mad- 
 deningly he wanted to know her. Yet he must not hurry, or he 
 missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a time. 
 And the multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little 
 rapturous places, sent him mad with delight, and with desire 
 to be able to know more, to have strength to know more. For 
 all was there. 
 
 He would say during the daytime : 
 
 " To-night I shall know the little hollow under her ankle, 
 
222 THE RAINBOW 
 
 where the blue vein crosses." And the thought of it, and the 
 desire for it, made a thick darkness of anticipation. 
 
 He would go all the day waiting for the night to come, when 
 he could give himself to the enjoyment of some luxurious ab- 
 solute of beauty in her. The thought of the hidden resources 
 of her, the undiscovered beauties and ecstatic places of delight 
 in her body, waiting, only waiting for him to discover them, 
 sent him slightly insane. He was obsessed. If he did not 
 discover and make known to himself these delights, they might 
 be lost for ever. He wished he had a hundred men's energies, 
 with which to enjoy her. 
 
 And she, separate, with a strange, dangerous, glistening look 
 in her eyes received all his activities upon her as if they were 
 expected by her, and provoked him when he was quiet to more, 
 till sometimes he was ready to perish for sheer inability to be 
 satisfied of her, inability to have had enough of her. 
 
 Their children became mere offspring to them, they lived 
 in the darkness and death of their own sensual activities. 
 Sometimes he felt he was going mad with a sense of Absolute 
 Beauty, perceived by him in her through his senses. It was 
 something too much for him. And in everything, was this 
 same, almost sinister, terrifying beauty. But in the revela- 
 tions of her body through contact with his body, was the 
 ultimate beauty, to know which was almost death in itself, 
 and yet for the knowledge of which he would have under- 
 gone endless torture. He would have forfeited anything, 
 anything, rather than forego his right even to the instep of her 
 foot, and the place from which the toes radiated out, the little, 
 miraculous white plain from which ran the little hillocks of 
 the toes, and the folded, dimpling hollows between the toes. 
 He felt he would have died rather than forfeit this. 
 
 This was what their love had become, a sensuality violent 
 and extreme as death. They had no conscious intimacy, no 
 tenderness of love. It was all the lust and the infinite, mad- 
 dening intoxication of the senses, a passion of death. 
 
 He had always, all his life, had a secret dread of Absolute 
 Beauty. It had always been like a fetish to him, something 
 to fear, really. For it was immoral and against mankind. 
 So he had turned to the Gothic form, which always asserted 
 the broken desire of mankind in its pointed arches, escaping 
 the rolling, absolute beauty of the round arch. 
 
 pow he had given way, and wjth infinite sensual violence 
 
THE CHILD 223 
 
 gave himself to the realization of this supreme, immoral, Abso- 
 lute Beauty, in the body of woman. It seemed to him, that it 
 came to being in the body of woman, under his touch. Under 
 his touch, even under his sight, it was there. But when he 
 neither saw nor touched the perfect place, it was not perfect, 
 it was not there. And he must make it exist. 
 
 But still the thing terrified him. Awful and threatening 
 it was, dangerous to a degree, even whilst he gave himself to 
 it. It was pure darkness, also. All the shameful things of the 
 body revealed themselves to him now with a sort of sinister, 
 tropical beauty. All the shameful, natural and unnatural 
 acts of sensual voluptuousness which he and the woman par- 
 took of together, created together, they had their heavy beauty 
 and their delight. Shame, what was it? It was part of ex- 
 treme delight. It was that part of delight of which man is 
 usually afraid. Why afraid? The secret, shameful things 
 are most terribly beautiful. 
 
 They accepted shame, and were one with it in their most 
 unlicensed pleasures. It was incorporated. It was a bud that 
 blossomed into beauty and heavy, fundamental gratification. 
 
 Their outward life went on much the same, but the inward 
 life was revolutionized. The children became less important, 
 the parents were absorbed in their own living. 
 
 And gradually, Brangwen began to find himself free to 
 attend to the outside life as well. His intimate life was so 
 violently active, that it set another man in him free. And 
 this new man turned with interest to public life, to see what 
 part he could take in it. This would give him scope for new 
 activity, activity of a kind for which he was now created and 
 released. He wanted to be unanimous with the whole of pur- 
 posive mankind. 
 
 At this time Education was in the forefront as a subject 
 of interest. There was the talk of new Swedish methods, of 
 handwork instruction, and so on. Brangwen embraced sin- 
 cerely the idea of handwork in schools. For the first time, he 
 began to take real interest in a public affair. He had at length, 
 from his profound sensual activity, developed a real purposive 
 self. 
 
 There was talk of night-schools, and of handicraft classes. 
 He wanted to start a woodwork class in Cossethay, to teach 
 carpentry and joinery and wood-carving to the village boys, 
 two nights a week. This seemed to him a supremely desirable 
 
224. THE RAINBOW 
 
 thing to be doing. His pay would be very little and when 
 he had it, he spent it all on extra wood and tools. But he was 
 very happy and keen in his new public spirit. 
 
 He started his night-classes in woodwork when he was thirty 
 years old. By this time he had five children, the last a boy. 
 But boy or girl mattered very little to him. He had a natural 
 blood-affection for his children, and he liked them as they 
 turned up: boys or girls. Only he was fondest of Ursula. 
 Somehow, she seemed to be at the back of his new night-school 
 venture. 
 
 The house by the yew trees was in connection with the great 
 human endeavour at last. It gained a new vigour thereby. 
 
 To Ursula, a child of eight, the increase in magic was con- 
 siderable. She heard all the talk, she saw the parish room 
 fitted up as a workshop. The parish room was a high, stone, 
 barn-like, ecclesiastical building standing away by itself in the 
 Brangwens' second garden, across the lane. She was always 
 attracted by its age and its stranded obsoleteness. Now she 
 watched preparations made, she sat on the flight of stone steps 
 that came down from the porch to the garden, and heard her 
 father and the vicar talking and planning and working. Then 
 an inspector came, a very strange man, and stayed talking with 
 her father all one evening. Everything was settled, and 
 twelve boys enrolled their names. It was very exciting. 
 
 But to Ursula, everything her father did was magic. 
 Whether he came from Ilkeston with news of the town, whether 
 he went across to the church with his music or his tools on a 
 sunny evening, whether he sat in his white surplice at the 
 organ on Sundays, leading the singing with his strong tenor 
 voice, or whether he were in the workshop with the boys, he 
 was always a centre of magic and fascination to her, his voice, 
 sounding out in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a 
 twang in it that sent a thrill over her blood, and hypnotized 
 her. She seemed to run in the shadow of some dark, potent 
 secret of which she would not, of whose existence even she 
 dared not become conscious, it cast such a spell over her, and 
 so darkened her mind. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 
 
 THERE was always regular connection between the 
 Yew Cottage and the Marsh, yet the two house- 
 holds remained separate, distinct. 
 
 After Anna's marriage, the Marsh became the 
 home of the two boys, Tom and Fred. Tom was a rather short, 
 good-looking youth, with crisp black hair and long black eye- 
 lashes and soft, dark, possessed eyes. He had a quick intelli- 
 gence. From the High School he went to London to study. 
 He had an instinct for attracting people of character and 
 energy. He gave place entirely to the other person, and at the 
 same time .kept himself independent. He scarcely existed ex- 
 cept through other people. When he was alone he was unre- 
 solved. When he was with another man, he seemed to add 
 himself to the other, make the other bigger than life size. 
 So that a few people loved him and attained a sort of fulfil- 
 ment in him. He carefully chose these few. 
 
 He had a subtle, quick, critical intelligence, a mind that 
 was like a scale or balance. There was something of a woman- 
 in all this. 
 
 In London he had been the favourite pupil of an engineer, 
 a clever man, who became well-known at the time when Tom 
 Brangwen had just finished his studies. Through this master 
 the youth kept acquaintance with various individual, out- 
 standing characters. He never asserted himself. He seemed 
 to be there to estimate and establish the rest. He was like a 
 presence that makes us aware of our own being. So that he 
 was while still young connected with some of the most ener- 
 getic scientific and mathematical people in London. They 
 took him as an equal. Quiet and perceptive and impersonal 
 as he was, he kept his place and learned how to value others 
 in just degree. He was there like a judgment. Besides, he 
 was very good-looking, of medium stature, but beautifully pro- 
 portioned, dark, with fine colouring, always perfectly healthy. 
 
 His father allowed him a liberal pocket-money, besides 
 
 225 
 
226 THE RAINBOW 
 
 which he had a sort of post as assistant to his chief. Then 
 from time to time the young man appeared at the Marsh, 
 curiously attractive, well-dressed, reserved, having by nature 
 a subtle, refined manner. And he set the change in the farm. 
 
 Fred, the younger brother, was a Brangwen, large-boned, 
 blue-eyed, English. He was his father's very son, the two 
 men, father and son, were supremely at ease with one another. 
 Fred was succeeding to the farm. 
 
 Between the elder brother and the younger existed an almost 
 passionate love. Tom watched over Fred with a woman's 
 poignant attention and self-less care. Fred looked up to Tom 
 as to something miraculous, that which he himself would 
 aspire to be, were he great also. 
 
 So that after Anna's departure, the Marsh began to take on 
 a new tone. The boys were gentlemen; Tom had a rare na- 
 ture and had risen high. Fred was sensitive and fond of 
 reading, he pondered Kuskin and then the Agnostic writings. 
 Like all the Brangwens, he was very much a thing to himself, 
 though fond of people, and indulgent to them, having an 
 exaggerated respect for them. 
 
 There was a rather uneasy friendship between him and one 
 of the young Hardys at the Hall. The two households were 
 different, yet the young men met on shy terms of equality. 
 
 It was young Tom Brangwen, with his dark lashes and beau- 
 tiful colouring, his soft, inscrutable nature, his strange repose 
 and his informed air, added to his position in London, who 
 seemed to emphasize the superior foreign element in the 
 Marsh. When he appeared, perfectly dressed, as if soft and 
 affable, and yet quite removed from everybody, he created 
 an uneasiness in people, he was reserved in the minds of the 
 Cossethay and Ilkeston acquaintances to a different, remote 
 world. 
 
 He and his mother had a kind of affinity. The affection 
 between them was of a mute, distant character, but radical. 
 His father was always uneasy and slightly deferential to his 
 eldest son. Tom also formed the link that kept the Marsh 
 in real connection with the Skrebenskys, now quite important 
 people in their own district. 
 
 So a change in tone came over the Marsh. Tom Brangwen 
 the father, as he grew older, seemed to mature into a gentle- 
 man-farmer. His figure lent itself: burly and handsome. 
 His face remained fresh and his blue eyes as full of light, 
 his thick hair and beard had turned gradually to a silky white-* 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 227 
 
 ness. It was his custom to laugh a great deal, in his acqui- 
 escent, wilful manner. Things had puzzled him very much, 
 so he had taken the line of easy, good-humoured acceptance. 
 He was not responsible for the frame of things. Yet he was 
 afraid of the unknown in life. 
 
 He was fairly well-off. His wife was there with him, a 
 different being from himself, yet somewhere vitally connected 
 with him : who was he to understand where and how ? His 
 two sons were gentlemen. They were men distinct from him- 
 self, they had separate beings of their own, yet they were 
 connected with himself. It was all adventurous and puzzling. 
 Yet one remained vital within one's own existence, whatever 
 the off-shoots. 
 
 So, handsome and puzzled, he laughed and stuck to him- 
 self as the only thing he could stick to. His youngness and 
 the wonder remained almost the same in him. He became 
 indolent, he developed a luxuriant ease. Fred did most of the 
 farm-work, the father saw to the more important transactions. 
 He drove a good mare, and sometimes he rode his cob. He 
 drank in the hofels and the inns with better-class farmers and 
 proprietors, he had well-to-do acquaintances among men. 
 But one class suited him no better than another. 
 
 His wife, as ever, had no acquaintances. Her hair was 
 threaded now with grey, her face grew older in form without 
 changing in expression. She seemed the same as when she 
 had come to the Marsh twenty-five years ago, save that her 
 health was more fragile. She seemed always to haunt the 
 Marsh rather than to live there. She was never part of the 
 life. Something she represented was alien there, she re- 
 mained a stranger within the gates, in some ways fixed and 
 impervious, in some ways curiously refining. She caused the 
 separateness and individuality of all the Marsh inmates, the 
 friability of the household. 
 
 When young Tom Brangwen was twenty-three years old 
 there was some breach between him and his chief which was 
 never explained, and he went away to Italy, then to America. 
 He came home for a while, then went to Germany ; always the 
 same good-looking, carefully-dressed, attractive young man, in 
 perfect health, yet somehow outside of everything. In his 
 dark eyes was a deep misery which he wore with the same ease 
 and pleasantness as he wore his close-sitting clothes. 
 
 To Ursula he was a romantic, alluring figure. He had a 
 grace of bringing beautiful presents: a box of expensive 
 
228 THE RAINBOW 
 
 sweets, such as Cossethay had never seen; or he gave her a 
 hair-brush and a long slim mirror of mother-of-pearl, all pale 
 and glimmering and exquisite ; or he sent her a little necklace 
 of rough stones, amethyst and opal and brilliants and garnet. 
 He spoke other languages easily and fluently, his nature was 
 curiously gracious and insinuating. With all that, he was 
 undefinably an outsider. He belonged to nowhere, to no so- 
 ciety. 
 
 Anna Brangwen had left her intimacy with her father un- 
 developed since the time of her marriage. At her marriage 
 it had been abandoned. He and she had drawn a reserve 
 between them. Anna went more to her mother. 
 
 Then suddenly the father died. 
 
 It happened one springtime when Ursula was about eight 
 years old, he, Tom Brangwen, drove off on a Saturday morn- 
 ing to the market in Nottingham, saying he might not be back 
 till late, as there was a special show and then a meeting he 
 had to attend. His family understood that he would enjoy 
 himself. 
 
 The season had been rainy and dreary. In the evening it 
 was pouring with rain. Fred Brangwen, unsettled, uneasy, 
 did not go out, as was his wont. He smoked and read and 
 fidgeted, hearing always the trickling of water outside. This 
 wet, black night seemed to cut him off and make him unset- 
 tled, aware of himself, aware that he wanted something else, 
 aware that he was scarcely living. There seemed to him to be 
 no root to his life, no place for him to get satisfied in. He 
 dreamed of going abroad. But his instinct knew that change 
 of place would not solve his problem. He wanted change, 
 deep, vital change of living. And he did not know how to 
 get it. 
 
 Tilly, an old woman now, came in saying that the labourers 
 who had been suppering up said the yard and everywhere was 
 just a slew of water. He heard in indifference. But he hated 
 a desolate, raw wetness in the world. He would leave the 
 Marsh. 
 
 His mother was in bed. At last he shut his book, his mind 
 was blank, he walked upstairs intoxicated with depression and 
 anger, and, intoxicated with depression and anger, locked 
 himself into sleep. 
 
 Tilly set slippers before the kitchen fire, and she also went 
 to bed, leaving the door unlocked. Then the farm was in 
 darkness, in the rain. 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 229 
 
 At eleven o'clock it was still raining. Tom Brangwen 
 stood in the yard of the Angel, in Nottingham, and buttoned 
 his coat. 
 
 " Oh, well," he said cheerfully, " it's rained on me before. 
 Put 'er in, Jack, my lad, put her in Tha'rt a rare old cock, 
 Jacky-boy, wi' a belly on thee as does credit to thy drink, 
 if not to thy corn. Co' up, lass, let's get off ter th' old home- 
 stead. Oh, my heart, what a wetness in the night ! There'll 
 be no volcanoes after this. Hey, Jack, my beautiful young 
 slender feller, which of us is Noah ? It seems as though the 
 water-works is bursted. Ducks and ayquatic fowl '11 be king 
 o' the castle at this rate dove an' olive branch an' all. 
 Stand up then, gel, stand up, we're not stoppin' here all night, 
 even if you thought we was. I'm dashed if the jumping rain 
 wouldn't make anybody think they was drunk. Hey, Jack 
 does rain-water wash the sense in, or does it wash it out ? " 
 And he laughed to himself at the joke. 
 
 He was always ashamed when he had to drive after he had 
 been drinking, always apologetic to the horse. His apologetic 
 frame made him facetious. He was aware of his inability to 
 walk quite straight. Nevertheless his will kept stiff and at- 
 tentive, in all his fuddledness. 
 
 He mounted and bowled off through the gates of the inn- 
 yard. The mare went well, he sat fixed, the rain beating on 
 his face. His heavy body rode motionless in a kind of sleep, 
 one centre of attention was kept fitfully burning, the rest was 
 dark. He concentrated his last attention on the fact of driv- 
 ing along the road he knew so well. He knew it so well, he 
 watched for it attentively, with an effort of will. 
 
 He talked aloud to himself, sententious in his anxiety, as 
 if he were perfectly sober, whilst the mare bowled along and 
 the rain beat on him. He watched the rain before the gig- 
 lamps, the faint gleaming of the shadowy horse's body, the 
 passing of the dark hedges. 
 
 " It's not a fit night to turn a dog out," he said to himself, 
 aloud. " It's high time as it did a bit of clearing up, I'll be 
 damned if it isn't. It was a lot of use putting those ten 
 loads of cinders on th' road. They'll be washed to kingdom- 
 come if it doesn't alter. Well, it's our Fred's look-out, if 
 they are. He's top-sawyer as far as those things go. I don't 
 see why I should concern myself. They can wash to king- 
 dom-come and back again for what I care. I suppose they 
 would be washed back again some day. That's how things 
 
230 THE RAINBOW 
 
 are. Th* rain tumbles down just to mount up in clouds 
 again. So they say. There's no more water on the earth 
 than there was in the year naught. That's the story, my boy, 
 if you understand it. There's no more to-day than there was 
 a thousand years ago nor no less either. You can't wear 
 water out. No, my boy: it'll give you the go-by. Try to 
 wear it out, and it takes its hook into vapour, it has its fingers 
 at its nose to you. It turns into cloud and falleth as rain on 
 the just and unjust. I wonder if I'm the just or the unjust." 
 
 He started awake as the trap lurched deep into a rut. And 
 he wakened to the point in his journey. He had travelled 
 some distance since he was last conscious. 
 
 But at length he reached the gate, and stumbled heavily 
 down, reeling, gripping fast to the trap. He descended into 
 several inches of water. 
 
 " Be damned ! " he said angrily. " Be damned to the mis- 
 erable slop." 
 
 And he led the horse washing through the gate. He was 
 quite drunk now, moving blindly, in habit. Everywhere there 
 was water underfoot. 
 
 The raised causeway of the house and the farm-stead was 
 dry, however. But there was a curious roar in the night 
 which seemed to be made in the darkness of his own intoxica- 
 tion. Eeeling, blinded, almost without consciousness he car- 
 ried his parcels and the rug and cushions into the house, 
 dropped them, and went out to put up the horse. 
 
 Now he was at home, he was a sleep-walker, waiting only 
 for the moment of activity to stop. Very deliberately and 
 carefully, he led the horse down the slope to the cart-shed. 
 She shied and backed. 
 
 " Why, wha's amiss ? " he hiccupped, plodding steadily on. 
 And he was again in a wash of water, the horse splashed up 
 water as she went. It was thickly dark, save for the gig- 
 lamps, and they lit on a rippling surface of water. 
 
 " Well, that's a knock-out," he said, as he came to the cart- 
 shed, and was wading in six inches of water. But everything 
 seemed to him amusing. He laughed to think of six inches 
 of water being in the cart-shed. 
 
 He backed in the mare. She was restive. He laughed at 
 the fun of untackling the mare with a lot of water washing 
 round his feet. He laughed because it upset her. " What's 
 amiss, what's amiss, a drop o' water won't hurt you ! " As 
 soon as he had undone the traces, she walked quickly away. 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 231 
 
 He hung up the shafts and took the gig-lamp. As he 
 came out of the familiar jumble of shafts and wheels in the 
 shed, the water, in little waves, came washing strongly against 
 his legs. He staggered and almost fell. 
 
 "Well, what the deuce!" he said, staring round at the 
 running water in the black, watery night. 
 
 He went to meet the running flood, sinking deeper and 
 deeper. His soul was full of great astonishment. He had 
 to go and look where it came from, though the ground was 
 going from under his feet. He went on, down towards the 
 pond, shakily. He rather enjoyed it. He was knee-deep, and 
 the water was pulling heavily. He stumbled, reeled sicken- 
 
 Fear took hold of him. Gripping tightly to the lamp, he 
 reeled, and looked round. The water was carrying his feet 
 away, he was dizzy. He did not know which way to turn. 
 The water was whirling, whirling, the whole black night was 
 swooping in rings. He swayed uncertainly at the centre of 
 all the attack, reeling in dismay. In his soul, he knew he 
 would fall. 
 
 As he staggered something in the water struck his legs, and 
 he fell. Instantly he was in the turmoil of suffocation. He 
 fought in a black horror of suffocation, fighting, wrestling, 
 but always borne down, borne inevitably down. Still he 
 wrestled and fought to get himself free, in the unutterable 
 struggle of suffocation, but he always fell again deeper. 
 Something struck his head, a great wonder of anguish went 
 over him, then the blackness covered him entirely. 
 
 In the utter darkness, the unconscious, drowning body was 
 rolled along, the waters pouring, washing, filling in the place. 
 The cattle woke up and rose to their feet, the dog began to 
 yelp. And the unconscious, drowning body was washed along 
 in the black, swirling darkness, passively. 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen woke up and listened. With preternatu- 
 rally sharp senses she heard the movement of all the darkness 
 that swirled outside. For a moment she lay still. Then she 
 went to the window. She heard the sharp rain, and the deep 
 running of water. She knew her husband was outside. 
 
 Fred," she called, " Fred I" 
 
 Away in the night was a hoarse, brutal roar of a mass of 
 water rushing downwards. 
 
 She went downstairs. She could not understand the multi- 
 plied running of water. Stepping down the step into the 
 
282 THE RAINBOW 
 
 kitchen, she put her foot into water. The kitchen was 
 flooded. Where did it come from? She could not under- 
 stand. 
 
 Water was running in out of the scullery. She paddled 
 through barefoot, to see. Water was bubbling fiercely under 
 the outer door. She was afraid. Then something washed 
 against her, something twined under her foot. It was the 
 riding whip. On the table were the rug and the cushion and 
 the parcel from the gig. 
 
 He had come home. 
 
 "Tom!" she called, afraid of her own voice. 
 
 She opened the door. Water ran in with a horrid sound. 
 Everywhere was moving water, a sound of waters. 
 
 " Tom ! " she cried, standing in her nightdress with the 
 candle, calling into the darkness and the flood out of the 
 doorway. 
 
 "Tom! Tom!" 
 
 And she listened. Fred appeared behind her, in trousers 
 and shirt. 
 
 " Where is he? " he asked. 
 
 He looked at the flood, then at his mother. She seemed 
 small and uncanny, elvish, in her nightdress. 
 
 " Go upstairs," he said. " He'll be in th' stable." 
 
 " To-om ! To-om ! " cried the elderly woman, with a long, 
 unnatural, penetrating call that chilled her son to the mar- 
 row. He quickly pulled on his boots and his coat. 
 
 " Go upstairs, mother," he said ; " I'll go an' see where he 
 is." 
 
 " To om ! To o om ! " rang out the shrill, unearthly 
 cry of the small woman. There was only the noise of water 
 and the mooing of uneasy cattle, and the long yelping of the 
 dog, clamouring in the darkness. 
 
 Fred Brangwen splashed out into the flood with a lantern. 
 His mother stood on a chair in the doorway, watching him 
 go. It was all water, water, running, flashing under the lan- 
 tern. 
 
 " Tom ! Tom ! To o om ! " came her long, unnatural 
 cry, ringing over the night. It made her son feel cold in his 
 soul. 
 
 And the unconscious, drowning body of the father rolled 
 on below the house, driven by the black water towards the 
 high-road. 
 
 Tilly appeared, a skirt over her nightdress. She saw her 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 233 
 
 mistress clinging on the top of a chair in the open doorway, 
 a candle burning on the table. 
 
 " God's sake ! " cried the old serving-woman. " The cut's 
 burst. That embankment's broke down. Whativer are we 
 goin' to do ! " 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen watched her son, and the lantern, go along 
 the upper causeway to the stable. Then she saw the dark 
 figure of a horse : then her son hung the lamp in the stable, 
 and the light shone out faintly on him as he untackled the 
 mare. The mother saw the soft blazed face of the horse 
 thrust forward into the stable-door. The stables were still 
 above the flood. But the water flowed strongly into the 
 house. 
 
 "It's getting higher," said Tilly. "Hasn't master come 
 in?" 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen did not hear. 
 
 " Isn't he the ere ? " she called, in her far-reaching, terri- 
 fying voice. 
 
 f( No," came the short answer out of the night. 
 
 " Go and loo-ok for him." 
 
 His mother's voice nearly drove the youth mad. 
 
 He put the halter on the horse and shut the stable door. 
 He came splashing back through the water, the lantern swing- 
 ing. 
 
 The unconscious, drowning body was pushed past the house 
 in the deepest current. Fred Brangwen came to his mother. 
 
 " I'll go to th' cart-shed," he said. 
 
 " To-om, To-o-om ! " rang out the strong, inhuman cry. 
 Fred Brangwen's blood froze, his heart was very angry. He 
 gripped his veins in a frenzy. Why was she yelling like this ? 
 He could not bear the sight of her, perched on a chair in her 
 white nightdress in the doorway, elvish and horrible. 
 
 "He's taken the mare out of the trap, so he's all right," 
 he said, growling, pretending to be normal. 
 
 But as he descended to the cart-shed, he sank into a foot 
 of water. He heard the rushing in the distance, he knew 
 the canal had broken down. The water was running deeper. 
 
 The trap was there all right, but no signs of his father. 
 The young man waded down to the pond. The water rose 
 above his knees, it swirled and forced him. He drew back. 
 
 " Is he the-e-ere ? " came the maddening cry of the mother. 
 
 " No," was the sharp answer. 
 
 "To-om To-o-om!" came the piercing, free, unearthly 
 
234* THE RAINBOW 
 
 call. It seemed high and supernatural, almost pure. Fred 
 Brangwen hated it. It nearly drove him mad. So awfully 
 it sang out, almost like a song. 
 
 The water was flowing fuller into the house. 
 
 " You'd better go up to Beeby's and bring him and Arthur 
 down, and tell Mrs. Beeby to fetch Wilkinson/' said Fred to 
 Tilly. He forced his mother to go upstairs. 
 
 "I know your father is drowned," she said, in a curious 
 dismay. 
 
 The flood rose through the night, till it washed the kettle 
 off the hob in the kitchen. Mrs. Brangwen sat alone at a 
 window upstairs. She called no more. The men were busy 
 with the pigs and the cattle. They were coming with a boat 
 for her. 
 
 Towards morning the rain ceased, the stars came out over 
 the noise and the terrifying clucking and trickling of the 
 water. Then there was a pallor in the east, the light began 
 to come. In the ruddy light of the dawn she saw the waters 
 spreading out, moving sluggishly, the buildings rising out of 
 a waste of water. Birds began to sing, drowsily, and as if 
 slightly hoarse with the dawn. It grew brighter. Up the 
 second field was the great, raw gap in the canal embankment. 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen went from window to window, watching 
 the flood. Somebody had brought a little boat. The light 
 grew stronger, the red gleam was gone off the flood-waters, 
 day took place. Mrs. Brangwen went from the front of the 
 house to the back, looking out, intent and unrelaxing, on the 
 pallid morning of spring. 
 
 She saw a glimpse of her husband's buff coat in the floods, 
 as the water rolled the body against the garden hedge. She 
 called to the men in the boat. She was glad he was found. 
 They dragged him out of the hedge. They could not lift 
 him into the boat. Fred Brangwen jumped into the water, 
 up to his waist, and half carried the body of his father through 
 the flood to the road. Hay and twigs and dirt were in the 
 beard and hair. The youth pushed through the water crying 
 loudly without tears, like a stricken animal. The mother at 
 the window cried, making no trouble. 
 
 The doctor came. But the body was dead. They carried 
 it up to Cossethay, to Anna's house. 
 
 When Anna Brangwen heard the news, she pressed back 
 her head and rolled her eyes, as if something were reaching 
 forward to bite at her throat. She pressed back her head, 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 235 
 
 her mind was driven back to sleep. Since she had married 
 and become a mother, the girl she had been was forgotten. 
 Now, the shock threatened to break in upon her and sweep 
 away all her intervening life, make her as a girl of eighteen 
 again, loving her father. So she pressed back, away from 
 the shock, she clung to her present life. 
 
 It was when they brought him to her house dead and in 
 his wet clothes, his wet, sodden clothes, fully dressed as he 
 came from market, yet all sodden and inert, that the shock 
 really broke into her, and she was terrified. A big, soaked, 
 inert heap, he was, who had been to her the image of power 
 and strong life. 
 
 Almost in horror, she began to take the wet things from 
 him, to pull off him the incongruous market-clothes of a well- 
 to-do farmer. The children were sent away to the Vicarage, 
 the dead body lay on the parlour floor, Anna quickly began 
 to undress him, laid his fob and seals in a wet heap on the 
 table. Her husband and the woman helped her. They 
 cleared and washed the body, and laid it on the bed. 
 
 There, it looked still and grand. He was perfectly calm 
 in death, and, now he was laid in line, inviolable, unapproach- 
 able. To Anna, he was the majesty of the inaccessible male, 
 the majesty of death. It made her still and awe-stricken, 
 almost glad. 
 
 Lydia Brangwen, the mother, also came and saw the im- 
 pressive, inviolable body of the dead man. She went pale, 
 seeing death. He was beyond change or knowledge, absolute, 
 laid in line with the infinite. What had she to do with him ? 
 He was a majestic Abstraction, made visible now for a mo- 
 ment, inviolate, absolute. And who could lay claim to him, 
 who could speak of him, of the him who was revealed in the 
 stripped moment of transit from life into death? Neither 
 the living nor the dead could claim him, he was both the one 
 and the other, inviolable, inaccessibly himself. 
 
 " I shared life with you, I belong in my own way to eter- 
 nity," said Lydia Brangwen, her heart cold, knowing her own 
 singleness. 
 
 " I did not know you in life. You are beyond me, supreme 
 now in death/' said Anna Brangwen, awe-stricken, almost 
 glad. 
 
 It was the sons who could not bear it. Fred Brangwen 
 went about with a set, blanched face and shut hands, his heart 
 full of hatred and rage for what had been done to his father, 
 
236 THE RAINBOW 
 
 bleeding also with desire to have his father again, to see him, 
 to hear him again. He could not bear it. 
 
 Tom Brangwen only arrived on the day of the funeral. 
 He was quiet and controlled as ever. He kissed his mother, 
 who was still dark-faced, inscrutable, he shook hands with 
 his brother without looking at him, he saw the great coffin 
 with its black handles. He even read the name-plate, " Tom 
 Brangwen, of the Marsh Farm. Born . Died ." 
 
 The good-looking, still face of the young man crinkled up 
 for a moment in a terrible grimace, then resumed its stillness. 
 The coffin was carried round to the church, the funeral bell 
 tanged at intervals, the mourners carried their wreaths of 
 white flowers. The mother, the Polish woman, went with 
 dark, abstract face, on her son's arm. He was good-looking 
 as ever, his face perfectly motionless and somehow pleasant. 
 Fred walked with Anna, she strange and winsome, he with a 
 face like wood, stiff, unyielding. 
 
 Only afterwards Ursula, flitting between the currant bushes 
 down the garden, saw her Uncle Tom standing in his black 
 clothes, erect and fashionable, but his fists lifted, and his 
 face distorted, his lips curled back from his teeth in a horrible 
 grin, like an animal which grimaces with torment, whilst his 
 body panted quick, like a panting dog's. He was facing the 
 open distance, panting, and holding still, then panting rapidly 
 again, but his face never changing from its almost bestial look 
 of torture, the teeth all showing, the nose wrinkled up, the 
 eyes unseeing, fixed. 
 
 Terrified, Ursula slipped away. And when her Uncle Tom 
 was in the house again, grave and very quiet, so that he 
 seemed almost to affect gravity, to pretend grief, she watched 
 his still, handsome face, imagining it again in its distortion. 
 But she saw the nose was rather thick, rather Eussian, under 
 its transparent skin, she remembered the teeth under the care- 
 fully cut moustache were small and sharp and spaced. She 
 could see him, in all his elegant demeanour, bestial, almost 
 corrupt. And she was frightened. She never forgot to look 
 for the bestial, frightening side of him, after this. 
 
 He said " Good-bye " to his mother and went away at once. 
 Ursula almost shrank from his kiss, now. She wanted it, 
 nevertheless, and the little revulsion as well. 
 
 At the funeral, and after the funeral, Will Brangwen was 
 madly in love with his wife. The death had shaken him. 
 But death and all seemed to gather in him into a mad, over- 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 237 
 
 whelming passion for his wife. She seemed so strange and 
 winsome. He was almost beside himself with desire for her. 
 
 And she took him, she seemed ready for him, she wanted 
 him. 
 
 The grandmother stayed a while at the Yew Cottage, till 
 the Marsh was restored. Then she returned to her own rooms, 
 quiet, and it seemed, wanting nothing. Fred threw himself 
 into the work of restoring the farm. That his father was 
 killed there, seemed to make it only the more intimate and the 
 more inevitably his own place. 
 
 There was a saying that the Brangwens always died a vio- 
 lent death. To them all, except perhaps Tom, it seemed al- 
 most natural. Yet Fred went about obstinate, his heart fixed. 
 He could never forgive the Unknown this murder of his 
 father. 
 
 After the death of the father, the Marsh was very quiet. 
 Mrs. Brangwen was unsettled. She could not sit all the even- 
 ing peacefully, as she could before, and during the day she 
 was always rising to her feet and hesitating, as if she must 
 go somewhere, and were not quite sure whither. 
 
 She was seen loitering about the garden, in her little 
 woollen jacket. She was often driven out in the gig, sitting 
 beside her son and watching the countryside or the streets of 
 the town, with a childish, candid, uncanny face, as if it all 
 were strange to her. 
 
 The children, Ursula and Gudrun and Theresa went by 
 the garden gate on their way to school. The grandmother 
 would have them call in each time they passed, she would have 
 them come to the Marsh for dinner. She wanted children 
 about her. 
 
 Of her sons, she was almost afraid. She could see the 
 sombre passion and desire and dissatisfaction in them, and 
 she wanted not to see it any more. Even Fred, with his blue 
 eyes and his heavy jaw, troubled her. There was no peace. 
 He wanted something, he wanted love, passion, and he could 
 not find them. But why must he trouble her? Why must 
 he come to her with his seething and suffering and dissatis- 
 factions? She was too old. 
 
 Tom was more restrained, reserved. He kept his body very 
 still. But he troubled her even more. She could not but see 
 the black depths of disintegration in his eyes, the sudden 
 glance upon her, as if she could save him, as if he would reveal 
 himself. 
 
238 THE RAINBOW 
 
 And how could age save youth? Youth must go to youth. 
 Always the storm! Could she not lie in peace, these years, 
 in the quiet, apart from life? No, always the swell must 
 heave upon her and break against the barriers. Always she 
 must be embroiled in the seethe and rage and passion, end- 
 less, endless, going on for ever. And she wanted to draw 
 away. She wanted at last her own innocence and peace. 
 She did not want her sons to force upon her any more the 
 old brutal story of desire and offerings and deep, deep-hidden 
 rage of unsatisfied men against women. She wanted to be 
 beyond it all, to know the peace and innocence of age. 
 
 She had never been a woman to work much. So that now 
 she would stand often at the garden-gate, watching the scant 
 world go by. And the sight of children pleased her, made 
 her happy. She had usually an apple or a few sweets in her 
 pocket. She liked children to smile at her. 
 
 She never went to her husband's grave. She spoke of him 
 simply, as if he were alive. Sometimes the tears would run 
 down her face, in helpless sadness. Then she recovered, and 
 was herself again, happy. 
 
 On wet days, she stayed in bed. Her bedroom was her 
 city of refuge, where she could lie down and muse and muse. 
 Sometimes Fred would read to her. But that did not mean 
 much. She had so many dreams to dream over, such an un- 
 sifted store. She wanted time. 
 
 Her chief friend at this period was Ursula. The little 
 girl and the musing, fragile woman of sixty seemed to under- 
 stand the same language. At Cossethay all was activity and 
 passion, everything moved upon poles of passion. Then there 
 were four children younger than Ursula, a throng of babies, 
 all the time many lives beating against each other. 
 
 So that for the eldest child, the peace of the grandmother's 
 bedroom was exquisite. Here Ursula came as to a hushed, 
 paradisal land, here her own existence became simple and ex- 
 quisite to her as if she were a flower. 
 
 Always on Saturdays she came down to the Marsh, and 
 always clutching a little offering, either a little mat made 
 of strips of coloured, woven paper, or a tiny basket made in 
 the kindergarten lesson, or a little crayon drawing of a bird. 
 
 When she appeared in the doorway, Tilly, ancient but still 
 in authority, would crane her skinny neck to see who it was. 
 
 '' Qh, it's you, is it ? " ghe, said, " I thought we should be 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 239 
 
 seein' you. My word, that's a bobby-dazzlin' posy you've 
 brought ! " 
 
 It was curious how Tilly preserved the spirit of Tom Brang- 
 wen, who was dead, in the Marsh. Ursula always connected 
 her with her grandfather. 
 
 This day the child had brought a tight little nosegay of 
 pinks, white ones, with a rim of pink ones. She was very 
 proud of it, and very shy because of her pride. 
 
 " Your gran'mother's in her bed. Wipe your shoes well if 
 you're goin' up, and don't go burstin' in on her like a sky- 
 rocket. My word, but that's a fine posy ! Did you do it all 
 by yourself, an' all ? " 
 
 Tilly stealthily ushered her into the bedroom. The child 
 entered with a strange, dragging hesitation characteristic of 
 her when she was moved. Her grandmother was sitting up 
 in bed, wearing a little grey woollen jacket. 
 
 The child hesitated in silence near the bed, clutching the 
 nosegay in front of her. Her childish eyes were shining. 
 The grandmother's grey eyes shone with a similar light. 
 
 " How pretty ! " she said. " How pretty you have made 
 them! What a darling little bunch." 
 
 Ursula, glowing, thrust them into her grandmother's hand, 
 saying, " I made them you." 
 
 "That is how the peasants tied them at home," said the 
 grandmother, pushing the pinks with her fingers, and smell- 
 ing them. " Just such tight little bunches ! And they make 
 wreaths for their hair they weave the stalks. Then they 
 go round with wreaths in their hair, and wearing their best 
 aprons." 
 
 Ursula immediately imagined herself in this story-land. 
 
 "Did you used to have a wreath in your hair, grand- 
 mother?" 
 
 "When I was a little girl, I had golden hair, something 
 like Katie's. Then I used to have a wreath of little blue 
 flowers, oh, so blue, that come when the snow is gone. Andrey, 
 the coachman, used to bring me the very first." 
 
 They talked, and then Tilly brought the tea-tray, set for 
 two. Ursula had a special green and gold cup kept for her- 
 self at the Marsh. There was thin bread and butter, and cress 
 for tea. It was all special and wonderful. She ate very 
 daintily, with little fastidious bites. 
 
 <f Wh do you have two wedding-rings, grandmother? . 
 
240 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Must you ? " asked the child, noticing her grandmother's ivory 
 coloured hand with blue veins, above the tray. 
 
 " If I had two husbands, child." 
 
 Ursula pondered a moment. 
 
 " Then you must wear both rings together ? " 
 
 "Yes."' 
 
 " Which was my grandfather's ring ? " 
 
 The woman hesitated. 
 
 " This grandfather whom you knew ? This was his ring, 
 the red one. The yellow one was your other grandfather's 
 whom you never knew." 
 
 Ursula looked interestedly at the two rings on the proffered 
 finger. 
 
 " Where did he buy it you ? " she asked. 
 
 " This one ? In Warsaw, I think." 
 
 " You didn't know my own grandfather then ? " 
 
 " Not this grandfather." 
 
 Ursula pondered this fascinating intelligence. 
 
 " Did he have white whiskers, as well ? " 
 
 " No, his beard was dark. You have his brows, I think." 
 
 Ursula ceased and became self-conscious. She at once 
 identified herself with her Polish grandfather. 
 
 " And did he have brown eyes ? " 
 
 " Yes, dark eyes. He was a clever man, as quick as a lion. 
 He was never still." 
 
 Lydia still resented Lensky. When she thought of him, 
 she was always younger than he, she was always twenty, or 
 twenty-five, and under his domination. He incorporated her 
 in his ideas as if she were not a person herself, as if she were 
 just his aide-de-camp, or part of his baggage, or one among 
 his surgical appliances. She still resented it. And he was 
 always only thirty : he had died when he was thirty-four. She 
 did not feel sorry for him. He was older than she. Yet she 
 still ached in the thought of those days. 
 
 "Did you like my first grandfather best?" asked Ursula, 
 
 " I liked them both," said the grandmother. 
 
 And, thinking, she became again Lensk/s girl-bride. He 
 was of good family, of better family even than her own, for 
 she was half German. She was a young girl in a house of 
 insecure fortune. And he, an intellectual., a clever surgeon 
 and physician, had loved her. How she had looked up to 
 him ! She remembered her first transports when he talked 
 to her, the important young man with the 8e.ve.re black beard. 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 241 
 
 He had seemed so wonderful, such an authority. 'After her 
 own lax household, his gravity and confident, hard authority 
 seemed almost God-like to her. For she had never known it 
 in her life, all her surroundings had been loose, lax, disor- 
 dered, a welter. 
 
 " Miss Lydia, will you marry me ? " he had said to her in 
 German, in his grave, yet tremulous voice. She had been 
 afraid of his dark eyes upon her. They did not see her, they 
 were fixed upon her. And he was hard, confident. She 
 thrilled with the excitement of it, and accepted. During the 
 courtship, his kisses were a wonder to her. She always 
 thought about them, and wondered over them. She never 
 wanted to kiss him back. In her idea, the man kissed, and 
 the woman examined in her soul the kisses she had received. 
 
 She had never quite recovered from her prostration of the 
 first days, or nights, of marriage. He had taken her to 
 Vienna, and she was utterly alone with him, utterly alone in 
 another world, everything, everything foreign, even he foreign 
 to her. Then came the real marriage, passion came to her, 
 and she became his slave, he was her lord, her lord. She was 
 the girl-bride, the slave, she kissed his feet, she had thought 
 it an honour to touch his body, to unfasten his boots. For 
 two years, she had gone on as his slave, crouching at his feet, 
 embracing his knees. 
 
 Children had come, he had followed his ideas. She was 
 there for him, just to keep him in condition. She was to him 
 one of the baser or material conditions necessary for his wel- 
 fare in prosecuting his ideas, of nationalism, of liberty, of 
 science. 
 
 But gradually, at twenty-three, twenty-four, she began to 
 realize that she too might consider these ideas. By his ac- 
 ceptance of her self-subordination, he exhausted the feeling in 
 her. There were those of his associates who would discuss 
 the ideas with her, though he did not wish to do so himself. 
 She adventured into the minds of other men. His, then, was 
 not the only male mind ! She did not exist, then, just as his 
 attribute ! She began to perceive the attention of other men. 
 An excitement came over her. She remembered now the men 
 who had paid her court, when she was married, in Warsaw. 
 
 Then the rebellion broke out, and she was inspired too. 
 She would go as a nurse at her husband's side. He worked 
 like a lion, he wore his life out. And she followed him help- 
 lessly. But she disbelieved in him. He was so separate, he 
 
242 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ignored so much. He counted too much on himself. His 
 work, his ideas, did nothing else matter ? 
 
 Then the children were dead, and for her, everything be- 
 came remote. He became remote. She saw him, she saw 
 him go white when he heard the news, then frown, as if he 
 thought, " Why have they died now, when I have no time to 
 grieve ? " 
 
 "He has no time to grieve," she had said, in her remote, 
 awful soul. " He has no time. It is so important, what he 
 does! He is then so self-important, this half-frenzied man! 
 Nothing matters, but this work of rebellion ! He has not time 
 to grieve, nor to think of his children ! He had not time even 
 to beget them, really/' 
 
 She had let him go on alone. But, in the chaos, she had 
 worked by his side again. And out of the chaos, she had fled 
 with him to London. 
 
 He was a broken, cold man. He had no affection for her, 
 nor for any one. He had failed in his work, so everything 
 had failed. He stiffened, and died. 
 
 She could not subscribe. He had failed, everything had 
 failed, yet behind the failure was the unyielding passion of 
 life. The individual effort might fail, but not the human joy. 
 She belonged to the human joy. 
 
 He died and went his way, but not before there was an- 
 other child. And this little Ursula was his grandchild. She 
 was glad of it. For she still honoured him, though he had 
 been mistaken. 
 
 She, Lydia Brangwen, was sorry for him now. He was 
 dead he had scarcely lived. He had never known her. He 
 had lain with her, but he had never known her. He had 
 never received what she could give him. He had gone away 
 from her empty. So, he had never lived. So, he had died 
 and passed away. Yet there had been strength and power 
 in him. 
 
 She could scarcely forgive him that he had never lived. 
 If it were not for Anna, and for this little Ursula, who had 
 his brows, there would be no more left of him than of a 
 broken vessel thrown away, and just remembered. 
 
 Tom Brangwen had served her. He had come to her, and 
 taken from her. He had died and gone his way into death. 
 But he had made himself immortal in his knowledge with 
 her. So she had her place here, in life, and in immortality, 
 he had taken his knowledge of her into death, so that she 
 
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD 
 
 had her place in death. " In my father's house are many 
 mansions." 
 
 She loved both her husbands. To one she had been a naked 
 little girl-bride, running to serve him. The other she loved 
 out of fulfilment, because he was good and had given her 
 being, because he had served her honourably, and become her 
 man, one with her. 
 
 She was established in this stretch of life, she had come 
 to herself. During her first marriage, she had not existed, 
 except through him, he was the substance and she the shadow 
 running at his feet. She was very glad she had come to her 
 own self. She was grateful to Brangwen. She reached out 
 to him in gratitude, into death. 
 
 In her heart she felt a vague tenderness and pity for her 
 first husband, who had been her lord. He was so wrong 
 when he died. She could not bear it, that he had never lived, 
 never really become himself. And he had been her lord! 
 Strange, it all had been! Why had he been her lord? He 
 seemed now so far off, so without bearing on her. 
 
 "Which did you, grandmother?" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Like best." 
 
 " I liked them both. I married the first when I was quite 
 a girl. Then I loved your grandfather when I was a woman. 
 There is a difference." 
 
 They were silent for a time. 
 
 " Did you cry when my first grandfather died ? " the child 
 asked. 
 
 Lydia Brangwen rocked herself on the bed, thinking aloud. 
 
 " When we came to England, he hardly ever spoke, he was 
 too much concerned to take any notice of anybody. He grew 
 thinner and thinner, till his cheeks were hollow and his mouth 
 stuck out. He wasn't handsome any more. I knew he 
 couldn't bear being beaten, I thought everything was lost in 
 the world. Only I had your mother a baby, it was no use my 
 dying. 
 
 " He looked at me with his black eyes, almost as if he hated 
 me, when he was ill, and said, ' It only wanted this. It only 
 wanted that I should leave you and a young child to starve in 
 this London.' I told him we should not starve. But I was 
 young, and foolish, and frightened, which he knew. 
 
 "He was bitter, and he never gave way. He lay beating 
 his brains, to see what he could do. ' I don't know what you 
 
244. THE RAINBOW 
 
 will do,' he said. ' I am no good, I am a failure from begin- 
 ning to end. I cannot even provide for my wife and child ! ' 
 
 "But you see, it was not for him to provide for us. My 
 life went on, though his stopped, and I married your grand- 
 father. 
 
 " I ought to have known, I ought to have been able to say 
 to him : ' Don't be so bitter, don't die because this has failed. 
 You are not the beginning and the end/ But I was too 
 young, he had never let me become myself, I thought he was 
 truly the beginning and the end. So I let him take all upon 
 himself. Yet all did not depend on him. Life must go on, 
 and I must marry your grandfather, and have your Uncle 
 Tom, and your Uncle Fred. We cannot take so much upon 
 ourselves." 
 
 The child's heart beat fast as she listened to these things. 
 She could not understand, but she seemed to feel far-off 
 things. It gave her a deep, joyous thrill, to know she hailed 
 from far off, from Poland, and that dark-bearded impressive 
 man. Strange, her antecedents were, and she felt fate on 
 either side of her terrible. 
 
 Almost every day, Ursula saw her grandmother, and every 
 time, they talked together. Till the grandmother's sayings 
 and stories, told in the complete hush of the Marsh bedroom, 
 accumulated with mystic significance, and became a sort of 
 Bible to the child. 
 
 And Ursula asked her deepest childish questions of her 
 grandmother. 
 
 "Will somebody love me, grandmother?" 
 
 " Many people love you, child. We all love you." 
 
 " But when I am grown up, will somebody love me ? " 
 
 "Yes, some man will love you, child, because it's your 
 nature. And I hope it will be somebody who will love you 
 for what you are, and not for what he wants of you. But 
 we have a right to what we want." 
 
 Ursula was frightened, hearing these things. Her heart 
 sank, she felt she had no ground under her feet. She clung 
 to her grandmother. Here was peace and security. Here, 
 from her grandmother's peaceful room, the door opened on to 
 the greater space, the past, which was so big, that all it con- 
 tained seemed tiny; loves and births and deaths, tiny units 
 and features within a vast horizon. That was a great relief, 
 to know the tiny importance of the individual, within the 
 great past. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE WIDENING CIRCLE 
 
 IT was very burdensome to Ursula, that she was the eldest 
 of the family. By the time she was eleven, she had to 
 take to school Gudrun and Theresa and Catherine. The 
 boy, William, always called Billy, so that he should not 
 be confused with his father, was a lovable, rather delicate 
 child of three, so he stayed at home as yet. There was an- 
 other baby girl, called Cassandra. 
 
 The children went for a time to the little church school just 
 near the Marsh. It was the only place within reach, and 
 being so small, Mrs. Brangwen felt safe in sending her chil- 
 dren there, though the village boys did nickname Ursula 
 " Urtler," and Gudrun " Good-runner," and Theresa " Tea- 
 pot." 
 
 Gudrun and Ursula were co-mates. The second child, with 
 her long, sleepy body and her endless chain of fancies, would 
 have nothing to do with realities. She was not for them, she 
 was for her own fancies. Ursula was the one for realities. 
 So Gudrun left all such to her elder sister, and trusted in her 
 implicitly, indifferently. Ursula had a great tenderness for 
 her co-mate sister. 
 
 It was no good trying to make Gudrun responsible. She 
 floated along like a fish in the sea, perfect within the medium 
 of her own difference and being. Other existence did not 
 trouble her. Only she believed in Ursula, and trusted to 
 Ursula. 
 
 The eldest child was very much fretted by her responsibility 
 for the other young ones. Especially Theresa, a sturdy, bold- 
 eyed thing, had a faculty for warfare. 
 
 " Our Ursula, Billy Pillins has lugged my hair." 
 
 " What did you say to him ? " 
 
 " I said nothing." 
 
 Then the Brangwen girls were in for a feud with the Pil- 
 linses, or Phillipses. 
 
 "You won't pull my hair again, Billy Pillins," said The- 
 
 245 
 
46 THE RAINBOW 
 
 resa, walking with her sisters, and looking superbly at the 
 freckled, red-haired boy. 
 
 "Why shan't I?" retorted Billy Pillins. 
 
 "You won't because you dursn't," said the tiresome The- 
 resa. 
 
 " You come here then, Tea-pot, an' see if I dursna." 
 
 Up marched Tea-pot, and immediately Billy Pillins lugged 
 her black, snaky locks. In a rage she flew at him. Imme- 
 diately in rushed Ursula and Gudrun, and little Katie, in 
 clashed the other Phillipses, Clem and Walter, and Eddie 
 Anthony. Then there was a fray. The Brangwen girls were 
 well-grown and stronger than many boys. But for pinafores 
 and long hair, they would have carried easy victories. They 
 went home, however, with hair lugged and pinafores torn. 
 It was a joy to the Phillips boys to rip the pinafores of the 
 Brangwen girls. 
 
 Then there was an outcry. Mrs. Brangwen would not have 
 it; no, she would not. All her innate dignity and stand- 
 offishness rose up. Then there was the vicar lecturing the 
 school. " It was a sad thing that the boys of Cossethay could 
 not behave more like gentlemen to the girls of Cossethay. 
 Indeed, what kind of boy was it that should set upon a girl, 
 and kick her, and beat her, and tear her pinafore? That 
 boy deserved severe castigation, and the name of coward, for 
 no boy who was not a coward etc., etc." 
 
 Meanwhile much hang-dog fury in the Pillinses' hearts, 
 much virtue in the Brangwen girls', particularly in Theresa's. 
 And the feud continued, with periods of extraordinary amity, 
 when Ursula was Clem Phillips's sweetheart, and Gudrun was 
 Walter's, and Theresa was Billy's, and even the tiny Katie 
 had to be Eddie Ant'ny's sweetheart. There was the closest 
 union. At every possible moment the little gang of Brang- 
 wens and Phillipses flew together. Yet neither Ursula nor 
 Gudrun could have any real intimacy with the Phillips boys. 
 It was a sort of fiction to them, this alliance and this dubbing 
 of sweethearts. 
 
 Again Mrs. Brangwen rose up. 
 
 " Ursula, I will not have you raking the roads with lads, so 
 I tell you. Now stop it, and the rest will stop it." 
 
 How Ursula hated always to represent the little Brangwen 
 club. She could never be herself, no, she was always Ursula- 
 Gudrun-Theresa-Catherine and later even Billy was added 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 247 
 
 on to her. Moreover, she did not want the Phillipses either. 
 She was out of taste with them. 
 
 However, the Brangwen-Pillins coalition readily broke 
 down, owing to the unfair superiority of the Brangwens. The 
 Brangwens were rich. They had free access to the Marsh 
 Farm. The school teachers were almost respectful to the 
 girls, the vicar spoke to them on equal terms. The Brangwen 
 girls presumed, they tossed their heads. 
 
 " You're not ivrybody, Urtler Brangwin, ugly-mug," said 
 Clem Phillips, his face going very red. 
 
 " I'm better than you, for all that," retorted Urtler. 
 
 " You think you are wi' a face like that Ugly Mug, 
 Urtler Brangwin/' he began to jeer, trying to set all the others 
 in cry against her. Then there was hostility again. How 
 she hated their jeering. She became cold against the Phil- 
 lipses. Ursula was very proud in her family. The Brang- 
 wen girls had all a curious blind dignity, even a kind of nobil- 
 ity in their bearing. By some result of breed and upbringing, 
 they seemed to rush along their own lives without caring that 
 they existed to other people. Never from the start did it 
 occur to Ursula that other people might hold a low opinion of 
 her. She thought that whosoever knew her, knew she was 
 enough and accepted her as such. She thought it was a world 
 of people like herself. She suffered bitterly if she were forced 
 to have a low opinion of any person, and she never forgave 
 that person. 
 
 This was maddening to many little people. All their lives, 
 the Brangwens were meeting folk who tried to pull them down 
 to make them seem little. Curiously, the mother was aware 
 of what would happen, and was always ready to give her chil- 
 dren the advantage of the move. 
 
 When Ursula was twelve, and the common school and the 
 companionship of the village children, niggardly and begrudg- 
 ing, was beginning to affect her, Anna sent her with Gudrun 
 to the Grammar School in Nottingham. This was a great re- 
 lease for Ursula. She had a passionate craving to escape from 
 the belittling circumstances of life, the little jealousies, the 
 little differences, the little meannesses. It was a torture to 
 her that the Phillipses were poorer and meaner than herself, 
 that they used mean little reservations, took petty little advan- 
 tages. She wanted to be with her equals : but not by diminish- 
 ing herself. She did want Clem Phillips to be her equal. 
 
RAINBOW 
 
 But by some puzzling, painful fate or other, when he was 
 really there with her, he produced in her a tight feeling in 
 the head. She wanted to beat her forehead, to escape. 
 
 Then she found that the way to escape was easy. One 
 departed from the whole circumstance. One went away to 
 the Grammar School, and left the little school, the meagre 
 teachers, the Phillipses whom she had tried to love but who 
 had made her fail, and whom she could not forgive. She had 
 an instinctive fear of petty people, as a deer is afraid of dogs. 
 Because she was blind, she could not calculate nor estimate 
 people. She must think that everybody was just like herself. 
 
 She measured by the standard of her own people : her father 
 and mother, her grandmother, her uncles. Her beloved father, 
 so utterly simple in his demeanour, yet with his strong, dark 
 soul fixed like a root in unexpressed depths that fascinated and 
 terrified her: her mother, so strangely free of all money and 
 convention and fear, entirely indifferent to the world, standing 
 by herself, without connection: her grandmother, who had 
 come from so far and was centred in so wide an horizon : peo- 
 ple must come up to these standards before they could be 
 Ursula's people. 
 
 So even as a girl of twelve she was glad to burst the narrow 
 boundary of Cossethay, where only limited people lived. Out- 
 side, was all vastness, and a throng of real, proud people whom 
 she would love. 
 
 Going to school by train, she must leave home at a quarter 
 to eight in the morning, and she did not arrive again till half- 
 past five at evening. Of this she was glad, for the house was 
 small and overful. It was a storm of movement, whence there 
 had been no escape. She hated so much being in charge. 
 
 The house was a storm of movement. The children were 
 healthy and turbulent, the mother only wanted their animal 
 well-being. To Ursula, as she grew a little older, it became 
 a nightmare. When she saw, later, a Eubens picture with 
 storms of naked babies, and found this was called " Fecund- 
 ity," she shuddered, and the world became abhorrent to her. 
 She knew as a child what it was to live amidst storms of 
 babies, in the heat and swelter of fecundity. And as a child, 
 she was against her mother, passionately against her mother, 
 she craved for some spirituality and stateliness. 
 
 In bad weather, home was a bedlam. Children dashed in 
 and out of the rain, to the puddles under the dismal yew-trees, 
 across the wet flagstones of the kitchen, whilst the cleaning- 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 
 
 woman grumbled and scolded ; children were swarming on the 
 sofa, children were kicking the piano in the parlour, to make 
 it sound like a beehive, children were rolling on the hearthrug, 
 legs in air, pulling a book in two between them, children, 
 fiendish, ubiquitous, were stealing upstairs to find out where 
 our Ursula was, whispering at bedroom doors, hanging on the 
 latch, calling mysteriously, "Ursula! Ursula!" to the girl 
 who had locked herself in to read. And it was hopeless. The 
 locked door excited their sense of mystery, she had to open to 
 dispel the lure. These children hung on to her with round- 
 eyed, excited questions. 
 
 The mother flourished amid all this. 
 
 " Better have them noisy than ill," she said. 
 
 But the growing girls, in turn, suffered bitterly. Ursula 
 was just coming to the stage when Andersen and Grimm were 
 being left behind for the " Idylls of the King " and romantic 
 love-stories. 
 
 " Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, 
 Elaine the lily maid of Astolat, 
 High in her chamber in a tower to the east 
 Guarded the sacred shield of Launcelot." 
 
 How she loved it! How she leaned in her bedroom window 
 with her black, rough hair on her shoulders, and her warm 
 face all rapt, and gazed across at the churchyard and the little 
 church, which was a turretted castle, whence Launcelot would 
 ride just now, would wave to her as he rode by, his scarlet 
 cloak passing behind the dark yew-trees and between the open 
 space : whilst she, ah, she, would remain the lonely maid high 
 up and isolated in the tower, polishing the terrible shield, 
 weaving it a covering with a true device, and waiting, waiting, 
 always remote and high. 
 
 At which point there would be a faint scuffle on the stairs, 
 a light-pitched whispering outside the door, and a creaking 
 of the latch: then Billy, excited, whispering: 
 
 "It's locked it's locked." 
 
 Then the knocking, kicking at the door with childish knees, 
 and the urgent, childish : 
 
 " Ursula our Ursula ? Ursula ? Eh, our Ursula ? " 
 
 No reply. 
 
 " Ursula ! Eh our Ursula ? " the name was shouted now. 
 Still no answer. 
 
 " Mother, she won't answer," came the yell. " She's dead." 
 
250 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Go away I'm not dead. What do you want ? " came the 
 angry voice of the girl. 
 
 " Open the door, our Ursula," came the complaining cry. 
 It was all over. She must open the door. She heard the 
 screech of the bucket downstairs dragged across the flagstones 
 as the woman washed the kitchen floor. And the children 
 were prowling in the bedroom, asking : 
 
 "What were you doing? What had you locked the door 
 for ? " Then she discovered the key of the parish room, and 
 betook herself there, and sat on some sacks with her books. 
 There began another dream. 
 
 She was the only daughter of the old lord, she was gifted 
 with magic. Day followed day of rapt silence, whilst she wan- 
 dered ghostlike in the hushed, ancient mansion, or flitted 
 along the sleeping terraces. 
 
 Here a grave grief attacked her: that her hair was dark. 
 She must have fair hair and a white skin. She was rather 
 bitter about her black mane. 
 
 Never mind, she would dye it when she grew up, or bleach 
 it in the sun, till it was bleached fair. Meanwhile she wore 
 a fair white coif of pure Venetian lace. 
 
 She flitted silently along the terraces, where jewelled lizards 
 basked -upon the stone, and did not move when her shadow 
 fell upon them. In the utter stillness she heard the tinkle of 
 the fountain, and smelled the roses whose blossoms hung rich 
 and motionless. So she drifted, drifted on the wistful feet 
 of beauty, past the water and the swans, to the noble park, 
 where, underneath a great oak, a doe all dappled lay with her 
 four fine feet together, her fawn nestling sun-coloured beside 
 her. 
 
 Oh, and this doe was her familiar. It would talk to her, 
 because she was a magician, it would tell her stories as if the 
 sunshine spoke. 
 
 Then one day, she left the door of the parish room un- 
 locked, careless and unheeding as she always was ; the children 
 found their way in, Katie cut her finger and howled, Billy 
 hacked notches in the fine chisels, and did much damage. 
 There was a great commotion. 
 
 The crossness of the mother was soon finished. Ursula 
 locked up the room again, and considered all was over. Then 
 her father came in with the notched tools, his forehead 
 knotted. 
 
 " Who the deuce opened the door ? " he cried in anger. 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 251] 
 
 "It was Ursula who opened the door," said the mother. 
 He had a duster in his hand. He turned and flapped the 
 cloth hard across the girl's face. The cloth stung, for a mo- 
 ment the girl was as if stunned. Then she remained motion- 
 less, her face closed and stubborn. But her heart was blazing. 
 In spite of herself the tears surged higher, in spite of her they 
 surged higher. 
 
 In spite of her, her face broke, she made a curious gulping 
 grimace, and the tears were falling. So she went away, deso- 
 late. But her blazing heart was fierce and unyielding. He 
 watched her go, and a pleasurable pain filled him, a sense of 
 triumph and easy power, followed immediately by acute pity. 
 
 " I'm sure that was unnecessary to hit the girl across the 
 face/' said the mother coldly. 
 
 " A flip with the duster won't hurt her," he said. 
 
 " NOT will it do her any good." 
 
 For days, for weeks, Ursula's heart burned from this rebuff. 
 She felt so cruelly vulnerable. Did he not know how vulner- 
 able she was, how exposed and wincing? He, of all people, 
 knew. And he wanted to do this to her. He wanted to hurt 
 her right through her closest sensitiveness, he wanted to treat 
 her with shame, to maim her with insult. 
 
 Her heart burnt in isolation, like a watchfire lighted. She 
 did not forget, she did not forget, she never forgot. When 
 she returned to her love for her father, the seed of mistrust 
 and defiance burned unquenched, though covered up far from 
 sight. She no longer belonged to him unquestioned. Slowly, 
 slowly, the fire of mistrust and defiance burned in her, burned 
 away her connection with him. 
 
 She ran a good deal alone, having a passion for all moving, 
 active things. She loved the little brooks. Wherever she 
 found a little running water, she was happy. It seemed to 
 make her run and sing in spirit along with it. She could sit 
 for hours by a brook or stream, on the roots of the alders, and 
 watch the water hasten dancing over the stones, or among 
 the twigs of a fallen branch. Sometimes, little fish vanished 
 before they had become real, like hallucinations, sometimes 
 wagtails ran by the water's brink, sometimes other little birds 
 came to drink. She saw a kingfisher darting blue and then 
 she was very happy. The kingfisher was the key to the magic 
 world: he was witness of the order of enchantment. 
 
 But she must move out of the intricately woven illusion of 
 her life: the illusion of a father whose life was an Odyssey 
 
252 THE RAINBOW 
 
 in an outer world ; the illusion of her grandmother, of realities 
 so shadowy and far-off that they became as mystic symbols : 
 peasant-girls with wreaths of blue flowers in their hair, the 
 sledges and the depth of winter; the dark-bearded young 
 grandfather, marriage and war and death ; then the multitude 
 of illusions concerning herself, how she was truly a princess 
 of Poland, how in England she was under a spell, she was not 
 really this Ursula Brangwen ; then the mirage of her reading : 
 out of the multicoloured illusion of this her life, she must 
 move on, to the Grammar School in Nottingham. 
 
 She was shy, and she suffered. For one thing, she bit her 
 nails, and had a cruel consciousness in her finger-tips, a shame, 
 an exposure. Out of all proportion, this shame haunted her. 
 She spent hours of torture, conjuring how she might keep her 
 gloves on: if she might say her hands were scalded, if she 
 might seem to forget to take off her gloves. 
 
 For she was going to inherit her own estate, when she went 
 to the High School. There, each girl was a lady. There, 
 she was going to walk among free souls, her co-mates and 
 her equals, and all petty things would be put away. Ah, if 
 only she did not bite her nails! If only she had not this 
 blemish! She wanted so much to be perfect without spot 
 or blemish, living the high, noble life. 
 
 It was a grief to her that her father made such a poor 
 introduction. He was brief as ever, like a boy saying his 
 errand, and his clothes looked ill-fitting and casual. Whereas 
 Ursula would have liked robes and a ceremonial of introduc- 
 tion to this, her new estate. 
 
 She made a new illusion of school. Miss Grey, the head- 
 mistress, had a certain silvery, school-mistressy beauty of 
 character. The school itself had been a gentleman's house. 
 Dark, sombre lawns separated it from the dark, select avenue. 
 But its rooms were large and of good appearance, and from 
 the back, one looked over lawns and shrubbery, over the trees 
 and the grassy slope of the Arboretum, to the town which 
 heaped the hollow with its roofs and cupolas and its shadows. 
 
 So Ursula seated herself upon the hill of learning, looking 
 down on the smoke and confusion and the manufacturing, en- 
 grossed activity of the town. She was happy. Up here, in 
 the Grammar School, she fancied the air was finer, beyond the 
 factory smoke. She wanted to learn Latin and Greek and 
 French and mathematics. She trembled like a postulant 
 when she wrote the Greek alphabet for the first time. 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 253 
 
 She was upon another hill-slope, whose summit she had not 
 scaled. There was always the marvellous eagerness in her 
 heart, to climb and to see beyond. A Latin verb was virgin 
 soil to her : she sniffed a new odour in it ; it meant something, 
 though she did not know what it meant. But she gathered it 
 up : it was significant. When she knew that : 
 x *_y*=(x + y) (x-y) 
 
 then she felt that she had grasped something, that she was 
 liberated into an intoxicating air, rare and unconditioned. 
 And she was very glad as she wrote her French exercise: 
 
 " J'ai donne le pain a mon petit f rere." 
 
 In all these things there was the sound of a bugle to her 
 heart, exhilarating, summoning her to perfect places. She 
 never forgot her brown " Longman's First French Grammar," 
 nor her " Via Latina " with its red edges, nor her little grey 
 Algebra book. There was always a magic in them. 
 
 At learning she was quick, intelligent, instinctive, but she 
 was not "thorough." If a thing did not come to her in- 
 stinctively, she could not learn it. And then, her mad rage 
 of loathing for all lessons, her bitter contempt of all teachers 
 and schoolmistresses, her recoil to a fierce, animal arrogance 
 made her detestable. 
 
 She was a free, unabateable animal, she declared in her re- 
 volts: there was no law for her, nor any rule. She existed 
 for herself alone. Then ensued a long struggle with every- 
 body, in which she broke down at last, when she had run the 
 full length of her resistance, and sobbed her heart out, deso- 
 late; and afterwards, in a chastened, washed-out, bodiless 
 state, she received the understanding that would not come 
 before, and went her way sadder and wiser. 
 
 Ursula and Gudrun went to school together. Gudrun was 
 a shy, quiet, wild creature, a thin slip of a thing hanging 
 back from notice or twisting past to disappear into her own 
 world again. She seemed to avoid all contact, instinctively, 
 and pursued her own intent way, pursuing half-formed fancies 
 that had no relation to any one else. 
 
 She was not clever at all. She thought Ursula clever 
 enough for two. Ursula understood, so why should she, 
 Gudrun, bother herself? The younger girl lived her reli- 
 gious, responsible life in her sister, by proxy. For herself, 
 she was indifferent and intent as a wild animal, and as irre- 
 sponsible. 
 
 When she found herself at the bottom of the class, sh$ 
 
254 THE RAINBOW 
 
 laughed, lazily, and was content, saying she was safe now. 
 She did not mind her father's chagrin nor her mother's tinge 
 of mortification. 
 
 "What do I pay for you to go to Nottingham for?" her 
 father asked, exasperated. 
 
 "Well, Dad, you know you needn't pay for me/' she re- 
 plied, nonchalant. " I'm ready to stop at home." 
 
 She was happy at home, Ursula was not. Slii% and un- 
 willing abroad, Gudrun was easy in her own house as a wild 
 thing in its lair. Whereas Ursula, attentive and keen abroad, 
 at home was reluctant, uneasy, unwilling to be herself, or 
 unable. 
 
 Nevertheless, Sunday remained the maximum day of the 
 week for both. Ursula turned passionately to it, to the sense 
 of eternal security it gave. She suffered anguish of fears 
 during the week-days, for she felt strong powers that would 
 not recognize her. There was upon her always a fear and a 
 dislike of authority. She felt she could always do as she 
 wanted if she managed to avoid a battle with Authority and 
 the authorized Powers. But if she gave herself away, she 
 would be lost, destroyed. There was always the menace 
 against her. 
 
 This strange sense of cruelty and ugliness always imminent, 
 ready to seize hold upon her, this feeling of the grudging 
 power of the mob lying in wait for her, who was the excep- 
 tion, formed one of the deepest influences of her life. Wher- 
 ever she was, at school, among friends, in the street, in the 
 train, she instinctively abated herself, made herself smaller, 
 feigned to be less than she was, for fear that her undiscovered 
 self should be seen, pounced upon, attacked by brutish resent- 
 ment of the commonplace, the average Self. 
 
 She was fairly safe at school, now. She knew how to take 
 her place there, and how much of herself to reserve. But 
 she was free only on Sundays. When she was but a girl of 
 fourteen, she began to feel a resentment growing against her 
 in her own home. She knew she was the disturbing influence 
 there. But as yet, on Sundays, she was free, really free, free 
 to be herself, without fear or misgiving. 
 
 Even at its stormiest, Sunday was a blessed day. Ursula 
 woke to it with a feeling of immense relief. She wondered 
 why her heart was so light. Then she remembered it was 
 Sunday. A gladness seemed to burst put around her, a feelr 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 255 
 
 ing of great freedom. The whole world was for twenty-four 
 hours revoked, put back. Only the Sunday world existed. 
 
 She loved the very confusion of the household. It was 
 lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon 
 after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, 
 announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding 
 of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, 
 scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, 
 flossy hair all clean from the Saturday's night bathing, their 
 souls excited by their bodies' cleanliness. 
 
 As the house began to teem with rushing, half-naked clean 
 children, one of the parents rose, either the mother, easy and 
 slatternly, with her thick, dark hair loosely coiled and slipping 
 over one ear, or the father, warm and comfortable, with ruf- 
 fled black hair and shirt unbuttoned at the neck. 
 
 Then the girls upstairs heard the continual : 
 
 "Now then, Billy, what are you up to?" in the father's 
 strong, vibrating voice : or the mother's dignified : 
 
 " I have said, Cassie, I will not have it." 
 
 It was amazing how the father's voice could ring out like 
 a gong, without his being in the least moved, and how the 
 mother could speak like a queen holding an audience, though 
 her blouse was sticking out all round and her hair was not 
 fastened up and the children were yelling a pandemonium. 
 
 Gradually breakfast was produced, and the elder girls came 
 down into the babel, whilst half-naked children flitted round 
 like the wrong ends of cherubs, as Gudrun said, watching the 
 bare little legs and the chubby tails appearing and disap- 
 pearing. 
 
 Gradually the young ones were captured, and nightdresses 
 finally removed, ready for the clean Sunday shirt. But be- 
 fore the Sunday shirt was slipped over the fleecy head, away 
 darted the naked body, to wallow in the sheepskin which 
 formed the parlour rug, whilst the mother walked after, pro- 
 testing sharply, holding the shirt like a noose, and the fa- 
 ther's bronze voice rang out, and the naked child wallowing 
 on its back in the deep sheepskin announced gleefully: 
 
 " I'm hading in the sea, mother." 
 
 " Why should I walk after you with your shirt ? " said the 
 mother. " Get up now." 
 
 "I'm bading in the sea, mother/' repeated the wallowing, 
 naked figure, 
 
256 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "We say bathing, not hading," said the mother, with her 
 strange, indifferent dignity. " I am waiting here with your 
 shirt." 
 
 At length shirts were on, and stockings were paired, and 
 little trousers buttoned and little petticoats tied behind. The 
 besetting cowardice of the family was its shirking of the 
 garter question. 
 
 "Where are your garters, Cassie?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Well, look for them." 
 
 But not one of the elder Brangwens would really face the 
 situation. After Cassie had grovelled under all the furniture 
 and blacked up all her Sunday cleanliness, to the infinite grief 
 of everybody, the garter was forgotten in the new washing of 
 the young face and hands. 
 
 Later, Ursula would be indignant to see Miss Cassie march- 
 ing into church from Sunday school with her stocking sluth- 
 ered down to her ankle, and a grubby knee showing. 
 
 " It's disgraceful ! " cried Ursula at dinner. "People will 
 think we're pigs, and the children are never washed." 
 
 "Never mind what people think," said the mother su- 
 perbly. "I see that the child is bathed properly, and if I 
 satisfy myself I satisfy everybody. She can't keep her stock- 
 ing up and no garter, and it isn't the child's fault she was let 
 to go without one." 
 
 The garter trouble continued in varying degrees, but till 
 each child wore long skirts or long trousers, it was not re- 
 moved. 
 
 On this day of decorum, the Brangwen family went to 
 church by the high-road, making a detour outside all the gar- 
 den-hedge, rather than climb the wall into the churchyard. 
 There was no law of this, from the parents. The children 
 themselves were the wardens of the Sabbath decency, very 
 jealous and instant with each other. 
 
 It came to be, gradually, that after church on Sundays the 
 house was really something of a sanctuary, with peace breath- 
 ing like a strange bird alighted in the rooms. Indoors, only 
 reading and tale-telling and quiet pursuits, such as drawing, 
 were allowed. Out of doors, all playing was to be carried on 
 unobtrusively. If there were noise, yelling and shouting, then 
 some fierce spirit woke up in the father and the elder children, 
 so that the younger were subdued, afraid of being excommuni- 
 cated. 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 257 
 
 The children themselves preserved the Sabbath. If Ursula 
 in her vanity sang: 
 
 "II 6tait im' bergfcre 
 Et ron-ron-ron petit patapon," 
 
 Theresa was sure to cry: 
 
 " That's not a Sunday song, our Ursula." 
 
 "You don't know," replied Ursula, superior. Neverthe- 
 less, she wavered. And her song faded down before she came 
 to the end. 
 
 Because, though she did not know it, her Sunday was very 
 precious to her. She found herself in a strange, undefined 
 place, where her spirit could wander in dreams, unassailed. 
 
 The white-robed spirit of Christ passed between olive trees. 
 It was a vision, not a reality. And she herself partook of the 
 visionary being. There was the voice in the night calling, 
 " Samuel, Samuel ! " And still the voice called in the night. 
 But not this night, nor last night, but in the unfathomed 
 night of Sunday, of the Sabbath silence. 
 
 There was Sin, the serpent, in whom was also wisdom. 
 There was Judas with the money and the kiss. 
 
 But there was no actual Sin. If Ursula slapped Theresa 
 across the face, even on a Sunday, that was not Sin, the ever- 
 lasting. It was misbehaviour. If Billy played truant from 
 Sunday school, he was bad, he was wicked, but he was not a 
 Sinner. 
 
 Sin was absolute and everlasting: wickedness and badness 
 were temporary and relative. When Billy, catching up the 
 local jargon, called Cassie a "sinner," everybody detested 
 him. Yet when there came to the Marsh a flippetty-floppetty 
 fox-hound puppy, he was mischievously christened " Sinner." 
 
 The Brangwens shrank from applying their religion to their 
 own immediate actions. They wanted the sense of the eter- 
 nal and immortal, not a list of rules for everyday conduct. 
 Therefore they were badly-behaved children, headstrong and 
 arrogant, though their feelings were generous. They had, 
 moreover intolerable to their ordinary neighbours a 
 proud gesture, that did not fit with the jealous idea of the 
 democratic Christian. So that they were always extraordi- 
 nary, outside of the ordinary. 
 
 How bitterly Ursula resented her first acquaintance with 
 evangelical teachings. She got a peculiar thrill from the 
 application of salvation to her own personal case. "Jesus 
 
258 THE RAINBOW 
 
 died for me, He suffered for me." There was a pride and a 
 thrill in it, followed almost immediately by a sense of dreari- 
 ness. Jesus with holes in His hands and feet: it was dis- 
 tasteful to her. The shadowy Jesus with the Stigmata: that 
 was her own vision. But Jesus the actual man, talking with 
 teeth and lips, telling one to put one's finger into His wounds, 
 like a villager gloating in his sores, repelled her. She was 
 enemy of those who insisted on the humanity of Christ. If 
 He were just a man, living in ordinary human life, then she 
 was indifferent. 
 
 But it was the jealousy of vulgar people which must insist 
 on the humanity of Christ. It was the vulgar mind which 
 would allow nothing extra-human, nothing beyond itself to 
 exist. It was the dirty, desecrating hands of the revivalists 
 which wanted to drag Jesus into this everyday life, to dress 
 Jesus up in trousers and frock coat, to compel Him to a 
 vulgar equality of footing. It was the impudent suburban 
 soul which would ask, " What would Jesus do, if he were in 
 my shoes?" 
 
 Against all this, the Brangwens stood at bay. If any one, 
 it was the mother who was caught by, or who was most care- 
 less of the vulgar clamour. She would have nothing extra- 
 human. She never really subscribed, all her life, to Brang- 
 weii's mystical passion. 
 
 But Ursula was with her father. As she became adolescent, 
 thirteen, fourteen, she set more and more against her mother's 
 practical indifference. To Ursula, there was something cal- 
 lous, almost wicked in her mother's attitude. What did Anna 
 Brangwen, in these years, care for God or Jesus or Angels? 
 She was the immediate life of to-day. Children were still 
 being born to her, she was throng with all the little activi- 
 ties of her family. And almost instinctively she resented her 
 husband's slavish service to the Church, his dark, subject 
 hankering to worship an unseen God. What did the unre- 
 vealed God matter, when a man had a young family that 
 needed fettling for? Let him attend to the immediate con- 
 cerns of his life, not go projecting himself towards the ulti- 
 mate. 
 
 But Ursula was all for the ultimate. She was always in 
 revolt against babies and muddled domesticity. To her Jesus 
 was another world, He was not of this world. He did not 
 thrust His hands under her face and, pointing to His wounds, 
 say: 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 
 
 " Look, Ursula Brangwen, I got these for your sake. Now 
 do as you're told." 
 
 To her, Jesus was beautifully remote, shining in the dis- 
 tance, like a white moon at sunset, a crescent moon beckoning 
 as it follows the sun, out of our ken. Sometimes dark clouds 
 standing very far off, pricking up into a clear yellow band of 
 sunset, of a winter evening, reminded her of Calvary, some- 
 times the full moon rising blood-red upon the hill terrified her 
 with the knowledge that Christ was now dead, hanging heavy 
 and dead on the Cross. 
 
 On Sundays, this visionary world came to pass. She heard 
 the long hush, she knew the marriage of dark and light was 
 taking place. In church, the Voice sounded, re-echoing not 
 from this world, as if the church itself were a shell that still 
 spoke the language of creation. 
 
 " The Sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were 
 fair : and they took them wives of all which they chose. 
 
 " And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with 
 Man, for that he also is flesh ; yet his days shall be an hundred 
 and twenty years. 
 
 "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also 
 after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters 
 of men, and they bare children unto them, the same became 
 mighty men which were of old, men of renown." 
 
 Over this Ursula was stirred as by a call from far off. In 
 those days, would not the Sons of God have found her fair, 
 would she not have been taken to wife by one of the Sons of 
 God ? It was a dream that frightened her, for she could not 
 understand it. 
 
 Who were the sons of God ? Was not Jesus the only begot- 
 ten Son? Was not Adam the only man created from God? 
 Yet there were men not begotten by Adam. Who were these, 
 and whence did they come ? They too must derive from God. 
 Had God many offspring, besides Adam and besides Jesus, 
 children whose origin the children of Adam cannot recognize ? 
 And perhaps these children, these sons of God, had known no 
 expulsion, no ignominy of the fall. 
 
 These came on free feet to the daughters of men, and saw 
 they were fair, and took them to wife, so that the women 
 conceived and brought forth men of renown. This was a 
 genuine fate. She moved about in the essential days, when 
 the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men. 
 
 Nor would any comparison of myths destroy her passion 
 
260 THE RAINBOW 
 
 in the knowledge. Jove had become a bull, or a man, in 
 order to love a mortal woman. He had begotten in her a 
 giant, a hero. 
 
 Very good, so he had, in Greece. For herself, she was no 
 Grecian woman. Not Jove nor Pan nor any of those gods, 
 not even Bacchus nor Apollo, could come to her. But the 
 Sons of God who took to wife the daughters of men, these 
 were such as should take her to wife. 
 
 She clung to the secret hope, the aspiration. She lived a 
 dual life, one where the facts of daily life encompassed every- 
 thing, being legion, and the other wherein the facts of daily 
 life were superseded by the eternal truth. So utterly did 
 she desire the Sons of God should come to the daughters 
 of men; and she believed more in her desire and its fulfil- 
 ment than in the obvious facts of life. The fact that a man 
 was a man, did not state his descent from Adam, did not 
 exclude that he was also one of the unhistoried, unaccount- 
 able Sons of God. As yet, she was confused, but not denied. 
 
 Again she heard the Voice : 
 
 " It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, 
 than for a rich man to enter into heaven." 
 
 But it was explained, the needle's eye was a little gateway 
 for foot passengers, through which the great, humped camel 
 with his load could not possibly squeeze himself: or per- 
 haps, at a great risk, if he were a little camel, he might get 
 through. For one could not absolutely exclude the rich man 
 from heaven, said the Sunday school teachers. 
 
 It pleased her also to know, that in the East one must use 
 hyperbole, or else remain unheard; because the Eastern man 
 must see a thing swelling to fill all heaven, or dwindled to a 
 mere nothing, before he is suitably impressed. She imme- 
 diately sympathized with this Eastern mind. 
 
 Yet the words continued to have a meaning that was un- 
 touched either by the knowledge of gateways or hyperboles. 
 The historical, or local, or psychological interest in the words 
 was another thing. There remained unaltered the inexplic- 
 able value of the saying. What was this relation between a 
 needle's eye, a rich man, and heaven ? What sort of a needle's 
 eye, what sort of a rich man, what sort of heaven? Who 
 knows ? It means the Absolute World, and can never be more 
 than half interpreted in terms of the relative world. 
 
 But must one apply the speech literally? Was her father 
 . rich man? Couldn't he get to heaven? Or was he only 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 
 
 a half-rich man? Or was he nearly a poor man? At any 
 rate, unless he gave everything away to the poor, he would 
 find it much harder to get to heaven. The needle's eye would 
 be too tight for him. She almost wished he were penniless 
 poor. If one were coming to the base of it, any man was 
 rich who was not as poor as the poorest. 
 
 She had her qualms, when in imagination she saw her father 
 giving away their piano and the two cows, and the capital 
 at the bank, to the labourers of the district, so that they, the 
 Brangwens, should be as poor as the Wherrys. And she did 
 not want it. She was impatient. 
 
 " Very well," she thought, " we'll forego that heaven, that's 
 all at any rate the needle's eye sort/' And she dismissed 
 the problem. She was not going to be as poor as the Wherrys, 
 not for all the sayings on earth the miserable squalid 
 Wherrys. 
 
 So she reverted to the non-literal application of the scrip- 
 tures. Her father very rarely read, but he had collected 
 many books of reproductions, and he would sit and look at, 
 these, curiously intent, like a child, yet with a passion that 
 was not childish. He loved the early Italian painters, but 
 particularly Giotto and Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi. The 
 great compositions cast a spell over him. How many times 
 had he turned to Raphael's "Dispute of the Sacrament" or 
 Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment" or the beautiful, compli- 
 cated renderings of the Adoration of the Magi, and always, 
 each time, he received the same gradual fulfilment of delight. 
 It had to do with the establishment of a whole mystical, 
 architectural conception which used the human figure as a 
 unit. Sometimes he had to hurry home, and go to the Fra 
 Angelico "Last Judgment." The pathway of open graves, 
 the huddled earth on either side, the seemly heaven arranged 
 above, the singing progress to paradise on the one hand, the 
 stuttering descent to hell on the other, completed and satisfied 
 him. He did not care whether or not he believed in devils or 
 angels. The whole conception gave him the deepest satisfac- 
 tion, and he wanted nothing more. 
 
 Ursula, accustomed to these pictures from her childhood, 
 hunted out their detail. She adored Fra Angelico's flowers 
 and light and angels, she liked the demons and enjoyed the 
 hell. But the representation of the encircled God, surrounded 
 by all the angels on high, suddenly bored her. The figure of 
 the Most High bored her, and roused her resentment. Was 
 
262 THE RAINBOW 
 
 this the culmination and the meaning of it all, this draped, null 
 figure ? The angels were so lovely, and the light so beautiful. 
 And only for this, to surround such a banality for God ! 
 
 She was dissatisfied, but not fit as yet to criticize. There 
 was yet so much to wonder over. Winter came, pine branches 
 were torn down in the snow, the green pine needles looked 
 rich upon the ground. There was the wonderful, starry, 
 straight track of a pheasant's footsteps across the snow im- 
 printed so clear ; there was the lobbing mark of the rabbit, two 
 holes abreast, two holes following behind; the hare shoved 
 deeper shafts, slanting, and his two hind feet came down to- 
 gether and made one large pit ; the cat podded little holes, and 
 birds made a lacy pattern. 
 
 Gradually there gathered the feeling of expectation. Christ- 
 mas was coming. In the shed, at nights, a secret candle was 
 burning, a sound of veiled voices was heard. The boys were 
 learning the old mystery play of St. George and Beelzebub. 
 Twice a week, by lamplight, there was choir practice in the 
 church, for the learning of old carols Brangwen wanted to hear. 
 The girls went to these practices. Everywhere was a sense of 
 mystery and rousedness. Everybody was preparing for some- 
 thing. 
 
 The time came near, the girls were decorating the church, 
 with cold fingers binding holly and fir and yew about the 
 pillars, till a new spirit was in the church, the stone broke 
 out into dark, rich leaf, the arches put forth their buds, and 
 cold flowers rose to blossom in the dim, mystic atmosphere. 
 Ursula must weave mistletoe over the door, and over the 
 screen, and hang a silver dove from a sprig of yew, till dusk 
 came down, and the church was like a grove. 
 
 In the cow-shed the boys were blacking their faces for a 
 dress-rehearsal; the turkey hung dead, with opened, speckled 
 wings, in the dairy. The time was come to make pies, in 
 readiness. 
 
 The expectation grew more tense. The star was risen into 
 the sky, the songs, the carols were ready to hail it. The star 
 was the sign in the sky. Earth too should give a sign. As 
 evening drew on, hearts beat fast with anticipation, hands 
 were full of ready gifts. There were the tremulously ex- 
 pectant words of the church service, the night was past and 
 the morning was come, the gifts were given and received, 
 joy and peace made a flapping of wings in each heart, there 
 was a great burst of carols, the Peace of the World had 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 263 
 
 dawned, strife had passed away, every hand was linked in 
 hand, every heart was singing. 
 
 It was bitter, though, that Christmas day, as it drew on to 
 evening, and night, became a sort of bank holiday, flat and 
 stale. The morning was so wonderful, but in the afternoon 
 and evening the ecstasy perished like a nipped thing, like a 
 bud in a false spring. Alas, that Christmas was only a do- 
 mestic feast, a feast of sweetmeats and toys ! Why did not the 
 grown-ups also change their everyday hearts, and give way to 
 ecstasy ? Where was the ecstasy ? 
 
 How passionately the Brangwens craved for it, the ecstasy. 
 The father was troubled, dark-faced and disconsolate, on 
 Christmas night, because the passion was not there, because 
 the day was become as every day, and hearts were not aflame. 
 Upon the mother was a kind of absentness, as ever, as if she 
 were exiled for all her life. Where was the fiery heart of 
 joy, now the coming was fulfilled; where was the star, the 
 Magi's transport, the thrill of new being that shook the earth ? 
 
 Still it was there, even if it were faint and inadequate. 
 The cycle of creation still wheeled in the Church year. After 
 Christmas, the ecstasy slowly sank and changed. Sunday fol- 
 lowed Sunday, trailing a fine movement, a finely developed 
 transformation over the heart of the family. The heart that 
 was big with joy, that had seen the star and had followed 
 to the inner walls of the Nativity, that there had swooned in 
 the great light, must now feel the light slowly withdrawing, 
 a shadow falling, darkening. The chill crept in, silence came 
 over the earth, and then all was darkness. The veil of the 
 temple was rent, each heart gave up the ghost, and sank dead. 
 
 They moved quietly, a little wanness on the lips of the 
 children, at Good Friday, feeling the shadow upon their hearts. 
 Then, pale with a deathly scent, came the lilies of resurrection, 
 that shone coldly till the Comforter was given. 
 
 But why the memory of the wounds and the death ? Surely 
 Christ rose with healed hands and feet, sound and strong and 
 glad ? Surely the passage of the cross and the tomb was for- 
 gotten ? But no always the memory of the wounds, always 
 the smell of grave-clothes? A small thing was Eesurrection, 
 compared with the Cross and the death, in this cycle. 
 
 So the children lived the year of Christianity, the epic of 
 the soul of mankind. Year by year the inner, unknown 
 drama went on in them, their hearts were born and came to 
 fulness, suffered on the cross, gave up the ghost, and rose 
 
THE HAINBOW 
 
 again to unnumbered days, untired, having at least this 
 rhythm of eternity in a ragged, inconsequential life. 
 
 But it was becoming a mechanical action now, this drama: 
 birth at Christmas for death at Good Friday. On Easter 
 Sunday the life-drama was as good as finished. For the 
 Resurrection was shadowy and overcome by the shadow of 
 death, the Ascension was scarce noticed, a mere confirmation 
 of death. 
 
 What was the hope and the fulfilment? Nay, was it all 
 only a useless after-death, a wan, bodiless after-death ? Alas, 
 and alas for the passion of the human heart, that must die so 
 long before the body was dead. 
 
 For from the grave, after the passion and the trial of 
 anguish, the body rose torn and chill and colourless. Did 
 not Christ say, " Mary ! " and when she turned with out- 
 stretched hands to him, did he not hasten to add, " Touch 
 me not; for I am not yet ascended to my father/' 
 
 Then how could the hands rejoice, or the heart be glad, 
 seeing themselves repulsed. Alas, for the resurrection of the 
 dead body! Alas, for the wavering, glimmering appearance 
 of the risen Christ. Alas, for the Ascension into heaven, 
 which is a shadow within death, a complete passing away. 
 
 Alas, that so soon the drama is over; that life is ended 
 at thirty-three; that the half of the year of the soul is cold 
 and historiless ! Alas, that a risen Christ has no place with us ! 
 Alas, that the memory of the passion of Sorrow and Death and 
 the Grave holds triumph over the pale fact of Resurrection! 
 
 But why? Why shall I not rise with my body whole and 
 perfect, shining with strong life? Why, when Mary says: 
 Rabboni, shall I not take her in my arms and kiss her and 
 hold her to my breast? Why is the risen body deadly, and 
 abhorrent with wounds ? 
 
 The Resurrection is to life, not to death. Shall I not see 
 those who have risen again walk here among men perfect in 
 body and spirit, whole and glad in the flesh, living in the 
 flesh, loving in the flesh, begetting children in the flesh, 
 arrived at last to wholeness, perfect without scar or blemish, 
 healthy without fear of ill-health? Is this not the period 
 of manhood and of joy and fulfilment, after the Resurrection ? 
 Who shall be shadowed by Death and the Cross, being risen, 
 and who shall fear the mystic, perfect flesh that belongs to 
 heaven ? 
 
 Can I not, then, walk this earth in gladness, being risen 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 265 
 
 from sorrow? Can I not eat with my brother happily, and 
 with joy kiss my beloved, after my resurrection, celebrate 
 my marriage in the flesh with feastings, go about my business 
 eagerly, in the joy of my fellows? Is heaven impatient for 
 me, and bitter against this earth, that I should hurry off, 
 or that I should linger pale and untouched? Is the flesh 
 which was crucified become as poison to the crowds in the 
 street, or is it as a strong gladness and hope to them, as the 
 first flower blossoming out of the earth's humus ? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FIRST LOVE 
 
 AS Ursula passed from girlhood towards womanhood, 
 gradually the cloud of self-responsibility gathered 
 upon her. She became aware of herself, that she 
 was a separate entity in the midst of an unseparated 
 obscurity, that she must go somewhere, she must become some- 
 thing. And she was afraid, troubled. Why, oh why must 
 one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing re- 
 sponsibility of living an undiscovered life ? Out of the noth- 
 ingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of 
 herself ! But what ? In the obscurity and pathlessness to 
 take a direction ! But whither ? How take even one step ? 
 And yet, how stand still ? This was torment indeed, to inherit 
 the responsibility of one's own life. 
 
 The religion which had been another world for her, a 
 glorious sort of play-world, where she lived, climbing the 
 tree with the short-statured man, walking shakily on the sea 
 like the disciple, breaking the bread into five thousand por- 
 tions, like the Lord, giving a great picnic to five thousand 
 people, now fell away from reality, and became a tale, a myth, 
 an illusion, which, however much one might assert it to be 
 true an historical fact, one knew was not true at least, for 
 this present-day life of ours. There could, within the limits 
 of this life we know, be no Feeding of the Five Thousand. 
 And the girl had come to the point where she held that that 
 which one cannot experience in daily life is not true for one- 
 self. 
 
 So, the old duality of life, wherein there had been a week- 
 day world of people and trains and duties and reports, and 
 besides that a Sunday world of absolute truth and living 
 mystery, of walking upon the waters and being blinded by the 
 face of the Lord, of following the pillar of cloud across the 
 desert and watching the bush that crackled yet did not burn 
 awav, this old, unquestioned duality suddenly was found to 
 
 266 
 
FIRST LOVE 267 
 
 be broken apart. The weekday world had triumphed over 
 the Sunday world. The Sunday world was not real, or at 
 least, not actual. And one lived by action. 
 
 Only the weekday world mattered. She herself, Ursula 
 Brangwen, must know how to take the weekday life. Her 
 body must be a weekday body, held in the world's estimate. 
 Her soul must have a weekday value, known according to 
 the world's knowledge. 
 
 Well, then, there was a weekday life to live, of action and 
 deeds. And so there was a necessity to choose one's action 
 and one's deeds. One was responsible to the world for what 
 one did. 
 
 Nay, one was more than responsible to the world. One 
 was responsible to oneself. There was some puzzling, tor- 
 menting residue of the Sunday world within her, some per- 
 sistent Sunday self, which insisted upon a relationship with 
 the now shed-away vision world. How could one keep up 
 a relationship with that which one denied? Her task was 
 now to learn the week-day life. 
 
 How to act, that was the question? Whither to go, how 
 to become oneself? One was not oneself, one was merely a 
 half -stated question. How to become oneself, how to know 
 the question and the answer of oneself, when one was merely 
 an unfixed something-nothing, blowing about like the winds 
 of heaven, undefined, unstated. 
 
 She turned to the visions, which had spoken far-off words 
 that ran along the blood like ripples of an unseen wind, she 
 heard the words again, she denied the vision, for she must be 
 a weekday person, to whom visions were not true, and she de- 
 manded only the weekday meaning of the words. 
 
 There were words spoken by the vision: and words must 
 have a weekday meaning, since words were weekday stuff. 
 Let them speak now: let them bespeak themselves in week- 
 day terms. The vision should translate itself into weekday 
 terms. 
 
 "Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor," she heard on 
 Sunday morning. That was plain enough, plain enough for 
 Monday morning too. As she went down the hill to the sta- 
 tion, going to school, she took the saying with her. 
 
 " Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor." 
 
 Did she want to do that? Did she want to sell her pearl- 
 backed brush and mirror, her silver candlestick, her pendant, 
 her lovely little necklace, and go dressed in drab like the 
 
268 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Wherrys: the unlovely uncombed Wherrys, who were the 
 "poor'" to her? She did not. 
 
 She walked this Monday morning on the verge of misery. 
 For she did want to do what was right. And she didn't want 
 to do what the gospels said. She didn't want to be poor 
 really poor. The thought was a horror to her: to live like 
 the Wherrys, so ugly, to be at the mercy of everybody. 
 
 " Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." 
 
 One could not do it in real life. How dreary and hopeless 
 it made her! 
 
 Nor could one turn the other cheek. Theresa slapped 
 Ursula on the face. Ursula, in a mood of Christian humility, 
 silently presented the other side of her face. Which Theresa, 
 in exasperation at the challenge, also hit. Whereupon Ursula, 
 with boiling heart, went meekly away. 
 
 But anger, and deep, writhing shame tortured her, so she 
 was not easy till she had again quarrelled with Theresa and 
 had almost shaken her sister's head off. 
 
 " That'll teach you" she said, grimly. 
 
 And she went away, unchristian but clean. 
 
 There was something unclean and degrading about this 
 humble side of Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted to 
 the other extreme. 
 
 "I hate the Wherrys, and I wish they were dead. Why 
 does my father leave us in the lurch like this, making us be 
 poor and insignificant? Why is he not more? If we had 
 a father as he ought to be, he would be Earl William Brang- 
 wen, and I should be the Lady Ursula? What right have 
 I to be poor ? crawling along the lane like vermin ? If I had 
 my rights I should be seated on horseback in a green riding- 
 habit, and my groom would be behind me. And I should stop 
 at the gates of the cottages, and enquire of the cottage woman 
 who came out with a child in her arms, how did her husband, 
 who had hurt his foot. And I would pat the flaxen head of 
 the child, stooping from my horse, and I would give her a 
 shilling from my purse, and order nourishing food to be sent 
 from the hall to the cottage." 
 
 So she rode in her pride. And sometimes, she dashed into 
 flames to rescue a forgotten child ; or she dived into the canal 
 locks and supported a boy who was seized with cramp ; or she 
 swept up a toddling infant from the feet of a runaway horse : 
 always imaginatively, of course. 
 
 But in the end there returned the poignant yearning from 
 
FIRST LOVE 269 
 
 the Sunday world. As she went down in the morning from 
 Cossethay and saw Ilkeston smoking blue and tender upon 
 its hill, then her heart surged with far-off words : 
 
 " Oh, Jerusalem Jerusalem how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens 
 under her wings, and ye would not " 
 
 The passion rose in her for Christ, for the gathering under 
 the wings of security and warmth. But how did it apply to 
 the weekday world? What could it mean, but that Christ 
 should clasp her to his breast, as a mother clasps her child? 
 And oh, for Christ, for him who could hold her to his breast 
 and lose her there. Oh, for the breast of man, where she 
 should have refuge and bliss for ever ! All her senses quivered 
 with passionate yearning. 
 
 Vaguely she knew that Christ meant something else: that 
 in the vision-world He spoke of Jerusalem, something that 
 did not exist in the everyday world. It was not houses and 
 factories He would hold in His bosom: nor householders nor 
 factory- workers nor poor people: but something that had no 
 part in the weekday world, nor seen nor touched with week- 
 day hands and eyes. 
 
 Yet she must have it in weekday terms she must. For 
 all her life was a weekday life, now, this was the whole. So 
 he must gather her body to his breast, that was strong with 
 a broad bone, and which sounded with the beating of the 
 heart, and which was warm with the life of which she par- 
 took, the life of the running blood. 
 
 So she craved for the breast of the Son of Man, to lie there. 
 And she was ashamed in her soul, ashamed. For whereas 
 Christ spoke for the Vision to answer, she answered from 
 the weekday fact. It was a betrayal, a transference of mean- 
 ing, from the vision world, to the matter-of-fact world. So 
 she was ashamed of her religious ecstasy, and dreaded lest any 
 one should see it. 
 
 Early in the year, when the lambs came, and shelters were 
 built of straw, and on her uncle's farm the men sat at night 
 with a lantern and a dog, then again there swept over her 
 this passionate confusion between the vision world and the 
 weekday world. Again she felt Jesus in the countryside. 
 Ah, he would lift up the lambs in his arms! Ah, and she 
 was the lamb. Again, in the morning, going down the lane, 
 she heard the ewe call, and the lambs came running, shaking 
 and twinkling with new-born bliss. And she saw them stoop- 
 
270 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ing, nuzzling, groping to the udder, to find the teats, whilst 
 the mother turned her head gravely and sniffed her own. 
 And they were sucking, vibrating with bliss on their little, 
 long legs, their throats stretched up, their new bodies quiver- 
 ing to the stream of blood-warm, loving milk. 
 
 Oh, and the bliss, the bliss ! She could scarcely tear her- 
 self away to go to school. The little noses nuzzling at the 
 udder, the little bodies so glad and sure, the little black legs, 
 crooked, the mother standing still, yielding herself to their 
 quivering attraction then the mother walked calmly away. 
 
 Jesus the vision world the everyday world all mixed 
 inextricably in a confusion of pain and bliss. It was almost 
 agony, the confusion, the inextricability. Jesus, the vision, 
 speaking to her, who was non-visionary! And she would" 
 take his words of the spirit and make them to pander to her 
 own carnality. 
 
 This was a shame to her. The confusing of the spirit world 
 with the material world, in her own soul, degraded her. She 
 answered the call of the spirit in terms of immediate, every- 
 day desire. 
 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, 
 and I will give you rest/' 
 
 It was the temporal answer she gave. She leapt with 
 sensuous yearning to respond to Christ. If she could go to 
 him really, and lay her head on his breast, to have comfort, 
 to be made much of, caressed like a child ! 
 
 All the time she walked in a confused heat of religious 
 yearning. She wanted Jesus to love her deliciously, to take 
 her sensuous offering, to give her sensuous response. For 
 weeks she went in a muse of enjoyment. 
 
 And all the time she knew underneath that she was play- 
 ing false, accepting the passion of Jesus for her own physical 
 satisfaction. But she was in such a daze, such a tangle. 
 How could she get free? 
 
 She hated herself, she wanted to trample on herself, destroy 
 herself. How could one become free? She hated religion, 
 because it lent itself to her confusion. She abused everything. 
 She wanted to become hard, indifferent, brutally callous to 
 everything but just the immediate need, the immediate satis- 
 faction. To have a yearning towards Jesus, only that she 
 might use him to pander to her own soft sensation, use him as 
 a means of re-acting upon herself, maddened her in the end. 
 
FIRST LOVE 271 
 
 There was then no Jesus, no sentimentality. With all the 
 bitter hatred of helplessness she hated sentimentality. 
 
 At this period came the young Skrebensky. She was nearly 
 sixteen years old, a slim, smouldering girl, deeply reticent, 
 yet lapsing into unreserved expansiveness now and then, when 
 she seemed to give away her whole soul, but when in fact 
 she only made another counterfeit of her soul for outward 
 presentation. She was sensitive in the extreme, always tor- 
 tured, always affecting a callous indifference to screen her- 
 self. 
 
 She was at this time a nuisance on the face of the earth, 
 with her spasmodic passion and her slumberous torment. 
 She seemed to go with all her soul in her hands, yearning, 
 to the other person. Yet all the while, deep at the bottom 
 of her was a childish antagonism of distrust. She thought 
 she loved everybody and believed in everybody. But be- 
 cause she could not love herself, nor believe in herself, she 
 mistrusted everybody with the mistrust of a serpent or a cap- 
 tured bird. Her starts of revulsion and hatred were more 
 inevitable than her impulses to love. 
 
 So she wrestled through her dark days of confusion, soul- 
 less, uncreated, unformed. 
 
 One evening, as she was studying in the parlour, her head 
 buried in her hands, she heard new voices in the kitchen speak- 
 ing. At once, from its apathy, her excitable spirit started and 
 strained to listen. It seemed to crouch, to lurk under cover, 
 tense, glaring forth unwilling to be seen. 
 
 There were two strange men's voices, one soft and candid, 
 veiled with soft candour, the other veiled with easy mobility, 
 running quickly. Ursula sat quite tense, shocked out of her 
 studies, lost. She listened all the time to the sound of the 
 voices, scarcely heeding the words. 
 
 The first speaker was her Uncle Tom. She knew the nai've 
 candour covering the girding and savage misery of his soul. 
 Who was the other speaker? Whose voice ran on so easy, 
 yet with an inflamed pulse? It seemed to hasten and urge 
 her forward, that other voice. 
 
 " I remember you," the young man's voice was saying. " I 
 remember you from the first time I saw you, because of your 
 dark eyes and fair face." 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen laughed, shy and pleased. 
 
 " You were a curly-headed little lad," she said. 
 
272 THE RAINBOW 
 
 "Was I? Yes, I know. They were very proud of my 
 curls." 
 
 And a laugh ran to silence. 
 
 "You were a very well-mannered lad, I remember," said 
 her father. 
 
 "Oh! did I ask you to stay the night? I always used 
 to ask people to stay the night. I believe it was rather try- 
 ing for my mother." 
 
 There was a general laugh. Ursula rose. She had to go. 
 
 At the click of the latch everybody looked round. The 
 girl hung in the doorway, seized with a moment's fierce con- 
 fusion. She was going to be good-looking. Now she had an 
 attractive gawkiness, as she hung a moment, not knowing 
 how to carry her shoulders. Her dark hair was tied behind, 
 her yellow-brown eyes shone without direction. Behind her, 
 in the parlour, was the soft light of a lamp upon open books. 
 
 A superficial readiness took her to her Uncle Tom, who 
 kissed her, greeting her with warmth, making a show of inti- 
 mate possession of her, and at the same time leaving evident 
 his own complete detachment. 
 
 But she wanted to turn to the stranger. He was standing 
 back a little, waiting. He was a young man with very clear 
 greyish eyes that waited until they were called upon, before 
 they took expression. 
 
 Something in his self-possessed waiting moved her, and 
 she broke into a confused, rather beautiful laugh as she gave 
 him her hand, catching her breath like an excited child. His 
 hand closed over hers very close, very near, he bowed, and 
 his eyes were watching her with some attention. She felt 
 proud her spirit leapt to life. 
 
 "You don't know Mr. Skrebensky, Ursula/' came her 
 Uncle Tom's intimate voice. She lifted her face with an 
 impulsive flash to the stranger, as if to declare a knowledge, 
 laughing her palpitating, excited laugh. 
 
 His eyes became confused with roused lights, his detached 
 attention changed to a readiness for her. He was a young 
 man of twenty-one, with a slender figure and soft brown hair 
 brushed up in the German fashion straight from his brow. 
 
 " Are you staying long? " she asked. 
 
 " I've got a month's leave," he said, glancing at Tom 
 Brangwen. " But I've various places I must go to put in 
 some time here and there." 
 
 He brought her a strong sense of the outer world. It was 
 
FIRST LOVE 273 
 
 as if she were set on a hill and could feel vaguely the whole 
 world lying spread before her. 
 
 " What have you a month's leave from ? " she asked. 
 
 " I'm in the Engineers in the Army." 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed, glad. 
 
 " We're taking you away from your studies," said her 
 Uncle Tom. 
 
 " Oh, no," she replied quickly. 
 
 Skrebensky laughed, young and inflammable. 
 
 " She won't wait to be taken away," said her father. But 
 that seemed clumsy. She wished he would leave her to say 
 her own things. 
 
 " Don't you like study ? " asked Skrebensky, turning to her, 
 putting the question from his own case. 
 
 " I like some things," said Ursula. " I like Latin and 
 French and grammar." 
 
 He watched her, and all his being seemed attentive to her, 
 then he shook his head. 
 
 " I don't," he said. " They say all the brains of the army 
 are in the Engineers. I think that's why I joined them 
 to get the credit of other people's brains." 
 
 He said this quizzically and with chagrin. And she be- 
 came alert to him. It interested her. Whether he had brains 
 or not, he was interesting. His directness attracted her, his 
 independent motion. She was aware of the movement of his 
 life over against her. 
 
 " I don't think brains matter," she said. 
 
 "What does matter then?" came her Uncle Tom's in- 
 timate, caressing, half-jeering voice. 
 
 She turned to him. 
 
 " It matters whether people have courage or not," she said. 
 
 " Courage for what? " asked her uncle. 
 
 " For everything." 
 
 Tom Brangwen gave a sharp little laugh. The mother 
 and father sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky 
 waited. She was speaking for him. 
 
 " Everything's nothing," laughed her uncle. 
 
 She disliked him at that moment. 
 
 " She doesn't practise what she preaches," said her father, 
 stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. 
 " She has courage for mighty little." 
 
 But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. 
 His face was irregular, almost ugly, fiattish, with a rather 
 
274 THE RAINBOW 
 
 thick nose. But his eyes were pellucid, strangely clear, his 
 brown hair was soft arid thick as silk, he had a slight mous- 
 tache. His skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Be- 
 side him, her Uncle Tom looked full-blown, her father seemed 
 uncouth. Yet he reminded her of her father, only he was 
 finer, and he seemed to be shining. And his face was almost 
 
 He seemed simply acquiescent in the fact of his own be- 
 ing, as if he were beyond any change or question. He was 
 himself. There was a sense of fatality about him that fasci- 
 nated her. He made no effort to prove himself to other peo- 
 ple. Let it be accepted for what it was, his own being. In 
 its isolation it made no excuse or explanation for itself. 
 
 So he seemed perfectly, even fatally established, he did 
 not ask to be rendered before he could exist, before he could 
 have relationship with another person. 
 
 This attracted Ursula very much. She was so used to 
 unsure people who took on a new being with every new in- 
 fluence. Her Uncle Tom was always more or less what the 
 other person would have him. In consequence, one never 
 knew the real Uncle Tom, only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux 
 with a more or less consistent appearance. 
 
 But, let Skrebensky do what he would, betray himself en- 
 tirely, he betrayed himself always upon his own responsi- 
 bility. He permitted no question about himself. He was 
 irrevocable in his isolation. 
 
 So Ursula thought him wonderful, he was so finely con- 
 stituted, and so distinct, self-contained, self-supporting. 
 This, she said to herself, was a gentleman, he had a nature 
 like fate, the nature of an aristocrat. 
 
 She laid hold of him at once for her dreams. Here was 
 one such as those Sons of God who saw the daughters of 
 men, that they were fair. He was no son of Adam. Adam 
 was servile. Had not Adam been driven cringing out of his 
 native place, had not the human race been a beggar ever 
 since,- seeking its own being? But Anton Skrebensky could 
 not beg. He was in possession of himself, of that, and no 
 more. Other people could not really give him anything nor 
 take anything from him. His soul stood alone. 
 
 She knew that her mother and father acknowledged him. 
 The house was changed. There had been a visit paid to the 
 house. Once three angels stood in Abraham's doorway, and 
 
FIRST LOVE 275 
 
 greeted him, and stayed and ate with him, leaving his house- 
 hold enriched for ever when they went. 
 
 The next day she went down to the Marsh according to 
 invitation. The two men were not come home. Then, look- 
 ing through the window, she saw the dogcart drive up, and 
 Skrebensky leapt down. She saw him draw himself together, 
 jump, laugh to her uncle, who was driving, then come to- 
 wards her to the house. He was so spontaneous and re- 
 vealed in his movements. He was isolated within his own 
 clear, fine atmosphere, and as still as if fated. 
 
 His resting in his own fate gave him an appearance of indo- 
 lence, almost of languor: he made no exuberant movement. 
 When he sat down, he seemed to go loose, languid. 
 
 " We are a little late," he said. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " 
 
 " We went to Derby to see a friend of my father's." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 It was an adventure to her to put direct questions and get 
 plain answers. She knew she might do it with this man. 
 
 "Why, he is a clergyman too he is my guardian one 
 of them." 
 
 Ursula knew that Skrebensky was an orphan. 
 
 " Where is really your home now ? " she asked. 
 
 " My home ? I wonder. I am very fond of my colonel 
 Colonel Hepburn : then there are my aunts : but my real home, 
 I suppose, is the army." 
 
 " Do you like being on your own ? " 
 
 His clear, greenish-grey eyes rested on her a moment, and, 
 as he considered, he did not see her. 
 
 " I suppose so," he said. " You see my father well, he 
 was never acclimatized here. He wanted I don't know 
 what he wanted but it was a strain. And my mother I 
 always knew she was too good to me. I could feel her being 
 too good to me my mother ! Then I went away to school 
 so early. And I must say, the outside world was always more 
 naturally a home to me than the vicarage I don't know 
 why." 
 
 " Do you feel like a bird blown out of its own latitude ? " 
 she asked, using a phrase she had met. 
 
 " No, no. I find everything very much as I like it." 
 
 He seemed more and more to give her a sense of the vast 
 world, a sense of distances and large masses of humanity. 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 It drew her as a scent draws a bee from afar. But also it hurt 
 her. 
 
 It was summer, and she wore cotton frocks. The third 
 time he saw her she had on a dress with fine blue-and-white 
 stripes, with a white collar, and a large white hat. It suited 
 her golden, warm complexion. 
 
 " I like you best in that dress," he said, standing with his 
 head slightly on one side, and appreciating her in a perceiv- 
 ing, critical fashion. 
 
 She was thrilled with a new life. For the first time she 
 was in love with a vision of herself: she saw as it were a 
 fine little reflection of herself in his eyes. And she must act 
 up to this: she must be beautiful. Her thoughts turned 
 swiftly to clothes, her passion was to make a beautiful appear- 
 ance. Her family looked on in amazement at the sudden 
 transformation of Ursula. She became elegant, really elegant, 
 in figured cotton frocks she made for herself, and hats she 
 bent to her fancy. An inspiration was upon her. 
 
 He sat with a sort of languor in her grandmother's rock- 
 ing-chair, rocking slowly, languidly, backward and forward, 
 as Ursula talked to him. 
 
 " You are not poor, are you ? " she said. 
 
 " Poor in money ? I have about a hundred and fifty a 
 year of my own so I am poor or rich, as you like. I am 
 poor enough, in fact.'* 
 
 " But you will earn money ? " 
 
 "I shall have my pay I have my pay now. I've got 
 my commission. That is another hundred and fifty." 
 
 " You will have more, though ? " 
 
 "I shan't have more than 200 a year for ten years to 
 come. I shall always be poor, if I have to live on my pay." 
 
 "Do you mind it?" 
 
 "Being poor? Not now not very much. I may later. 
 People the officers, are good to me. Colonel Hepburn has 
 a sort of fancy for me he is a rich man, I suppose." 
 
 A chill went over Ursula. Was he going to sell himself in 
 some way? 
 
 "Is Colonel Hepburn married?" 
 
 " Yes with two daughters." 
 
 But she was too proud at once to care whether Colonel 
 Hepburn's daughter wanted to marry him or not. 
 
 There came a silence. Gudrun entered, and Skrebensky 
 still rocked languidly on the chair. 
 
FlfcST LOVE 277 
 
 "You look very lazy," said Gudrun. 
 
 " I am lazy," he answered. 
 
 " You look really floppy," she said. 
 
 " I am floppy," he answered. 
 
 " Can't you stop ? " asked Gudrun. 
 
 " No it's the perpetuum mobile." 
 
 " You look as if you hadn't a bone in your body/' 
 
 " That's how I like to feel." 
 
 " I don't admire your taste." 
 
 " That's my misfortune." 
 
 And he rocked on. 
 
 Gudrun seated herself behind him, and as he rocked back, 
 she caught his hair between her finger and thumb, so that 
 it tugged him as he swung forward again. He took no 
 notice. There was only the sound of the rockers on the floor. 
 In silence, like a crab, Gudrun caught a strand of his hair 
 each time he rocked back. Ursula flushed, and sat in some 
 pain. She saw the irritation gathering on his brow. 
 
 At last he leapt up, suddenly, like a steel spring going off, 
 and stood on the hearthrug. 
 
 " Damn it, why can't I rock ? " he asked petulantly, fiercely. 
 
 Ursula loved him for his sudden, steel-like start out of the 
 languor. He stood on the hearthrug fuming, his eyes gleam- 
 ing with anger. 
 
 Gudrun laughed in her deep, mellow fashion. 
 
 " Men don't rock themselves," she said. 
 
 " Girls don't pull men's hair," he said. 
 
 Gudrun laughed again. 
 
 Ursula sat amused, but waiting. And he knew Ursula was 
 waiting for him. It roused his blood. He had to go to her, 
 to follow her call. 
 
 Once he drove her to Derby in the dog-cart. He belonged 
 to the horsey set of the sappers. They had lunch in an inn, 
 and went through the market, pleased with everything. He 
 bought her a copy of " Wuthering Heights " from a bookstall. 
 Then they found a little fair in progress and she said, 
 
 " My father used to take me in the swingboats." 
 
 " Did you like it? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, it was fine," she said. 
 
 " Would you like to go now ? " 
 
 " Love itj" she said, though she was afraid. But the pros- 
 pect of doing an unusual, exciting thing was attractive to her. 
 
 He went straight to the stand, paid the money, and helped 
 
27$ THE RAINBOW 
 
 her to mount. He seemed to ignore everything but just 
 what he was doing. Other people were mere objects of in- 
 difference to him. She would have liked to hang back, but 
 she was more ashamed to retreat from him than to expose 
 herself to the crowd or to dare the swingboat. His eyes 
 laughed, and standing before her with his sharp, sudden figure, 
 he set the boat swinging. She was not afraid, she was 
 thrilled. His colour flushed, his eyes shone with a roused 
 light, and she looked up at him, her face like a flower in the 
 sun, so bright and attractive. So they rushed through the 
 bright air, up at the sky as if flung from a catapult, then fall- 
 ing terribly back. She loved it. The motion seemed to fan 
 their blood to fire, they laughed, feeling like flames. 
 
 After the swingboats, they went on the roundabouts to 
 calm down, he twisting astride on his jerky wooden steed to- 
 wards her, and always seeming at his ease, enjoying himself. 
 A zest of antagonism to the convention made him fully him- 
 self. As they sat on the whirling carousal, with the music 
 grinding out, she was aware of the people on the earth out- 
 side, and it seemed that he and she were riding carelessly 
 over the faces of the crowd, riding forever buoyantly, proudly, 
 gallantly over the upturned faces of the crowd, moving on a 
 high level, spurning the common mass. 
 
 When they must descend and walk away, she was un- 
 happy, feeling like a giant suddenly cut down to ordinary 
 level, at the mercy of the mob. 
 
 They left the fair, to return for the dog-cart. Passing the 
 large church, Ursula must look in. But the whole interior 
 was filled with scaffolding, fallen stone and rubbish were 
 heaped on the floor, bits of plaster crunched underfoot, and 
 the place re-echoed to the calling of secular voices and to 
 blows of the hammer. 
 
 She had come to plunge in the utter gloom and peace for 
 a moment, bringing all her yearning, that had returned on 
 her uncontrolled after the reckless riding over the face of 
 the crowd, in the fair. After pride, she wanted comfort, 
 solace, for pride and scorn seemed to hurt her most of all. 
 
 And she found the immemorial gloom full of bits of falling 
 plaster, and dust of floating plaster, smelling of old lime, 
 having scaffolding and rubbish heaped about, dust cloths over 
 the altar. 
 
 " Let us sit down a minute/' she said. 
 
 They sat unnoticed in the back pew, in the gloom, and 
 
FIRST LOVE 279 
 
 she watched the dirty, disorderly work of bricklayers and 
 plasterers. Workmen in heavy boots walked grinding down 
 the aisles, calling out in a vulgar accent : 
 
 " Hi, mate, has them corner mouldin's come ? " 
 
 There were shouts of coarse answer from the roof of the 
 church. The place echoed desolate. 
 
 Skrebensky sat close to her. Everything seemed wonder- 
 ful, if dreadful, to her, the world tumbling into ruins, and 
 she and he clambering unhurt, lawless over the face of it all. 
 He sat close to her, touching her, and she was aware of his 
 influence upon her. But she was glad. It excited her to 
 feel the press of him upon her, as if his being were urging 
 her to something. 
 
 As they drove home, he sat near to her. And when he 
 swayed to the cart, he swayed in a voluptuous, lingering way, 
 against her, lingering as he swung away to recover balance. 
 Without speaking, he took her hand across, under the wrap, 
 and with his unseeing face lifted to the road, his soul intent, 
 he began with his one hand to unfasten the buttons of her 
 glove, to push back her glove from her hand, carefully laying 
 bare her hand. And the close-working, instinctive subtlety 
 of his fingers upon her hand sent the young girl mad with 
 voluptuous delight. His hand was so wonderful, intent as 
 a living creature skilfully pushing and manipulating in the 
 dark underworld, removing her glove and laying bare her 
 palm, her fingers. Then his hand closed over hers, so firm, 
 so close, as if the flesh knitted to one thing his hand and 
 hers. Meanwhile his face watched the road and the ears of 
 the horse, he drove with steady attention through the villages, 
 and she sat beside him, rapt, glowing, blinded with a new 
 light. Neither of them spoke. In outward attention they 
 were entirely separate. But between them was the com- 
 pact of his flesh with hers, in the hand-clasp. 
 
 Then, in a strange voice, affecting nonchalance and super- 
 ficiality he said to her : 
 
 " Sitting in the church there reminded me of Ingram." 
 
 "Who is Ingram?" she asked. 
 
 She also affected calm superficiality. But she knew that 
 something forbidden was coming. 
 
 " He is one of the other men with me down at Chatham 
 a subaltern but a year older than I am." 
 
 " And why did the church remind you of him ? " 
 
 " Well, he had a girl in Rochester, and they always sat in 
 
260 THE EAINBOW 
 
 a particular corner in the cathedral for their love-making." 
 
 " How nice ! " she cried, impulsively. 
 
 They misunderstood each other. 
 
 "It had its disadvantages though. The verger made a 
 row about it." 
 
 " What a shame ! Why shouldn't they sit in a cathedral ? " 
 
 " I suppose they all think it a profanity except you and 
 Ingram and the girl." 
 
 " I don't think it a profanity I think it's right, to make 
 love in a cathedral." 
 
 She said this almost defiantly, in despite of her own soul. 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 " And was she nice ? " 
 
 "Who? Emily? Yes, she was rather nice. She was a 
 milliner, and she wouldn't be seen in the streets with Ingram. 
 It was rather sad, really, because the verger spied on them, 
 and got to know their names and then made a regular row. 
 It was a common tale afterwards." 
 
 "What did she do?" 
 
 " She went to London, into a big shop. Ingram still goes 
 up to see her." 
 
 "Does he love her?" 
 
 " It's a year and a half he's been with her now." 
 
 "What was she like?" 
 
 "Emily? Little, shy-violet sort of girl with nice eye- 
 brows." , 
 
 Ursula meditated this. It seemed like real romance of 
 the outer world. 
 
 " Do all men have lovers ? " she asked, amazed at her 
 own temerity. But her hand was still fastened with his, and 
 his face still had the same unchanging fixity of outward calm. 
 
 " They're always mentioning some amazing fine woman or 
 other, and getting drunk to talk about her. Most of them 
 dash up to London the moment they are free." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " To some amazing fine woman or other." 
 
 "What sort of woman?" 
 
 " Various. Her name changes pretty frequently, as a rule. 
 One of the fellows is a perfect maniac. He keeps a suit-case 
 always ready, and the instant he is at liberty, he bolts with it 
 to the station, and changes in the train. No matter who is 
 in the carriage, off he whips his tunic, and performs at least 
 the top half of his toilet." 
 
FIRST LOVE 281 
 
 Ursula quivered and wondered. 
 
 " Why is he in such a hurry ? " she asked. 
 
 Her throat was becoming hard and difficult. 
 
 " He's got a woman in his mind, I suppose." 
 
 She was chilled, hardened. And yet this world of passions 
 and lawlessness was fascinating to her. It seemed to her a 
 splendid recklessness. Her adventure in life was beginning. 
 It seemed very splendid. 
 
 That evening she stayed at the Marsh till after dark, and 
 Skrebensky escorted her home. For she could not go away 
 from him. And she was waiting, waiting for something 
 more. 
 
 In the warm of the early night, with the shadows new about 
 them, she felt in another, harder, more beautiful, less personal 
 world. Now a new state should come to pass. 
 
 He walked near to her, and with the same silent, intent 
 approach put his arm round her waist, and softly, very softly, 
 drew her to him, till his arm was hard and pressed in upon 
 her; she seemed to be carried along, floating, her feet scarce 
 touching the ground, borne upon the firm, moving surface 
 of his body, upon whose side she seemed to lie, in a delicious 
 swoon of motion. And whilst she swooned, his face bent 
 nearer to her, her head was leaned on his shoulder, she felt his 
 warm breath on her face. Then softly, oh softly, so softly 
 that she seemed to faint away, his lips touched her cheek, and 
 she drifted through strands of heat and darkness. 
 
 Still she waited, in her swoon and her drifting, waited, 
 like the Sleeping Beauty in the story. She waited, and again 
 his face was bent to hers, his lips came warm to her face, their 
 footsteps lingered and ceased, they stood still under the trees, 
 whilst his lips waited on her face, waited like a butterfly 
 that does not move on a flower. She pressed her breast a 
 little nearer to him, he moved, put both his arms round her, 
 and drew her close. 
 
 And then, in the darkness, he bent to her mouth, softly, 
 and touched her mouth with his mouth. She was afraid, she 
 lay still on his arm, feeling his lips on her lips. She kept 
 still, helpless. Then his mouth drew near, pressing open her 
 mouth, a hot, drenching surge rose within her, she opened 
 her lips to him, in pained, poignant eddies she drew him 
 nearer, she let him come further, his lips came and surging, 
 surging, soft, oh soft, yet oh, like the powerful surge of 
 water, irresistible, till with a little blind cry, she broke away. 
 
282 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She heard him breathing heavily, strangely, beside her. & 
 terrible and magnificent sense of his strangeness possessed 
 her. But she shrank a little now, within herself. Hesitat- 
 ing, they continued to walk on, quivering like shadows under 
 the ash-trees of the hill, where her grandfather had walked 
 with his daffodils to make his proposal, and where her mother 
 had gone with her young husband, walking close upon him 
 as Ursula was now walking upon Skrebensky. 
 
 Ursula was aware of the dark limbs of the trees stretching 
 overhead, clothed with leaves, and of fine ash-leaves tressing 
 the summer night. 
 
 They walked with their bodies moving in complex unity, 
 close together. He held her hand, and they went the long 
 way round by the road, to be further. Always she felt as if she 
 were supported off her feet, as if her feet were light as little 
 breezes in motion. 
 
 He would kiss her again but not^again that night with 
 the same deep-reaching kiss. She was aware now, aware of 
 what a kiss might be. And so, it was more difficult to come 
 to him. 
 
 She went to bed feeling all warm with electric warmth, as 
 if the gush of dawn were within her, upholding her. And 
 she slept deeply, sweetly, oh, so sweetly. In the morning she 
 felt sound as an ear of wheat, fragrant and firm and full. 
 
 They continued to be lovers, in the first wondering state 
 of unrealization. Ursula told nobody; she was entirely lost 
 in her own world. 
 
 Yet some strange affectation made her seek for a spurious 
 confidence. She had at school a quiet, meditative, serious- 
 souled friend called Ethel, and to Ethel must Ursula confide 
 the story. Ethel listened absorbedly, with bowed, unbetray- 
 ing head, whilst Ursula told her secret. Oh, it was so lovely, 
 his gentle, delicate way of making love ! Ursula talked like 
 a practised lover. 
 
 " Do you think," asked Ursula, " it is wicked to let a man 
 kiss you real kisses, not flirting?" 
 
 "I should think," said Ethel, "it depends." 
 
 "He kissed me under the ash-trees on Cossethay hill 
 do you think it was wrong?" 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " On Thursday night when he was seeing me home but 
 real kisses real . He is an officer in the army." 
 
 "What time was it?" asked the deliberate Ethel. 
 
FIRST LOVE 283 
 
 "I don't know about half-past nine." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 "7 think it's wrong," said Ethel, lifting her head with 
 impatience. "You don't know him." 
 
 She spoke with some contempt. 
 
 "Yes, I do. He is half a Pole, and a Baron too. In 
 England he is equivalent to a Lord. My grandmother was 
 his father's friend." 
 
 But the two friends were hostile. It was as if Ursula 
 wanted to divide herself from her acquaintances, in asserting 
 her connection with Anton, as she now called him. 
 
 He came a good deal to Cossethay, because her mother 
 was fond of him. Anna Brangwen became something of a 
 grande dame with Skrebensky, very calm, taking things for 
 granted. 
 
 "Aren't the children in bed?" cried Ursula petulantly, 
 as she came in with the young man. 
 
 " They will be in bed in half an hour/' said the mother. 
 
 " There is no peace," cried Ursula. 
 
 " The children must live, Ursula," said her mother. 
 
 And Skrebensky was against Ursula in this. Why should 
 she be so insistent? 
 
 But then, as Ursula knew, he did not have the perpetual 
 tyranny of young children about him. He treated her 
 mother with great courtliness, to which Mrs. Brangwen re- 
 turned an easy, friendly hospitality. Something pleased the 
 girl in her mother's calm assumption of state. It seemed 
 impossible to abate Mrs. Brangwen's position. She could 
 never be beneath any one in public relation. Between Brang- 
 wen and Skrebensky there was an unbridgeable silence. 
 Sometimes the two men made a slight conversation, but there 
 was no interchange. Ursula rejoiced to see her father re- 
 treating into himself against the young man. 
 
 She was proud of Skrebensky in the house. His lounging, 
 languorous indifference irritated her and yet cast a spell over 
 her. She knew it was the outcome of a spirit of laisser-aller 
 combined with profound young vitality. Yet it irritated 
 her deeply. 
 
 Notwithstanding, she was proud of him as he lounged in 
 his lambent fashion in her home, he was so attentive and 
 courteous to her mother and to herself all the time. It was 
 wonderful to have his awareness in the room. She felt rich 
 and augmented by it, as if she were the positive attraction 
 
284 THE RAINBOW 
 
 and he the flow towards her. And his courtesy and his agree- 
 ment might be all her mother's, but the lambent flicker of 
 his body was for herself. She held it. 
 
 She must ever prove her power. 
 
 "I meant to show you my little wood-carving," she said. 
 
 "I'm sure it's not worth showing, that/' said her father. 
 
 "Would you like to see it?" she asked, leaning towards 
 the door. 
 
 And his body had risen from the chair, though his face 
 seemed to want to agree with her parents. 
 
 " It is in the shed," she said. 
 
 And he followed her out of the door, whatever his feelings 
 might be. 
 
 In the shed they played at kisses, really played at kisses. 
 It was a delicious, exciting game. She turned to him, her 
 face all laughing, like a challenge. And he accepted the 
 challenge at once. He twined his hand full of her hair, and 
 gently, with his hand wrapped round with hair behind her 
 head, gradually brought her face nearer to his, whilst she 
 laughed breathless with challenge, and his eyes gleamed with 
 answer, with enjoyment of the game. And he kissed her, 
 asserting his will over her, and she kissed him back, asserting 
 her deliberate enjoyment of him. Daring and reckless and 
 dangerous they knew it was, their game, each playing with 
 fire, not with love. A sort of defiance of all the world pos- 
 sessed her in it she would kiss him just because she wanted 
 to. And a dare-devilry in him, like a cynicism, a cut at 
 everything he pretended to serve, retaliated in him. 
 
 She was very beautiful then, so wide opened, so radiant, 
 so palpitating, exquisitely vulnerable and poignantly, wrongly, 
 throwing herself to risk. It roused a sort of madness in him. 
 Like a flower shaking and wide-opened in the sun, she tempted 
 him and challenged him, and he accepted the challenge, some- 
 thing went fixed in him. And under all her laughing, poig- 
 nant recklessness was the quiver of tears. That almost sent 
 him mad, mad with desire, with pain, whose only issue was 
 through possession of her body. 
 
 So, shaken, afraid, they went back to her parents in the 
 kitchen, and dissimulated. But something was roused in 
 both of them that they could not now allay. It intensified 
 and heightened their senses, they were more vivid, and 
 powerful in their being. But under it all was a poignant 
 sense of transience. It was a magnificent self-assertion on 
 
FIRST LOVE 285 
 
 the part of both of them, he asserted himself before her, 
 he felt himself infinitely male and infinitely irresistible, she 
 asserted herself before him, she knew herself infinitely desir- 
 able, and hence infinitely strong. And after all, what could 
 either of them get from such a passion but a sense of his 
 or of her own maximum self, in contradistinction to all the 
 rest of life? Wherein was something finite and sad, for the 
 human soul at its maximum wants a sense of the infinite. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was begun now, this passion, and must go 
 on, the passion of Ursula to know her own maximum self, 
 limited and so defined against him. She could limit and de- 
 fine herself against him, the male, she could be her maxi- 
 mum self, female, oh female, triumphant for one moment 
 in exquisite assertion against the male, in supreme contra- 
 distinction to the male. 
 
 The next afternoon, when he came, prowling, she went 
 with him across to the church. Her father was gradually 
 gathering in anger against him, her mother was hardening 
 in anger against her. But the parents were naturally tolerant 
 in action. 
 
 They went together across the churchyard, Ursula and 
 Skrebensky, and ran to hiding in the church. It was dimmer 
 in there than the sunny afternoon outside, but the mellow 
 glow among the bowed stone was very sweet. The windows 
 burned in ruby and in blue, they made magnificent arras 
 to their bower of secret stone. 
 
 "What a perfect place for a rendezvous," he said, in a 
 hushed voice, glancing round. 
 
 She too glanced round the familiar interior. The dimness 
 and stillness chilled her. But her eyes lit up with daring. 
 Here, here she would assert her indomitable gorgeous female 
 self, here. Here she would open her female flower like a 
 flame, in this dimness that was more passionate than light. 
 
 They hung apart a moment, then wilfully turned to each 
 other for the desired contact. She put her arms round him, 
 she cleaved her body to his, and with her hands pressed upon 
 his shoulders, on his back, she seemed to feel right through 
 him, to know his young, tense body right through. And it 
 was so fine, so hard, yet so exquisitely subject and under her 
 control. She reached him her mouth and drank his full 
 kiss, drank it fuller and fuller. 
 
 And it was good, it was very, very good. She seemed to 
 be filled with his kiss, filled as if she had drunk strong, glow- 
 
286 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ing sunshine. She glowed all inside, the sunshine seemed 
 to beat upon her heart underneath, she had drunk so beau- 
 tifully. 
 
 She drew away, and looked at him radiant, exquisitely, 
 glowingly beautiful, and satisfied, but radiant as an illumined 
 cloud. 
 
 To him this was bitter, that she was so radiant and satisfied. 
 She laughed upon him, blind to him, so full of her own bliss, 
 never doubting but that he was the same as she was. And 
 radiant as an angel she went with him out of the church, as 
 if her feet were beams of light that walked on flowers for 
 footsteps. 
 
 He went beside her, his soul clenched, his body unsatisfied. 
 Was she going to make this easy triumph over him? For 
 him, there was now no self-bliss, only pain and confused 
 anger. 
 
 It was high summer, and the hay-harvest was almost over. 
 It would be finished on Saturday. On Saturday, however, 
 Skrebensky was going away. He could not stay any longer. 
 
 Having decided to go he became very tender and loving to 
 her, kissing her gently, with such soft, sweet, insidious close- 
 ness that they were both of them intoxicated. 
 
 The very last Friday of his stay he met her coming out of 
 school, and took her to tea in the town. Then he had a 
 motor-car to drive her home. 
 
 Her excitement at riding in a motor-car was greatest of 
 all. He too was very proud of this last coup. He saw 
 Ursula kindle and flare up to the romance of the situation. 
 She raised her head like a young horse snuffing with wild 
 delight. 
 
 The car swerved round a corner, and Ursula was swung 
 against Skrebensky. The contact made her aware of him. 
 With a swift, foraging impulse she sought for his hand and 
 clasped it in her own, so close, so combined, as if they were 
 two children. 
 
 The wind blew in on Ursula's face, the mud flew in a soft, 
 wild rush from the wheels, the country was blackish green, 
 with the silver of new hay here and there, and masses of 
 trees under a silver-gleaming sky. 
 
 Her hand tightened on his with a new consciousness, trou- 
 bled. They did not speak for some time, but sat, hand- 
 fast, with averted, shining faces. 
 
 And every now and then the car swung her against him. 
 
FIRST LOVE 287 
 
 And they waited for the motion to bring them together. 
 Yet they stared out of the windows, mute. 
 
 She saw the familiar country racing by. But now, it was 
 no familiar country, it was wonderland. There was the 
 Hemlock Stone standing on its grassy hill. Strange it looked 
 on this wet, early summer evening, remote, in a magic land. 
 Some rooks were flying out of the trees. 
 
 Ah, if only she and Skrebensky could get out, dismount 
 into this enchanted land where nobody had ever been before ! 
 Then they would be enchanted people, they would put off the 
 dull, customary self. If she were wandering there, on that 
 hill-slope under a silvery, changing sky, in which many rooks 
 melted like hurrying showers of blots! If they could walk 
 past the wetted hay-swaths, smelling the early evening, and 
 pass in to the wood where the honeysuckle scent was sweet 
 on the cold tang of the air, and showers of drops fell when 
 one brushed a bough, cold and lovely on the face ! 
 
 But she was here with him in the car, close to him, and 
 the wind was rushing on her lifted, eager face, blowing back 
 the hair. He turned and looked at her, at her face clean 
 as a chiselled thing, her hair chiselled back by the wind, 
 her fine nose keen and lifted. 
 
 It was agony to him, seeing her swift and clean-cut and 
 virgin. He wanted to kill himself, and throw his detested 
 carcase at her feet. His desire to turn round on himself and 
 rend himself was an agony to him. 
 
 Suddenly she glanced at him. He seemed to be crouching 
 towards her, reaching, he seemed to wince between the brows. 
 But instantly, seeing her lighted eyes and radiant face, his 
 expression changed, his old reckless laugh shone to her. She 
 pressed his hand in utter delight, and he abided. And sud- 
 denly she stooped and kissed his hand, bent her head and 
 caught it to her mouth, in generous homage. And the blood 
 burned in him. Yet he remained still, he made no move. 
 
 She started. They were swinging into Cossethay. Skre- 
 bensky was going to leave her. But it was all so magic, her 
 cup was so full of bright wine, her eyes could only shine. 
 
 He tapped and spoke to the man. The car swung up by 
 the yew-trees. She gave him her hand and said good-bye, 
 naive and brief as a schoolgirl. And she stood watching 
 him go, her face shining. The fact of his driving on meant 
 nothing to her, she was so filled by her own bright ecstasy. 
 She did not see him go, for she was filled with light, which 
 
288 THE RAINBOW 
 
 was of him. Bright with an amazing light as she was, how 
 could she miss him? 
 
 In her bedroom she threw her arms in the air in clear pain 
 of magnificence. Oh, it was her transfiguration, she was be- 
 yond herself. She wanted to fling herself into all the hidden 
 brightness of the air. It was there, it was there, if she 
 could but meet it. 
 
 But the next day she knew he had gone. Her glory had 
 partly died down but never from her memory. It was too 
 real. Yet it was gone by, leaving a wistfulness. A deeper 
 yearning came into her soul, a new reserve. 
 
 She shrank from touch and question. She was very proud, 
 but very new, and very sensitive. Oh, that no one should 
 lay hands on her ! 
 
 She was happier running on by herself. Oh, it was a joy 
 to run along the lanes without seeing things, yet being with 
 them. It was such a joy to be alone with all one's riches. 
 
 The holidays came, when she was free. She spent most 
 of her time running on by herself, curled up in a squirrel- 
 place in the garden, lying in a hammock in the coppice, while 
 the birds came near near so near. Or, in rainy weather, 
 she flitted to the Marsh, and lay hidden with her book in a 
 hay-loft. 
 
 All the time, she dreamed of him, sometimes definitely, 
 but when she was happiest, only vaguely. He was the warm 
 colouring to her dreams, he was the hot blood beating within 
 them. 
 
 When she was less happy, out of sorts, she pondered over 
 his appearance, his clothes, the buttons with his regimental 
 badge, which he had given her. Or she tried to imagine his 
 life in barracks. Or she conjured up a vision of herself as 
 she appeared in his eyes. 
 
 His birthday was in August, and she spent some pains on 
 making him a cake. She felt that it would not be in good 
 taste for her to give him a present. 
 
 Their correspondence was brief, mostly an exchange of 
 post-cards, not at all frequent. But with her cake she must 
 send him a letter. 
 
 "Dear Anton. The sunshine has come back specially for 
 your birthday, I think. 
 
 " I made the calce myself, and wish you many happy returns 
 
FIRST LOVE 289 
 
 of the day. Don't eat it if it is not good. Mother hopes you 
 will come and see us when you are near enough. 
 
 "I am 
 
 " Your sincere friend, 
 " Ursula Brangwen." 
 
 It bored her to write a letter even to him. After all, 
 writing words on paper had nothing to do with him and 
 her. 
 
 The fine weather had set in, the cutting machine went on 
 from dawn till sunset, chattering round the fields. She 
 heard from Skrebensky; he too was on duty in the country, 
 on Salisbury Plain. He was now a second lieutenant in a 
 Field Troop. He would have a few days off shortly, and 
 would come to the Marsh for the wedding. 
 
 Fred Brangwen was going to marry a schoolmistress out 
 of Ilkeston as soon as corn-harvest was at an end. 
 
 The dim blue-and-gold of a hot, sweet autumn saw the 
 close of the corn-harvest. To Ursula, it was as if the world 
 had opened its softest purest flower, its chicory flower, its 
 meadow saffron. The sky was blue and sweet, the yellow 
 leaves down the lane seemed like free, wandering flowers 
 as they chittered round the feet, making a keen, poignant, 
 almost unbearable music to her heart. And the scents of 
 autumn were like a summer madness to her. She fled away 
 from the little, purple-red button-chrysanthemums like a 
 frightened dryad, the bright yellow little chrysanthemums 
 smelled so strong, her feet seemed to dither in a drunken 
 dance. 
 
 Then her Uncle Tom appeared, always like the cynical 
 Bacchus in the picture. He would have a jolly wedding, a 
 harvest supper and a wedding feast in one : a tent in the home 
 close, and a band for dancing, and a great feast out of doors. 
 
 Fred demurred, but Tom must be satisfied. Also Laura, 
 a handsome, clever girl, the bride, she also must have a great 
 and jolly feast. It appealed to her educated sense. She 
 had been to Salisbury Training College, knew folk-songs and 
 morris-dancing. 
 
 So the preparations were begun, directed by Tom Brangwen. 
 A marquee was set up on the home close, two large bonfires 
 were prepared. Musicians were hired, a feast made ready. 
 
 Skrebensky was to come, arriving in the morning. Ursula 
 
290 THE RAINBOW 
 
 had a new white dress of soft crape, and a white hat. She 
 liked to wear white. With her black hair and clear golden 
 skin, she looked southern, or rather tropical, like a Creole. 
 She wore no colour whatsoever. 
 
 She trembled that day as she prepared to go down to the 
 wedding. She was to be a bridesmaid. Skrebensky would 
 not arrive till afternoon. The wedding was at two o'clock. 
 
 As the wedding-party returned home, Skrebensky stood 
 in the parlour at the Marsh. Through the window he saw 
 Tom Brangwen, who was best man, coming up the garden 
 path most elegant in cut-away coat and white slip and spats, 
 with Ursula laughing on his arm. Tom Brangwen was hand- 
 some, with his womanish colouring and dark eyes and black 
 close-cut moustache. But there was something subtly coarse 
 and suggestive about him for all his beauty; his strange, 
 bestial nostrils opened so hard and wide, and his well-shaped 
 head almost disquieting in its nakedness, rather bald from 
 the front, and all its soft fulness betrayed. 
 
 Skrebensky saw the man rather than the woman. She 
 was brilliant, with a curious, wordless, distracted animation 
 which she always felt when with her Uncle Tom, always con- 
 fused in herself. 
 
 But when she met Skrebensky everything vanished. She 
 saw only the slender, unchangeable youth waiting there in- 
 scrutable, like her fate. He was beyond her, with his loose, 
 slightly horsey appearance, that made him seem very manly 
 and foreign. Yet his face was smooth and soft and impres- 
 sionable. She shook hands with him, and her voice was like 
 the rousing of a bird startled by the dawn. 
 
 "Isn't it nice," she cried, "to have a wedding?" 
 
 There were bits of coloured confetti lodged in her dark 
 hair. 
 
 Again the confusion came over him, as if he were losing 
 himself and becoming all vague, undefined, inchoate. Yet he 
 wanted to be hard, manly, horsey. And he followed her. 
 
 There was a light tea, and the guests scattered. The 
 real feast was for the evening. Ursula walked out with Skre- 
 bensky through the stackyard to the fields, and up the em- 
 bankment to the canal-side. 
 
 The new corn-stacks were big and golden as they went by, 
 an army of white geese marched aside in braggart protest. 
 Ursula was light as a white ball of down. Skrebensky drifted 
 beside .her, indefinite, his old form loosened., and another self, 
 
FIRST LOVE 291 
 
 grey, vague, drifting out as from a bud. They talked lightly, 
 of nothing. 
 
 The blue way of the canal wound softly between the autumn 
 hedges, on towards the greenness of a small hill. On the 
 left was the whole black agitation of colliery and railway and 
 the town which rose on its hill, the church tower topping all. 
 The round white dot of the clock on the tower was distinct 
 in the evening light. 
 
 That way, Ursula felt, was the way to London, through 
 the grim, alluring seethe of the town. On the other hand 
 was the evening, mellow over the green water-meadows and 
 the winding alder-trees beside the river, and the pale stretches 
 of stubble beyond. There the evening glowed softly, and 
 even a pee-wit was flapping in solitude and peace. 
 
 Ursula and Anton Skrebensky walked along the ridge of 
 the canal between. The berries on the hedges were crimson 
 and bright red, above the leaves. The glow of evening and 
 the wheeling of the solitary pee-wit and the faint cry of the 
 birds came to meet the shuffling noise of the pits, the dark, 
 fuming stress of the town opposite, and they two walked the 
 blue strip of water-way, the ribbon of sky between. 
 
 He was looking, Ursula thought, very beautiful, because 
 of a flush of sunburn on his hands and face. He was telling 
 her hew he had learned to shoe horses and select cattle fit for 
 killing. 
 
 " Do you like to be a soldier ? " she asked. 
 
 " I am not exactly a soldier," he replied. 
 
 " But you only do things for wars," she said. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Would you like to go to war ? " 
 
 "I? Well, it would be exciting. If there were a war I 
 would want to go." 
 
 A strange, distracted feeling came over her, a sense of 
 potent unrealities. 
 
 "Why would you want to go?" 
 
 "I should be doing something, it would be genuine. It's 
 a sort of toy-life as it is." 
 
 " But what would you be doing if you went to war ? " 
 
 "I would be making railways or bridges, working like a 
 nigger." 
 
 " But you'd only make them to be pulled down again when 
 the armies had done with them. It seems just as much a 
 game." 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 " If you call war a game." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " It's about the most serious business there is, fighting." 
 
 A sense of hard separateness came over her. 
 
 "Why is fighting more serious than anything else?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " You either kill or get killed and I suppose it is serious 
 enough, killing." 
 
 " But when you're dead you don't matter any more," she 
 said. 
 
 He was silenced for a moment. 
 
 " But the result matters," he said. " It matters whether 
 we settle the Mahdi or not." 
 
 " Not to you nor me we don't care about Khartoum." 
 
 " You want to have room to live in : and somebody has to 
 make room." 
 
 " But I don't want to live in the desert of Sahara do 
 you ? " she replied, laughing with antagonism. 
 
 "I don't but we've got to back up those who do." 
 
 "Why have we?" 
 
 " Where is the nation if we don't ? " 
 
 " But we aren't the nation. There are heaps of other 
 people who are the nation." 
 
 " They might say they weren't either." 
 
 " Well, if everybody said it, there wouldn't be a nation. 
 But I should still be myself," she asserted brilliantly. 
 
 " You wouldn't be yourself if there were no nation." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because you'd just be a prey to everybody and anybody." 
 
 "How a prey?" 
 
 "They'd come and take everything you'd got." 
 
 "Well, they couldn't take much even then. I don't care 
 what they take. I'd rather have a robber who carried me 
 off than a millionaire who gave me everything you can 
 buy." 
 
 "That's because you are a romanticist." 
 
 " Yes, I am. I want to be romantic. I hate houses that 
 never go away, and people just living in the houses. It's 
 all so stiff and stupid. I hate soldiers, they are stiff and 
 wooden. What do you fight for, really ? " 
 
 "I would fight for the nation." 
 
 " For all that, you aren't the nation. What would you do 
 for yourself ? " 
 
FI&ST LOVE 293 
 
 * I belong to the nation and must do my duty by the na- 
 tion." 
 
 "But when it didn't need your services in particular 
 when there is no fighting? What would you do then?" 
 
 He was irritated. 
 
 "I would do what everybody else does." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Nothing. I would be in readiness for when I was 
 needed." 
 
 The answer came in exasperation. 
 
 " It seems to me," she answered, " as if you weren't any- 
 body as if there weren't anybody there, where you are. 
 Are you anybody, really? You seem like nothing to me." 
 
 They had walked till they had reached a wharf, just above 
 a lock. There an empty barge, painted with a red and 
 yellow cabin hood, but with a long, coal-black hold, was lying 
 moored. A man, lean and grimy, was sitting on a box against 
 the cabin-side by the door, smoking, and nursing a baby that 
 was wrapped in a drab shawl, and looking into the glow of 
 evening. A woman bustled out, sent a pail dashing into 
 the canal, drew her water, and bustled in again. Children's 
 voices were heard. A thin blue smoke ascended from the 
 cabin chimney, there was a smell of cooking. 
 
 Ursula, white as a moth, lingered to look. Skrebensky 
 lingered by her. The man glanced up. 
 
 " Good evening," he called, half impudent, half attracted. 
 He had blue eyes which glanced impudently from his grimy 
 face. 
 
 "Good evening," said Ursula, delighted. "Isn't it nice 
 now?" 
 
 "Ay," said the man, "very nice." 
 
 His mouth was red under his ragged, sandy moustache. 
 His teeth were white as he laughed. 
 
 " Oh, but " stammered Ursula, laughing, " it is. Why 
 
 do you say it as if it weren't ? " 
 
 "'Appen for them as is childt-nursin' it's none so rosy." 
 
 " May I look inside your barge ? " asked Ursula. 
 
 " There's nobody'll stop you ; you come if you like." 
 
 The barge lay at the opposite bank, at the wharf. It was 
 the Annabel, belonging to J. Ruth of Loughborough. The 
 man watched Ursula closely from his keen, twinkling eyes. 
 His fair hair was wispy on his grimed forehead. Two dirty 
 children appeared to see who was talking. 
 
294 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula glanced at the great lock gates. They were shut, 
 and the water was sounding, spurting and trickling down in 
 the gloom beyond. On this side the bright water was almost 
 to the top of the gate. She went boldly across, and round 
 to the wharf. 
 
 Stooping from the bank, she peeped into the cabin, where 
 was a red glow of fire and the shadowy figure of a woman. 
 She did want to go down. 
 
 " You'll mess your frock," said the man, warningly. 
 
 "I'll be careful," she answered. "May I come?" 
 
 " Ay, come if you like." 
 
 She gathered her skirts, lowered her foot to the side of 
 the boat, and leapt down, laughing. Coal-dust flew up. 
 
 The woman came to the door. She was plump and sandy- 
 haired, young, with an odd, stubby nose. 
 
 " Oh, you will make a mess of yourself," she cried, sur- 
 prised and laughing with a little wonder. 
 
 "I did want to see. Isn't it lovely living on a barge?" 
 asked Ursula. 
 
 " I don't live on one altogether," said the woman cheerfully. 
 
 " She's got her parlour an' her plush suite in Lough- 
 borough," said her husband with just pride. 
 
 Ursula peeped into the cabin, where saucepans were boiling 
 and some dishes were on the table. It was very hot. Then 
 she came out again. The man was talking to the baby. It 
 was a blue-eyed, fresh-faced thing with floss of red-gold hair. 
 
 " Is it a boy or a girl ? " she asked. 
 
 " It's a girl aren't you a girl, eh ? " he shouted at the 
 infant, shaking his head. Its little face wrinkled up into 
 the oddest, funniest smile. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Ursula. "Oh, the dear! Oh, how nice 
 when she laughs ! " 
 
 " She'll laugh hard enough," said the father. 
 
 " What is her name ? " asked Ursula. 
 
 " She hasn't got a name, she's not worth one," said the 
 man. "Are you, you fag-end o' nothing?" he shouted to 
 the baby. The baby laughed. 
 
 "No, we've been that busy, we've never took her to th' 
 registry office," came the woman's voice. " She was born 
 on th' boat here." 
 
 "But you know what you're going to call her?" asked 
 Ursula. 
 
 " We did think of Gladys Em'ly," said the mother. 
 
FIRST LOVE 295 
 
 " We thought of nowt o' th' sort," said the father. 
 
 " Hark at him ! What do you want ? " cried the mother 
 in exasperation. 
 
 " She'll be called Annabel after th' boat she was born on." 
 
 " She's not, so there," said the mother, viciously defiant. 
 
 The father sat in humorous malice, grinning. 
 
 "Well, you'll see," he said. 
 
 And Ursula could tell, by the woman's vibrating exaspera- 
 tion, that he would never give way. 
 
 "They're all nice names," she said. "Call her Gladys 
 Annabel Emily." 
 
 "Nay, that's heavy-laden, if you like," he answered. 
 
 "You see!" cried the woman. "He's that pig-headed!" 
 
 "And she's so nice, and she laughs, and she hasn't even 
 got a name," crooned Ursula to the child. 
 
 "Let me hold her," she added. 
 
 He yielded her the child, that smelt of babies. But it 
 had such blue, wide, china eyes, and it laughed so oddly, with 
 such a taking grimace, Ursula loved it. She cooed and 
 talked to it. It was such an odd, exciting child. 
 
 " What's your name ? " the man suddenly asked of her. 
 
 " My name is Ursula Ursula Brangwen," she replied. 
 
 " Ursula ! " he exclaimed, dumf ounded. 
 
 " There was a Saint Ursula. It's a very old name," she 
 added hastily, in justification. 
 
 " Hey, mother ! " he called. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 "Pern!" he called, "can't y'hear?" 
 
 "What?" came the short answer. 
 
 " What about < Ursula ' ? " he grinned. 
 
 "What about what?" came the answer, and the woman 
 appeared in the doorway, ready for combat. 
 
 " Ursula it's the lass's name there," he said, gently. 
 
 The woman looked the young girl up and down. Evidently 
 she was attracted by her slim, graceful, new beauty, her ef- 
 fect of white elegance, and her tender way of holding the 
 child. 
 
 "Why, how do you write it?" the mother asked, awk- 
 ward now she was touched. Ursula spelled out her name. 
 The man looked at the woman. A bright, confused flush 
 came over the mother's face, a sort of luminous shyness. 
 
 " It's not a common name, is it ! " she exclaimed, excited 
 as by an adventure. 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Are you goin' to have it then ? " he asked. 
 
 " I'd rather have it than Annabel/' she said, decisively. 
 
 " An' I'd rather have it than Gladys Em'ler," he replied. 
 
 There was a silence, Ursula looked up. 
 
 " Will you really call her Ursula ? " she asked. 
 
 "Ursula Ruth," replied the man, laughing vainly, as 
 pleased as if he had found something. 
 
 It was now Ursula's turn to be confused. 
 
 " It does sound awfully nice/' she said. " I must give her 
 something. And I haven't got anything at all." 
 
 She stood in her white dress, wondering, down there in the 
 barge. The lean man sitting near to her watched her as if 
 she were a strange being, as if she lit up his face. His eyes 
 smiled on her, boldly, and yet with exceeding admiration un- 
 derneath. 
 
 " Could I give her my necklace ? " she said. 
 
 It was the little necklace made of pieces of amethyst and 
 topaz and pearl and crystal, strung at intervals on a little 
 golden chain, which her Uncle Tom had given her. She was 
 very fond of it. She looked at it lovingly, when she had 
 taken it from her neck. 
 
 " Is it valuable ? " the man asked her, curiously. 
 
 " I think so," she replied. 
 
 " The stones and pearl are real ; it is worth three or four 
 pounds," said Skrebensky from the wharf above. Ursula 
 could tell he disapproved of her. 
 
 " I must give it to your baby may I ? " she said to the 
 bargee. 
 
 He flushed, and looked away into the evening. 
 
 "Nay," he said, "it's not for me to say." 
 
 "What would your father and mother say?" cried the 
 woman curiously, from the door. 
 
 "It is my own," said Ursula, and she dangled the little 
 glittering string before the baby. The infant spread its 
 little fingers. But it could not grasp. Ursula closed the tiny 
 hand over the jewel. The baby waved the bright ends of 
 the string. Ursula had given her necklace away. She felt 
 sad. But she did not want it back. 
 
 The jewel swung from the baby's hand and fell in a little 
 heap on the coal-dusty bottom of the barge. The man groped 
 for it, with a kind of careful reverence. Ursula noticed the 
 coarsened, blunted fingers groping at the little jewelled heap. 
 The skin was red on the back of the hand, the fair hairs glis- 
 
FIRST LOVE 297 
 
 tened stiffly. It was a thin, sinewy, capable hand nevertheless, 
 and Ursula liked it. He took up the necklace, carefully, and 
 blew the coal-dust from it, as it lay in the hollow of his hand. 
 He seemed still and attentive. He held out his hand with the 
 necklace shining small in its hard, black hollow. 
 
 " Take it back," he said. 
 
 Ursula hardened with a kind of radiance. 
 
 " No/' she said. " It belongs to little Ursula." 
 
 And she went to the infant and fastened the necklace round 
 its warm, soft, weak little neck. 
 
 There was a moment of confusion, then the father bent 
 over his child: 
 
 "What do you say?" he said. "Do you say thank you? 
 Do you say thank you, Ursula ? " 
 
 " Her name's Ursula now" said the mother, smiling a little 
 bit ingratiatingly from the door. And she came out to ex- 
 amine the jewel on the child's neck. 
 
 " It is Ursula, isn't it ? " said Ursula Brangwen. 
 
 The father looked up at her, with an intimate, half -gallant, 
 half-impudent, but wistful look. His captive soul loved her : 
 but his soul was captive, he knew, always. 
 
 She wanted to go. He set a little ladder for her to climb 
 up to the wharf. She kissed the child, which was in its 
 mother's arms, then she turned away. The mother was ef- 
 fusive. The man stood silent by the ladder. 
 
 Ursula joined Skrebensky. The two young figures crossed 
 the lock, above the shining yellow water. The barge-man 
 watched them go. 
 
 " I love d them," she was saying. " He was so gentle oh, 
 so gentle ! And the baby was such a dear ! " 
 
 "Was he gentle?" said Skrebensky. "The woman had 
 been a servant, I'm sure of that." 
 
 Ursula winced. 
 
 "But I loved his impudence it was so gentle under- 
 neath." 
 
 She went hastening on, gladdened by having met the grimy, 
 lean man with the ragged moustache. He gave her a pleas- 
 ant warm feeling. He made her feel the richness of her own 
 life. Skrebensky, somehow, had created a deadness round 
 her, a sterility, as if the world were ashes. 
 
 They said very little as they hastened home to the big 
 supper. He was envying the lean father of three children, 
 for his impudent directness and his worship of the woman in 
 
298 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula, a worship of body and soul together, the man's body 
 and soul wistful and worshipping the body and spirit of the 
 girl, with a desire that knew the inaccessibility of its object, 
 but was only glad to know that the perfect thing existed, glad 
 to have had a moment of communion. 
 
 Why could not he himself desire a woman so? Why did 
 he never really want a woman, not with the whole of him: 
 never loved, never worshipped, only just physically wanted 
 her. 
 
 But he would want her with his body, let his soul do as it 
 would. A kind of flame of physical desire was gradually 
 beating up in the Marsh, kindled by Tom Brangwen, and by 
 the fact of the wedding of Fred, the shy, fair, stiff-set farmer 
 with the handsome, half -educated girl. Tom Brangwen, with 
 all his secret power, seemed to fan the flame that was rising. 
 The bride was strongly attracted by him, and he was exerting 
 his influence on another beautiful, fair girl, chill and burning 
 as the sea, who said witty things which he appreciated, mak- 
 ing her glint with more, like phosphorescence. And her 
 greenish eyes seemed to rock a secret, and her hands like 
 mother-of-pearl seemed luminous, transparent, as if the secret 
 were burning visible in them. 
 
 At the end of supper, during dessert, the music began to 
 play, violins, and flutes. Everybody's face was lit up. A 
 glow of excitement prevailed. When the little speeches were 
 over, and the port remained unreached for any more, those 
 who wished were invited out to the open for coffee. The 
 night was warm. 
 
 Bright stars were shining, the moon was not yet up. And 
 under the stars burned two great, red, flameless fires, and 
 round these lights and lanterns hung, the marquee stood open 
 before a fire, with its lights inside. 
 
 The young people flocked out into the mysterious night. 
 There was sound of laughter and voices, and a scent of coffee. 
 The farm-buildings loomed dark in the background. Figures, 
 pale and dark, flitted about, intermingling. The red fire 
 glinted on a white or a silken skirt, the lanterns gleamed on 
 the transient heads of the wedding guests. 
 
 To Ursula it was wonderful. She felt she was a new being. 
 The darkness seemed to breathe like the sides of some great 
 beast, the haystacks loomed half-revealed, a crowd of them, 
 a dark, fecund lair just behind. Waves of delirious darkness 
 ran through her soul. She wanted to let go. She wanted 
 
FIRST LOVE 299 
 
 to reach and be amongst the flashing stars, she wanted to 
 race with her feet and be beyond the confines of this earth. 
 She was mad to be gone. It was as if a hound were straining 
 on the le#sh, ready to hurl itself after a nameless quarry into 
 the dark. And she was the quarry, and she was also the 
 hound. The darkness was passionate and breathing with 
 immense, unperceived heaving. It was waiting to receive 
 her in her flight. And how could she start and how could 
 she let go ? She must leap from the known into the unknown. 
 Her feet and hands beat like a madness, her breast strained 
 as if in bonds. 
 
 The music began, and the bonds began to slip. Tom Brang- 
 wen was dancing with the bride, quick and fluid and as if 
 in another element, inaccessible as the creatures that move in 
 the water. Fred Brangwen went in with another partner. 
 The music came in waves. One couple after another was 
 washed and absorbed into the deep underwater of the dance. 
 
 " Come," said Ursula to Skrebensky, laying her hand on his 
 arm. 
 
 At the touch of her hand on his arm, his consciousness 
 melted away from him. He took her into his arms, as if 
 into the sure, subtle power of his will, and they became one 
 movement, one dual movement, dancing on the slippery grass. 
 It would be endless, this movement, it would continue for ever. 
 It was his will and her will locked in a trance of motion, two 
 wills locked in one motion, yet never fusing, never yielding 
 one to the other. It was a glaucous, intertwining, delicious 
 flux and contest in flux. 
 
 They were both absorbed into a profound silence, into a 
 deep, fluid underwater energy that gave them unlimited 
 strength. All the dancers were waving intertwined in the 
 flux of music. Shadowy couples passed and repassed before 
 the fire, the dancing feet danced silently by into the dark- 
 ness. It was a vision of the depths of the underworld, under 
 the great flood. 
 
 There was a wonderful rocking of the darkness, slowly, a 
 great, slow swinging of the whole night, with the music play- 
 ing lightly on the surface, making the strange, ecstatic, rip- 
 pling on the surface of the dance, but underneath only one 
 great flood heaving slowly backwards to the verge of oblivion, 
 slowly forward to the other verge, the heart sweeping along 
 each time, and tightening with anguish as the limit was 
 reached, and the movement, at crises, turned and swept 
 
SOO THE RAINBOW 
 
 As the dance surged heavily on, Ursula was aware of some 
 influence looking in upon her. Something was looking at 
 her. Some powerful, glowing sight was looking right into 
 her, not upon her, but right at her. Out of the great dis- 
 tance, and yet imminent, the powerful, overwhelming watch 
 was kept upon her. And she danced on and on with Skre- 
 bensky, while the great, white watching continued, balanc- 
 ing all in its revelation. 
 
 "The moon has risen," said Anton, as the music ceased, 
 and they found themselves suddenly stranded, like bits of 
 jetsam on a shore. She turned, and saw a great white moon 
 looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, 
 she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She 
 stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two 
 breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like 
 a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the 
 moon. She wanted the moon to fill in to her, she wanted 
 more, more communion with the moon, consummation. But 
 Skrebensky put his arm round her and led her away. He 
 put a big, dark cloak round her, and sat holding her hand, 
 whilst the moonlight streamed above the glowing fires. 
 
 She was not there. Patiently she sat, under the cloak, 
 with Skrebensky holding her hand. But her naked self was 
 away there beating upon the moonlight, dashing the moon- 
 light with her breasts and her knees, in meeting, in com- 
 munion. She half started, to go in actuality, to fling away 
 her clothing and flee away, away from this dark confusion 
 and chaos of people to the hill and the moon. But the 
 petfple stood round her like stones, like magnetic stones, and 
 she could not go, in actuality. Skrebensky, like a load-stone 
 weighed on her, the weight of his presence detained her. She 
 felt the burden of him, the blind, persistent, inert burden. 
 He was inert, and he weighed upon her. She sighed in pain. 
 Oh, for the coolness and entire liberty and brightness of the 
 moon. Oh, for the cold liberty to be herself, to do entirely as 
 she liked. She wanted to get right away. She felt like 
 bright metal weighted down by dark, impure magnetism. He 
 was the dross, people were the dross. If she could but get 
 away to the clean free moonlight. 
 
 "Don't you like me to-night?" said his low voice, the 
 voice of the shadow over her shoulder. She clenched her 
 hands in the dewy brilliance of the moon, as if she were mad. 
 
 " Don't you like me to-night ? " repeated the soft voice. 
 
FIRST LOVE 301 
 
 And she knew that if she turned, she would die. A strange 
 rage filled her, a rage to tear things asunder. Her hands feit 
 destructive, like metal blades of destruction. 
 
 " Let me alone," she said. 
 
 A darkness, an obstinacy settled on him too, in a kind of 
 inertia. He sat inert beside her. She threw off her cloak 
 and walked towards the moon, silver-white herself. He fol- 
 lowed her closely. 
 
 The music began again and the dance. He appropriated 
 her. There was a fierce, white, cold passion in her heart. 
 But he held her close, and danced with her. Always present, 
 like a soft weight upon her, bearing her down, was his body 
 against her as they danced. He held her very close, so that 
 she 2ould feel his body, the weight of him sinking, settling 
 upon her, overcoming her life and energy, making her inert 
 alonf with him, she felt his hands pressing behind her, upon 
 her. But still in her body was the subdued, cold, indomitable 
 passion. She liked the dance: it eased her, put her into a 
 fort of trance. But it was only a kind of waiting, of using 
 ip the time that intervened between her and her pure being. 
 She left herself against him, she let him exert all his power 
 ver her, as if he would gain power over her, to bear her 
 (own. She received all the force of his power. She even 
 yished he might overcome her. She was cold and unmoved as 
 ; pillar of salt. 
 
 His will was set and straining with all its tension to en- 
 ompass him and compel her. If he could only compel her. 
 le seemed to be annihilated. She was cold and hard and 
 ompact of brilliance as the moon itself, and beyond him as 
 tie moonlight was beyond him, never to be grasped or known. 
 I he could only set a bond round her and compel her! 
 
 So they danced four or five dances, always together, al- 
 ways his will becoming more tense, his body more subtle, 
 paying upon her. And still he had not got her, she was 
 hrd and bright as ever, intact. But he must weave himself 
 Dund her, enclose her, enclose her in a net of shadow, of 
 arkness, so she would be like a bright creature gleaming 
 i a net of shadows, caught. Then he would have her, he 
 wild enjoy her. How he would enjoy her, when she was 
 aught. 
 
 At last, when the dance was over, she would not sit down, 
 he walked away. He came with his arm round her, keep- 
 og her upon the movement of his walking. And she seemed 
 
302 THE RAINBOW 
 
 to agree. She was bright as a piece of moonlight, as bright 
 as a steel blade, he seemed to be clasping a blade that hurt 
 him. Yet he would clasp her, if it killed him. 
 
 They went towards the stackyard. There he saw, with 
 something like terror, the great new stacks of corn glistening 
 and gleaming transfigured, silvery and present under the 
 night-blue sky, throwing dark, substantial shadows, but them- 
 selves majestic and dimly present. She, like glimmering 
 gossamer, seemed to burn among them, as they rose like coli 
 fires to the silvery-bluish air. All was intangible, a burnirg 
 of cold, glimmering, whitish-steely fires. He was afraid of 
 the great moon-conflagration of the cornstacks rising above 
 him. His heart grew smaller, it began to fuse like a bead. 
 He knew he would die. 
 
 She stood for some moments out in the overwhelning 
 luminosity of the moon. She seemed a beam of gleaming 
 power. She was afraid of what she was. Looking at hin, at 
 his shadowy, unreal, wavering presence a sudden lust seized 
 her, to lay hold of him and tear him and make him into noth- 
 ing. Her hands and wrists felt immeasurably hard and 
 strong, like blades. He waited there beside her like a shadow 
 which she wanted to dissipate, destroy as the moonlight de- 
 stroys a darkness, annihilate, have done with. She looked at 
 him and her face gleamed bright and inspired. She tempted 
 him. 
 
 And an obstinacy in him made him put his arm round her 
 and draw her to the shadow. She submitted: let him try 
 what he could do. Let him try what he could do. He leaned 
 against the side of the stack, holding her. The stack stung 
 him keenly with a thousand cold, sharp flames. Still ob 
 stinately he held her. 
 
 And timorously, his hands went over her, over the salt 
 compact brilliance of her body. If he could but have hei 
 how he would enjoy her ! If he could but net her brilliant 
 cold, salt-burning body in the soft iron of his own hands, ne| 
 her, capture her, hold her down, how madly he would enjoj 
 her. He strove subtly, but with all his energy, to enclosj 
 her, to have her. And always she was burning and brillian 
 and hard as salt, and deadly. Yet obstinately, all his flesl 
 burning and corroding, as if he were invaded by some con 
 suming, scathing poison, still he persisted, thinking at las 
 he might overcome her. Even, in his frenzy, he sought fo 
 
FIRST LOVE 303 
 
 her mouth with his mouth, though it was like putting his 
 face into some awful death. She yielded to him, and he 
 pressed himself upon her in extremity, his soul groaning over 
 and over. 
 
 She took him in the kiss, hard her kiss seized upon him, 
 hard and fierce and burning corrosive as the moonlight. She 
 seemed to be destroying him. He was reeling, summoning 
 all his strength to keep his kiss upon her, to keep himself 
 in the kiss. 
 
 But hard and fierce she had fastened upon him, cold as 
 the moon and burning as a fierce salt. Till gradually his 
 warm, soft iron yielded, yielded, and she was there fierce, 
 corrosive, seething with his destruction, seething like some 
 cruel, corrosive salt around the last substance of his being, 
 destroying him, destroying him in the kiss. And her soul 
 crystallized with triumph, and his soul was dissolved with 
 agony and annihilation. So she held him there, the victim, 
 consumed, annihilated. She had triumphed : he was not any 
 more. 
 
 Gradually she began to come to herself. Gradually a sort 
 of daytime consciousness came back to her. Suddenly the 
 night was struck back into its old, accustomed, mild real- 
 ity. Gradually she realized that the night was common 
 and ordinary, that the great, blistering, transcendent night 
 did not really exist. She was overcome with slow horror. 
 Where was she? What was this nothingness she felt? The 
 nothingness was Skrebensky. Was he really there? who 
 was he? He was silent, he was not there. What had hap- 
 pened? Had she been mad: what horrible thing had pos- 
 sessed her? She was filled with overpowering fear of her- 
 self, overpowering desire that it should not be, that other 
 burning, corrosive self. She was seized with a frenzied de- 
 sire that what had been should never be remembered, never be 
 thought of, never be for one moment allowed possible. She 
 denied it with all her might. With all her might she turned 
 away from it. She was good, she was loving. Her heart 
 was warm, her blood was dark and warm and soft. She laid 
 her hand caressively on Anton's shoulder. 
 
 "Isn't it lovely?" she said, softly, coaxingly, caressingly. 
 And she began to caress him to life again. For he was dead. 
 And she intended that he should never know, never become 
 aware, pf what had been. She would bring him back from the 
 
304 THE RAINBOW 
 
 dead without leaving him one trace of fact to remember his 
 annihilation by. 
 
 She exerted all her ordinary, warm self, she touched him, 
 she did him homage of loving awareness. And gradually he 
 came back to her, another man. She was soft and winning 
 and caressing. She was his servant, his adoring slave. And 
 she restored the whole shell of him. She restored the whole 
 form and figure of him. But the core was gone. His pride 
 was bolstered up, his blood ran once more in pride. But 
 there was no core to him : as a distinct male he had no core. 
 His triumphant, flaming, overweening heart of the intrinsic 
 male would never beat again. He would be subject now, 
 reciprocal, never the indomitable thing with a core of over- 
 weening, unabateable fire. She had abated that fire, she 
 had broken him. 
 
 But she caressed him. She would not have him remember 
 what had been. She would not remember herself. 
 
 " Kiss me, Anton, kiss me," she pleaded. 
 
 He kissed her, but she knew he could not touch her. His 
 arms were round her, but they had not got her. She could 
 feel his mouth upon her, but she was not at all compelled by 
 it. 
 
 "Kiss me," she whispered, in acute distress, "kiss me." 
 
 And he kissed her as she bade him, but his heart was hol- 
 low. She took his kisses, outwardly. But her soul was empty 
 and finished. 
 
 Looking away, she saw the delicate glint of oats dangling 
 from the side of the stack, in the moonlight, something proud 
 and royal, and quite impersonal. She had been proud with 
 them, where they were, she had been also. But in this 
 temporary warm world of the commonplace, she was a kind, 
 good girl. She reached out yearningly for goodness and af- 
 fection. She wanted to be kind and good. 
 
 They went home through the night that was all pale and 
 glowing around, with shadows and glimmerings and pres- 
 ences. Distinctly, she saw the flowers in the hedge-bottoms, 
 she saw the thin, raked sheaves flung white upon the thorny 
 hedge. 
 
 How beautiful, how beautiful it was! She thought with 
 anguish how wildly happy she was to-night, since he had kissed 
 her. But as he walked with his arm round her waist, she 
 turned with a great offering of herself to the night that glis- 
 tened tremendous, a magnificent godly moon, white, and can- 
 
FIRST LOVE 305 
 
 did as a bridegroom, flowers silvery and transformed filling 
 up the shadows. 
 
 He kissed her again, under the yew-trees at home, and she 
 left him. She ran from the intrusion of her parents at 
 home, to her bedroom, where, looking out on the moonlit coun- 
 try, she stretched up her arms, hard, hard, in bliss, agony 
 offering herself to the blond, debonair presence of the 
 night. 
 
 But there was a wound of sorrow, she had hurt herself, as 
 if she had bruised herself, in annihilating him. She covered 
 up her two young breasts with her hands, covering them to 
 herself; and covering herself with herself, she crouched in 
 bed, to sleep. 
 
 In the morning the sun shone, she got up strong and danc- 
 ing. Skrebensky was still at the Marsh. He was coming to 
 church. How lovely, how amazing life was! On the fresh 
 Sunday morning she went out to the garden, among the yel- 
 lows and the deep-vibrating reds of autumn, she smelled the 
 earth and felt the gossamer, the cornfields across the country 
 were pale and unreal, everywhere was the intense silence of 
 the Sunday morning, filled with unacquainted noises. She 
 smelled the body of the earth, it seemed to stir its powerful 
 flank beneath her as she stood. In the bluish air came the 
 powerful exudation, the peace was the peace of strong, ex- 
 hausted breathing, the reds and yellows and the white gleam 
 of stubble were the quivers and motion of the last subsiding 
 transports and clear bliss of fulfilment. 
 
 The church-bells were ringing when he came. She looked 
 up in keen anticipation at his entry. But he was troubled 
 and his pride was hurt. He seemed very much clothed, she 
 was conscious of his tailored suit. 
 
 " Wasn't it lovely last night ? " she whispered to him. 
 
 "Yes," he said. But his face did not open nor become 
 free. 
 
 The service and the singing in church that morning passed 
 unnoticed by her. She saw the coloured glow of the windows, 
 the forms of the worshippers. Only she glanced at the book 
 of Genesis, which was her favourite book in the Bible. 
 
 " And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, 
 Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. 
 
 "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be 
 upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the 
 air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all 
 
306 THE RAINBOW 
 
 the fishes in the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 
 
 " Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; 
 even as the green herb have I given you all things." 
 
 But Ursula was not moved by the history this morning. 
 Multiplying and replenishing the earth bored her. Altogether 
 it seemed merely a vulgar and stock-raising sort of business. 
 She was left quite cold by man's stock-breeding lordship over 
 beast and fishes. 
 
 "And you, be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth 
 abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein." 
 
 In her soul she mocked at this multiplication, every cow 
 becoming two cows, every turnip ten turnips. 
 
 " And God said ; This is the token of the covenant which 
 I make between me and you and every living creature that 
 is with you, for perpetual generations; 
 
 " I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of 
 a covenant between me and the earth. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the 
 earth, that a bow shall be seen in the cloud ; 
 
 "And I will remember my covenant, which is between 
 me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the 
 waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." 
 
 " Destroy all flesh," why " flesh " in particular? Who was 
 this lord of flesh ? After all, how big was the Flood ? Per- 
 haps a few dryads and fauns had just run into the hills and 
 the further valleys and woods, frightened, but most had gone 
 on blithely unaware of any flood at all, unless the nymphs 
 should tell them. It pleased Ursula to think of the naiads 
 in Asia Minor meeting the nereids at the mouth of the 
 streams, where the sea washed against the fresh, sweet tide, 
 and calling to their sisters the news of Noah's Flood. They 
 would tell amusing accounts of Noah in his ark. Some 
 nymphs would relate how they had hung on the side of the 
 ark, peeped in, and heard Noah and Shem and Ham and 
 Japeth, sitting in their place under the rain, saying, how they 
 four were the only men on earth now, because the Lord 
 had drowned all the rest, so that they four would have every- 
 thing to themselves, and be masters of every thing, sub-ten- 
 ants under the great Proprietor. 
 
 Ursula wished she had been a nymph. She would have 
 laughed through the window of the ark, and flicked drops of 
 the flood at Noah, before she drifted away to people who 
 were less important in their Proprietor and their Flood. 
 
FIRST LOVE 307 
 
 What was God, after all? If maggots in a dead dog be 
 but God kissing carrion, what then is not God? She was 
 surfeited of this God. She was weary of the Ursula Brang- 
 wen who felt troubled about God. What ever God was, He 
 was, and there was no need for her to trouble about Him. She 
 felt she had now all licence. 
 
 Skrebensky sat beside her, listening to the sermon, to the 
 voice of law and order. "The very hairs of your head are 
 all numbered." He did not believe it. He believed his own 
 things were quite at his own disposal. You could do as you 
 liked with your own things, so long as you left other people's 
 alone. 
 
 Ursula caressed him and made love to him. Nevertheless 
 he knew she wanted to react upon him and to destroy his 
 being. She was not with him, she was against him. But 
 her making love to him, her complete admiration of him, in 
 open life, gratified him. 
 
 She caught him out of himself, and they were lovers, in 
 a young, romantic, almost fantastic way. He gave her a 
 little ring. They put it in Ehine wine, in their glass, and she 
 drank, then he drank. They drank till the ring lay exposed 
 at the bottom of the glass. Then she took the simple jewel, 
 and tied it on a thread round her neck, where she wore it. 
 
 He asked her for a photograph when he was going away. 
 She went in great excitement to the photographer, with five 
 shillings. The result was an ugly little picture of herself 
 with her mouth on one side. She wondered over it and ad- 
 mired it. 
 
 He saw only the live face of the girl. The picture hurt 
 him. He kept it, he always remembered it, but he could 
 scarcely bear to see it. There was a hurt to his soul in the 
 clear, fearless face that was touched with abstraction. Its 
 abstraction was certainly away from him. 
 
 Then war was declared with the Boers in South Africa, and 
 everywhere was a fizz of excitement. He wrote that he might 
 have to go. And he sent her a box of sweets. 
 
 She was slightly dazed at the thought of his going to the 
 war, not knowing how to feel. It was a sort of romantic 
 situation that she knew so well in fiction she hardly under- 
 stood it in fact. Underneath a top elation was a sort of 
 dreariness, deep, ashy disappointment. 
 
 However, she secreted the sweets under her bed, and ate 
 them all herself, when she went to bed, and when she woke 
 
308 THE RAINBOW 
 
 in the morning. All the time she felt very guilty and 
 ashamed, but she simply did not want to share them. 
 
 That box of sweets remained stuck in her mind afterwards. 
 Why had she secreted them and eaten them every one ? Why ? 
 She did not feel guilty she only knew she ought to feel 
 guilty. And she could not make up her mind. Curiously 
 monumental that box of sweets stood up, now it was empty. 
 It was a crux for her. What was she to think of it ? 
 
 The idea of war altogether made her feel uneasy, uneasy. 
 When men began organized fighting with each other it seemed 
 to her as if the poles of the universe were cracking, and the 
 whole might go tumbling into the bottomless pit. A hor- 
 rible bottomless feeling she had. Yet of course there was 
 the minted superscription of romance and honour and even 
 religion about war. She was very confused. 
 
 Skrebensky was busy, he could not come to see her. She 
 asked for no assurance, no security. What was between 
 them, was, and could not be altered by avowals. She knew 
 that by instinct, she trusted to the intrinsic reality. 
 
 But she felt an agony of helplessness. She could do noth- 
 ing. Vaguely she knew the huge powers of the world rolling 
 and crashing together, darkly, clumsily, stupidly, yet colossal, 
 so that one was brushed along almost as dust. Helpless, 
 helpless, swirling like dust ! Yet she wanted so hard to rebel, 
 to rage, to fight. But with what ? 
 
 Could she with her hands fight the face of the earth, beat 
 the hills in their places? Yet her breast wanted to fight, 
 to fight the whole world. And these two small hands were 
 all she had to do it with. 
 
 The months went by, and it was Christmas the snowdrops 
 came. There was a little hollow in the wood near Cosse- 
 thay, where snowdrops grew wild. She sent him some in a 
 box, and he wrote her a quick little note of thanks very 
 grateful and wistful he seemed. Her eyes grew childlike and 
 puzzled. Puzzled from day to day she went on, helpless, car- 
 ried along by all that must happen. 
 
 He went about at his duties, giving himself up to them. 
 At the bottom of his heart his self, the soul that aspired and 
 had true hope of self-effectuation lay as dead, still-born, a 
 dead weight in his womb. Who was he, to hold important his 
 personal connection ? What did a man matter personally ? 
 He was just a brick in the whole great social fabric, the na- 
 tion, the modern humanity. His personal movements were 
 
FIRST LOVE 309 
 
 email, and entirely subsidiary. The whole form must be en- 
 sured, not ruptured, for any personal reason whatsoever, since 
 no personal reason could justify such a breaking. What did 
 personal intimacy matter ? One had to fill one's place in the 
 whole, the great scheme of man's elaborate civilization, that 
 was all. The Whole mattered but the unit, the person, 
 had no importance, except as he represented the Whole. 
 
 So Skrebensky left the girl out and went his way, serving 
 what he had to serve, and enduring what he had to endure, 
 without remark. To his own intrinsic life, he was dead. 
 And he could not rise again from the dead. His soul lay in 
 the tomb. His life lay in the established order of things. 
 He had his five senses too. They were to be gratified. Apart 
 from this, he represented the great, established, extant Idea 
 of life, and as this he was important and beyond question. 
 
 The good of the greatest number was all that mattered. 
 That which was the greatest good for them all, collectively, 
 was the greatest good for the individual. And so, every 
 man must give himself to support the state, and so labour 
 for the greatest good of all. One might make improvements 
 in the state, perhaps, but always with a view to preserving it 
 intact. 
 
 No highest good of the community, however, would give 
 him the vital fulfilment of his soul. He knew this. But he 
 did not consider the soul of the individual sufficiently impor- 
 tant. He believed a man was important in so far as he repre- 
 sented all humanity. 
 
 He could not see, it was not born in him to see, that the 
 highest good of the community as it stands is no longer the 
 highest good of even the average individual. He thought 
 that, because the community represents millions of people, 
 therefore it must be millions of times more important than 
 any individual, forgetting that the community is an abstrac- 
 tion from the many, and is not the many themselves. Now 
 when the statement of the abstract good for the community 
 has become a formula lacking in all inspiration or value 
 to the average intelligence, then the "common good" be- 
 comes a general nuisance, representing the vulgar, conserva- 
 tive materialism at a low level. 
 
 And by the highest good of the greatest number is chiefly 
 meant the material prosperity of all classes. Skrebensky 
 did not really care about his own material prosperity. If 
 he had been penniless well, he would have taken his chances. 
 
310 THE JRAINBOW 
 
 Therefore how could he find his highest good in giving up 
 his life for the material prosperity of everybody else ! What 
 he considered an unimportant thing for himself he could not 
 think worthy of every sacrifice on behalf of other people. 
 And that which he would consider of the deepest importance 
 to himself as an individual oh, he said, you mustn't con- 
 sider the community from that standpoint. No no we 
 know what the community wants; it wants something solid, 
 it wants good wages, equal opportunities, good conditions of 
 living, that's what the community wants. It doesn't want 
 anything subtle or difficult. Duty is very plain keep in 
 mind the material, the immediate welfare of every man, that's 
 all. 
 
 So there came over Skrebensky a sort of nullity, which 
 more and more terrified Ursula. She felt there was something 
 hopeless which she had to submit to. She felt a great sense 
 of disaster impending. Day after day was made inert with 
 a sense of disaster. She became morbidly sensitive, depressed, 
 apprehensive. It was anguish to her when she saw one rook 
 slowly flapping in the sky. That was a sign of ill-omen. 
 And the foreboding became so black and so powerful in her, 
 that she was almost extinguished. 
 
 Yet what was the matter? At the worst he was only 
 going away. Why did she mind, what was it she feared? 
 She did not know. Only she had a black dread possessing 
 her. When she went at night and saw the big, flashing stars 
 they seemed terrible, by day she was always expecting some 
 charge to be made against her. 
 
 He wrote in March to say that he was going to South 
 Africa in a short time, but before he went, he would snatch 
 a day at the Marsh. 
 
 As if in a painful dream, she waited suspended, unresolved. 
 She did not know, she could not understand. Only she felt 
 that all the threads of her fate were being held taut, in sus- 
 pense. She only wept sometimes as she went about, saying 
 blindly : 
 
 " I am so fond of him, I am so fond of him." 
 
 He came. But why did he come? She looked at him 
 for a sign. He gave no sign. He did not even kiss her. He 
 behaved as if he were an affable, usual acquaintance. This 
 was superficial, but what did it hide? She waited for him, 
 she wanted him to make some sign. 
 
 So the whole of the day they wavered and avoided con- 
 
FIRST LOVE 311 
 
 tact, until evening. Then, laughing, saying he would be back 
 in six months' time and would tell them all about it, he shook 
 hands with her mother and took his leave. 
 
 Ursula accompanied him into the lane. The night was 
 windy, the yew-trees seethed and hissed and vibrated. The 
 wind seemed to rush about among the chimneys and the 
 church-tower. It was dark. 
 
 The wind blew Ursula's face, and her clothes cleaved to 
 her limbs. But it was a surging, turgid wind, instinct with 
 compressed vigour of life. And she seemed to have lost 
 Skrebensky. Out there in the strong, urgent night she could 
 not find him. 
 
 " Where are you ? " she asked. 
 
 " Here," came his bodiless voice. 
 
 And groping, she touched him. A fire like lightning 
 drenched them. 
 
 "Anton?" she said. 
 
 "What?" he answered. 
 
 She held him with her hands in the darkness, she felt his 
 body again with hers. 
 
 " Don't leave me come back to me," she said. 
 
 " Yes," he said, holding her in his arms. 
 
 But the male in him was scotched by the knowledge that 
 she was not under his spell nor his influence. He wanted to 
 go away from her. He rested in the knowledge that to- 
 morrow he was going away, his life was really elsewhere. 
 His life was elsewhere his life was elsewhere the centre of 
 his life was not what she would have. She was different 
 there was a breach between them. They were hostile worlds. 
 
 " You will come back to me ? " she reiterated. 
 
 "Yes," he said. And he meant it. But as one keeps an 
 appointment, not as a man returning to his fulfilment. 
 
 So she kissed him, and went indoors, lost. He walked 
 down to the Marsh abstracted. The contact with her hurt 
 him, and threatened him. He shrank, he had to be free of 
 her spirit. For she would stand before him, like the angel 
 before Balaam, and drive him back with a sword from the 
 way he was going, into a wilderness. 
 
 The next day she went to the station to see him go. She 
 looked at him, she turned to him, but he was always so 
 strange and null so null. He was so collected. She 
 thought it was that which made him null. Strangely nothing 
 he was. 
 
RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula stood near to him with a mute, pale face which lie 
 would rather not see. There seemed some shame at the 
 very root of life, cold, dead shame for her. 
 
 The three made a noticeable group on the station; the 
 girl in her fur cap and tippet and her olive green costume, 
 pale, tense with youth, isolated, unyielding; the soldierly 
 young man in a crush hat and a heavy overcoat, his face 
 rather pale and reserved above his purple scarf, his whole 
 figure neutral; then the elder man, a fashionable bowler hat 
 pressed low over his dark brows, his face warm-coloured and 
 calm, his whole figure curiously suggestive of full-blooded 
 indifference ; he was the eternal audience, the chorus, the spec- 
 tator at the drama ; in his own life he would have no drama. 
 
 The train was rushing up. Ursula's heart heaved, but the 
 ice was frozen too strong upon it. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said, lifting her hand, her face laughing 
 with her peculiar, blind, almost dazzling laugh. She won- 
 dered what he was doing, when he stooped and kissed her. 
 He should be shaking hands and going. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said again. 
 
 He picked up his little bag and turned his back on her. 
 There was a hurry along the train. Ah, here was his carriage. 
 He took his seat. Tom Brangwen shut the door, and the 
 two men shook hands as the whistle went. 
 
 " Good-bye and good luck," said Brangwen. 
 
 "Thank you good-bye." 
 
 The train moved off. Skrebensky stood at the carriage 
 window, waving, but not really looking to the two figures, 
 the girl' and the warm-coloured, almost effeminately-dressed 
 man. Ursula waved her handkerchief. The train gathered 
 speed, it grew smaller and smaller. Still it ran in a straight 
 line. The speck of white vanished. The rear of the train 
 was small in the distance. Still she stood on the platform, 
 feeling a great emptiness about her. In spite of herself her 
 mouth was quivering : she did not want to cry : her heart was 
 dead cold. 
 
 Her uncle Tom had gone to an automatic machine, and was 
 getting matches. 
 
 " Would you like some sweets," he said, turning round. 
 
 Her face was covered with tears, she made curious, down- 
 ward grimaces with her mouth, to get control. Yet her heart 
 was not crying it was cold and earthy. 
 
 " What kind would you like any ? " persisted her uncle. 
 
FIRST LOVE 31S 
 
 "I should love some peppermint drops," she said, in a 
 strange, normal voice, from her distorted face. But in a 
 few moments she had gained control of herself, and was 
 still, detached. 
 
 " Let us go into the town," he said, and he rushed her into 
 a train, moving to the town station. They went to a cafe 
 to drink coffee, she sat looking at people in the street, and 
 a great wound was in her breast, a cold imperturbability in 
 her soul. 
 
 This cold imperturbability of spirit continued in her now. 
 It was as if some disillusion had frozen upon her, a hard dis- 
 belief. Part of her had gone cold, apathetic. She was too 
 young, too baffled to understand, or even to know that she 
 suffered much. And she was too deeply hurt to submit. 
 
 She had her blind agonies, when she wanted him, she 
 wanted him. But from the moment of his departure, he 
 had become a visionary thing of her own. All her roused 
 torment and passion and yearning she turned to him. 
 
 She kept a diary, in which she wrote impulsive thoughts. 
 Seeing the moon in the sky, her own heart surcharged, she 
 went and wrote: 
 
 "If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down." 
 It meant so much to her, that sentence she put into it 
 all the anguish of her youth and her young passion and yearn- 
 ing. She called to him from her heart wherever she went, 
 her limbs vibrated with anguish towards him wherever she 
 was, the radiating force of her soul seemed to travel to him, 
 endlessly, endlessly, and in her soul's own creation, find 
 him. 
 
 But who was he, and where did he exist ? In her own de- 
 sire only. 
 
 She received a post-card from him, and she put it in her 
 bosom. It did not mean much to her, really. The second 
 day, she lost it, and never even remembered she had had it, 
 till some days afterwards. 
 
 The long weeks went by. There came the constant bad 
 news of the war. And she felt as if all, outside there in the 
 world, were a hurt, a hurt against her. And something in 
 her soul remained cold, apathetic, unchanging. 
 
 Her life was always only partial at this time, never did she 
 live completely. There was the cold, unliving part of her. 
 Yet she was madly sensitive. She could not bear herself. 
 When a dirty, red-eyed old woman came begging of her in 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 the street, slie started away as from an unclean thing. And 
 then, when the old woman shouted acrid insults after her, 
 she winced, her limbs palpitated with insane torment, she 
 could not bear herself. Whenever she thought of the red- 
 eyed old women, a/ sort of madness ran in inflammation over 
 hier flesh and her brain, she almost wanted to kill herself. 
 
 And in this state, her sexual life flamed into a kind of 
 disease within her. She was so overwrought and sensitive, 
 that the mere touch of coarse wool seemed to tear her nerves. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 SHAME 
 
 URSULA had only two more terms at school. She 
 was studying for her matriculation examination. It 
 was dreary work, for she had very little intelligence 
 when she was disjointed from happiness. Stub- 
 bornness and a consciousness of impending fate kept her half- 
 heartedly pinned to it. She knew that soon she would want to 
 become a self-responsible person, and her dread was that she 
 would be prevented. An all-containing will in her for com- 
 plete independence, complete social independence, complete 
 independence from any personal authority, kept her dullishly 
 at her studies. For she knew that she had always her price 
 of ransom her f emaleness. She was always a woman, and 
 what she could not get because she was a human being, fellow 
 to the rest of mankind, she would get because she was a female, 
 other than the man. In her femaleness she felt a secret riches, 
 a reserve, she had always the price of freedom. 
 
 However, she was sufficiently reserved about this last re- 
 source. The other things should be tried first. There was 
 the mysterious man's world to be adventured upon, the world 
 of daily work and duty, and existence as a working member 
 of the community. Against this she had a subtle grudge. 
 She wanted to make her conquest also of this man's world. 
 
 So she ground away at her work, never giving it up. Some 
 things she liked. Her subjects were English, Latin, French, 
 mathematics and history. Once she knew how to read French 
 and Latin, the syntax bored her. Most tedious was the close 
 study of English literature. Why should one remember the 
 things one read? Something in mathematics, their cold 
 absoluteness, fascinated her, but the actual practice was 
 tedious. Some people in history puzzled her and made her 
 ponder, but the political parts angered her, and she hated 
 ministers. Only in odd streaks did she get a poignant sense 
 of acquisition and enrichment and enlarging from her studies ; 
 one afternoon, reading " As You Like It " ; once when, with 
 her blood, she heard a passage of Latin, and she knew how the 
 
 315 
 
316 THE RAINBOW 
 
 blood beat in a Roman's body; so that ever after she felt she 
 knew the Romans by contact. She enjoyed the vagaries of 
 English Grammar, because it gave her pleasure to detect the 
 live movements of words and sentences ; and mathematics, the 
 very sight of the letters in Algebra, had a real lure for her. 
 
 She felt so much and so confusedly at this time, that her 
 face got a queer, wondering, half-scared look, as if she were 
 not sure what might seize upon her at any moment out of the 
 unknown. 
 
 Odd little bits of information stirred unfathomable passion 
 in her. When she knew that in the tiny brown buds of 
 autumn were folded, minute and complete, the finished flowers 
 of the summer nine months hence,, tiny, folded up, and left 
 there waiting, a flash of triumph and love went over her. 
 
 "I could never die while there was a tree," she said pas- 
 sionately, sententiously, standing before a great ash in wor- 
 ship. 
 
 It was the people who, somehow, walked as an upright 
 menace to her. Her life at this time was unformed, palpitat- 
 ing, essentially shrinking from all touch. She gave some- 
 thing to other people, but she was never herself, since she had 
 no self. She was not afraid nor ashamed before trees, and 
 birds, and the sky. But she shrank violently from people, 
 ashamed she was not as they were, fixed, emphatic, but a 
 wavering, undefined sensibility only, without form or being. 
 
 Gudrun was at this time a great comfort and shield to her. 
 The younger girl was a lithe, farouche animal, who mis- 
 trusted all approach, and would have none of the petty se- 
 crecies and jealousies of schoolgirl intimacy. She would have 
 no truck with the tame cats, nice or not, because she believed 
 that they were all only untamed cats with a nasty, untrust- 
 worthy habit of tameness. 
 
 This was a great stand-back to Ursula, who suffered agonies 
 when she thought a person disliked her, no matter how much 
 she despised that other person. How could any one dislike 
 her, Ursula Brangwen? The question terrified her and was 
 unanswerable. She sought refuge in Gudrun's natural, proud 
 indifference. 
 
 It had been discovered that Gudrun had a talent for draw- 
 ing. This solved the problem of the girl's indifference to all 
 study. It was said of her, " She can draw marvellously." 
 
 Suddenly Ursula found a queer awareness existed between 
 herself and her class-mistress,. Miss Inger. The latter wag a, 
 
SHAME 317 
 
 rather beautiful woman of twenty-eight, a fearless-seeming, 
 clean type of modern girl whose very independence betrays 
 her sorrow. She was clever, and expert in what she did, ac- 
 curate, quick, commanding. 
 
 To Ursula she had always given pleasure, because of her 
 clear, decided, yet graceful appearance. She carried her 
 head high, a little thrown back, and Ursula thought there 
 was a look of nobility in the way she twisted her smooth 
 brown hair upon her head. She always wore clean, attrac- 
 tive, well-fitting blouses, and a well-made skirt. Everything 
 about her was so well-ordered, betraying a fine, clear spirit, 
 that it was a pleasure to sit in her class. 
 
 Her voice was just as ringing and clear, and with unwaver- 
 ing, finely-touched modulation. Her eyes were blue, clear, 
 proud, she gave one altogether the sense of a fine-mettled, 
 scrupulously groomed person, and of an unyielding mind. 
 Yet there was an infinite poignancy about her, a great pathos 
 in her lonely, proudly closed mouth. 
 
 It was after Skrebensky had gone that there sprang up be- 
 tween the mistress and the girl that strange awareness, then 
 the unspoken intimacy that sometimes connects two people 
 who may never even make each other's acquaintance. Be- 
 fore, they had always been good friends, in the undistin- 
 guished way of the class-room, with the professional relation- 
 ship of mistress and scholar always present. Now, however, 
 another thing came to pass. When they were in the room to- 
 gether, they were aware of each other, almost to the exclusion 
 of everything else. Winifred Inger felt a hot delight in the 
 lessons when Ursula was present, Ursula felt her whole life 
 begin when Miss Inger came into the room. Then, with the 
 beloved, subtly-intimate teacher present, the girl sat as within 
 the rays of some enrichening sun, whose intoxicating heat 
 poured straight into her veins. 
 
 The state of bliss, when Miss Inger was present, was 
 supreme in the girl, but always eager, eager. As she went 
 home, Ursula dreamed of the school-mistress, made infinite 
 dreams of things she could give her, of how she might make 
 the elder woman adore her. 
 
 Miss Inger was a Bachelor of Arts, who had studied at 
 Newnham. She was a clergyman's daughter, of good family. 
 But what Ursula adored so much was her fine, upright, athletic 
 bearing, and her indomitably proud nature. She was proud 
 and free as a man, yet exquisite as a woman, 
 
318 THE RAINBOW 
 
 The girl's heart burned in her breast as she set off for 
 school in the morning. So eager was her breast, so glad her 
 feet, to travel towards the beloved. Ah, Miss Inger, how 
 straight and fine was her back, how strong her loins, how 
 calm and free her limbs ! 
 
 Ursula craved ceaselessly to know if Miss Inger cared for 
 her. As yet no definite sign had been passed between the 
 two. Yet surely, surely Miss Inger loved her too, was fond 
 of her, liked her at least more than the rest of the scholars 
 in the class. Yet she was never certain. It might be that 
 Miss Inger cared nothing for her. And yet, and yet, with 
 blazing heart, Ursula felt that if only she could speak to her, 
 touch her, she would know. 
 
 The summer term came, and with it the swimming class. 
 Miss Inger was to take the swimming class. Then Ursula 
 trembled and was dazed with passion. Her hopes were soon 
 to be realized. She would see Miss Inger in her bathing dress. 
 
 The day came. In the great bath the water was glimmer- 
 ing pale emerald green, a lovely, glimmering mass of colour 
 within the whitish marble-like confines. Overhead the light 
 fell softly and the great green body of pure water moved under 
 it as some one dived from the side. 
 
 Ursula, trembling, hardly able to contain herself, pulled 
 off her clothes, put on her tight bathing suit, and opened the 
 door of her cabin. Two girls were in the water. The mis- 
 tress had not appeared. She waited. A door opened. Miss 
 Inger came out, dressed in a rust-red tunic like a Greek 
 girl's, tied round the waist, and a red silk handkerchief round 
 her head. How lovely she looked ! Her knees were so white 
 and strong and proud, and she was firm-bodied as Diana. She 
 walked simply to the side of the bath, and with a negligent 
 movement, flung herself in. For a moment Ursula watched 
 the white, smooth, strong shoulders, and the easy arms swim- 
 ming. Then she too dived into the water. 
 
 Now, ah now, she was swimming in the same water with 
 her dear mistress. The girl moved her limbs voluptuously, 
 and swam by herself, deliciously, yet with a craving of un- 
 satisfaction. She wanted to touch the other, to touch her, to 
 feel her. 
 
 " I will race you, Ursula/' came the well-modulated voice. 
 
 Ursula started violently. She turned to see the warm, un- 
 folded face of her mistress looking at her, to her. She was 
 Acknowledged. Laughing her own beautiful, startled laugh. 
 
SHAME 319 
 
 she began to swim. The mistress was just ahead, swimming 
 with easy strokes. Ursula could see the head put back, the 
 water flickering upon the white shoulders, the strong legs 
 kicking shadowily. And she swam blinded with passion. Ah, 
 the beauty of the firm, white, cool flesh ! Ah, the wonderful 
 firm limbs. Ah, if she did not so despise her own thin, dusky 
 fragment of a body, if only she too were fearless and capable. 
 
 She swam on eagerly, not wanting to win, only wanting 
 to be near her mistress, to swim in a race with her. They 
 neared the end of the bath, the deep end. Miss Inger touched 
 the pipe, swung herself round, and caught Ursula round the 
 waist in the water, and held her for a moment. 
 
 " I won," said Miss Inger, laughing. 
 
 There was a moment of suspense. Ursula's heart was beat- 
 ing so fast, she clung to the rail, and could not move. Her 
 dilated, warm, unfolded, glowing face turned to the mistress, 
 as if to her very sun. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Miss Inger, and she swam away to the 
 other pupils, taking professional interest in them. 
 
 Ursula was dazed. She could still feel the touch of the 
 mistress's body against her own only this, only this. The 
 rest of the swimming time passed like a trance. When the 
 call was given to leave the water, Miss Inger walked down 
 the bath towards Ursula. Her rust-red, thin tunic was cling- 
 ing to her, the whole body was defined, firm and magnificent, 
 as it seemed to the girl. 
 
 " I enjoyed our race, Ursula, did you ? " said Miss Inger. 
 
 The girl could only laugh with revealed, open, glowing 
 face. 
 
 The love was now tacitly confessed. But it was some 
 time before any further progress was made. Ursula continued 
 in suspense, in inflamed bliss. 
 
 Then one day, when she was alone, the mistress came near 
 to her, and touching her cheek with her fingers, said with 
 some difficulty. 
 
 "Would you like to come to tea with me on Saturday, 
 Ursula?" 
 
 The girl flushed all gratitude. 
 
 " We'll go to a lovely little bungalow on the Soar, shall we ? 
 I stay the week-ends there sometimes." 
 
 Ursula was beside herself. She could not endure till the 
 Saturday came, her thoughts burned up like a fire. If only 
 it were Saturday, if only it were Saturday. 
 
320 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Then Saturday came, and she set out. 1 * Miss Inger met her 
 in Sawley, and they walked about three miles to the bunga- 
 low. It was a moist, warm cloudy day. 
 
 The bungalow was a tiny, two-roomed shanty set on a steep 
 bank. Everything in it was exquisite. In delicious privacy, 
 the two girls made tea, and then they talked. Ursula need 
 not be home till about ten o'clock. 
 
 The talk was led, by a kind of spell, to love. Miss Inger 
 was telling Ursula of a friend, how she had died in child- 
 birth, and what she had suffered; then she told of a prosti- 
 tute, and of some of her experiences with men. 
 
 As they talked thus, on the little verandah of the bunga- 
 low, the night fell, there was a little warm rain. 
 
 " It is really stifling," said Miss Inger. 
 
 They watched a train, whose lights were pale in the linger- 
 ing twilight, rushing across the distance. 
 
 " It will thunder/' said Ursula. 
 
 The electric suspense continued, the darkness sank, they 
 were eclipsed. 
 
 " I think I shall go and bathe," said Miss Inger, out of the 
 cloud-black darkness. 
 
 "At night?" said Ursula. 
 
 " It is best at night. Will you come ? " 
 
 "I should like to." 
 
 " It is quite safe the grounds are private. We had better 
 undress in the bungalow, for fear of the rain, then run down." 
 
 Shyly, stiffly, Ursula went into the bungalow, and began to 
 remove her clothes. The lamp was turned low, she stood 
 in the shadow. By another chair Winifred Inger was undress- 
 ing. 
 
 Soon the naked, shadowy figure of the elder girl came to 
 the younger. 
 
 " Are you ready ? " she said. 
 
 " One moment." 
 
 Ursula could hardly speak. The other naked woman stood 
 by, stood near, silent. Ursula was ready. 
 
 They ventured out into the darkness, feeling the soft air 
 of night upon their skins. 
 
 " I can't see the path," said Ursula. 
 
 " It is here," said the voice, and the wavering, pallid figure 
 was beside her, a hand grasping her arm. And the elder held 
 the younger close against her, close, as they went down, and 
 by the side of the water, she put her arms round her, and 
 
SHAME 321 
 
 kissed her. And she lifted her in her arms, close, saying, 
 softly, 
 
 " I shall carry you into the water." 
 
 After awhile the rain came down on their flushed, hot limbs, 
 startling, delicious. A sudden, ice-cold shower burst in a 
 great weight upon them. They stood up to it with pleasure. 
 Ursula received the stream of it upon her breasts and her 
 limbs. It made her cold, and a deep, bottomless silence welled 
 up in her, as if bottomless darkness were returning upon her. 
 
 So the heat vanished away, she was chilled, as if from a 
 waking up. She ran indoors, a chill, non-existent thing, want- 
 ing to get away. She wanted the light, the presence of other 
 people, the external connection with the many. Above all she 
 wanted to lose herself among natural surroundings. 
 
 She took her leave of her mistress and returned home. 
 She was glad to be on the station with a crowd of Saturday- 
 night people, glad to sit in the lighted, crowded railway car- 
 riage. Only she did not want to meet anybody she knew. 
 She did not want to talk. She was alone, immune. 
 
 All this stir and seethe of lights and people was but the 
 rim, the shores of a great inner darkness and void. She 
 wanted very much to be on the seething, partially illuminated 
 shore, for within her was the void reality of dark space. 
 
 For a time Miss Inger, her mistress, was gone; she was 
 only a dark void, and Ursula was free as a shade walking in 
 an underworld of extinction, of oblivion. Ursula was glad, 
 with a kind of motionless, lifeless gladness, that her mistress 
 was extinct, gone out of her. 
 
 In the morning, however, the love was there again, burning, 
 burning. She remembered yesterday, and she wanted more, 
 always more. She wanted to be with her mistress. All sepa- 
 ration from her mistress was a restriction from living. Why 
 could she not go to her to-day, to-day? Why must she pace 
 about revoked at Cossethay whilst her mistress was elsewhere ? 
 She sat down and wrote a burning, passionate love-letter : she 
 could not help it. 
 
 The two women became intimate. Their lives seemed sud- 
 denly to fuse into one, inseparable. Ursula went to Wini- 
 fred's lodging, she spent there her only living hours. Wini- 
 fred was very fond of water, of swimming, of rowing. She 
 belonged to various athletic clubs. Many delicious afternoons 
 the two girls spent in a light boat on the river, Winifred al- 
 ways rowing. Indeed, Winifred seemed to delight in having 
 
322 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula in her charge, in giving things to the girl, in filling 
 and enrichening her life. 
 
 So that Ursula developed rapidly during the few months 
 of her intimacy with her mistress. Winifred had had a scien- 
 tific education. She had known many clever people. She 
 wanted to bring Ursula to her own position of thought. 
 
 They took religion and rid it of its dogmas, its falsehoods. 
 Winifred humanized it all. Gradually it dawned upon Ursula 
 that all the religion she knew was but a particular clothing 
 to a human aspiration. The aspiration was the real thing, 
 the clothing was a matter almost of national taste or need. 
 The Greeks had a naked Apollo, the Christians a white-robed 
 Christ, the Buddhists a royal prince, the Egyptians their 
 Osiris. Religions were local and religion was universal. 
 Christianity was a local branch. There was as yet no assimila- 
 tion of local religions into universal religion. 
 
 In religion there were the two great motives of fear and love. 
 The motive of fear was as great as the motive of love. Christi- 
 anity accepted crucifixion to escape from fear; "Do your 
 worst to me, that I may have no more fear of the worst." But 
 that which was feared was not necessarily all evil, and that 
 which was loved not necessarily all good. Fear shall become 
 reverence, and reverence is submission in identification; love 
 shall become triumph, and triumph is delight in identifica- 
 tion. 
 
 So much she talked of religion, getting the gist of many 
 writings. In philosophy she was brought to the conclusion 
 that the human desire is the criterion of all truth and all 
 good. Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of 
 the products of the human mind and feeling. There is really 
 nothing to fear. The motive of fear in religion is base, and 
 must be left to the ancient worshippers of power, worship of 
 Moloch. We do not worship power, in our enlightened souls. 
 Power is degenerated to money and Napoleonic stupidity. 
 
 Ursula could not help dreaming of Moloch. Her God was 
 not mild and gentle, neither Lamb nor Dove. He was the 
 lion and the eagle. Not because the lion and the eagle had 
 power, but because they were proud and strong; they were 
 themselves, they were not passive subjects of some shepherd, 
 or pets of some loving woman, or sacrifices of some priest. 
 She was weary to death of mild, passive lambs and monot- 
 onous doves. If the lamb might lie down with the lion, it 
 would be a great honour to the lamb, but the lion's powerful 
 
SHAME 323 
 
 heart would suffer no diminishing. She loved the dignity 
 and self-possession of lions. 
 
 She did not see how lambs could love. Lambs could only 
 be loved. They could only be afraid, and tremblingly sub- 
 mit to fear, and become sacrificial; or they could submit to 
 love, and become beloveds. In both they were passive. Rag- 
 ing, destructive lovers, seeking the moment when fear is great- 
 est, and triumph is greatest, the fear not greater than the tri- 
 umph, the triumph not greater than the fear, these were no 
 lambs nor doves. She stretched her own limbs like a lion or a 
 wild horse, her heart was relentless in its desires. It would 
 suffer a thousand deaths, but it would still be a lion's heart 
 when it rose from death, a fiercer lion she would be, a surer, 
 knowing herself different from and separate from the great, 
 conflicting universe that was not herself. 
 
 Winifred Inger was also interested in the Women's Move- 
 ment. 
 
 " The men will do no more, they have lost the capacity 
 for doing," said the elder girl. "They fuss and talk, but 
 they are really inane. They make everything fit into an old, 
 inert idea. Love is a dead idea to them. They don't come 
 to one and love one, they come to an idea, and they say 
 ' You are my idea/ so they embrace themselves. As if I were 
 any man's idea ! As if I exist because a man has an idea of 
 me ! As if I will be betrayed by him, lend him my body as an 
 instrument for his idea, to be a mere apparatus of his dead 
 theory. But they are too fussy to be able to act; they are 
 all impotent, they can't take a woman. They come to their 
 own idea every time, and take that. They are like serpents 
 trying to swallow themselves because they are hungry." 
 
 Ursula was introduced by her friend to various women and 
 men, educated, unsatisfied people, who still moved within the 
 smug provincial society as if they were nearly as tame as 
 their outward behaviour showed, but who were inwardly raging 
 and mad. 
 
 It was a strange world the girl was swept into, like a chaos, 
 like the end of the world. She was too young to understand 
 it all. Yet the inoculation passed into her, through her love 
 for her mistress. 
 
 The examination came, and then school was over. It was 
 the long vacation. Winifred Inger went away to London. 
 Ursula was left alone in Cossethay. A terrible, outcast, al- 
 most poisonous despair possessed her. It was no use doing 
 
THE &AINBOW 
 
 anything, or being anything. She had no connection with 
 other people. Her lot was isolated and deadly. There was 
 nothing for her anywhere, but this black disintegration. Yet, 
 within all the great attack of disintegration upon her, she 
 remained herself. It was the terrible core of all her suffering, 
 that she was always herself. Never could she escape that: 
 she could not put off being herself. 
 
 She still adhered to Winifred Inger. But a sort of nausea 
 was coming over her. She loved her mistress. But a heavy, 
 clogged sense of deadness began to gather upon her, from 
 the other woman's contact. And sometimes she thought Wini- 
 fred was ugly, clayey. Her female hips seemed big and 
 earthy, her ankles and her arms were too thick. She wanted 
 some fine intensity, instead of this heavy cleaving of moist 
 clay, that cleaves because it has no life of its own. 
 
 Winifred still loved Ursula. She had a passion for the fine 
 flame of the girl, she served her endlessly, would have done 
 anything for her. 
 
 " Come with me to London," she pleaded to the girl. " I 
 will make it nice for you, you shall do lots of things you 
 will enjoy/' 
 
 " No," said Ursula, stubbornly and dully. " No, I don't 
 want to go to London, I want to be by myself." 
 
 Winifred knew what this meant. She knew that Ursula 
 was beginning to reject her. The fine, unquenchable flame 
 of the younger girl would consent no more to mingle with the 
 perverted life of the elder woman. Winifred knew it would 
 come. But she too was proud. At the bottom of her was a 
 black pit of despair. She knew perfectly well that Ursula 
 would cast her off. 
 
 And that seemed like the end of her life. But she was too 
 hopeless to rage. Wisely, economizing what was left of 
 Ursula's love, she went away to London, leaving the beloved 
 girl alone. 
 
 And after a fortnight, Ursula's letters became tender again, 
 loving. Her Uncle Tom had invited her to go and stay with 
 him. He was managing a big, new colliery in Yorkshire. 
 Would Winifred come too? 
 
 For now Ursula was imagining marriage for Winifred. 
 She wanted her to marry her Uncle Tom. Winifred knew 
 this. She said she would come to Wiggiston. She would 
 now let fate do as it liked with her, since there was nothing 
 remaining to be done. Tom Brangwen also saw Ursula's 
 
SHAME 
 
 intention. He too was at the end of his desires. He had 
 done the things he had wanted to. They had all ended in a 
 disintegrated lifelessness of soul, which he hid under an utterly 
 tolerant good-humour. He no longer cared about anything 
 on earth, neither man nor woman, nor God nor humanity. 
 He had come to a stability of nullification. He did not care 
 any more, neither about his body nor about his soul. Only 
 he would preserve intact his own life. Only the simple, super- 
 ficial fact of living persisted. He was still healthy. He 
 lived. Therefore he would fill each moment. That had al- 
 ways been his creed. It was not instinctive easiness: it was 
 the inevitable outcome of his nature. When he was in the 
 absolute privacy of his own life, he did as he pleased, un- 
 scrupulous, without any ulterior thought. He believed neither 
 in good nor evil. Each moment was like a separate little is- 
 land, isolated from time, and blank, unconditioned by time. 
 
 He lived in a large new house of red brick, standing out- 
 side a mass of homogeneous red-brick dwellings, called Wiggis- 
 ton. Wiggiston was only seven years old. It had been a 
 hamlet of eleven houses on the edge of healthy, half-agri- 
 cultural country. Then the great seam of coal had been 
 opened. In a year Wiggiston appeared, a great mass of pink- 
 ish rows of thin, unreal dwellings of five rooms each. The 
 streets were like visions of pure ugliness ; a grey-black macad- 
 amized road, asphalt causeways, held in between a flat succes- 
 sion of wall, window, and door, a new-brick channel that be- 
 gan nowhere, and ended nowhere. Everything was amor- 
 phous, yet everything repeated itself endlessly. Only now and 
 then, in one of the house-windows vegetables or small groceries 
 were displayed for sale. 
 
 In the middle of the town was a large, open, shapeless 
 space, or market-place, of black trodden earth, surrounded by 
 the same flat material of dwellings, new red-brick becoming 
 grimy, small oblong windows, and oblong doors, repeated end- 
 lessly, with just, at one corner, a great and gaudy public- 
 house, and somewhere lost on one of the sides of the square, 
 a large window opaque and darkish green, which was the post- 
 office. 
 
 The place had the strange desolation of a ruin. Colliers 
 hanging about in gangs and groups, or passing along the 
 asphalt pavements heavily to work, seemed not like living 
 people, but like spectres. The rigidity of the blank streets, 
 the homogeneous amorphous sterility of the whole suggested 
 
326 THE RAINBOW 
 
 death rather than life. There was no meeting place, no centre, 
 no artery, no organic formation. There it lay, like the new 
 foundations of a red-brick confusion rapidly spreading, like a 
 skin-disease. 
 
 Just outside of this, on a little hill, was Tom Brangwen's 
 big, red-brick house. It looked from the front upon the edge 
 of the place, a meaningless squalor of ash-pits and closets and 
 irregular rows of the backs of houses, each with its small 
 activity made sordid by barren cohesion with the rest of the 
 small activities. Further off was the great colliery that went 
 night and day. And all around was the country, green with 
 two winding streams, ragged with gorse, and heath, the darker 
 woods in the distance. 
 
 The whole place was just unreal, just unreal. Even now, 
 when he had been there for two years, Tom Brangwen did 
 not believe in the actuality of the place. It was like some 
 gruesome dream, some ugly, dead, amorphous mood become 
 concrete. 
 
 Ursula and Winifred were met by the motor car at the 
 raw little station, and drove through what seemed to them 
 like the horrible raw beginnings of something. The place 
 was a moment of chaos perpetuated, persisting, chaos fixed 
 and rigid. Ursula was fascinated by the many men who were 
 there groups of men standing in the streets, four or five 
 men walking in a gang together, their dogs running behind or 
 before. They were all decently dressed, and most of them 
 rather gaunt. The terrible gaunt repose of their bearing fasci- 
 nated her. Like creatures with no more hope, but which still 
 live and have passionate being, within some utterly unliving 
 shell, they passed meaninglessly along, with strange, isolated 
 dignity. It was as if a hard, horny shell enclosed them all. 
 
 Shocked and startled, Ursula was carried to her Uncle 
 Tom's house. He was not yet at home. His house was 
 simply, but well furnished. He had taken out a dividing wall, 
 and made the whole front of the house into a large library, 
 with one end devoted to his science. It was a handsome room, 
 appointed as a laboratory and reading room, but giving the 
 same sense of hard, mechanical activity, activity mechanical 
 yet inchoate, and looking out on the hideous abstraction of 
 the town, and at the green meadows and rough country be- 
 yond, and at the great, mathematical colliery on the other 
 side. 
 
SHAME 327 
 
 They saw Tom Brangwen walking up the curved drive. He 
 was getting stouter, but with his bowler hat worn well set 
 down on his brows, he looked manly, handsome, curiously like 
 any other man of action. His colour was as fresh, his health 
 as perfect as ever, he walked like a man rather absorbed. 
 
 Winifred Inger was startled when he entered the library, 
 his coat fastened close and correct, his head bald to the crown, 
 but not shiny, rather like something naked that one is ac- 
 customed to see covered, and his dark eyes liquid and formless. 
 He seemed to stand in the shadow, like a thing ashamed. 
 And the clasp of his hand was so soft and yet so forceful, that 
 it chilled the heart. She was afraid of him, repelled by him, 
 and yet attracted. 
 
 He looked at the athletic, seemingly fearless girl, and he 
 detected in her a kinship with his own dark corruption. Im- 
 mediately, he knew they were akin. 
 
 His manner was polite, almost foreign, and rather cold. 
 He still laughed in his curious, animal fashion, suddenly 
 wrinkling up his wide nose, and showing his sharp teeth. The 
 fine beauty of his skin and his complexion, some almost 
 waxen quality, hid the strange, repellent grossness of him, the 
 slight sense of putrescence, the commonness which revealed it- 
 self in his rather fat thighs and loins. 
 
 Winifred saw at once the deferential, slightly servile, 
 slightly cunning regard he had for Ursula, which made the 
 girl at once so proud and so perplexed. 
 
 "But is this place as awful as it looks?" the young girl 
 asked, a strain in her eyes. 
 
 " It is just what it looks/' he said. " It hides nothing/' 
 
 " Why are the men so sad ? " 
 
 " Are they sad ? " he replied. 
 
 " They seem unutterably, unutterably sad," said Ursula, out 
 of a passionate throat. 
 
 "I don't think they are that. They just take it for 
 granted." 
 
 "What do they take for granted?" 
 
 " This the pits and the place altogether." 
 
 " Why don't they alter it ? " she passionately protested. 
 
 " They believe they must alter themselves to fit the pits and 
 the place, rather than alter the pits and the place to fit them- 
 selves. It is easier," he said. 
 
 " And you agree with them," burst out his niece, unable to 
 
328 THE RAINBOW 
 
 bear it. " You think like they do that living human beings 
 must be taken and adapted to all kinds of horrors. We could 
 easily do without the pits/' 
 
 He smiled, uncomfortably, cynically. Ursula felt again the 
 revolt of hatred from him. 
 
 " I suppose their lives are not really so bad/ 7 said Winifred 
 Inger, superior to the Zolaesque tragedy. 
 
 He turned with his polite, distant attention. 
 
 "Yes, they are pretty bad. The pits are very deep, and 
 hot, and in some places wet. The men die of consumption 
 fairly often. But they earn good wages." 
 
 " How gruesome ! " said Winifred Inger. 
 
 "Yes/' he replied gravely. It was his grave, solid, self- 
 contained manner which made him so much respected as a 
 colliery manager. 
 
 The servant came in to ask where they would have tea. 
 
 "Put it in the summer-house, Mrs. Smith," he said. 
 
 The fair-haired, good-looking young woman went out. 
 
 " Is she married and in service ? " asked Ursula. 
 
 " She is a widow. Her husband died of consumption a 
 little while ago." Brangwen gave a sinister little laugh. 
 " He lay there in the house-place at her mother's, and five 
 or six other people in the house, and died very gradually. I 
 asked her if his death wasn't a great trouble to her. ' Well/ 
 she said, ' he was very fretful towards the last, never satisfied, 
 never easy, always fret-fretting, an' never knowing what would 
 satisfy him. So in one way it was a relief when it was over 
 for him and for everybody.' They had only been married 
 two years, and she has one boy. I asked her if she hadn't been 
 very happy. ' Oh, yes, sir, we was very comfortable at first, 
 till he took bad, oh, we was very comfortable, oh, yes, 
 but, you see, you get used to it. I've had my father and two 
 brothers go off just the same. You get used to it.' '' 
 
 " It's a horrible thing to get used to," said Winifred Inger, 
 with a shudder. 
 
 " Yes," he said, still smiling. But that's how they are. 
 She'll be getting married again directly. One man or an- 
 other it does not matter very much. They're all colliers." 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Ursula. "They're all col- 
 liers?" 
 
 "It is with the women as with us," he replied. "Her 
 husband was John Smith, loader. We reckoned him as a 
 loader, he reckoned himself as a loader, and so she knew he 
 
SHAME 329 
 
 represented his job. Marriage and home is a little side-show. 
 The women know it right enough, and take it for what it's 
 worth. One man or another, it doesn't matter all the world. 
 The pit matters. Bound the pit there will always be the side- 
 shows, plenty of 'em." 
 
 He looked round at the red chaos, the rigid, amorphous con- 
 fusion of Wiggiston. 
 
 " Every man his own little side-show, his home, but the 
 pit owns every man. The women have what is left. What's 
 left of this man, or what is left of that it doesn't matter 
 altogether. The pit takes all that really matters." 
 
 " It is the same everywhere," burst out Winifred. " It is 
 the office, or the shop, or the business that gets the man, 
 the woman gets the bit the shop can't digest. What is he at 
 home, a man ? He is a meaningless lump a standing ma- 
 chine, a machine out of work." 
 
 " They know they are sold," said Tom Brangwen. " That's 
 where it is. They know they are sold to their job. If a 
 woman talks her throat out, what difference can it make? 
 The man's sold to his job. So the women don't bother. They 
 take what they can catch and vogue la galere." 
 
 " Aren't they very strict here ? " asked Miss Inger. 
 
 " Oh, no. Mrs. Smith has two sisters who have just 
 changed husbands. They're not very particular neither are 
 they very interested. They go dragging along what is left 
 from the pits. They're not interested enough to be very 
 immoral it all amounts to the same thing, moral or im- 
 moral just a question of pit-wages. The most moral duke in 
 England makes two hundred thousand a year out of these pits. 
 He keeps the morality end up." 
 
 Ursula sat black-souled and very bitter, hearing the two 
 of them talk. There seemed something ghoulish even in their 
 very deploring of the state of things. They seemed to take 
 a ghoulish satisfaction in it. The pit was the great mistress. 
 Ursula looked out of the window and saw the proud, demon- 
 like colliery with her wheels twinkling in the heavens, the 
 formless, squalid mass of the town lying aside. It was the 
 squalid heap of side-shows. The -pit was the main show, the 
 raison d'etre of all. 
 
 How terrible it was ! There was a horrible fascination in 
 it, human bodies and lives subjected in slavery to that 
 symmetric monster of the colliery. There was a swooning, 
 perverse satisfaction in it. For a moment she was dizzy. 
 
330 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Then she recovered, felt herself in a great loneliness, wherein 
 she was sad but free. She had departed. No more would 
 she subscribe to the great colliery, to the great machine which 
 has taken us all captives. In her soul, she was against it, 
 she disowned even its power. It had only to be forsaken to 
 be inane, meaningless. And she knew it was meaningless. 
 But it needed a great, passionate effort of will on her part, 
 seeing the colliery, still to maintain her knowledge that it 
 was meaningless. 
 
 But her Uncle Tom and her mistress remained there among 
 the horde, cynically reviling the monstrous state and yet ad- 
 hering to it, like a man who reviles his mistress, yet who is in 
 love with her. She knew her Uncle Tom perceived what was 
 going on. But she knew moreover that in spite of his criti- 
 cism and condemnation, he still wanted the great machine. 
 His only happy moments, his only moments of pure freedom 
 were when he was serving the machine. Then, and then only, 
 when the machine caught him up, was he free from the hatred 
 of himself, could he act wholely, without cynicism and un- 
 reality. 
 
 His real mistress was the machine, and the real mistress of 
 Winifred was the machine. She too, Winifred, worshipped 
 the impure abstraction, the mechanisms of matter. There, 
 there, in the machine, in service of the machine, was she free 
 from the clog and degradation of human feeling. There, in 
 the monstrous mechanism that held all matter, living or dead, 
 in its service, did she achieve her consummation and her per- 
 fect unison, her immortality. 
 
 Hatred sprang up in Ursula's heart. If she could she 
 would smash the machine. Her soul's action should be the 
 smashing of the great machine. If she could destroy the col- 
 liery, and make all the men of Wiggiston out of work, she 
 would do it. Let them starve and grub in the earth for roots, 
 rather than serve such a Moloch as this. 
 
 She hated her Uncle Tom, she hated Winifred Inger. They 
 went down to the summer-house for tea. It was a pleasant 
 place among a few trees, at the end of a tiny garden, on the 
 edge of a field. Her Uncle Tom and Winifred seemed to jeer 
 at her, to cheapen her. She was miserable and desolate. But 
 she would never give way. 
 
 Her coldness for Winifred should never cease. She knew 
 it was over between them. She saw gross, ugly movements 
 in her mistress, she saw a clayey, inert, unquickened flesh, 
 
SHAME 331 
 
 that reminded her of the great prehistoric lizards. One day 
 her Uncle Tom came in out of the broiling sunshine heated 
 from walking. Then the perspiration stood out upon his head 
 and brow, his hand was wet and hot and suffocating in its 
 clasp. He too had something marshy about him the suc- 
 culent moistness and turgidity, and the same brackish, nause- 
 ating effect of a marsh, where life and decaying are one. 
 
 He was repellent to her, who was so dry and fine in her 
 fire. Her very bones seemed to bid him keep his distance 
 from her. 
 
 It was in these weeks that Ursula grew up. She stayed 
 two weeks at Wiggiston, and she hated it. All was grey, dry 
 ash, cold and dead and ugly. But she stayed. She stayed 
 also to get rid of Winifred. The girl's hatred and her sense 
 of repulsiveness in her mistress and in her uncle seemed to 
 throw the other two together. They drew together as if 
 against her. 
 
 In hardness and bitterness of soul, Ursula knew that Wini- 
 fred was become her uncle's lover. She was glad. She had 
 loved them both. Now she wanted to be rid of them both. 
 Their marshy, bitter-sweet corruption came sick and unwhole- 
 some in her nostrils. Anything, to get out of the foetid air. 
 She would leave them both for ever, leave for ever their 
 strange, soft, half-corrupt element. Anything to get away. 
 
 One night Winifred came all burning into Ursula's bed, 
 and put her arms round the girl, holding her to herself in spite 
 of unwillingness, and said, 
 
 "Dear, my dear, shall I marry Mr. Brangwen shall 
 I?" 
 
 The clinging, heavy, muddy question weighed on Ursula 
 intolerably. 
 
 " Has he asked you? "she said, using all her might of hard 
 resistance. 
 
 "He's asked me," said Winifred. "Do you want me to 
 marry him, Ursula ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Ursula. 
 
 The arms tightened more on her. 
 
 "I knew you did, my sweet and I will marry him. 
 You're fond of him, aren't you ? " 
 
 " I've been awfully fond of him ever since I was a child." 
 
 " I know I know. I can see what you like in him. He 
 is a man by himself, he has something apart from the rest." 
 
 " Yes," said Ursula. 
 
332 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " But he's not like you, my dear ha, he's not as good as 
 you. There's something even objectionable in him." 
 
 Ursula was silent. 
 
 " But I'll marry him, my dear it will be best. Now say 
 you love me." 
 
 A sort of profession was extorted out of the girl. Never- 
 theless her mistress went away sighing, to weep in her own 
 chamber. 
 
 In two days' time Ursula left Wiggiston. Miss Inger went 
 to Nottingham. There was an engagement between her and 
 Tom Brangwen, which the uncle seemed to vaunt as if it were 
 an assurance of his validity. 
 
 Brangwen and Winifred Inger continued engaged for an- 
 other term. Then they married. Brangwen had reached the 
 age when he wanted children. He wanted children. Neither 
 marriage nor the domestic establishment meant anything to 
 him. He wanted to propagate himself. He knew what he 
 was doing. He had the instinct of a growing inertia, of a 
 thing that chooses its place of rest in which to lapse into 
 apathy, complete, profound indifference. He would let the 
 machinery carry him; husband, father, pit-manager, warm 
 clay lifted through the recurrent action of day after day by 
 the great machine from which it derived its motion. As for 
 Winifred, she was an educated woman, and of the same sort as 
 himself. She would make a good companion. She was his 
 mate. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE MAN'S WORLD 
 
 URSULA came back to Cossethay to fight with her 
 mother. Her schooldays were over. She had passed 
 the matriculation examination. Now she came home 
 to face that empty period between school and pos- 
 sible marriage. 
 
 At first she thought it would be just like holidays all the 
 time, she would feel just free. Her soul was in chaos, blinded 
 suffering, maimed. She had no will left to think about her- 
 self. For a time she must just lapse. 
 
 But very shortly she found herself up against her mother. 
 Her mother had, at this time, the power to irritate and madden 
 the girl continuously. There were already seven children, 
 yet Mrs. Brangwen was again with child, the ninth she had 
 borne. One had died of diphtheria in infancy. 
 
 Even this fact of her mother's pregnancy enraged the eldest 
 girl. Mrs. Brangwen was so complacent, so utterly fulfilled 
 in her breeding. She would not have the existence at all of 
 anything but the immediate, physical, common things. 
 Ursula, inflamed in soul, was suffering all the anguish of 
 youth's reaching for some unknown ideal, that it can't grasp, 
 can't even distinguish or conceive. Maddened, she was fight- 
 ing all the darkness she was up against. And part of this 
 darkness was her mother. To limit, as her mother did, every- 
 thing to the ring of physical considerations, and complacently 
 to reject the reality of anything else, was horrible. Not a 
 thing did Mrs. Brangwen care about, but the children, the 
 house, and a little local gossip. And she would not be touched, 
 she would let nothing else live near her. She went about, 
 big with child, slovenly, easy, having a certain lax dignity, 
 taking her own time, pleasing herself, always, always doing 
 things for the children, and feeling that she thereby fulfilled 
 the whole of womanhood. 
 
 This long trance of complacent child-bearing had kept her 
 young and undeveloped. She was scarcely a day older than 
 
334 THE RAINBOW 
 
 when Gudrun was born. All these years nothing had hap- 
 pened save the coming of the children, nothing had mattered 
 but the bodies of her babies. As her children came into con- 
 sciousness, as they began to suffer their own fulfilment, she 
 cast them off. But she remained dominant in the house. 
 Brangwen continued in a kind of rich drowse of physical heat, 
 in connection with his wife. They were neither of them quite 
 personal, quite defined as individuals, so much were they per- 
 vaded by the physical heat of breeding and rearing their young. 
 
 How Ursula resented it, how she fought against the close, 
 physical, limited life of herded domesticity! Calm, placid, 
 unshakeable as ever, Mrs. Brangwen went about in her domi- 
 nance of physical maternity. 
 
 There were battles. Ursula would fight for things that mat- 
 tered to her. She would have the children less rude and 
 tyrannical, she would have a place in the house. But her 
 mother pulled her down, pulled her down. With all the cun- 
 ning instinct of a breeding animal, Mrs. Brangwen ridiculed 
 and held cheap Ursula's passions, her ideas, her pronuncia- 
 tions. Ursula would try to insist, in her own home, on the 
 right of women to take equal place with men in the field of 
 action and work. 
 
 "Ay," said the mother, "there's a good crop of stockings 
 lying ripe for mending. Let that be your field of action." 
 
 Ursula disliked mending stockings, and this retort mad- 
 dened her. She hated her mother bitterly. After a few 
 weeks of enforced domestic life, she had had enough of her 
 home. The commonness, the triviality, the immediate mean- 
 inglessness of it all drove her to frenzy. She talked and 
 stormed ideas, she corrected and nagged at the children, she 
 turned her back in silent contempt on her breeding mother, 
 who treated her with supercilious indifference, as if she were a 
 pretentious child not to be taken seriously. 
 
 Brangwen was sometimes dragged into the trouble. He 
 loved Ursula, therefore he always had a sense of shame, al- 
 most of betrayal, when he turned on her. So he turned 
 fiercely and scathingly, and with a wholesale brutality that 
 made Ursula go white, mute, and numb. Her feelings seemed 
 to be becoming deadened in her, her temper hard and cold. 
 
 Brangwen himself was in one of his states of flux. After 
 all these years, he began to see a loophole of freedom. For 
 twenty years he had gone on at this office as a draughtsman, 
 doing work in which he had no interest, because it seemed his 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 335 
 
 allotted work. The growing up of his daughters, their de- 
 veloping rejection of old forms set him also free. 
 
 He was a man of ceaseless activity. Blindly, like a mole, 
 he pushed his way out of the earth that covered him, working 
 always away from the physical element in which his life was 
 captured. Slowly, blindly, gropingly, with what initiative was 
 left to him, he made his way towards individual expression 
 and individual form. 
 
 At last, after twenty years, he came back to his wood- 
 carving, almost to the point where he had left off his Adam 
 and Eve panel, when he was courting. But now he had knowl- 
 edge and skill without vision. He saw the puerility of his 
 young conceptions, he saw the unreal world in which they 
 had been conceived. He now had a new strength in his sense 
 of reality. He felt as if he were real, as if he handled real 
 things. He had worked for many years at Cossethay, build- 
 ing the organ for the church, restoring the wood- work, gradu- 
 ally coming to a knowledge of beauty in the plain labours. 
 Now he wanted again to carve things that were utterances of 
 himself. 
 
 But he could not quite hitch on always he was too busy, 
 too uncertain, confused. Wavering, he began to study model- 
 ling. To his surprise he found he could do it. Modelling in 
 clay, in plaster, he produced beautiful reproductions, really 
 beautiful. Then he set-to to make a head of Ursula, in high 
 relief, in the Donatello manner. In his first passion, he got 
 a beautiful suggestion of his desire. But the pitch of concen- 
 tration would not come. With a little ash in his mouth he 
 gave up. He continued to copy, or to make designs by selec- 
 ting motives from classic stuff. He loved the Delia Eobbia 
 and Donatello as he had loved Fra Angelico when he was a 
 young man. His work had some of the freshness, the naive 
 alertness of the early Italians. But it was only reproduction. 
 
 Having reached his limit in modelling, he turned to paint- 
 ing. But he tried water-colour painting after the manner of 
 any other amateur. He got his results but was not much 
 interested. After one or two drawings of his beloved church, 
 which had the same alertness as his modelling, but seemed to 
 be incongruous with the modern atmospheric way of painting, 
 so that his church tower stood up, really stood and asserted 
 its standing, but was ashamed of its own lack of meaning, 
 he turned away again. 
 
 He took up jewellery, read Benvenuto Cellini, pored over 
 
336 THE RAINBOW 
 
 reproductions of ornament, and began to make pendants in 
 silver and pearl and matrix. The first things he did, in his 
 start of discovery, were really beautiful. Those later were 
 more imitative. But, starting with his wife, he made a pen- 
 dant each for all his womenfolk. Then he made rings and 
 bracelets. 
 
 Then he took up beaten and chiselled metal work. When 
 Ursula left school, he was making a silver bowl of lovely 
 shape. How he delighted in it, almost lusted after it. 
 
 All this time his only connection with the real outer world 
 was through his winter evening classes, which brought him 
 into contact with state education. About all the rest, he 
 was oblivious, and entirely indifferent even about the war. 
 The nation did not exist to him. He was in a private retreat 
 of his own, that had neither nationality, nor any great ad- 
 herent. 
 
 Ursula watched the newspapers, vaguely, concerning the 
 war in South Africa. They made her miserable, and she 
 tried to have as little to do with them as possible. But Skre- 
 bensky was out there. He sent her an occasional post-card. 
 But it was as if she were a blank wall in his direction, with- 
 out windows or outgoing. She adhered to the Skrebensky 
 of her memory. 
 
 Her love for Winifred Inger wrenched her life as it seemed 
 from the roots and native soil where Skrebensky had belonged 
 to it, and she was aridly transplanted. He was really only a 
 memory. She revived his memory with strange passion, after 
 the departure of Winifred. He was to her almost the symbol 
 of her real life. It was as if, through him, in him, she might 
 return to her own self, which she was before she had loved 
 Winifred, before this deadness had come upon her, this piti- 
 less transplanting. But even her memories were the work 
 of her imagination. 
 
 She dreamed of him and her as they had been together. 
 She could not dream of him progressively, of what he was 
 doing now, of what relation he would have to her now. Only 
 sometimes she wept to think how cruelly she had suffered 
 when he left her, ah, how she had suffered! She remem- 
 bered what she had written in her diary ; 
 
 "If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down." 
 
 Ah, it was a dull agony to her to remember what she had 
 been then. For it was remembering a dead self. All that 
 was dead after Winifred. She knewj the corpse of her young, 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 337 
 
 loving self, she knew its grave. And the young loving self 
 she mourned for had scarcely existed, it was the creature of 
 her imagination. 
 
 Deep within her a cold despair remained unchanging and 
 unchanged. No one would ever love her now she would 
 love no one. The body of love was killed in her after Wini- 
 fred, there was something of the corpse in her. She would 
 live, she would go on, but she would have no lovers, no lover 
 would want her any more. She herself would want no lover. 
 The vividest little flame of desire was extinct in her for ever. 
 The tiny, vivid germ that contained the bud of her real self, 
 her real love, was killed, she would go on growing as a plant, 
 she would do her best to produce her minor flowers, but her 
 leading flower was dead before it was born, all her growth 
 was the conveying of a corpse of hope. 
 
 The miserable weeks went on, in the poky house crammed 
 with children. What was her life a sordid, formless, dis- 
 integrated nothing; Ursula Brangwen a person without worth 
 or importance, living in the mean village of Cossethay, within 
 the sordid scope of Ilkeston. Ursula Brangwen, at seventeen, 
 worthless and unvalued, neither wanted nor needed by any- 
 body, and conscious herself of her own dead value. It would 
 not bear thinking of. 
 
 But still her dogged pride held its own. She might be de- 
 filed, she might be a corpse that should never be loved, she 
 might be a core-rotten stalk living upon the food that others 
 provided ; yet she would give in to nobody. 
 
 Gradually she became conscious that she could not go on 
 living at home as she was doing, without place or meaning 
 or worth. The very children that went to school held her 
 uselessness in contempt. She must do something. 
 
 Her father said she had plenty to do to help her mother. 
 From her parents she would never get more than a hit in the 
 face. She was not a practical person. She thought of wild 
 things, of running away and becoming a domestic servant, 
 of asking some man to take her. 
 
 She wrote to the mistress of the High School for advice. 
 
 "I cannot see very clearly what you should do, Ursula," 
 came the reply, "unless you are willing to become an ele- 
 mentary school teacher. You have matriculated, and that 
 qualifies you to take a post as uncertificated teacher in any 
 echool, at a salary of about fifty pounds a year. 
 
 "I cannot tell you how deeply I sympathize with you in 
 
338 THE RAINBOW 
 
 your desire to do something. You will learn that mankind 
 is a great body of which you are one useful member, you will 
 take your own place at the great task which humanity is 
 trying to fulfil. That will give you a satisfaction and ,a self- 
 respect which nothing else could give." 
 
 Ursula's heart sank. It was a cold, dreary satisfaction to 
 think of. Yet her cold will acquiesced. This was what she 
 wanted. 
 
 " You have an emotional nature," the letter went on, " a 
 quick natural response. If only you could learn patience and 
 self-discipline, I do not see why you should not make a good 
 teacher. The least you could do is to try. You need only 
 serve a year, or perhaps two years, as uncertificated teacher. 
 Then you would go to one of the training colleges, where I 
 hope you would take your degree. I most strongly urge and 
 advise you to keep up your studies always with the intention 
 of taking a degree. That will give you a qualification and a 
 position in the world, and will give you more scope to choose 
 your own way. 
 
 "I shall be proud to see one of my girls win her own 
 economical independence, which means so much more than 
 it seems. I shall be glad indeed to know that one more of 
 my girls has provided for herself the means of freedom to 
 choose for herself." 
 
 It all sounded grim and desperate. Ursula rather hated it. 
 But her mother's contempt and her fathers harshness had 
 made her raw at the quick, she knew the ignominy of being 
 a hanger-on, she felt the festering thorn of her mother's 
 animal estimation. 
 
 At length she had to speak. Hard and shut down and 
 silent within herself, she slipped out one evening to the work- 
 shed. She heard the tap-tap-tap of the hammer upon the 
 metal. Her father lifted his head as the door opened. His 
 ' face was ruddy and bright with instinct, as when he was a 
 ! youth, his black moustache was cut close over his wide mouth, 
 : his black hair was fine and close as ever. But there was 
 about him an abstraction, a sort of instrumental detachment 
 from human things. He was a worker. He watched his 
 daughter's hard, expressionless face. A hot anger came over 
 his breast and belly. 
 
 "What now?" he said. 
 
 " Can't I," she answered, looking aside, not looking at him, 
 " Can't I go out to work ? " 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 339 
 
 " Go out to work, what for? " 
 
 His voice was so strong, and ready, and vibrant. It irri- 
 tated her. 
 
 " I want some other life than this." 
 
 A flash of strong rage arrested all his blood for a moment. 
 
 " Some other life ? " he repeated. " Why, what other life 
 do you want ? " 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 " Something else besides housework and hanging about. 
 And I want to earn something." 
 
 Her curious, brutal hardness of speech, and the fierce in- 
 vincibility of her youth, which ignored him, made him also 
 harden with anger. 
 
 " And how do you think you're going to earn anything ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "I can become a teacher Fm qualified by my ma- 
 tric." 
 
 He wished her matric. in hell. 
 
 " And how much are you qualified to earn by your matric. ? " 
 he asked, jeering. 
 
 " Fifty pounds a year," she said. 
 
 He was silent, his power taken out of his hand. 
 
 He had always hugged a secret pride in the fact that his 
 daughters need not go out to work. With his wife's money 
 and his own they had four hundred a year. They could draw 
 on the capital if need be later on. He was not afraid for his 
 old age. His daughters might be ladies. 
 
 Fifty pound a year was a pound a week which was 
 enough for her to live on independently. 
 
 " And what sort of a teacher do you think you'd make ? 
 You haven't the patience of a Jack-gnat with your own 
 brothers and sisters, let alone with a class of children. And 
 I thought you didn't like dirty, board-school brats." 
 
 " They're not all dirty." 
 
 " You'd find they're not all clean." 
 
 There was silence in the workshop. The lamplight fell on 
 the burned silver bowl that lay before him, on mallet and 
 furnace and chisel. Brangwen stood with a queer, cat-like 
 light on his face, almost like a smile. But it was no smile. 
 
 "Can I try? "she said. 
 
 "You can do what the deuce you like, and go where you 
 like." 
 
 Her face was fixed and expressionless and indifferent. It 
 
S40 THE RAINBOW 
 
 always sent him to a pitch of frenzy to see it like that. He 
 kept perfectly still. 
 
 Cold, without any betrayal of feeling, she turned and left 
 the shed. He worked on, with all his nerves jangled. Then 
 he had to put down his tools and go into the house. 
 
 In a bitter tone of anger and contempt he told his wife. 
 Ursula was present. There was a brief altercation, closed by 
 Mrs. Brangwen's saying, in a tone of biting superiority and 
 indifference. 
 
 "Let her find out what it's like. She'll soon have had 
 enough." 
 
 The matter was left there. But Ursula considered herself 
 free to act. For some days she made no move. She was 
 reluctant to take the cruel step of finding work, for she shrank 
 with extreme sensitiveness and shyness from new contact, 
 new situations. Then at length a sort of doggedness drove 
 her. Her soul was full of bitterness. 
 
 She went to the Free Library in Ilkeston, copied out ad- 
 dresses from the Schoolmistress, and wrote for application 
 forms. After two days she rose early to meet the postman. 
 As she expected, there were three long envelopes. 
 
 Her heart beat painfully as she went up with them to her 
 bedroom. Her fingers trembled, she could hardly force her- 
 self to look at the long, official forms she had to fill in. The 
 whole thing was so cruel, so impersonal. Yet it must be 
 done. 
 
 " Name (surname first) : " 
 
 In a trembling hand she wrote, " Brangwen, Ursula." 
 
 " Age and date of birth : " 
 
 After a long time considering, she filled in that line. 
 
 " Qualifications, with date of Examination : " 
 
 With a little pride she wrote: 
 
 " London Matriculation Examination." 
 
 " Previous experience and where obtained : " 
 
 Her heart sank as she wrote: 
 
 None." 
 
 Still there was much to answer. It took her two hours to 
 fill in the three forms. Then she had to copy her testimonials 
 from her head-mistress and from the clergyman. 
 
 At last, however, it was finished. She had sealed the three 
 long envelopes. In the afternoon she went down to Ilkeston 
 to post them. She said nothing of it all to her parents. As 
 she stamped her long letters and put them into the box at 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD &ti 
 
 the main post-office she felt as if already she was out of the 
 reach of her father and mother, as if she had connected 
 herself with the outer, greater world of activity, the man- 
 made world. 
 
 As she returned home, she dreamed again in her own 
 fashion her old, gorgeous dreams. One of her applications 
 was to Gillingham, in Kent, one to Kingston-on-Thames, and 
 one to Swanwick in Derbyshire. 
 
 Gillingham was such a lovely name, and Kent was the 
 Garden of England. So that, in Gillingham, an old, old vil- 
 lage by the hopfields, where the sun shone softly, she came 
 out of school in the afternoon into the shadow of the plane- 
 trees by the gate, and turned down the sleepy road towards 
 the cottage where cornflowers poked their blue heads through 
 the old wooden fence, and phlox stood built up of blossom 
 beside the path. 
 
 A delicate, silver-haired lady rose with delicate, ivory hands 
 uplifted as Ursula entered the room, and, 
 
 " Oh, my dear, what do you think ! " 
 
 "What is it, Mrs. Wetherall?" 
 
 Frederick had come home. Nay, his manly step was heard 
 on the stair, she saw his strong boots, his blue trousers, his 
 uniformed figure, and then his face, clean and keen as an 
 eagle's, and his eyes lit up with the glamour of strange seas, 
 ah, strange seas that had woven through his soul, as he de- 
 scended into the kitchen. 
 
 This dream, with its amplifications, lasted her a mile of 
 walking. Then she went to Kingston-on-Thames. 
 
 Kingston-on-Thames was an old historic place just south 
 of London. There lived the well-born dignified souls who 
 belonged to the metropolis, but who loved peace. There she 
 met a wonderful family of girls living in a large old Queen 
 Anne house, whose lawns sloped to the river, and in an at- 
 mosphere of stately peace she found herself among her sours 
 intimates. They loved her as sisters, they shared with her 
 all noble thoughts. 
 
 She was happy again. In her musings she spread her 
 poor, clipped wings, and flew into the pure empyrean. 
 
 Day followed day. She did not speak to her parents. 
 Then came the return of her testimonials from Gillingham. 
 She was not wanted, neither at Swanwick. The bitterness 
 of rejection followed the sweets of hope. Her bright feathers 
 were in the dust again. 
 
342 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Then, suddenly, after a fortnight, came an intimation from 
 Kingston-on-Thames. She was to appear at the Education 
 Office of that town on the following Thursday, for an inter- 
 view with the Committee. Her heart stood still. She knew 
 she would make the Committee accept her. Now she was 
 afraid, now that her removal was imminent. Her heart 
 quivered with fear and reluctance. But underneath her pur- 
 pose was fixed. 
 
 She passed shadowily through the day, unwilling to tell 
 her news to her mother, waiting for her father. Suspense 
 and fear were strong upon her. She dreaded going to King- 
 ston. Her easy dreams disappeared from the grasp of reality. 
 
 And yet, as the afternoon wore away, the sweetness of the 
 dream returned again. Kingston-on-Thames there was 
 such sound of dignity to her. The shadow of history and 
 the glamour of stately progress enveloped her. The palaces 
 would be old and darkened, the place of kings obscured. Yet 
 it was a place of kings for her Eichard and Henry and 
 Wolsey and Queen Elizabeth. She divined great lawns with 
 noble trees, and terraces whose steps the water washed softly, 
 where the swans sometimes came to earth. Still she must 
 see the stately, gorgeous barge of the Queen float down, the 
 crimson carpet put upon the landing stairs, the gentlemen in 
 their purple-velvet cloaks, bare-headed, standing in the sun- 
 shine grouped on either side waiting. 
 
 " Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song." 
 
 Evening came, her father returned home, sanguine and 
 alert and detached as ever. He was less real than her fancies. 
 She waited whilst he ate his tea. He took big mouthfuls, 
 big bites, and ate unconsciously with the same abandon an 
 animal gives to its food. 
 
 Immediately after tea he went over to the church. It was 
 choir-practice, and he wanted to try the tunes on his organ. 
 
 The latch of the big door clicked loudly as she came after 
 him, but the organ rolled more loudly still. He was unaware. 
 He was practising the anthem. She saw his small, jet-black 
 head and alert face between the candle-flames, his slim body 
 sagged on the music-stool. His face was so luminous and 
 fixed, the movements of his limbs seemed strange, apart from 
 him. The sound of the organ seemed to belong to the very 
 stone of the pillars, like sap running in them. 
 
 Then there was a close of music and silence. 
 
 "Father!" she said. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 343 
 
 He looked round as if at an apparition. Ursula stood 
 shadowily within the candle-light. 
 
 " What now ? " he said, not coming to earth. 
 
 It was difficult to speak to him. 
 
 "I've got a situation/' she said, forcing herself to speak. 
 
 " You've got what ? " he answered, unwilling to come out of 
 his mood of organ-playing. He closed the music before him. 
 
 " I've got a situation to go to." 
 
 Then he turned to her, still abstracted, unwilling. 
 
 "Oh, where's that?" he said. 
 
 " At Kingston-on-Thames. I must go on Thursday for an 
 interview with the Committee." 
 
 " You must go on Thursday ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 And she handed him the letter. He read it by the light 
 of the candles. 
 
 "Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, Cossethay, Derby- 
 shire. 
 
 " Dear Madam, You are requested to call at the above 
 offices on Thursday next, the 10th, at 11.30 a.m., for an 
 interview with the committee, referring to your application 
 for the post of assistant mistress at the Wellingborough Green 
 Schools." 
 
 It was very difficult for Brangwen to take in this remote 
 and official information, glowing as he was within the quiet 
 of his church and his anthem music. 
 
 " Well, you needn't bother me with it now, need you ? " 
 he said impatiently, giving her back the letter. 
 
 " I've got to go on Thursday," she said. 
 
 He sat motionless. Then he reached more music, and there 
 was a rushing sound of air, then a long, emphatic trumpet- 
 note of the organ, as he laid his hands on the keys. Ursula 
 turned and went away. 
 
 He tried to give himself again to the organ. But he could 
 not. He could not get back. All the time a sort of string 
 was tugging, tugging him elsewhere, miserably. 
 
 So that when he came into the house after choir-practice 
 his face was dark and his heart black. He said nothing, 
 however, until all the younger children were in bed. Ursula, 
 however, knew what was brewing. 
 
 At length he asked: 
 
 "Where's that letter?" 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 She gave it to him. He sat looking at it. " You are re- 
 quested to call at the above offices on Thursday next " 
 It was a cold, official notice to Ursula herself and had nothing 
 to do with him. So! She existed now as a separate social 
 individual. It was for her to answer this note, without re- 
 gard to him. He had even no right to interfere. His heart 
 was hard and angry. 
 
 " You had to do it behind our backs, had you ? " he said, 
 with a sneer. And her heart leapt with hot pain. She knew 
 she was free she had broken away from him. He was 
 beaten. 
 
 " You said, * let her try,' " she retorted, almost apologizing 
 to him. 
 
 He did not hear. He sat looking at the letter. 
 
 " Education Office, Kingston-on-Thames " and then the 
 type-written "Miss Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, 
 Cossethay." It was all so complete and so final. He could 
 not but feel the new position Ursula held, as recipient of that 
 letter. It was an iron in his soul. 
 
 " Well/' he said at length, " you're not going." 
 
 Ursula started and could find no words to clamour her 
 revolt. 
 
 " If you think you're going dancing off to th' other side of 
 London, you're mistaken." 
 
 " Why not ? " she cried, at once hard fixed in her will to 
 
 go- 
 
 " That's why not," he said. 
 
 And there was silence till Mrs. Brangwen came down- 
 stairs. 
 
 " Look here, Anna," he said, handing her the letter. 
 
 She put back her head, seeing a type-written letter, an- 
 ticipating trouble from the outside world. There was the 
 curious, sliding motion of her eyes, as if she shut off her 
 sentient, maternal self, and a kind of hard trance, meaning- 
 less, took its place. Thus, meaningless, she glanced over the 
 letter, careful not to take it in. She apprehended the con- 
 tents with her callous, superficial mind. Her feeling self was 
 shut down. 
 
 "What post is it?" she asked. 
 
 " She wants to go and be a teacher in Kingston-on-Thames, 
 at fifty pounds a year." 
 
 "Oh, indeed." 
 
 The mother spoke as if it were a hostile fact concerning 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 346 
 
 some stranger. She would have let her go, out of callousness. 
 Mrs. Brangwen would begin to grow up again only with her 
 youngest child. Her eldest girl was in the way now. 
 
 " She's not going all that distance," said the father. 
 
 " I have to go where they want me," cried Ursula. " And 
 it's a good place to go to." 
 
 "What do you know about the place?" said her father 
 harshly. 
 
 " And it doesn't matter whether they want you or not, 
 if your father says you are not to go," said the mother calmly. 
 
 How Ursula hated her ! 
 
 " You said I was to try," the girl cried. " Now I've got 
 a place and I'm going to go." 
 
 " You're not going all that distance," said her father. 
 
 "Why don't you get a place at Ilkeston, where you can 
 live at home ? " asked Gudrun, who hated conflicts, who could 
 not understand Ursula's uneasy way, yet who must stand by 
 her sister. 
 
 "There aren't any places in Ilkeston," cried Ursula. 
 "And I'd rather go right away." 
 
 "If you'd asked about it, a place could have been got for 
 you in Ilkeston. But you had to play Miss High-an'-mighty, 
 and go your own way," said her father. 
 
 "I've no doubt you'd rather go right away," said her 
 mother, very caustic. " And I've no doubt you'd find other 
 people didn't put up with you for very long either. You've 
 too much opinion of yourself for your good." 
 
 Between the girl and her mother was a feeling of pure 
 hatred. There came a stubborn silence. Ursula knew she 
 must break it. 
 
 "Well, they've written to me, and I s'll have to go," she 
 said. 
 
 " Where will you get the money from ? " asked her father. 
 
 " Uncle Tom will give it me," she said. 
 
 Again there was silence. This time she was triumphant. 
 
 Then at length her father lifted his head. His face was 
 abstracted, he seemed to be abstracting himself, to make a 
 pure statement. 
 
 "Well, you're not going all that distance away," he said. 
 " I'll ask Mr. Burt about a place here. I'm not going to have 
 you by yourself at the other side of London." 
 
 " But I've got to go to Kingston," said Ursula. " They've 
 sent for me." 
 
346 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " They'll do without you," he said. 
 
 There was a trembling silence when she was on the point 
 of tears. 
 
 " Well," she said, low and tense, " you can put me off 
 this, but Fm going to have a place. Fm not going to stop 
 at home." 
 
 " Nobody wants you to stop at home," he suddenly shouted, 
 going livid with rage. 
 
 She said no more. Her nature had gone hard and smiling 
 in its own arrogance, in its own antagonistic indifference to 
 the rest of them. This was the state in which he wanted to 
 kill her. She went singing into the parlour. 
 
 "C'est la mere Michel qui a perdu son chat, 
 Qui cri par la fenetre qu'est-ce qui le lui rendra " 
 
 During the next days Ursula went about bright and hard, 
 singing to herself, making love to the children, but her soul 
 hard and cold with regard to her parents. Nothing more 
 was said. The hardness and brightness lasted for four days. 
 Then it began to break up. So at evening she said to her 
 father, 
 
 " Have you spoken about a place for me ? " 
 
 " I spoke to Mr. Burt." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "There's a committee meeting to-morrow. He'll tell me 
 on Friday." 
 
 So she waited till Friday. Kingston-on-Thames had been 
 an exciting dream. Here she could feel the hard, raw reality. 
 So she knew that this would come to pass. Because nothing 
 was ever fulfilled, she found, except in the hard limited 
 reality. She did not want to be a teacher in Ilkeston, be- 
 cause she knew Ilkeston, and hated it. But she wanted to 
 be free, so she must take her freedom where she could. 
 
 On Friday her father said there was a place vacant in 
 Brinsley Street school. This could most probably be secured 
 for her, at once, without the trouble of application. 
 
 Her heart nalted. Brinsley Street was a school in a poor 
 quarter, and she had had a taste of the common children of 
 Ilkeston. They had shouted after her and thrown stones. 
 Still, as a teacher, she would be in authority. And it was all 
 unknown. She was excited. The very forest of dry, sterile 
 brick had some fascination for her. It was so hard and ugly, 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 347 
 
 so relentlessly ugly, it would purge her of some of her floating 
 sentimentality. 
 
 She dreamed how she would make the little, ugly children 
 love her. She would be so personal. Teachers were always 
 so hard and impersonal. There was no vivid relationship. 
 She would make everything personal and vivid, she would 
 give herself, she would give, give, give all her great stores of 
 wealth to her children, she would make them so happy, and 
 they would prefer her to any teacher on the face of the earth. 
 
 At Christmas she would choose such fascinating Christmas 
 cards for them, and she would give them such a happy party 
 in one of the class-rooms. 
 
 The head-master, Mr. Harby, was a short, thick-set, rather 
 common man, she thought. But she would hold before him 
 the light of grace and refinement, he would have her in such 
 high esteem before long. She would be the gleaming sun of 
 the school, the children would blossom like little weeds, the 
 teachers like tall, hard plants would burst into rare flower. 
 
 The Monday morning came. It was the end of September, 
 and a drizzle of fine rain like veils round her, making her 
 seem intimate, a world to herself. She walked forward to 
 the new land. The old was blotted out. The veil would be 
 rent that hid the new world. She was gripped hard with sus- 
 pense as she went down the hill in the rain, carrying her din- 
 ner-bag. 
 
 Through the thin rain she saw the town, a black, extensive 
 mount. She must enter in upon it. She felt at once a feel- 
 ing of repugnance and of excited fulfilment. But she shrank. 
 
 She waited at the terminus for the tram. Here it was 
 beginning. Before her was the station to Nottingham, 
 whence Theresa had gone to school half an hour before; be- 
 hind her was the little church school she had attended when 
 she was a child, when her grandmother was alive. Her grand 
 mother had been dead two years now. There was a strange 
 woman at the Marsh, with her Uncle Fred, and a small baby. 
 Behind her was Cossethay, and blackberries were ripe on the 
 hedges. 
 
 As she waited at the tram-terminus she reverted swiftly 
 to her childhood ; her teasing grandfather, with his fair beard 
 and blue eyes, and his big, monumental body; he had got 
 drowned: her grandmother, whom Ursula would sometimes 
 say she had loved more than any one else in the world: the 
 little church school, the Phillips boys ; one was a soldier in the 
 
348 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Life Guards now, one was a collier. With a passion she clung 
 to the past. 
 
 But as she dreamed of it, she heard the tram-car grinding 
 round a bend, rumbling dully, she saw it draw into sight, 
 and hum nearer. It sidled round the loop at the terminus, 
 and came to a standstill, looming above her. Some shadowy 
 grey people stepped from the far end, the conductor was 
 walking in the puddles, swinging round the pole. 
 
 She mounted into the wet, comfortless tram, whose floor 
 was dark with wet, whose windows were all steamed, and she 
 sat in suspense. It had begun, her new existence. 
 
 One other passenger mounted a sort of charwoman with 
 a drab, wet coat. Ursula could not bear the waiting of the 
 tram. The bell clanged, there was a lurch forward. The 
 car moved cautiously down the wet street. She was being 
 carried forward, into her new existence. Her heart burned 
 with pain and suspense, as if something were cutting her 
 living tissue. 
 
 Often, oh often the tram seemed to stop, and wet, cloaked 
 people mounted and sat mute and grey in stiff rows opposite 
 her, their umbrellas between their knees. The windows of 
 the tram grew more steamy, opaque. She was shut in with 
 these unliving, spectral people. Even yet it did not occur 
 to her that she was one of them. The conductor came down 
 issuing tickets. Each little ring of his clipper sent a pang 
 of dread through her. But her ticket surely was different 
 from the rest. 
 
 They were all going to work; she also was going to work. 
 Her ticket was the same. She sat trying to fit in with them. 
 But fear was at her bowels, she felt an unknown, terrible 
 grip upon her. 
 
 At Bath Street she must dismount and change trams. She 
 looked uphill. It seemed to lead to freedom. She remem- 
 bered the many Saturday afternoons she had walked up to 
 the shops. How free and careless she had been! 
 
 Ah, her tram was sliding gingerly downhill. She dreaded 
 every yard of her conveyance. The car halted, she mounted 
 hastily. 
 
 She kept turning her head as the car ran on, because she 
 was uncertain of the street. At last, her heart a flame of 
 suspense, trembling, she rose. The conductor rang the bell 
 brusquely. 
 
 She was walking down a small, mean, wet street, empty 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 349 
 
 of people. The school squatted low within its railed, asphalt 
 yard, that shone black with rain. The building was grimy, 
 and horrible, dry plants were shadowily looking through the 
 windows. 
 
 She entered the arched doorway of the porch. The whole 
 place seemed to have a threatening expression, imitating the 
 church's architecture, for the purpose of domineering, like a 
 gesture of vulgar authority. She saw that one pair of feet 
 had paddled across the flagstone floor of the porch. The 
 place was silent, deserted, like an empty prison waiting the 
 return of tramping feet. 
 
 Ursula went forward to the teachers' room that burrowed 
 in a gloomy hole. She knocked timidly. 
 
 " Come in ! " called a surprised man's voice, as from a prison 
 cell. She entered the dark little room that never got any 
 sun. The gas was lighted naked and raw. At the table a 
 thin man in shirt-sleeves was rubbing a paper on a jelly- 
 tray. He looked up at Ursula with his narrow, sharp face, 
 said " Good morning," then turned away again, and stripped 
 the paper off the tray, glancing at the violet-coloured writing 
 transferred, before he dropped the curled sheet aside among 
 a heap. 
 
 Ursula watched him fascinated. In the gaslight and gloom 
 and the narrowness of the room, all seemed unreal. 
 
 " Isn't it a nasty morning," she said. 
 
 <e Yes," he said, " it's not much of weather." 
 
 But in here it seemed that neither morning nor weather 
 really existed. This place was timeless. He spoke in an 
 occupied voice, like an echo. Ursula did not know what to 
 say. She took off her waterproof. 
 
 "Am I early?" she asked. 
 
 The man looked first at a little clock, then at her. His 
 eyes seemed to be sharpened to needle-points of vision. 
 
 " Twenty-five past," he said. " You're the second to come. 
 I'm first this morning." 
 
 Ursula sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair, and 
 watched his thin red hands rubbing away on the white sur- 
 face of the paper, then pausing, pulling up a corner of the 
 sheet, peering, and rubbing away again. There was a great 
 heap of curled white-and-scribbled sheets on the table. 
 
 " Must you do so many ? " asked Ursula. 
 
 Again the man glanced up sharply. He was about thirty 
 or thirty-three years old, thin, greenish, with a long nose and 
 
350 THE RAINBOW 
 
 a sharp face. His eyes were blue, and sharp as points of 
 steel, rather beautiful, the girl thought. 
 
 " Sixty-three," he answered. 
 
 " So many ! " she said, gently. Then she remembered. 
 
 " But they're not all for your class, are they ? " she added. 
 
 "Why aren't they?" he replied, a fierceness in his voice. 
 
 Ursuia was rather frightened by his mechanical ignoring 
 of her, and his directness of statement. It was something 
 new to her. She had never been treated like this before, as 
 if she did not count, as if she were addressing a machine. 
 
 " It is too many," she said sympathetically. 
 
 "You'll get about the same," he said. 
 
 That was all she received. She sat rather blank, not 
 knowing how to feel. Still she liked him. He seemed so 
 cross. There was a queer, sharp, keen-edge feeling about 
 him that attracted her and frightened her at the same time. 
 It was so cold, and against his nature. 
 
 The door opened, and a short, neutral-tinted young woman 
 of about twenty-eight appeared. 
 
 " Oh, Ursula ! " the newcomer exclaimed. " You are here 
 early ! My word, I'll warrant you don't keep it up. That's 
 Mr. Williamson's peg. This is yours. Standard Five teacher 
 always has this. Aren't you going to take your hat off?" 
 
 Miss Violet Harby removed Ursula's waterproof from the 
 peg on which it was hung, to one a little further down the 
 TOW. She had already snatched the pins from her own stuff 
 hat, and jammed them through her coat. She turned to 
 Ursula, as she pushed up her frizzed, flat, dun-coloured hair. 
 
 "Isn't it a beastly morning," she exclaimed, "beastly! 
 And if there's one thing I hate above another it's a wet 
 Monday morning ; pack of kids trailing in anyhow-nohow, 
 and no holding 'em " 
 
 She had taken a black pinafore from a newspaper package, 
 and was tying it round her waist. 
 
 " You've brought an apron, haven't you ? " she said jerkily, 
 glancing at Ursula. "Oh you'll want one. You've no 
 idea what a sight you'll look before half -past four, what with 
 chalk and ink and kids' dirty feet. Well, I can send a 
 boy down to mamma's for one." 
 
 " Oh, it doesn't matter," said Ursula. 
 
 " Oh, yes I can send easily," cried Miss Harby. 
 
 Ursula's heart sank. Everybody seemed so cocksure and 
 so bossy. How was she going to get oil with such jolty, 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 351 
 
 jerky, bossy people? And Miss Harby had not spoken a 
 word to the man at the table. She simply ignored him. 
 Ursula felt the callous crude rudeness between the two 
 teachers. 
 
 The two girls went out into the passage. A few children 
 were already clattering in the porch. 
 
 "Jim Kichards," called Miss Harby, hard and authorita- 
 tive. A boy came sheepishly forward. 
 
 " Shall you go down to our house for me, eh ? " said Miss 
 Harby, in a commanding, condescending, coaxing voice. 
 She did not wait for an answer. " Go down and ask mamma 
 to send me one of my school pinas, for Miss Brangwen shall 
 you?" 
 
 The boy muttered a sheepish " Yes, Miss," and was moving 
 away. 
 
 " Hey," called Miss Harby. " Come here now what are 
 you going for ? What shall you say to mamma ? " 
 
 " A school pina " muttered the boy. 
 
 " ' Please, Mrs. Harby, Miss Harby says will you send her 
 another school pinafore for Miss Brangwen, because she's 
 come without one/ '' 
 
 "Yes, Miss," muttered the boy, head ducked, and was 
 moving off. Miss Harby caught him back, holding him by 
 the shoulder. 
 
 " What are you going to say ? " 
 
 " Please, Mrs. Harby, Miss Harby wants a pinny for Miss 
 Brangwin," muttered the boy very sheepishly. 
 
 "Miss Brangwen!" laughed Miss Harby, pushing him 
 away. "Here, you'd better have my umbrella wait a 
 minute." 
 
 The unwilling boy was rigged up with Miss Harby's um- 
 brella, and set off. 
 
 "Don't take long over it," called Miss Harby, after him. 
 Then she turned to Ursula, and said brightly : 
 
 " Oh, he's a caution, that lad but not bad, you know." 
 
 " No," Ursula agreed, weakly. 
 
 The latch of the door clicked, and they entered the big 
 room. Ursula glanced down the place. Its rigid, long silence 
 was official and chilling. Half way down was a glass par- 
 tition, the doors of which were open. A clock ticked re- 
 echoing, and Miss Harby's voice sounded double as she said: 
 
 " This is the big room Standard Five-Six-and-Seven, 
 Here's your place Five " 
 
352 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She stood in the near end of the great room. There was 
 a small high teacher's desk facing a squadron of long benches, 
 two high windows in the wall opposite. 
 
 It was fascinating and horrible to Ursula. The curious, 
 unliving light in the room changed her character. She 
 thought it was the rainy morning. Then she looked up again, 
 because of the horrid feeling of being shut in a rigid, in- 
 flexible air, away from all feeling of the ordinary day; and 
 she noticed that the windows were of ribbed, suffused glass. 
 
 The prison was round her now! She looked at the walls, 
 colour washed, pale green and chocolate, at the large windows 
 with frowsy geraniums against the pale glass, at the long 
 rows of desks, arranged in a squadron, and dread filled her. 
 This was a new world, a new life, with which she was threat- 
 ened. But still excited, she climbed into her chair at her 
 teacher's desk. It was high, and her feet could not reach 
 the ground, but must rest on the step. Lifted up there, off 
 the ground, she was in office. How queer, how queer it all 
 was! How different it was from the mist of rain blowing 
 over Cossethay. As she thought of her own village, a spasm 
 of yearning crossed her, it seemed so far off, so lost to her. 
 
 She was here in this hard, stark reality reality. It was 
 queer that she should call this the reality, which she had 
 never known till to-day, and which now so filled her with 
 dread and dislike, that she wished she might go away. This 
 was the reality, and Cossethay, her beloved, beautiful, well- 
 known Cossethay, which was as herself unto her, that was 
 minor reality. This prison of a school was reality. Here, 
 then, she would sit in state, the queen of scholars! Here 
 she would realize her dream of being the beloved teacher 
 bringing light and joy to her children ! But the desks before 
 her had an abstract angularity that bruised her sentiment 
 and made her shrink. She winced, feeling she had been a 
 fool in her anticipations. She had brought her feelings and 
 her generosity to where neither generosity nor emotion were 
 wanted. And already she felt rebuffed, troubled by the 
 new atmosphere, out of place. 
 
 She slid down, and they returned to the teacher's room. 
 It was queer to feel that one ought to alter one's personality. 
 She was nobody, there was no reality in herself, the reality 
 was all outside of her, and she must apply herself to it. 
 
 Mr. Harby was in the teacher's room, standing before a 
 big, open cupboard, in which Ursula could see piles of pink 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 353 
 
 blotting paper, heaps of shiny new books, boxes of chalk, and 
 bottles of coloured inks. It looked a treasure store. 
 
 The schoolmaster was a short, sturdy man, with a fine 
 head, and a heavy jowl. Nevertheless he was good-looking, 
 with his shapely brows and nose, and his great, hanging mous- 
 tache. He seemed absorbed in his work, and took no notice 
 of Ursula's entry. There was something insulting in the way 
 he could be so actively unaware of another person, so occupied. 
 
 When he had a moment of absence, he looked up from the 
 table and said good-morning to Ursula. There was a pleas- 
 ant light in his brown eyes. He seemed very manly and in- 
 controvertible, like something she wanted to push over. 
 
 " You had a wet walk/' he said to Ursula. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mind, I'm used to it," she replied, with a 
 nervous little laugh. 
 
 But already he was not listening. Her words sounded ri- 
 diculous and babbling. He was taking no notice of her. 
 
 " You will sign your name here," he said to her, as if she 
 were some child " and the time when you come and go." 
 
 Ursula signed her name in the time book and stood back. 
 No one took any further notice of her. She beat her brains 
 for something to say, but in vain. 
 
 "I'd let them in now," said Mr. Harby to the thin man, 
 who was very hastily arranging his papers. 
 
 The assistant teacher made no sign of acquiescence, and 
 went on with what he was doing. The atmosphere in the 
 room grew tense. At the last moment Mr. Brunt slipped 
 into his coat. 
 
 " You will go to the girls' lobby," said the schoolmaster to 
 Ursula, with a fascinating, insulting geniality, purely official 
 and domineering. 
 
 She went out and found Miss Harby, and another girl 
 teacher, in the porch. On the asphalt yard the rain was fall- 
 ing. A toneless bell tang-tang-tanged drearily overhead, 
 monotonously, insistently. It came to an end. Then Mr. 
 Brunt was seen, bare-headed, standing at the other gate of 
 the school yard, blowing shrill blasts on a whistle and looking 
 down the rainy, dreary street. 
 
 Boys in gangs and streams came trotting up, running past 
 the master and with a loud clatter of feet and voices, over the 
 yard to the boys' porch. Girls were running and walking 
 through the other entrance. 
 
 In the porch where Ursula stood there was a great noise 
 
354 THE RAINBOW 
 
 of girls, who were tearing off their coats and hats, and hang- 
 ing them on the racks bristling with pegs. There was a smell 
 of wet clothing, a tossing out of wet, draggled hair, a noise 
 of voices and feet. 
 
 The mass of girls grew greater, the rage around the pegs 
 grew steadier, the scholars tended to fall into little noisy 
 gangs in the porch. Then Violet Harby clapped her hands, 
 clapped them louder, with a shrill " Quiet, girls, quiet ! " 
 
 There was a pause. The hubbub died down but did not 
 cease. 
 
 "What did I say?" cried Miss Harby, shrilly. 
 
 There was almost complete silence. Sometimes a girl, 
 rather late, whirled into the porch and flung off her things. 
 
 " Leaders in place," commanded Miss Harby shrilly. 
 
 Pairs of girls in pinafores and long hair stood separate in 
 the porch. 
 
 " Standard Four, Five, and Six fall in," cried Miss 
 Harby. 
 
 There was a hubbub, which gradually resolved itself into 
 three columns of girls, two and two, standing smirking in the 
 passage. In among the peg-racks, other teachers were putting 
 the lower, classes into ranks. 
 
 Ursula stood by her own Standard Five. They were jerk- 
 ing their shoulders, tossing their hair, nudging, writhing, star- 
 ing, grinning, whispering and twisting. 
 
 A sharp whistle was heard, and Standard Six, the biggest 
 girls, set off, led by Miss Harby. Ursula, with her Standard 
 Five, followed after. She stood beside a smirking, grinning 
 row of girls, waiting in a narrow passage. What she was 
 herself she did not know. 
 
 Suddenly the sound of a piano was heard, and Standard 
 Six set off hollowly down the big room. The boys had en- 
 tered by another door. The piano played on, a march tune, 
 Standard Five followed to the door of the big room. Mr. 
 Harby was seen away beyond at his desk. Mr. Brunt guarded 
 the other door of the room. Ursula's class pushed up. She 
 stood near them. They glanced and smirked and shoved. 
 
 " Go on," said Ursula. 
 
 They tittered. 
 
 " Go on," said Ursula, for the piano continued. 
 
 The girls broke loosely into the room. Mr. Harby, who 
 had seemed immersed in some occupation, away at his desk, 
 lifted his head and thundered, 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 355 
 
 "Halt!" 
 
 There was a halt, the piano stopped. The boys who were 
 just starting through the other door, pushed back. The harsh, 
 subdued voice of Mr. Brunt was heard, then the booming 
 shout of Mr. Harby, from far down the room : 
 
 " Who told Standard Five girls to come in like that ? " 
 
 Ursula crimsoned. Her girls were glancing up at her, 
 smirking their accusation. 
 
 " I sent them in, Mr. Harby," she said, in a clear, strug- 
 gling voice. There was a moment of silence. Then Mr. 
 Harby roared from the distance. 
 
 " Go back to your places, Standard Five girls." 
 
 The girls glanced up at Ursula, accusing, rather jeering, 
 furtive. They pushed back. Ursula's heart hardened with 
 ignominious pain. 
 
 " Forward march," came Mr. Brunt's voice, and the girls 
 set off, keeping time with the ranks of boys. 
 
 Ursula faced her class, some fifty-five boys and girls who 
 stood filling the ranks of the desks. She felt utterly non- 
 existent. She had no place nor being there. She faced the 
 block of children. 
 
 Down the room she heard the rapid firing of questions. 
 She stood before her class not knowing what to do. She 
 waited painfully. Her block of children, fifty unknown faces, 
 watched her, hostile, ready to jeer. She felt as if she were 
 in torture over a fire of faces. And on every side she was 
 naked to them. Of unutterable length and torture the sec- 
 onds went by. 
 
 Then she gathered courage. She heard Mr. Brunt asking 
 questions in mental arithmetic. She stood near to her class, 
 so that her voice need not be raised, too much, and faltering, 
 uncertain, she said: 
 
 " Seven hats at two-pence ha'penny each ? " 
 
 A grin went over the faces of the class, seeing her com- 
 mence. She was red and suffering. Then some hands shot 
 up like blades, and she asked for the answer. 
 
 The day passed incredibly slowly. She never knew what 
 to do, there came horrible gaps, when she was merely exposed 
 to the children; and when, relying on some pert little girl 
 for information, she had started a lesson, she did not know 
 how to go on with it properly. The children were her mas- 
 ters. She deferred to them. She could always hear Mr. 
 Brunt. Like a machine, always in the same hard, high, in- 
 
356 THE RAINBOW 
 
 human voice "he went on with his teaching, oblivious of every- 
 thing. And before this inhuman number of children she was 
 always at bay. She could not get away from it. There it 
 was, this class of fifty collective children, depending on her 
 for command, for command it hated and resented. It made 
 her feel she could not breathe : she must suffocate, it was so 
 inhuman. They were so many, that they were not children. 
 They were a squadron. She could not speak as she would to 
 a child, because they were not individual children, they were 
 a collective, inhuman thing. 
 
 Dinner time came, and stunned, bewildered, solitary, she 
 went into the teacher's room for dinner. Never had she felt 
 such a stranger to life before. It seemed to her she had just 
 disembarked from some strange horrible state where every- 
 thing was as in hell, a condition of hard, malevolent system. 
 And she was not really free. The afternoon drew at her like 
 some bondage. 
 
 The first week passed in a blind confusion. She did not 
 know how to teach, and she felt she never would know. Mr. 
 Harby came down every now and then to her class, to see 
 what she was doing. She felt so incompetent as he stood by, 
 bullying and threatening, so unreal, that she wavered, be- 
 came neutral and non-existent. But he stood there watch- 
 ing with the listening-genial smile of the eyes, that was really 
 threatening ; he said nothing, he made her go on teaching, she 
 felt she had no soul in her body. Then he went away, and 
 his going was like a derision. The class was his class. She 
 was a wavering substitute. He thrashed and bullied, he was 
 hated. But he was master. Though she was gentle and al- 
 ways considerate of her class, yet they belonged to Mr. Harby, 
 and they did not belong to her. Like some invincible source 
 of the mechanism he kept all power to himself. And the 
 class owned his power. And in school it was power, and power 
 alone that mattered. 
 
 Soon Ursula came to dread him, and at the bottom of her 
 dread was a seed of hate, for she despised him, yet he was 
 master of her. Then she began to get on. All the other 
 teachers hated him, and fanned their hatred among them- 
 selves. For he was master of them and the children, he 
 stood like a wheel to make absolute his authority over the 
 herd. That seemed to be his one reason in life, to hold 
 blind authority over the school. His teachers were his sub- 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 357 
 
 jects as much as the scholars. Only, because they had some 
 authority, his instinct was to detest them. 
 
 Ursula could not make herself a favourite with him. From 
 the first moment she set hard against him. She set against 
 Violet Harby also. Mr. Harby was, however, too much for 
 her, he was something she could not come to grips with, some- 
 thing too strong for her. She tried to approach him as a 
 young, bright girl usually approaches a man, expecting a lit- 
 tle chivalrous courtesy. But the fact that she was a girl, a 
 woman, was ignored or used as a matter for contempt against 
 her. She did not know what she was, nor what she must be. 
 She wanted to remain her own responsive, personal self. 
 
 So she taught on. She made friends with the Standard 
 Three teacher, Maggie Schofield. Miss Schofield was about 
 twenty years old, a subdued girl who held aloof from the 
 other teachers. She was rather beautiful, meditative, and 
 seemed to live in another, lovelier world. 
 
 Ursula took her dinner to school, and during the second 
 week ate it in Miss Schofield's room. Standard Three class- 
 room stood by itself and had windows on two sides, looking 
 on to the playground. It was a passionate relief to find such 
 a retreat in the jarring school. For there were pots of chry- 
 santhemums and coloured leaves, and a big jar of berries : there 
 were pretty little pictures on the wall, photogravure reproduc- 
 tions from Greuze, and Reynolds's " Age of Innocence," giv- 
 ing an air of intimacy; so that the room, with its window 
 space, its smaller, tidier desks, its touch of pictures and 
 flowers, made Ursula at once glad. Here at last was a little 
 personal touch, to which she could respond. 
 
 It was Monday. She had been at school a week and was 
 getting used to the surroundings, though she was still an 
 entire foreigner in herself. She looked forward to having 
 dinner with Maggie. That was the bright spot in the day. 
 Maggie was so strong and remote, walking with slow, sure 
 steps down a hard road, carrying the dream within her. 
 Ursula went through the class teaching as through a meaning- 
 less daze. 
 
 Her class tumbled out at mid-day in haphazard fashion. 
 She did not realize what host she was gathering against 
 herself by her superior tolerance, her kindness and her laisser- 
 aller. They were gone, and she was rid of them, and that 
 was all. She hurried away to the teachers' room. 
 
358 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Mr. Brunt was crouching at the small stove, putting a little 
 rice-pudding into the oven. He rose then, and attentively 
 poked in a small saucepan on the hob with a fork. Then he 
 replaced the saucepan lid. 
 
 " Aren't they done ? " asked Ursula gaily, breaking in on 
 his tense absorption. 
 
 She always kept a bright, blithe manner, and was pleasant 
 to all the teachers. For she felt like the swan among the 
 geese, of superior heritage and belonging. And her pride at 
 being the swan in this ugly school was not yet abated. 
 
 " Not yet," replied Mr. Brunt, laconic. 
 
 " I wonder if my dish is hot," she said, bending down at 
 the oven. She half expected him to look for her, but he took 
 no notice. She was hungry and she poked her finger eagerly 
 in the pot to see if her brussels sprouts and potatoes and meat 
 were ready. They were not. 
 
 "Don't you think it's rather jolly bringing dinner?" she 
 said to Mr. Brunt. 
 
 "I don't know as I do," he said, spreading a serviette on 
 a corner of the table, and not looking at her. 
 
 " I suppose it is too far for you to go home ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said. Then he rose and looked at her. He had 
 the bluest, fiercest, most pointed eyes that she had ever met. 
 He stared at her with growing fierceness. 
 
 " If I were you, Miss Brangwen," he said, menacingly, " I 
 should get a bit tighter hand over my class." 
 
 Ursula shrank. 
 
 " Would you ? " she asked, sweetly, yet in terror. " Aren't 
 I strict enough ? " 
 
 "Because," he repeated, taking no notice of her, "they'll 
 get you down if you don't tackle 'em pretty quick. They'll 
 pull you down, and worry you, till Harby gets you shifted 
 that's how it'll be. You won't be here another six weeks " 
 and he filled his mouth with food " if you don't tackle 'em 
 and tackle 'em quick." 
 
 " Oh, but " Ursula said, resentfully, ruefully. The ter- 
 ror was deep in her. 
 
 " Harby'll not help you. This is what he'll do he'll let 
 you go on, getting worse and worse, till either you clear out or 
 he clears you out. It doesn't matter to me, except that you'll 
 leave a class behind you as I hope I shan't have to cope with." 
 
 She heard the accusation in the man's voice, and felt con- 
 demned. But still, school had not yet become a definite 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 359 
 
 reality to her. She was shirking it. It was reality, but it 
 was all outside her. And she fought against Mr. Brunt's rep- 
 resentation. She did not want to realize. 
 
 " Will it be so terrible ? " she said, quivering, rather beau- 
 tiful, but with a slight touch of condescension, because she 
 would not betray her own trepidation. 
 
 "Terrible?" said the man, turning to his potatoes again. 
 " I dunno about terrible." 
 
 " I do feel frightened," said Ursula. " The children seem 
 so 
 
 "What?" said Miss Harby, entering at that moment. 
 
 " Why," said Ursula, " Mr. Brunt says I ought to tackle 
 my class," and she laughed uneasily. 
 
 " Oh, you have to keep order if you want to teach," said 
 Miss Harby, hard, superior, trite. 
 
 Ursula did not answer. She felt non valid before them. 
 
 " If you want to> be let to live, you have," said Mr. Brunt. 
 
 " Well, if you can't keep order, what good are you ? " said 
 Miss Harby. 
 
 " An' you've got to do it by yourself," his voice rose like 
 the bitter cry of the prophets. "You'll get no help from 
 anybody." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " said Miss Harby. " Some people can't be 
 helped." And she departed. 
 
 The air of hostility and disintegration, of wills working in 
 antagonistic subordination, was hideous. Mr. Brunt, subor- 
 dinate, afraid, acid with shame, frightened her. Ursula 
 wanted to run. She only wanted to clear out, not to under- 
 stand. 
 
 Then Miss Schofield came in, and with her another, more 
 restful note. Ursula at once turned for confirmation to the 
 new-comer. Maggie remained personal within all this un- 
 clean system of authority. 
 
 "Is the big Anderson here?" she asked of Mr. Brunt. 
 And they spoke of some affair about two scholars, coldly, 
 officially. 
 
 Miss Schofield took her brown dish, and Ursula followed 
 with her own. The cloth was laid in the pleasant Standard 
 Three room, there was a jar with two or three monthly roses on 
 the table. 
 
 "It is so nice in here, you have made it different," said 
 Ursula gaily. But she was afraid. The atmosphere of the 
 school was upon her. 
 
360 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " The big room," said Miss Schofield, " ha, it's misery to be 
 in it!" 
 
 She too spoke with bitterness. She too lived in the igno- 
 minious position of an upper servant hated by the master 
 above and the class beneath. She was, she knew, liable to 
 attack from either side at any minute, or from both at once, 
 for the authorities would listen to the complaints of parents, 
 and both would turn round on the mongrel authority, the 
 teacher. 
 
 So there was a hard, bitter withholding in Maggie Schofield 
 even as she poured out her savoury mess of big golden beans 
 and brown gravy. 
 
 " It is vegetarian hot-pot," said Miss Schofield. " Would 
 you like to try it?" 
 
 "I should love to," said Ursula. 
 
 Her own dinner seemed coarse and ugly beside this savoury, 
 clean dish. 
 
 "I've never eaten vegetarian things," she said. "But I 
 should think they can be good." 
 
 " I'm not really a vegetarian," said Maggie, " I don't like 
 to bring meat to school." 
 
 " No," said Ursula, " I don't think I do either." 
 
 And again her soul rang an answer to a new refinement, 
 a new liberty. If all vegetarian things were as nice as this, 
 she would be glad to escape the slight uncleanness of meat. 
 
 " How good ! " she cried. 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Schofield, and she proceeded to tell her 
 the receipt. The two girls passed on to talk about them- 
 selves. Ursula told all about the High School, and about 
 her matriculation, bragging a little. She felt so poor here, 
 in this ugly place. Miss Schofield listened with brooding, 
 handsome face, rather gloomy. 
 
 " Couldn't you have got to some better place than this ? " 
 she asked at length. 
 
 " I didn't know what it was like," said Ursula, doubtfully. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Miss Schofield, and she turned aside her head 
 with a bitter motion. 
 
 " Is it as horrid as it seems ? " asked Ursula, frowning 
 lightly, in fear. 
 
 " It is" said Miss Schofield, bitterly. " Ha ! it is hate- 
 ful!" 
 
 Ursula's heart sank, seeing even Miss Schofield in the 
 deadly bondage. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 361 
 
 " It is Mr. Harby," said Maggie Schofield, breaking forth. 
 " I don't think I could live again in the big room Mr. 
 Brunt's voice and Mr. Harby ah " 
 
 She turned aside her head with a deep hurt. Some things 
 she could not bear. 
 
 "Is Mr. Harby really horrid?" asked Ursula, venturing 
 into her own dread. 
 
 " He ! why, he's just a bully," said Miss Schofield, rais- 
 ing her shamed dark eyes, that flamed with tortured contempt. 
 " He's not bad as long as you keep in with him, and refer to 
 him, and do everything in his way but it's all so mean! 
 It's just a question of fighting on both sides and those great 
 louts " 
 
 She spoke with difficulty and with increased bitterness. She 
 had evidently suffered. Her soul was raw with ignominy. 
 Ursula suffered in response. 
 
 "But why is it so horrid?" she asked, helplessly. 
 
 "You can't do anything" said Miss Schofield. "He's 
 against you on one side and he sets the children against you 
 on the other. The children are simply awful. You've got 
 to make them do everything. Everything, everything has 
 got to come out of you. Whatever they learn, you've got to 
 force it into them and that's how it is." 
 
 Ursula felt her heart fail inside her. Why must she grasp 
 all this, why must she force learning on fifty-five reluctant 
 children, having all the time an ugly, rude jealousy behind 
 her, ready to throw her to the mercy of the herd of children, 
 who would like to rend her as a weaker representative of 
 authority. A great dread of her task possessed her. She 
 saw Mr. Brunt, Miss Harby, Miss Schofield, all the school- 
 teachers, drudging unwillingly at the graceless task of com- 
 pelling many children into one disciplined, mechanical set, 
 reducing the whole set to an automatic state of obedience and 
 attention, and then of commanding their acceptance of vari- 
 ous pieces of knowledge. The first great task was to reduce 
 sixty children to one state of mind, or being. This state must 
 be produced automatically, through the will of the teacher, 
 and the will of the whole school authority, imposed upon the 
 will of the children. The point was that the headmaster and 
 the teachers should have one will in authority, which should 
 bring the will of the children into accord. But the headmas- 
 ter was narrow and exclusive. The will of the teachers could 
 not agree with his, their separate wills refused to be so sub- 
 
362 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ordinated. So there was a state of anarchy, leaving the final 
 judgment to the children themselves, which authority should 
 exist. 
 
 So there existed a set of separate wills, each straining itself 
 to the utmost to exert its own authority. Children will never 
 naturally acquiesce to sitting in a class and submitting to 
 knowledge. They must be compelled by a stronger, wiser 
 will. Against which will they must always strive to revolt. 
 So that the first great effort of every teacher of a large class 
 must be to bring the will of the children into accordance with 
 his own will. And this he can only do by an abnegation of 
 his personal self, and an application of a system of laws, for 
 the purpose of achieving a certain calculable result, the im- 
 parting of certain knowledge. Whereas Ursula thought she 
 was going to become the first wise teacher by making the 
 whole business personal, and using no compulsion. She be- 
 lieved entirely in her own personality. 
 
 So that she was in a very deep mess. In the first place she 
 was offering to a class a relationship which only one or two 
 of the children were sensitive enough to appreciate, so that 
 the mass were left outsiders, therefore against her. Sec- 
 ondly, she was placing herself in passive antagonism to the one 
 fixed authority of Mr. Harby, so that the scholars could more 
 safely harry her. She did not know, but her instinct grad- 
 ually warned her. She was tortured by the voice of Mr. 
 Brunt. On it went, jarring, harsh, full of hate, but so 
 monotonous, it nearly drove her mad: always the same set, 
 harsh monotony. The man was become a mechanism work- 
 ing on and on and on. But the personal man was in sub- 
 dued friction all the time. It was horrible all hate ! Must 
 she be like this? She could feel the ghastly necessity. She 
 must become the same put away the personal self, become 
 an instrument, an abstraction, working upon a certain ma- 
 terial, the class, to achieve a set purpose of making them 
 know so much each day. And she could not submit. Yet 
 gradually she felt the invincible iron closing upon her. The 
 sun was being blocked out. Often when she went out at 
 playtime and saw a luminous blue sky with changing clouds, 
 it seemed just a fantasy, like a piece of painted scenery. Her 
 heart was so black and tangled in the teaching, her personal 
 self was shut in prison, abolished, she was subjugate to a bad, 
 destructive will. How then could the sky be shining ? There 
 was no sky, there was no luminous atmosphere of out-of-doors. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 363 
 
 Only the inside of the school was real hard, concrete, real 
 and vicious. 
 
 She would not yet, however, let school quite overcome her. 
 She always said, " It is not a permanency, it will come to an 
 end." She could always see herself beyond the place, see 
 the time when she had left it. On Sundays and on holidays, 
 when she was away at Cossethay or in the woods where the 
 beech-leaves were fallen, she could think of St. Philip's Church 
 School, and by an effort of will put it in the picture as a dirty 
 little low-squatting building that made a very tiny mound 
 under the sky, while the great beech-woods spread immense 
 about her, and the afternoon was spacious and wonderful. 
 Moreover the children, the scholars, they were insignificant 
 little objects far away, oh, far away. And what power had 
 they over her free soul? A fleeting thought of them, as she 
 kicked her way through the beech-leaves, and they were gone. 
 But her will was tense against them all the time. 
 
 All the while, they pursued her. She had never had such 
 a passionate love of the beautiful things about her. Sitting 
 on top of the tram-car, at evening, sometimes school was 
 swept away as she saw a magnificent sky settling down. And 
 her breast, her very hands, clamoured for the lovely flare of 
 sunset. It was poignant almost to agony, her reaching for it. 
 She almost cried aloud seeing the sundown so lovely. 
 
 For she was held away. It was no matter how she said to 
 herself that school existed no more once she had left it. It 
 existed. It was within her like a dark weight, controlling 
 her movement. It was in vain the high-spirited, proud young 
 girl flung off the school and its association with her. She was 
 Miss Brangwen, she was Standard Five teacher, she had her 
 most important being in her work now. 
 
 Constantly haunting her, like a darkness hovering over her 
 heart and threatening to swoop down over it at every moment, 
 was the sense that somehow, somehow she was brought down. 
 Bitterly she denied unto herself that she was really a school- 
 teacher. Leave that to the Violet Harbys. She herself would 
 stand clear of the accusation. It was in vain she denied it. 
 
 Within herself some recording hand seemed to point me- 
 chanically to a negation. She was incapable of fulfilling her 
 task. She could never for a moment escape from the fatal 
 weight of the knowledge. 
 
 And so she felt inferior to Violet Harby. Miss Harby was 
 a splendid teacher. She could keep order and inflict knowl- 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 edge on a class with remarkable efficiency. It was no good 
 Ursula's protesting to herself that she was infinitely, infinitely 
 the superior of Violet Harby. She knew that Violet Harby 
 succeeded where she failed, and this in a task which was 
 almost a test of her. She felt something all the time wearing 
 upon her, wearing her down. She went about in these first 
 weeks trying to deny it, to say she was free as ever. She 
 tried not to feel at a disadvantage before Miss Harby, tried 
 to keep up the effect of her own superiority. But a great 
 weight was on her, which Violet Harby could bear, and she 
 herself could not. 
 
 Though she did not give in, she never succeeded. Her 
 class was getting in worse condition, she knew herself less 
 and less secure in teaching it. Ought she to withdraw and 
 go home again ? Ought she to say she had come to the wrong 
 place, and so retire ? Her very life was at test. 
 
 She went on doggedly, blindly, waiting for a crisis. Mr. 
 Harby had now begun to persecute her. Her dread and hatred 
 of him grew and loomed larger and larger. She was afraid 
 he was going to bully her and destroy her. He began to perse- 
 cute her because she could not keep her class in proper con- 
 dition, because her class was the weak link in the chain which 
 made up the school. 
 
 One of the offences was that her class was noisy and dis- 
 turbed Mr. Harby, as he took Standard Seven at the other 
 end of the room. She was taking composition on a certain 
 morning, walking in among the scholars. Some of the boys 
 had dirty ears and necks, their clothing smelled unpleasantly, 
 but she could ignore it. She corrected the writing as she 
 went. 
 
 "When you say 'their fur is brown,' how do you write 
 < their ' ? she asked. 
 
 There was a little pause; the boys were always jeeringly 
 backward in answering. They had begun to jeer at her au- 
 thority altogether. 
 
 " Please, miss, t-h-e-i-r," spelled a lad, loudly, with a note of 
 mockery. 
 
 At that moment Mr. Harby was passing. 
 
 " Stand up, Hill ! " he called, in a big voice. 
 
 Everybody started. Ursula watched the boy. He was evi- 
 dently poor, and rather cunning. A stiff bit of hair stood 
 straight off his forehead, the rest fitted close to his meagre 
 head. He was pale and colourless. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 365 
 
 "Who told you to call out?" thundered Mr. Harby. 
 
 The boy looked up and down, with a guilty air, and a cun- 
 ning, cynical reserve. 
 
 " Please, sir, I was answering," he replied, with the same 
 humble insolence. 
 
 " Go to my desk." 
 
 The boy set off down the room, the big black jacket hang- 
 ing in dejected folds about him, his thin legs, rather knocked 
 at the knees, going already with the pauper's crawl, his feet 
 in their big boots scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his 
 crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her 
 boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half fur- 
 tively, with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the 
 big boys of Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his de- 
 jected garments, he lounged under the menace of the head- 
 master's desk, with one thin leg crooked at the knee and the 
 foot stuck out sideways his hands in the low-hanging pockets 
 of his man's jacket. 
 
 Ursula tried to get her attention back to the class. The 
 boy gave her a little horror, and she was at the same time 
 hot with pity for him. She felt she wanted to scream. She 
 was responsible for the boy's punishment. Mr. Harby was 
 looking at her handwriting on the board. He turned to the 
 class. 
 
 " Pens down." 
 
 The children put down their pens and looked up. 
 
 " Fold arms." 
 
 They pushed back their books and folded arms. 
 
 Ursula, stuck among the back forms, could not extricate 
 herself. 
 
 " What is your composition about ? " asked the headmaster. 
 
 Every hand shot up. " The " stuttered some voice in its 
 
 eagerness to answer. 
 
 " I wouldn't advise you to call out," said Mr. Harby. He 
 would have a pleasant voice, full and musical, but for the de- 
 testable menace that always tailed in it. He stood unmoved, 
 his eyes twinkling under his bushy black brows, watching the 
 class. There was something fascinating in him, as he stood, 
 and again she wanted to scream. She was all jarred, she 
 did not know what she felt. 
 
 "Well, Alice? "he said. 
 
 " The rabbit," piped a girl's voice. 
 
 " A very easy subject for Standard Five." 
 
366 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula felt a slight shame of incompetence. She was ex- 
 posed before the class. And she was tormented by the con- 
 tradictoriness of everything. Mr. Harby stood so strong, 
 and so male, with his black brows and clear forehead, the 
 heavy jaw, the big, overhanging moustache : such a man, with 
 strength and male power, and a certain blind, native beauty. 
 She might have liked him as a man. And here he stood in 
 some other capacity, bullying over such a trifle as a boy's 
 speaking out without permission. Yet he was not a little, 
 fussy man. He seemed to have some cruel, stubborn, evil 
 spirit, he was imprisoned in a task too small and petty for him, 
 which yet, in a servile acquiescence, he would fulfil, because he 
 had to earn his living. He had no finer control over him- 
 self, only this blind, dogged, wholesale will. He would keep 
 the job going, since he must. And his job was to make the 
 children spell the word " caution " correctly, and put a capital 
 letter after a full-stop. So at this he hammered with his sup- 
 pressed hatred, always suppressing himself, till he was beside 
 himself. Ursula suffered bitterly as he stood, short and hand- 
 some and powerful, teaching her class. It seemed such a 
 miserable thing for him to be doing. He had a decent, power- 
 ful, rude soul. What did he care about the composition on 
 " The Kabbit " ? Yet his will kept him there before the class, 
 threshing the trivial subject. It was habit with him now, to 
 be so little and vulgar, out of place. She saw the shamef ulness 
 of his position, felt the fettered wickedness in him which would 
 blaze out into evil rage in the long run, so that he was like a 
 persistent, strong creature tethered. It was really intolerable. 
 The jarring was torture to her. She looked over the silent, 
 attentive class that seemed to have crystallized into order and 
 rigid, neutral form. This he had it in his power to do, to 
 crystallize the children into hard, mute fragments, fixed under 
 his will : his brute will, which fixed them by sheer force. She 
 too must learn to subdue them to her will : she must. For it 
 was her duty, since the school was such. He had crystallized 
 the class into order. But to see him, a strong, powerful man, 
 using all his power for such a purpose, seemed almost horrible. 
 There was something hideous about it. The strange, genial 
 light in his eye was really vicious, and ugly, his smile was one 
 of torture. He could not be impersonal. He could not have 
 a clear, pure purpose, he could only exercise his own brute will. 
 He did not believe in the least in the education he kept in- 
 flicting year after year upon the children, So he must bully, 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 367 
 
 only bully, even while it tortured his strong, wholesome nature 
 with shame like a spur always galling. He was so blind and 
 ugly and out of place. Ursula could not bear it as he stood 
 there. The whole situation was wrong and ugly. 
 
 The lesson was finished, Mr. Harby went away. At the 
 far end of the room she heard the whistle and the thud of the 
 cane. Her heart stood still within her. She could not bear 
 it, no, she could not bear it when the boy was beaten. It made 
 her sick. She felt that she must go out of this school, this 
 torture-place. And she hated the schoolmaster, thoroughly 
 and finally. The brute, had he no shame ? He should never 
 be allowed to continue the atrocity of this bullying cruelty. 
 Then Hill came crawling back, blubbering piteously. There 
 was something desolate about his blubbering that nearly broke 
 her heart. For after all, if she had kept her class in proper 
 discipline, this would never have happened, Hill would never 
 have called out and been caned. 
 
 She began the arithmetic lesson. But she was distracted. 
 The boy Hill sat away on the back desk, huddled up, blub- 
 bering and sucking his hand. It was a long time. She dared 
 not go near, nor speak to him. She felt ashamed before him. 
 And she felt she could not forgive the boy for being the hud- 
 dled, blubbering object, all wet and snivelled, which he was. 
 
 She went on correcting the sums. But there were too manv 
 children. She could not get round the class. And Hill was 
 on her conscience. At last he had stopped crying, and sat 
 bunched over his hands, playing quietly. Then he looked up 
 at her. His face was dirty with tears, his eyes had a curious 
 washed look, like the sky after rain, a sort of wanness. He 
 bore no malice. He had already forgotten, and was waiting 
 to be restored to the normal position. 
 
 " Go on with your work, Hill/' she said. 
 
 The children were playing over their arithmetic, and, she 
 knew, cheating thoroughly. She wrote another sum on the 
 blackboard. She could not get round the class. She went 
 again to the front to watch. Some were ready. Some were 
 not. What was she to do? 
 
 At last it was time for recreation. She gave the order to 
 cease working, and in some way or other got her class out of 
 the room. Then she faced the disorderly litter or blotted, 
 uncorrected books, of broken rulers and chewed pens. And 
 her heart sank in sickness. The misery was getting deeper. 
 
 The trouble went on and on, day after day. She had al- 
 
368 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ways piles of books to mark, myriads of errors to correct, a 
 heart-wearying task that she loathed. And the work got worse 
 and worse. When she tried to flatter herself that the composi- 
 tion grew more alive, more interesting, she had to see that the 
 handwriting grew more and more slovenly, the books more 
 filthy and disgraceful. She tried what she could, but it was 
 of no use. But she was not going to take it seriously. Why 
 should she ? Why should she say to herself, that it mattered, 
 if she failed to teach a class to write perfectly neatly? Why 
 should she take the blame unto herself ? 
 
 Pay day came, and she received four pounds two shillings 
 and one penny. She was very proud that day. She had never 
 had so much money before. And she had earned it all herself. 
 She sat on the top of the tram-car fingering the gold and fear- 
 ing she might lose it. She felt so established and strong, be- 
 cause of it. And when she got home she said to her mother : 
 
 " It is pay day to-day, mother." 
 
 " Ay," said her mother coolly. 
 
 Then Ursula put down fifty shillings on the table. 
 
 " That is my board," she said. 
 
 " Ay," said her mother, letting it lie. 
 
 Ursula was hurt. Yet she had paid her scot. She was 
 free. She paid for what she had. There remained moreover 
 thirty-two shillings of her own. She would not spend any, 
 she who was naturally a spendthrift, because she could not 
 bear to damage her fine gold. 
 
 She had a standing ground now apart from her parents. 
 She was something else besides the mere daughter of William 
 and Anna Brangwen. She was independent. She earned 
 her own living. She was an important member of the work- 
 ing community. She was sure that fifty shillings a month 
 quite paid for her keep. If her mother received fifty shillings 
 a month for each of the children, she would have twenty 
 pounds a month and no clothes to provide. Very well then. 
 
 Ursula was independent of her parents. She now adhered 
 elsewhere. Now, the "Board of Education" was a phrase 
 that rang significant to her, and she felt Whitehall far beyond 
 her as her ultimate home. In the government, she knew which 
 minister had supreme control over Education, and it seemed 
 to her that, in some way, he was connected with her, as her 
 father was connected with her. 
 
 She had another self, another responsibility. She was no 
 longer Ursula Brangwen, daughter of William Brangwen. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 369 
 
 She was also Standard Five teacher in St. Philip's School. 
 And it was a case now of being Standard Five teacher, and 
 nothing else. For she could not escape. 
 
 Neither could she succeed. That was her horror. As the 
 weeks passed on, there was no Ursula Brangwen, free and 
 jolly. There was only a girl of that name obsessed by the 
 fact that she could not manage her class of children. At 
 week-ends there came days of passionate reaction, when she 
 went mad with the taste of liberty, when merely to be free 
 in the morning, to sit down at her embroidery and stitch the 
 coloured silks was a passion of delight. For the prison house 
 was always awaiting her! This was only a respite, as her 
 chained heart knew well. So that she seized hold of the 
 swift hours of the week end, and wrung the last drop of sweet- 
 ness out of them, in a little, cruel frenzy. 
 
 She did not tell anybody how this state was a torture to her. 
 She did not confide, either to Gudrun or to her parents, how 
 horrible she found it to be a school-teacher. But when Sun- 
 day night came, and she felt the Monday morning at hand, 
 she was strung up tight with dreadful anticipation, because 
 the strain and the torture was near again. 
 
 She did not believe that she could ever teach that great, 
 brutish class, in that brutal school: ever, ever. And yet, 
 if she failed, she must in some way go under. She must admit 
 that the man's world was too strong for her, she could not 
 take her place in it; she must go down before Mr. Harby. 
 And all her life henceforth, she must go on, never having freed 
 herself of the man's world, never having achieved the freedom 
 of the great world of responsible work. Maggie had taken 
 her place there, she had even stood level with Mr. Harby and 
 got free of him: and her soul was always wandering in far- 
 off valleys and glades of poetry. Maggie was free. Yet there 
 was something like subjection in Maggie's very freedom. Mr. 
 Harby, the man, disliked the reserved woman, Maggie. Mr. 
 Harby, the schoolmaster, respected his teacher, Miss Scho- 
 field. 
 
 For the present, however, Ursula only envied and admired 
 Maggie. She herself had still to get where Maggie had got. 
 She had still to make her footing. She had taken up a posi- 
 tion on Mr. Harby's ground, and she must keep it. For he 
 was now beginning a regular attack on her, to drive her away 
 out of his school. She could not keep order. Her class was 
 a turbulent crowd, and the weak spot in the school's work. 
 
370 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Therefore she must go, and some one more useful must come 
 in her place, some one who could keep discipline. 
 
 The headmaster had worked himself into an obsession of 
 fury against her. He only wanted her gone. She had come, 
 she had got worse as the weeks went on, she was absolutely 
 no good. His system, which was his very life in school, the 
 outcome of his bodily movement, was attacked and threatened 
 at the point where Ursula was included. She was the danger 
 that threatened his body with a blow, a fall. And blindly, 
 thoroughly, moving from strong instinct of opposition, he set 
 to work to expel her. 
 
 When he punished one of her children as he had punished 
 the boy Hill, for an offence against himself, he made the 
 punishment extra heavy with the significance that the extra 
 stroke came in because of the weak teacher who allowed all 
 these things to be. When he punished for an offence against 
 her, he punished lightly, as if offences against her were not 
 significant. Which all the children knew, and they behaved 
 accordingly. 
 
 Every now and again Mr. Harby would swoop down to 
 examine exercise books. For a whole hour, he would be going 
 round the class, taking book after book, comparing page 
 after page, whilst Ursula stood aside for all the remarks and 
 fault-finding to be pointed at her through the scholars. It 
 was true, since she had come, the composition books had grown 
 more and more untidy, disorderly, filthy. Mr. Harby pointed 
 to the pages done before her regime, and to those done after, 
 and fell into a passion of rage. Many children he sent out 
 to the front with their books. And after he had thoroughly 
 gone through the silent and quivering class he caned the worst 
 offenders well, in front of the others, thundering in real pas- 
 sion of anger and chagrin. 
 
 " Such a condition in a class, I can't believe it ! It is 
 simply disgraceful ! I can't think how you have been let to 
 get like it! Every Monday morning I shall come down and 
 examine these books. So don't think that because there is 
 nobody paying any attention to you, that you are free to 
 unlearn everything you ever learned, and go back till you are 
 not fit for Standard Three. I shall examine all books every 
 Monday " 
 
 Then in a rage, he went away with his cane, leaving Ursula 
 to confront a pale, quivering class, whose childish faces were 
 shut in blank resentment, fear, and bitterness, whose souls 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 371* 
 
 were full of anger and contempt of her rather than of the 
 master, whose eyes looked at her with the cold, inhuman 
 accusation of children. And she could hardly make mechani- 
 cal words to speak to them. When she gave an order they 
 obeyed with an insolent off-handedness, as if to say : " As 
 for you, do you think we would obey you, but for the master ? " 
 She sent the blubbering, caned boys to their seats, knowing 
 that they too jeered at her and her authority, holding her 
 weakness responsible for what punishment had overtaken them. 
 And she knew the whole position, so that even her horror of 
 physical beating and suffering sank to a deeper pain, and be- 
 came a moral judgment upon her, worse than any hurt. 
 
 She must, during the next week, watch over her books, 
 and punish any fault. Her soul decided it coldly. Her per- 
 sonal desire was dead for that day at least. She must have 
 nothing more of herself in school. She was to be Standard 
 Five teacher only. That was her duty. In school, she was 
 nothing but Standard Five teacher. Ursula Brangwen must 
 be excluded. 
 
 So that, pale, shut, at last distant and impersonal, she saw 
 no longer the child, how his eyes danced, or how he had a 
 queer little soul that could not be bothered with shaping hand- 
 writing so long as he dashed down what he thought. She 
 saw no children, only the task that was to be done. And 
 keeping her eyes there, on the task, and not on the child, she 
 was impersonal enough to punish where she could otherwise 
 only have sympathized, understood, and condoned, to approve 
 where she would have been merely uninterested before. But 
 her interest had no place any more. 
 
 It was agony to the impulsive, bright girl of seventeen to 
 become distant and official, having no personal relationship 
 with the children. For a few days, after the agony of the 
 Monday, she succeeded, and had some success with her class. 
 But it was a state not natural to her, and she began to relax. 
 
 Then came another infliction. There were not enough pens 
 to go round the class. She sent to Mr. Harby for more. He 
 came in person. 
 
 " Not enough pens, Miss Brangwen ? " he said, with the 
 smile and calm of exceeding rage against her. 
 
 " No, we are six short/' she said, quaking. 
 
 " Oh, how is that ? " he said, menacingly. Then, looking 
 over the class, he asked : 
 
 " How many are there here to-day ? " 
 
372 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Fifty-two," said Ursula, but he did not take any notice, 
 counting for himself. 
 
 " Fifty-two/ 5 he said. " And how many pens are there, 
 Staples?" 
 
 Ursula was now silent. He would not heed her if she an- 
 swered, since he had addressed the monitor. 
 
 "That's a very curious thing," said Mr. Harby, looking 
 over the silent class with a slight grin of fury. All the child- 
 ish faces looked up at him blank and exposed. 
 
 " A few days ago there were sixty pens for this class now 
 there are forty-eight. What is forty-eight from sixty, Wil- 
 liams?" There was a sinister suspense in the question. A 
 thin, ferret-faced boy in a sailor suit started up exaggeratedly. 
 
 " Please, sir ! " he said. Then a slow, sly grin came over 
 his face. He did not know. There was a tense silence. The 
 b.oy dropped his head. Then he looked up again, a little cun- 
 ning triumph in his eyes. " Twelve," he said. 
 
 " I would advise you to attend," said the headmaster dan- 
 gerously. The boy sat down. 
 
 " Forty-eight from sixty is twelve : so there are twelve 
 pens to account for. Have you looked for them, Staples ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Then look again." 
 
 The scene dragged on. Two pens were found: ten were 
 missing. Then the storm burst. 
 
 " Am I to have you thieving, besides your dirt and bad 
 work and bad behaviour ? " the headmaster began. " Not con- 
 tent with being the worst-behaved and dirtiest class in the 
 school, you are thieves into the bargain, are you? It is a 
 very funny thing! Pens don't melt into the air: pens are 
 not in the habit of mizzling away into nothing. What has 
 become of them then? They must be somewhere. What 
 has become of them? For they must be found, and found 
 by Standard Five. They were lost by Standard Five, and 
 they must be found." 
 
 Ursula stood and listened, her heart hard and cold. She 
 was so much upset, that she felt almost mad. Something in 
 her tempted her to turn on the headmaster and tell him to 
 stop, about the miserable pens. But she did not. She could 
 not. 
 
 After every session, morning and evening, she had the pens 
 counted. Still they were missing. And pencils and india- 
 rubbers disappeared. She kept the class staying behind, till 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 
 
 the things were found. But as soon as Mr. Harby had gone 
 out of the room, the boys began to jump about and shout, and 
 at last they bolted in a body from the school. 
 
 This was drawing near a crisis. She could not tell Mr. 
 Harby because, while he would punish the class, he would 
 make her the cause of the punishment, and her class would 
 pay her back with disobedience and derision. Already there 
 was a deadly hostility grown up between her and the children. 
 After keeping in the class, at evening, to finish some work, 
 she would find boys dodging behind her, calling after her: 
 " Brangwen, Brangwen Proud-acre/' 
 
 When she went into Ilkeston of a Saturday morning with 
 Gudrun, she heard again the voices yelling after her : 
 
 " Brangwen, Brangwen." 
 
 She pretended to take no notice, but she coloured with 
 shame at being held up to derision in the public street. She, 
 Ursula Brangwen of Cossethay, could not escape from the 
 Standard Five teacher which she was. In vain she went out 
 to buy ribbon for her hat. They called after her, the boys 
 she tried to teach. 
 
 And one evening, as she went from the edge of the town 
 into the country, stones came flying at her. Then the passion 
 of shame and anger surpassed her. She walked on unheeding, 
 beside herself. Because of the darkness she could not see 
 who were those that threw. But she did not want to know. 
 
 Only in her soul a change took place. Never more, and 
 never more would she give herself as individual to her class. 
 Never would she, Ursula Brangwen, the girl she was, the 
 person she was, come into contact with those boys. She would 
 be Standard Five teacher, as far away personally from her 
 class as if she had never set foot in St. Philip's School. She 
 would just obliterate them all, and keep herself apart, take 
 them as scholars only. 
 
 So her face grew more and more shut, and over her flayed, 
 exposed soul of a young girl who had gone open and warm 
 to give herself to the children, there set a hard, insentient 
 thing, that worked mechanically according to a system im- 
 posed. 
 
 It seemed she scarcely saw her class the next day. She 
 could only feel her will, and what she would have of this 
 class which she must grasp into subjection. It was no good, 
 any more, to appeal, to play upon the better feelings of the 
 class. Her swift-working soul realized this. 
 
$74 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She, as teacher, must bring them all as scholars, into sub- 
 jection. And this she was going to do. All else she would 
 forsake. She had become hard and impersonal, almost avenge- 
 ful on herself as well as on them, since the stone throwing. 
 She did not want to be a person, to be herself any more, after 
 such humiliation. She would assert herself for mastery, be 
 only teacher. She was set now. She was going to fight and 
 subdue. 
 
 She knew by now her enemies in the class. The one she 
 hated most was Williams. He was a sort of defective, not 
 bad enough to be so classed. He could read with fluency, 
 and had plenty of cunning intelligence. But he could not 
 keep still. And he had a kind of sickness very repulsive to a 
 sensitive girl, something cunning and etiolated and degener- 
 ate. Once he had thrown an ink-well at her, in one of his 
 mad little rages. Twice he had run home out of class. He 
 was a well-known character. 
 
 And he grinned up his sleeve at this girl-teacher, sometimes 
 hanging round her to fawn on her. But this made her dislike 
 him more. He had a kind of leech-like power. 
 
 From one of the children she took a supple cane, and this 
 she determined to use when real occasion came. One morning, 
 at composition, she said to the boy Williams : 
 
 " Why have you made this blot ? " 
 
 " Please, Miss, it fell off my pen," he whined out, in the 
 mocking voice that he was so clever in using. The boys near 
 snorted with laughter. For Williams was an actor, he could 
 tickle the feelings of his hearers subtly. Particularly he could 
 tickle the children with him into ridiculing his teacher, or in- 
 deed, any authority of which he was not afraid. He had that 
 peculiar gaol instinct. 
 
 "Then you must stay in and finish another page of com- 
 position/' said the teacher. 
 
 This was against her usual sense of justice, and the boy 
 resented it derisively. At twelve o'clock she caught him 
 slinking out. 
 
 " Williams, sit down/' she said. 
 
 And there she sat, and there he sat, alone, opposite to her, 
 on the back desk, looking up at her with his furtive eyes 
 every minute. 
 
 " Please, Miss, I've got to go an errand," he called out in- 
 solently. 
 
 " Bring me your book," said Ursula. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 375 
 
 The boy came out, flapping his book along the desks. He 
 had not written a line. 
 
 " Go back and do the writing you have to do," said Ursula. 
 And she sat at her desk, trying to correct books. She was 
 trembling and upset. And for an hour the miserable boy 
 writhed and grinned in his seat. At the end of that time he 
 had done five lines. 
 
 "As it is so late now," said Ursula, "you will finish the 
 rest this evening." 
 
 The boy kicked his way insolently down the passage. 
 
 The afternoon came again. Williams was there, glancing 
 at her, and her heart beat thick, for she knew it was a fight 
 between them. She watched him. 
 
 During the geography lesson, as she was pointing to the 
 map with her cane, the boy continually ducked his whitish 
 head under the desk, and attracted the attention of other 
 boys. 
 
 "Williams," she said, gathering her courage, for it was 
 critical now to speak to him, " what are you doing ? " 
 
 He lifted his face, the sore-rimmed eyes half smiling. 
 There was something intrinsically indecent about him. 
 Ursula shrank away. 
 
 " Nothing," he replied, feeling a triumph. 
 
 " What are you doing ? " she repeated, her heart-beat suffo- 
 cating her. 
 
 " Nothing," replied the boy, insolently, aggrieved, comic. 
 
 " If I speak to you again, you must go down to Mr. Harby," 
 she said. 
 
 But this boy was a match even for Mr. Harby. He was so 
 persistent, so cringing, and flexible, he howled so when he 
 was hurt, that the master hated more the teacher who sent 
 him than he hated the boy himself. For of the boy he was 
 sick of the sight. Which Williams knew. He grinned visibly. 
 
 Ursula turned to the map again, to go on with the geography 
 lesson. But there was a little ferment in the class. Williams' 
 spirit infected them all. She heard a scuffle, and then she 
 trembled inwardly. If they all turned on her this time, she 
 was beaten. 
 
 " Please, Miss " called a voice in distress. 
 
 She turned round. One of the boys she liked was ruefully 
 holding out a torn celluloid collar. She heard the complaint, 
 feeling futile. 
 
 " Go in front, Wright," she said. 
 
kAlNBOW 
 
 She was trembling in every fibre. A big, sullen boy, not 
 bad but very difficult, slouched out to the front. She went 
 on with the lesson, aware that Williams was making faces 
 at Wright, and that Wright was grinning behind her. She 
 was afraid. She turned to the map again. And she was 
 afraid. 
 
 " Please, Miss, Williams " came a sharp cry, and a boy 
 
 on the back row was standing up, with drawn, painted brows, 
 half a mocking grin on his pain, half real resentment against 
 Williams " Please, Miss, he's nipped me," and he rubbed 
 his leg ruefully. 
 
 " Come in front, Williams," she said. 
 
 The rat-like boy sat with his pale smile ar^l did not move. 
 
 " Come in front," she repeated, definite now. 
 
 "I shan't," he cried, snarling, rat-like, grinning. Some- 
 thing went click in Ursula's soul. Her face and eyes set, she 
 went through the class straight. The boy cowered before her 
 glowering, fixed eyes. But she advanced on him, seized him 
 by the arm, and dragged him from his seat. He clung to the 
 form. It was the battle between him and her. Her instinct 
 had suddenly become calm and quick. She jerked him from 
 his grip, and dragged him, struggling and kicking, to the front. 
 He kicked her several times, and clung to the forms as he 
 passed, but she went on. The class was on its feet in excite- 
 ment. She saw it, but made no move. 
 
 She knew if she let go the boy he would dash to the door. 
 Already he had run home once out of her class. So she 
 snatched her cane from the desk, and brought it down on 
 him. He was writhing and kicking. She saw his face be- 
 neath her, white, with eyes like the eyes of a fish, stony, yet 
 full of hate and horrible fear. And she loathed him, the 
 hideous writhing thing that was nearly too much for her. 
 In horror lest he should overcome her, and yet at the heart 
 quite calm, she brought down the cane again and again, 
 whilst he struggled making inarticulate noises, and lunging 
 vicious kicks at her. With one hand she managed to hold 
 him, and now and then the cane came down on him. He 
 writhed, like a mad thing. But the pain of the strokes cut 
 through his writhing, vicious, coward's courage, bit deeper, 
 till at last, with a long whimper that became a yell, he went 
 limp. She let him go, and he rushed at her, his teeth and 
 eyes glinting. There was a second of agonized terror in her 
 heart : he was a beast thing. Then she caught him, and the 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 377 
 
 cane came down on him. A few times, madly, in a frenzy, 
 he lunged and writhed, to kick her. But again the cane 
 broke him, he sank with a howling yell on the floor, and like a 
 beaten beast lay there yelling. 
 
 Mr. Harby had rushed up towards the end of this perform- 
 ance. 
 
 " What's the matter? " he roared. 
 
 Ursula felt as if something were going to break in her. 
 
 " I've thrashed him," she said, her breast heaving, forcing 
 out the words on the last breath. The headmaster stood 
 choked with rage, helpless. She looked at the writhing, howl- 
 ing figure on tl>e floor. 
 
 " Get up," ,ehe said. The thing writhed away from her. 
 She took a step forward. She had realized the presence of 
 the headmaster for one second, and then she was oblivious 
 of it again. 
 
 " Get up," she said. And with a little dart the boy was 
 on his feet. His yelling dropped to a mad blubber. He had 
 been in a frenzy. 
 
 " Go and stand by the radiator," she said. 
 
 As if mechanically, blubbering, he went. 
 
 The headmaster stood robbed of movement or speech. His 
 face was yellow, his hands twitched convulsively. But Ursula 
 stood stiff not far from him. Nothing could touch her now : 
 she was beyond Mr. Harby. She was as if violated to death. 
 
 The headmaster muttered something, turned, and went 
 down the room, whence, from the far end, he was heard roar- 
 ing in a mad rage at his own class. 
 
 The boy blubbered wildly by the radiator. Ursula looked 
 at the class. There were fifty pale, still faces watching her, 
 a hundred round eyes fixed on her in an attentive, expression- 
 less stare. 
 
 " Give out the history readers," she said to the monitors. 
 
 There was dead silence. As she stood there, she could 
 hear again the ticking of the clock, and the chock of piles of 
 books taken out of the low cupboard. Then came the faint 
 flap of books on the desks. The children passed in silence, 
 their hands working in unison. They were no longer a pack, 
 but each one separated into a silent, closed thing. 
 
 " Take page 125, and read that chapter," said Ursula. 
 
 There was a click of many books opened. The children 
 found the page, and bent their heads obediently to read. 
 And they read, mechanically. 
 
378 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula, who was trembling violently, went and sat in her 
 high chair. The blubbering of the boy continued. The 
 strident voice of Mr. Brunt, the roar of Mr. Harby, came 
 muffled through the glass partition. And now and then a pair 
 of eyes rose from the reading-book, rested on her a moment, 
 watchful, as if calculating impersonally, then sank again. 
 
 She sat still without moving, her eyes watching the class, 
 unseeing. She was quite still, and weak. She felt that she 
 could not raise her hand from the desk. If she sat there for 
 ever, she felt she could not move again, nor utter a com- 
 mand. It was a quarter past four. She almost dreaded the 
 closing of the school, when she would be alone. 
 
 The class began to recover its ease, the tension relaxed. 
 Williams was still crying. Mr. Brunt was giving orders for 
 the closing of the lesson. Ursula got down. 
 
 " Take your place, Williams," she said. 
 
 He dragged his feet across the room, wiping his face on 
 his sleeve. As he sat down, he glanced at her furtively, his 
 eyes still redder. Now he looked like some beaten rat. 
 
 At last the children were gone. Mr. Harby trod by heavily, 
 without looking her way, or speaking. Mr. Brunt hesitated 
 as she was locking her cupboard. 
 
 "If you settle Clarke and Letts in the same way, Miss 
 Brangwen, you'll be all right," he said, his blue eyes glancing 
 down in a strange fellowship, his long nose pointing at her. 
 
 " Shall I ? " she laughed nervously. She did not want any- 
 body to talk to her. 
 
 As she went along the street, clattering on the granite pave- 
 ment, she was aware of boys dodging behind her. Something 
 struck her hand that was carrying her bag, bruising her. As 
 it rolled away she saw that it was a potato. Her hand was 
 hurt, but she gave no sign. Soon she would take the tram. 
 
 She was afraid, and strange. It was to her quite strange 
 and ugly, like some dream where she was degraded. She 
 would have died rather than admit it to anybody. She could 
 not look at her swollen hand. Something had broken in her ; 
 she had passed a crisis. Williams was beaten, but at a cost. 
 
 Feeling too much upset to go home, she rode a little further 
 into the town, and got down from the tram at a small tea- 
 shop. There, in the dark little place behind the shop, she 
 drank her tea and ate bread-and-butter. She did not taste 
 anything. The taking tea was just a mechanical action, to 
 cover over her existence. There she sat in the dark, obscure 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 379 
 
 little place, without knowing. Only unconsciously she nursed 
 the back of her hand, which was bruised. 
 
 When finally she took her way home, it was sunset red 
 across the west. She did not know why she was going home. 
 There was nothing for her there. She had, true, only to pre- 
 tend to be normal. There was nobody she could speak to, no- 
 where to go for escape. But she must keep on, under this red 
 sunset, alone, knowing the horror in humanity, that would de- 
 stroy her, and with which she was at war. Yet it had to be 
 so. 
 
 In the morning again she must go to school. She got up 
 and went without murmuring even to herself. She was in 
 the hands of some bigger, stronger, coarser will. 
 
 School was fairly quiet. But she could feel the class watch- 
 ing her, ready to spring on her. Her instinct was aware of 
 the class instinct to catch her if she were weak. But she 
 kept cold and was guarded. 
 
 Williams was absent from school. In the middle of the 
 morning there was a knock at the door : some one wanted the 
 headmaster. Mr. Harby went out, heavily, angrily, nervously. 
 He was afraid of irate parents. After a moment in the pas- 
 sage, he came again into school. 
 
 " Sturgess," he called to one of his larger boys. " Stand 
 in front of the class and write down the name of any one who 
 speaks. Will you come this way, Miss Brangwen." 
 
 He seemed vindictively to seize upon her. 
 
 Ursula followed him, and found in the lobby a thin woman 
 with a whitish skin, not ill-dressed in a grey costume and a 
 purple hat. 
 
 " I called about Vernon," said the woman, speaking in a 
 refined accent. There was about the woman altogether an 
 appearance of refinement and of cleanliness, curiously con- 
 tradicted by her half beggar's deportment, and a sense of her 
 being unpleasant to touch, like something going bad inside. 
 She was neither a lady nor an ordinary working man's wife, 
 but a creature separate from society. By her dress she was 
 not poor. 
 
 Ursula knew at once that she was Williams' mother, and 
 that he was Vernon. She remembered that he was always 
 clean, and well-dressed, in a sailor suit. And he had this 
 same peculiar, half transparent unwholesomeness, rather like 
 a corpse. 
 
 " I wasn't able to send him to school to-day," continued 
 
380 THE RAINBOW 
 
 the woman, with a false grace of manner. " He came home 
 last night so ill he was violently sick I thought I should 
 have to send for the doctor. You know he has a weak 
 heart" 
 
 The woman looked at Ursula with her pale, dead eyes. 
 
 " No," replied the girl, " I did not know." 
 
 She stood still with repulsion and uncertainty. Mr. Harby, 
 large and male, with his overhanging moustache, stood by 
 with a slight, ugly smile at the corner of his eyes. The 
 woman went on insidiously, not quite human : 
 
 "Oh, yes, he has had heart disease ever since he was a 
 child. That is why he isn't very regular at school. And it 
 is very bad to beat him. He was awfully ill this morning 
 I shall call on the doctor as I go back." 
 
 "Who is staying with him now, then?" put in the deep 
 voice of the schoolmaster, cunningly. 
 
 " Oh, I left him with a woman who comes in to help me 
 and who understands him. But I shall call in the doctor on 
 my way home." 
 
 Ursula stood still. She felt vague threats in all this. But 
 the woman was so utterly strange to her, that she did not un- 
 derstand. 
 
 " He told me he had been beaten," continued the woman, 
 " and when I undressed him to put him to bed, his body was 
 covered with marks I could show them to any doctor." 
 
 Mr. Harby looked at Ursula to answer. She began to under- 
 stand. The woman was threatening to take out a charge of 
 assault on her son against her. Perhaps she wanted money. 
 
 " I caned him," she said. " He was so much trouble." 
 
 " I'm sorry if he was troublesome," said the woman, " but 
 he must have been shamefully beaten. I could show the 
 marks to any doctor. I'm sure it isn't allowed, if it was 
 known." 
 
 " I caned him while he kept kicking me," said Ursula, get- 
 ting angry because she was half excusing herself, Mr. Harby 
 standing there with the twinkle at the side of his eyes, enjoy- 
 ing the dilemma of the two women. 
 
 " I'm sure I'm sorry if he behaved badly," said the woman. 
 "But I can't think he deserved treating as he has been. I 
 can't send him to school, and really can't afford to pay the 
 doctor. Is it allowed for the teachers to beat the children 
 like that, Mr. Harby?" 
 
 The headmaster refused to answer. Ursula loathed her- 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 381 
 
 self, and loathed Mr. Harby with his twinkling cunning and 
 malice on the occasion. The other miserable woman watched 
 her chance. 
 
 " It is an expense to me, and I have a great struggle to keep 
 my boy decent." 
 
 Ursula still would not answer. She looked out at the 
 asphalt yard, where a dirty rag of paper was blowing. 
 
 " And it isn't allowed to beat a child like that, I am sure, 
 especially when he is delicate/' 
 
 Ursula stared with a set face on the yard, as if she did not 
 hear. She loathed all this, and had ceased to feel or to exist. 
 
 " Though I know he is troublesome sometimes but I think 
 it was too much. His body is covered with marks/' 
 
 Mr. Harby stood sturdy and unmoved, waiting now to have 
 done, with the twinkling, tiny wrinkles of an ironical smile at 
 the corners of his eyes. He felt himself master of the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 " And he was violently sick. I couldn't possibly send him 
 to school to-day. He couldn't keep his head up." 
 
 Yet she had no answer. 
 
 "You will understand, Sir, why he is absent," she said, 
 turning to Mr. Harby. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said, rough and off-hand. Ursula detested 
 him for his male triumph. And she loathed the woman. She 
 loathed everything. 
 
 "You will try to have it remembered, Sir, that he has a 
 weak heart. He is so sick after these things." 
 
 " Yes," said the headmaster, " I'll see about it." 
 
 "I know he is troublesome," the woman only addressed 
 herself to the male now "but if you could have him pun- 
 ished without beating he is really delicate." 
 
 Ursula was beginning to feel upset. Harby stood in rather 
 superb mastery, the woman cringing to him to tickle him as 
 one tickles trout. 
 
 "I had come to explain why he was away this morning, 
 Sir. You will understand." 
 
 She held out her hand. Harby took it and let it go, sur- 
 prised and angry. 
 
 " Good morning," she said, and she gave her gloved, seedy 
 hand to Ursula. She was not ill-looking, and had a curious 
 insinuating way, very distasteful yet effective. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Harby, and thank you." 
 
 The figure, in the grey costume and the purple hat was 
 
382 THE RAINBOW 
 
 going across the school yard with a curious lingering walk. 
 Ursula felt a strange pity for her, and revulsion from her. 
 She shuddered. She went into the school again. 
 
 The next morning Williams turned up, looking paler than 
 ever, very neat and nicely dressed in his sailor blouse. He 
 glanced at Ursula with a half-smile : cunning, subdued, ready 
 to do as she told him. There was something about him that 
 made her shiver. She loathed the idea of having laid hands 
 on him. His elder brother was standing outside the gate at 
 playtime, a youth of about fifteen, tall and thin and pale. 
 He raised his hat, almost like a gentleman. But there was 
 something subdued, insidious about him too. 
 
 "Who is it?" said Ursula. 
 
 " It's the big Williams," said Violet Harby roughly. " She 
 was here yesterday, wasn't she?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " It's no good her coming her character's not good enough 
 for her to make any trouble." 
 
 Ursula shrank from the brutality and the scandal. But 
 it had some vague, horrid fascination. How sordid everything 
 seemed ! She felt sorry for the queer woman with the linger- 
 ing walk, and those queer, insidious boys. The Williams in 
 her class was wrong somewhere. How nasty it was altogether. 
 
 So the battle went on till her heart was sick. She had sev- 
 eral more boys to subjugate before she could establish herself. 
 And Mr. Harby hated her almost as if she were a man. She 
 knew now that nothing but a thrashing would settle some of 
 the big louts who wanted to play cat and mouse with her. 
 Mr. Harby would not give them the thrashing if he could help 
 it. For he hated the teacher, the stuck-up, insolent high- 
 school miss with her independence. 
 
 (t Now, Wright, what have you done this time ? " he would 
 say genially to the boy who was sent to him from Standard 
 Five for punishment. And he left the lad standing, lounging, 
 wasting his time. 
 
 So that Ursula would appeal no more to the headmaster, 
 but, when she was driven wild, she seized her cane, and 
 slashed the boy who was insolent to her, over head and ears 
 and hands. And at length they were afraid of her, she had 
 them in order. 
 
 But she had paid a great price out of her own soul, to do 
 this. It seemed as if a great flame had gone through her 
 burnt her sensitive tissue. She who shrank from the. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 383 
 
 thought of physical suffering in any form, had been forced to 
 fight and beat with a cane and rouse all her instincts to hurt. 
 And afterwards she had been forced to endure the sound of 
 their blubbering and desolation, when she had broken them to 
 order. 
 
 Oh, and sometimes she felt as if she would go mad. What 
 did it matter, what did it matter if their books were dirty 
 and they did not obey? She would rather, in reality, that 
 they disobeyed the whole rules of the school, than that they 
 should be beaten, broken, reduced to this crying, hopeless state. 
 She would rather bear all their insults and insolences a thou- 
 sand times than reduce herself and them to this. Bitterly she 
 repented having got beside herself, and having tackled the boy 
 she had beaten. 
 
 Yet it had to be so. She did not want .to do it. Yet she 
 had to. Oh, why, why had she leagued herself to this evil 
 system where she must brutalize herself to live? Why had 
 she become a school teacher, why, why ? 
 
 The children had forced her to the beatings. No, she did 
 not pity them. She had come to them full of kindness and 
 love, and they would have torn her to pieces. They chose 
 Mr. Harby. Well then, they must know her as well as Mr. 
 Harby, they must first be subjugate to her. For she was not 
 going to be made nought, no, neither by them, nor by Mr. 
 Harby, nor by all the system around her. She was not going 
 to be put down, prevented from standing free. It was not to 
 be said of her, she could not take her place and carry out her 
 task. She would fight and hold her place in this state also, 
 in the world of work and man's convention. 
 
 She was isolated now from the life of her childhood, a 
 foreigner in a new life, of work and mechanical consideration. 
 She and Maggie, in their dinner hours and their occasional 
 teas at the little restaurant, discussed life and ideas. Maggie 
 was a great suffragette, trusting in the vote. To Ursula the 
 vote was never a reality. She had within her the strange, 
 passionate knowledge of religion and living far transcending 
 the limits of the automatic system that contained the vote. 
 But her fundamental, organic knowledge had as yet to take 
 form and rise to utterance. For her, as for Maggie, the liberty 
 of woman meant something real and deep. She felt that 
 somewhere, in something, she was not free. And she wanted 
 to be. She was in revolt. For once she were free she could 
 get somewhere, Ah, the wonderful, real somewhere that was 
 
384, THE RAINBOW 
 
 beyond her, the somewhere that she felt deep, deep inside 
 her. 
 
 In coming out and earning her own living she had made a 
 strong, cruel jmove towards freeing herself. But having more 
 freedom she only became more profoundly aware of the big 
 want. She wanted so many things. She wanted to read 
 great, beautiful books, and be rich with them; she wanted to 
 see beautiful things, and have the joy of them for ever; she 
 wanted to know big, free people; and there remained always 
 the want she could put no name to. 
 
 It was so difficult. There were so many things, so much 
 to meet and surpass. And one never knew where one was 
 going. It was a blind fight. She had suffered bitterly in 
 this school of St. Philip's. She was like a young filly that 
 has been broken in to the shafts, and has lost its freedom. 
 And now she was suffering bitterly from the agony of the 
 shafts. The agony, the galling, the ignominy of her breaking 
 in. This wore into her soul. But she would never submit. 
 To shafts like these she would never submit for long. But 
 she would know them. She would serve them that she might 
 destroy them. 
 
 She and Maggie went to all kinds of places together, to big 
 suffrage meetings in Nottingham, to concerts, to theatres, to 
 exhibitions of pictures. Ursula saved her money and bought 
 a bicycle, and the two girls rode to Lincoln, to Southwell, 
 and into Derbyshire. They had an endless wealth of things 
 to talk about. And it was a great joy, finding, discovering. 
 
 But Ursula never told about Winifred Inger. That was a 
 sort of secret side-show to her life, never to be opened. She 
 did not even think of it. It was the closed door she had not 
 the strength to open. 
 
 Once she was broken in to her teaching, Ursula began 
 gradually to have a new life of her own again. She was going 
 to college in eighteen months 7 time. Then she would take 
 her degree, and she would ah, she would perhaps be a big 
 woman, and lead a movement. Who knows? At any rate 
 she would go to college in eighteen months' time. All that 
 mattered now was work, work. 
 
 And till college, she must go on with this teaching in St. 
 Philip's School, which was always destroying her, but which 
 she could now manage, without spoiling all her life. She 
 would submit to it for a time, since the time had a definite 
 limit. 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 385 
 
 The class-teaching itself at last became almost mechanical. 
 It was a strain on her, an exhausting wearying strain, always 
 unnatural. But there was a certain amount of pleasure in 
 the sheer oblivion of teaching, so much work to do, so many 
 children to see after, so much to be done, that one's self was 
 forgotten. When the work had become like habit to her, and 
 her individual soul was left out, had its growth elsewhere, 
 then she could be almost happy. 
 
 Her real, individual self drew together and became more 
 coherent during these two years of teaching, during the strug- 
 gle against the odds of class teaching. It was always a prison 
 to her, the school. But it was a prison where her wild, chaotic 
 soul became hard and independent. When she was well 
 enough and not tired, then she did not hate the teaching. 
 She enjoyed getting into the swing of work of a morning, 
 putting forth all her strength, making the thing go. It was 
 for her a strenuous form of exercise. And her soul was left to 
 rest, it had the time of torpor in which to gather itself to- 
 gether in strength again. But the teaching hours were too 
 long, the tasks too heavy, and the disciplinary condition of the 
 school too unnatural for her. She was worn very thin and 
 quivering. 
 
 She came to school in the morning seeing the hawthorn 
 flowers wet, the little, rosy grains swimming in a bowl of dew. 
 The larks quivered their song up into the new sunshine, and 
 the country was so glad. It was a violation to plunge into 
 the dust and greyness of the town. 
 
 So that she stood before her class unwilling to give herself 
 up to the activity of teaching, to turn her energy, that longed 
 for the country and for joy of early summer, into the domi- 
 nating of fifty children and the transferring to them some 
 morsels of arithmetic. There was a little absentness about 
 her. She could not force herself into forgetfulness. A jar 
 of buttercups and fooPs-parsley in the window-bottom kept 
 her away in the meadows, where in the lush grass the moon- 
 daisies were half-submerged, and a spray of pink ragged 
 robin. Yet before her were faces of fifty children. They 
 were almost like big daisies in a dimness of the grass. 
 
 A brightness was on her face, a little unreality in her teach- 
 ing. She could not quite see her children. She was strug- 
 gling between two worlds, her own world of young summer and 
 flowers, and this other world of work. And the glimmer of 
 her own sunlight was between her and her class. 
 
386 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Then the morning passed with a strange far-awayness and 
 quietness. Dinner-time came, when she and Maggie ate joy- 
 ously, with all the windows open. And then they went out 
 into St. Philip's churchyard, where was a shadowy corner 
 under red hawthorn trees. And there they talked and read 
 Shelley or Browning or some work about "Woman and 
 Labour." 
 
 And when she went back to school, Ursula lived still in the 
 shadowy corner of the graveyard, where pink-red petals lay 
 scattered from the hawthorn tree, like myriad tiny shells 
 on a beach, and a church bell sometimes rang sonorously, 
 and sometimes a bird called out, whilst Maggie's voice went 
 on low and sweet. 
 
 These days she was happy in her soul: oh, she was so 
 happy, that she wished she could take her joy and scatter 
 it in armfuls broadcast. She made her children happy, too, 
 with a little tingling of delight. But to her, the children 
 were not a school class this afternoon. They were flowers, 
 birds, little bright animals, children, anything. They only 
 were not Standard Five. She felt no responsibility for them. 
 It was for once a game, this teaching. And if they got their 
 sums wrong, what matter? And she would take a pleasant 
 bit of reading. And instead of history with dates, she would 
 tell a lovely tale. And for grammar, they could have a bit of 
 written analysis thaf was not difficult, because they had done it 
 before : 
 
 " She shall be sportive as a fawn 
 That wild with glee across the lawn 
 Or up the mountain springs." 
 
 She wrote that from memory, because it pleased her. 
 
 So the golden afternoon passed away and she went home 
 happy. She had finished her day of school, and was free to 
 plunge into the glowing evening of Cossethay. And she loved 
 walking home. But it had not been school. It had been 
 playing at school beneath red hawthorn blossom. 
 
 She could not go on like this. The quarterly examination 
 was coming, and her class was not ready. It irritated her 
 that she must drag herself away from her happy self, and exert 
 herself with all her strength to force, to compel this heavy 
 class of children to work hard at arithmetic. They did not 
 want, to work, she did not want to compel them. And yet, 
 some second conscience gnawed $t her, telling her the work 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 387 
 
 was not properly done. It irritated her almost to madness, 
 and she let loose all the irritation in the class. Then fol- 
 lowed a day of battle and hate and violence, when she went 
 home raw, feeling the golden evening taken away from her, 
 herself incarcerated in some dark, heavy place, and chained 
 there with a consciousness of having done badly at work. 
 
 What good was it that it was summer, that right till evening, 
 when the corncrakes called, the larks would mount up into 
 the light, to sing once more before nightfall. What good was 
 it all, when she was out of tune, when she must only remember 
 the burden and shame of school that day. 
 
 And still, she hated school. Still she cried, she did not 
 believe in it. Why should the children learn, and why should 
 she teach them ? It was all so much milling the wind. What 
 folly was it that made life into this, the fulfilling of some 
 stupid, factitious duty ? It was all so made up, so unnatural. 
 The school, the sums, the grammar, the quarterly examina- 
 tions, the registers it was all a barren nothing ! 
 
 Why should she give her allegiance to this world, and let it 
 so dominate her, that her own world of warm sun and grow- 
 ing, sap-filled life was turned into nothing? She was not 
 going to do it. She was not going to be prisoner in the 
 dry, tyrannical man- world. She was not going to care about 
 it. What did it matter if her class did ever so badly in the 
 quarterly examination. Let it what did it matter ? 
 
 Nevertheless, when the time came, and the report on her 
 class was bad, she was miserable, and the joy of the summer 
 was taken away from her, she was shut up in gloom. She 
 could not really escape from this world of system and work, 
 out into her fields where she was happy. She must have her 
 place in the working world, be a recognized member with 
 full rights there. It was more important to her than fields 
 and sun and poetry, at this time. But she was only the more 
 its enemy. 
 
 It was a very difficult thing, she thought, during the long 
 hours of intermission in the summer holidays, to be herself, 
 her happy self that enjoyed so much to lie in the sun, to play 
 and swim and be content, and also to be a school-teacher 
 getting results out of a class of children. She dreamed fondly 
 of the time when she need not be a teacher any more. But 
 vaguely, she knew that responsibility had taken place in her 
 for ever> and as yet her prime business was to work. 
 
 The autumn passed away, the winter was at hand. Ursula 
 
388 THE RAINBOW 
 
 became more and more an inhabitant of the world of work, 
 and of what is called life. She could not see her future, but 
 a little way off, was college, and to the thought of this she 
 clung fixedly. She would go to college, and get her two or 
 three years' training, free of cost. Already she had applied 
 and had her place appointed for the coming year. 
 
 So she continued to study for her degree. She would take 
 French, Latin, English, mathematics and botany. She went 
 to classes in Ilkeston, she studied at evening. For there was 
 this world to conquer, this knowledge to acquire, this qualifi- 
 cation to attain. And she worked with intensity, because of 
 a want inside her that drove her on. Almost everything was 
 subordinated now to this one desire to take her place in the 
 world. What kind of place it was to be she did not ask herself. 
 The blind desire drove her on. She must take her place. 
 
 She knew she would never be much of a success as an ele- 
 mentary school teacher. But neither had she failed. She 
 hated it, but she had managed it. 
 
 Maggie had left St. Philip's School, and had found a more 
 congenial post. The two girls remained friends. They met 
 at evening classes, they studied and somehow encouraged a 
 firm hope each in the other. They did not know whither they 
 were making, nor what they ultimately wanted. But they 
 knew they wanted now to learn, to know and to do. 
 
 They talked of love and marriage, and the position of woman 
 in marriage. Maggie said that love was the flower of life, 
 and blossomed unexpectedly and without law, and must be 
 plucked where it was found, and enjoyed for the brief hour 
 of its duration. 
 
 To Ursula this was unsatisfactory. She thought she still 
 loved Anton Skrebensky. But she did not forgive him that 
 he had not been strong enough to acknowledge her. He 
 had denied her. How then could she love him? How then 
 was love so absolute? She did not believe it. She believed 
 that love was a way, a means, not an end in itself, as Maggie 
 seemed to think. And always the way of love would be 
 found. But whither did it lead ? 
 
 "I believe there are many men in the world one might 
 love there is not only one man/' said Ursula. 
 
 She was thinking of Skrebensky. Her heart was hollow 
 with the knowledge of Winifred Inger. 
 
 " But you must distinguish between love and passion/' said 
 
THE MAN'S WORLD 389 
 
 Maggie, adding, with a touch of contempt : " Men will easily 
 have a passion for you, but they won't love you." 
 
 " Yes," said Ursula, vehemently, the look of suffering, al- 
 most of fanaticism, on her face. " Passion is only part of love. 
 And it seems so much because it can't last. That is why pas- 
 sion is never happy." 
 
 She was staunch for joy, for happiness, and permanency, in 
 contrast with Maggie, who was for sadness, and the inevitable 
 passing-away of things. Ursula suffered bitterly at the hands 
 of life, Maggie was always single, always withheld, so she 
 went in a heavy brooding sadness that was almost meat to her. 
 In Ursula's last winter at St. Philip's the friendship of the 
 two girls came to a climax. It was during this winter that 
 Ursula suffered and enjoyed most keenly Maggie's funda- 
 mental sadness of enclosedness. Maggie enjoyed and suffered 
 Ursula's struggles against the confines of her life. And then 
 the two girls began to drift apart, as Ursula broke from that 
 form of life wherein Maggie must remain enclosed. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE WIDENING CIRCLE 
 
 MAGGIE'S people, the Schofields, lived in the large 
 gardener's cottage, that was half a farm, behind 
 Belcote Hall. The hall was too damp to live in, 
 so the Schofields were caretakers, gamekeepers, 
 farmers, all in one. The father was gamekeeper and stock- 
 breeder, the eldest son was market-gardener, using the big hall 
 gardens, the second son was farmer and gardener. There was 
 a large family, as at Cossethay. 
 
 Ursula loved to stay at Belcote, to be treated as a grand 
 lady by Maggie's brothers. They were good-looking men. 
 The eldest was twenty-six years old. He was the gardener, 
 a man not very tall, but strong and well made, with brown, 
 sunny, easy eyes and a face handsomely hewn, brown, with 
 a long fair moustache which he pulled as he talked to Ursula. 
 
 The girl was excited because these men attended to her 
 when she came near. She could make their eyes light up 
 and quiver, she could make Anthony, the eldest, twist and 
 twist his moustache. She knew she could move them almost 
 at will with her light laughter and chatter. They loved her 
 ideas, watched her as she talked vehemently about politics 
 or economics. And she, while she talked, saw the golden- 
 brown eyes of Anthony gleam like the eyes of a satyr as they 
 watched her. He did not listen to her words, he listened to 
 her. It excited her. 
 
 He was like a faun pleased when she would go with him 
 over his hothouses, to look at the green and pretty plants, 
 at the pink primulas nodding among their leaves, and cinar- 
 arias flaunting purple and crimson and white. She asked 
 about everything, and he told her very exactly and minutely, 
 in a queer pedantic way that made her want to laugh. Yet 
 she was really interested in what he did. And he had the 
 curious light in his face, like the light in the eyes of the 
 goat that was tethered by the farmyard gate. 
 
 390 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 391 
 
 She went down with him into the warmish cellar, where 
 already in the darkness the little yellow knobs of rhubarb 
 were coming. He held the lantern down to the dark earth. 
 She saw the shiny knob-end of the rhubarb thrusting upwards 
 upon the thick red stem, thrusting itself like a knob of flame 
 through the soft soil. His face was turned up to her, the 
 light glittered on his eyes and his teeth as he laughed, with 
 a faint, musical neigh. He looked handsome. And she heard 
 a new sound in her ears, the faintly-musical, neighing laugh 
 of Anthony, whose moustache twisted up, and whose eyes 
 were luminous with a cold, steady, arrogant-laughing glare. 
 There seemed a little prance of triumph in his movement, 
 she could not rid herself of a movement of acquiescence, a 
 touch of acceptance. Yet he was so humble, his voice was so 
 caressing. He held his hand for her to step on when she 
 must climb a wall. And she stepped on the living firmness 
 of him, that quivered firmly under her weight. 
 
 She was aware of him as if in a mesmeric state. In her 
 ordinary sense, she had nothing to do with him. But the 
 peculiar ease and unnoticeableness of his entering the house, 
 the power of his cold, gleaming light on her when he looked 
 at her, was like a bewitchment. In his eyes, as in the pale 
 grey eyes of a goat, there seemed some of that steady, hard 
 fire of moonlight which has nothing to do with the day. It 
 made her alert, and yet her mind went out like an extinguished 
 thing. She was all senses, all her senses were alive. 
 
 Then she saw him on Sunday, dressed up in Sunday clothes, 
 trying to impress her. And he looked ridiculous. She clung 
 to the ridiculous effect of his stiff, Sunday clothes. 
 
 She was always conscious of some unfaithfulness to Maggie, 
 on Anthony's score. Poor Maggie stood apart as if betrayed. 
 Maggie and Anthony were enemies by instinct. Ursula had 
 to go back to her friend brimming with affection and a poign- 
 ancy of pity. Which Maggie received with a little stiffness. 
 Then poetry and books and learning took the place of An- 
 thony, with his goats' movements and his cold, gleaming hu- 
 mour. 
 
 While Ursula was at Belcote, the snow fell. In the morn- 
 ing, a covering of snow weighed on the rhododendron bushes. 
 
 " Shall we go out ? " said Maggie. 
 
 She had lost some of her leader's sureness, and was now 
 tentative, a little in reserve from her friend. 
 
 They took the key of the gate and wandered into the park. 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 It was a white world on which dark trees and tree masses 
 stood under a sky keen with frost. The two girls went past 
 the hall, that was shuttered and silent, their footprints mark- 
 ing the snow on the drive. Down the park, a long way off, a 
 man was carrying armfuls of hay across the snow. He was a 
 small, dark figure, like an animal moving in its unaware- 
 ness. 
 
 Ursula and Maggie went on exploring, down to a tinkling, 
 chilly brook, that had worn the snow away in little scoops, 
 and ran dark between. They saw a robin glance its bright 
 eyes and burst scarlet and grey into the hedge, then some 
 pertly-marked blue-tits scuffled. Meanwhile the brook slid 
 on coldly, chuckling to itself. 
 
 The girls wandered across the snowy grass to where the 
 artificial fish-ponds lay under thin ice. There was a big tree 
 with a thick trunk twisted with ivy, that hung almost hori- 
 zontal over the ponds. Ursula climbed joyfully into this, 
 and sat amid bosses of bright ivy and dull berries. Some ivy 
 leaves were like green spears held out, and tipped with snow. 
 The ice was seen beneath them. 
 
 Maggie took out a book, and sitting lower down the trunk 
 began to read Coleridge's " Christabel." Ursula half listened. 
 She was wildly thrilled. Then she saw Anthony coming across 
 the snow, with his confident, slightly strutting stride. His 
 face looked brown and hard against the snow, smiling with a 
 sort of tense confidence. 
 
 " Hello ! " she called to him. 
 
 A response went over his face, his head was lifted in an an- 
 swering, jerking gesture. 
 
 " Hello ! " he said. " You're like a bird in there." 
 
 And Ursula's laugh rang out. She answered to the pe- 
 culiar, reedy twang in his penetrating voice. 
 
 She did not think of Anthony, yet she lived in a sort of con- 
 nection with him, in his world. One evening she met him 
 as she was coming down the lane, and they walked side by 
 side. 
 
 "I think it's so lovely here," she cried. 
 
 " Do you? " he said. " I'm glad you like it." 
 
 There was a curious confidence in his voice. 
 
 " Oh, I love it. What more does one want than to live in 
 this beautiful place, and make things grow in your garden. It 
 is like the Garden of Eden." 
 
 "Is it?" he said, with a little laugh. "Yes well, it's 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 393 
 
 not so bad " he was hesitating. The pale gleam was 
 
 strong in his eyes, he was looking at her steadily, watching 
 her, as an animal might. Something leaped in her soul. She 
 knew he was going to suggest to her that she should be as 
 he was. 
 
 " Would you like to stay here with me ? " he asked, tenta- 
 tively. 
 
 She blenched with fear and with the intense sensation of 
 proffered licence suggested to her. 
 
 They had come to the gate. 
 
 " How? " she asked. " You aren't alone here." 
 
 " We could marry/' he answered, in the strange, coldly- 
 gleaming insinuating tone that chilled the sunshine into moon- 
 light. All substantial things seemed transformed. Shadows 
 and dancing moonlight were real, and all cold, inhuman, 
 gleaming sensations. She realized with something like terror 
 that she was going to accept this. She was going inevitably 
 to accept him. His hand was reaching out to the gate before 
 them. She stood still. His flesh was hard and brown and 
 final. She seemed to be in the grip of some insult. 
 
 " I couldn't," she answered, involuntarily. 
 
 He gave the same brief, neighing little laugh, very sad 
 and bitter now, and slotted back the bar of the gate. Yet 
 he did not open. For a moment they both stood looking at 
 the fire of sunset that quivered among the purple twigs of the 
 trees. She saw his brown, hard, well-hewn face gleaming 
 with anger and humiliation and submission. He was an ani- 
 mal that knows that it is subdued. Her heart flamed with 
 sensation of him, of the fascinating thing he offered her, and 
 with sorrow, and with an inconsolable sense of loneliness. Her 
 soul was an infant crying in the night. He had no soul. Oh, 
 and why had she ? He was the cleaner. 
 
 She turned away, she turned round from him, and saw 
 the east flushed strangely rose, the moon coming yellow and 
 lovely upon a rosy sky, above the darkening, bluish snow. 
 All this so beautiful, all this so lovely! He did not see it. 
 He was one with it. But she saw it, and was one with it. 
 Her seeing separated them infinitely. 
 
 They went on in silence down the path, following their 
 different fates. The trees grew darker and darker, the snow 
 made only a dimness in an unreal world. And like a shadow, 
 the day had gone into a faintly luminous, snowy evening, 
 while she was talking aimlessly to him, to keep him at a 
 
394- THE RAINBOW 
 
 distance, yet to keep him near her, and he walked heavily. 
 He opened the garden gate for her quietly, and she was enter- 
 ing into her own pleasances, leaving him outside the gate. 
 
 Then even whilst she was escaping, or trying to escape, 
 this feeling of pain, came Maggie the next day, saying : 
 
 " I wouldn't make Anthony love you, Ursula, if you don't 
 want him. It is not nice." 
 
 "But, Maggie, I never made him love me," cried Ursula, 
 dismayed and suffering, and feeling as if she had done some- 
 thing hase. 
 
 She liked Anthony, though. All her life, at intervals, she 
 returned to the thought of him and of that which he offered. 
 But she was a traveller, she was a traveller on the face of 
 the earth, and he was an isolated creature living in the ful- 
 filment of his own senses. 
 
 She could not help it, that she was a traveller. She knew 
 Anthony, that he was not one. But oh, ultimately and 
 finally, she must go on and on, seeking the goal that she 
 knew she did draw nearer to. 
 
 She was wearing away her second and last cycle at St. 
 Philip's. As the months went she ticked them off, first 
 October, then November, December, January. She was care- 
 ful always to subtract a month from the remainder, for the 
 summer holidays. She saw herself travelling round a circle, 
 only an arc of which remained to complete. Then, she was 
 in the open, like a bird tossed into mid-air, a bird that had 
 learned in some measure to fly. 
 
 There was college ahead; that was her mid-air, unknown, 
 spacious. Come college, and she would have broken from 
 the confines of all the life she had known. For her father 
 was also going to move. They were all going to leave Cosse- 
 thay. 
 
 Brangwen had kept his carelessness about his circumstances. 
 He knew his work in the lace designing meant little to him 
 personally, he just earned his wage by it. He did not know 
 what meant much to him. Living close to Anna Brangwen, 
 his mind was always suffused through with physical heat, 
 he moved from instinct to instinct, groping, always groping 
 on. 
 
 When it was suggested to him that he might apply for one 
 of the posts as hand-work instructor, posts about to be cre- 
 ated by the Nottingham Education Committee, it was as 
 if a space had been given to him, into which he could re- 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 395 
 
 move from his hot, dusky enclosure. He sent in his appli- 
 cation, confidently, expectantly. He had a sort of belief in 
 his supernatural fate. The inevitable weariness of his daily 
 work had stiffened some of his muscles, and made a slight 
 deadness in his ruddy, alert face. Now he might escape. 
 
 He was full of the new possibilities, and his wife was acqui- 
 escent. She was willing now to have a change. She too 
 was tired of Cossethay. The house was too small for the 
 growing children. And since she was nearly forty years old, 
 she began to come awake from her sleep of motherhood, her 
 energy moved more outwards. The din of growing lives 
 roused her from her apathy. She too must have her hand in 
 making life. She was quite ready to move, taking all her 
 brood. It would be better now if she transplanted them. 
 For she had borne her last child, it would be growing up. 
 
 So that in her easy, unused fashion she talked plans and 
 arrangements with her husband, indifferent really as to the 
 method of the change, since a change was coming; even if 
 it did not come in this way it would come in another. 
 
 The house was full of ferment. Ursula was wild with ex- 
 citement. At last her father was going to be something, 
 socially. So long, he had been a social cypher, without form 
 or standing. Now he was going to be Art and Handwork In- 
 structor for the County of Nottingham. That was really a 
 status. It was a position. He would be a specialist in his 
 way. And he was an uncommon man. Ursula felt they were 
 all getting foothold at last. He was coming to his own. Who 
 else that she knew could turn out from his own fingers the 
 beautiful things her father could produce? She felt he was 
 certain of this new job. 
 
 They would move. They would leave this cottage at Cosse- 
 thay which had grown too small for them; they would leave 
 Cossethay, where the children had all been born, and where 
 they were always kept to the same measure. For the peo- 
 ple who had known them as children along with the other 
 village boys and girls would never, could never understand 
 that they should grow up different. They had held " Urtler 
 Brangwen" one of themselves, and had given her her place 
 in her native village, as in a family. And the bond was 
 strong. But now, when she was growing to something be- 
 yond what Cossethay would allow or understand, the bond 
 between her and her old associates was becoming a bondage. 
 
 " 'Ello Urs'ler, 'ow are yer goin' on ? " they said when 
 
396 THE RAINBOW 
 
 they met her. And it demanded of her. in the old voice the 
 old response. And something in her must respond and be- 
 long to people who knew her. But something else denied 
 bitterly. What was true of her ten years ago was not true 
 now. And something else which she was, and must be, they 
 could neither see nor allow. They felt it there nevertheless, 
 something beyond them, and they were injured. They said 
 she was proud and conceited, that she was too big for her 
 shoes nowadays. They said, she needn't pretend, because 
 they knew what she was. They had known her since she 
 was born. They quoted this and that about her. And she 
 was ashamed because she did feel different from the people 
 she had lived amongst. It hurt her that she could not be at 
 her ease with them any more. And yet and yet one's 
 kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to let 
 it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the 
 further it goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it. So 
 Cossethay hampered her, and she wanted to go away, to be 
 free to fly her kite as high as she liked. She wanted to go 
 away, to be free to stand straight up to her own height. 
 
 So that when she knew that her father had the new post, 
 and that the family would move, she felt like skipping on the 
 face of the earth, and making psalms of joy. The old, 
 bound shell of Cossethay was to be cast off, and she was to 
 dance away into the blue air. She wanted to dance and sing. 
 
 She made dreams of the new place she would live in, where 
 stately cultured people of high feeling would be friends with 
 her, and she would live with the noble in the land, moving 
 to a large freedom of feeling. She dreamed of a rich, proud, 
 simple girl-friend, who had never known Mr. Harby and his 
 like, nor ever had a note in her voice of bondaged contempt 
 and fear, as Maggie had. 
 
 And she gave herself to all that she loved in Cossethay, 
 passionately, because she was going away now. She wan- 
 dered about to her favourite spots. There was a place where 
 she went trespassing to find the snowdrops that grew wild. 
 It was evening and the winter-darkened meadows were full 
 of mystery. When she came to the woods an oak tree had 
 been newly chopped down in the dell. Pale drops of flowers 
 glimmered many under the hazels, and by the sharp, golden 
 splinters of wood that were splashed about, the grey-green 
 blades of snowdrop leaves pricked unheeding, the drooping 
 still little flowers were without heed. 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 397 
 
 Ursula picked some lovingly, in an ecstasy. The golden 
 chips of wood shone yellow like sunlight, the snowdrops in 
 the twilight were like the first stars of night. And she, alone 
 amongst them, was wildly happy to have found her way into 
 such a glimmering dusk, to the intimate little flowers, and 
 the splash of wood chips like sunshine over the twilight of 
 the ground. She sat down on the felled tree and remained 
 awhile remote. 
 
 Going home, she left the purplish dark of the trees for the 
 open lane, where the puddles shone long and jewel-like in 
 the ruts, the land about her was darkened, and the sky a 
 jewel overhead. Oh, how amazing it was to her! It was 
 almost too much. She wanted to run, and sing, and cry 
 out for very wildness and poignancy, but she could not run 
 and sing and cry out in such a way as to cry out the deep 
 things in her heart, so she was still, and almost sad with 
 loneliness. 
 
 At Easter she went again to Maggie's home, for a few days. 
 She was, however, shy and fugitive. She saw Anthony, how 
 suggestive he was to look on, and how his eyes had a sort 
 of supplicating light, that was rather beautiful. She looked 
 at him, and she looked again, for him to become real to her. 
 But it was her own self that was occupied elsewhere. She 
 seemed to have some other being. 
 
 And she turned to spring and the opening buds. There 
 was a large pear-tree by a wall, and it was full, thronged with 
 tiny, grey-green buds, myriads. She stood before it arrested 
 with delight, and a realization went deep into her heart. 
 There was so great a host in array behind the cloud of pale, 
 dim green, so much to come forth so much sunshine to pour 
 down. 
 
 So the weeks passed on, trance-like and pregnant. The 
 pear-tree at Cossethay burst into bloom against the cottage- 
 end, like a wave burst into foam. Then gradually the blue- 
 bells came, blue as water standing thin in the level places 
 under the trees and bushes, flowing in more and more, till 
 there was a flood of azure, and pale-green leaves burning, 
 and tiny birds with fiery little song and flight. Then swiftly 
 the flood sank and was gone, and it was summer. 
 
 There was to be no going to the seaside for a holiday. The 
 holiday was the removal from Cossethay. 
 
 They were going to live near Willey Green, which place 
 was most central for Brangwen. It was an old, quiet village 
 
398 THE RAINBOW 
 
 on the edge of the thronged colliery-district. So that it 
 served, in its quaintness of odd old cottages lingering in 
 their sunny gardens, as a sort of bower or pleasaunce to the 
 sprawling colliery-townlet of Beldover, a pleasant walk-round 
 for the colliers on Sunday morning, before the public-houses 
 opened. 
 
 In Willey Green stood the Grammar School where Brang- 
 wen was occupied for two days during the week, and where 
 experiments in education were being carried on. 
 
 Ursula wanted to live in Willey Green on the remoter side, 
 towards Southwell, and Sherwood Forest. There it was so 
 lovely and romantic. But out into the world meant out into 
 the world. Will Brangwen must become modern. 
 
 He bought, with his wife's money, a fairly large house in 
 the new, red-brick part of Beldover. It was a villa built by 
 the widow of the late colliery manager, and stood in a quiet, 
 new little side-street near the large church. 
 
 Ursula was rather sad. Instead of having arrived at dis- 
 tinction they had come to new red-brick suburbia in a grimy, 
 small town. 
 
 Mrs. Brangwen was happy. The rooms were splendidly 
 large a splendid dining-room, drawing-room and kitchen, 
 besides a very pleasant study downstairs. Everything was 
 admirably appointed. The widow had settled herself in 
 lavishly. She was a native of Beldover, and had intended 
 to reign almost queen. Her bathroom was white and silver, 
 her stairs were of oak, her chimney-pieces were massive and 
 oaken, wth bulging, columnar supports. 
 
 " Good and substantial " was the keynote. But Ursula re- 
 sented the stout, inflated prosperity implied everywhere. She 
 made her father promise to chisel down the bulging oaken 
 chimney-pieces, chisel them flat. That sort of important 
 paunch was very distasteful to her. Her father was himself 
 long and loosely built. What had he to do with so much 
 "good and substantial" importance? 
 
 They bought a fair amount also of the widow's furniture. 
 It was in common good taste the great Wilton carpet, the 
 large round table, the Chesterfield covered with glossy chintz 
 in roses and birds. It was all really very sunny and nice, 
 with large windows, and a view right across the shallow 
 valley. 
 
 After all, they would be, as one of their acquaintances said, 
 among the elite of Beldover. They would represent culture. 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 399 
 
 And as there was no one of higher social importance than 
 the doctors, the colliery-managers, and the chemists, they 
 would shine, with their Delia Robbia beautiful Madonna, their 
 lovely reliefs from Donatello, their reproductions from Botti- 
 celli. Nay, the large photographs of the Primavera and the 
 Aphrodite and the Nativity in the dining-room, the ordinary 
 reception-room, would make dumb the mouth of Beldover. 
 
 And after all, it is better to be princess in Beldover than a 
 vulgar nobody in the country. 
 
 There was great preparation made for the removal of the 
 whole Brangwen family, ten in all. The house in Beldover 
 was prepared, the house in Cossethay was dismantled. Come 
 the end of the school-term the removal would begin. 
 
 Ursula left school at the end of July, when the summer 
 holiday commenced. The morning outside was bright and 
 sunny, and the freedom got inside the schoolroom tins last 
 day. It was as if the walls of the school were going to melt 
 away. Already they seemed shadowy and unreal. It was 
 breaking-up morning. Soon scholars and teachers would be 
 outside, each going his own way. The irons were struck 
 off, the sentence was expired, the prison was a momentary 
 shadow halting about them. The children were carrying away 
 books and inkwells, and rolling up maps. All their faces were 
 bright with gladness and goodwill. There was a bustle of 
 cleaning and clearing away all marks of this last term of im- 
 prisonment. They were all breaking free. Busily, eagerly, 
 Ursula made up her totals of attendances in the register. 
 With pride she wrote down the thousands: to so many thou- 
 sands of children had she given another session's lessons. It 
 looked tremendous. The excited hours passed slowly in 
 suspense. Then at last it was over. For the last time, she 
 stood before her children whilst they said their prayers and 
 sang a hymn. Then it was over. 
 
 " Good-bye, children," she said. " I shall not forget you, 
 and you must not forget me." 
 
 "No, miss/' cried the children in chorus, with shining 
 faces. 
 
 She stood smiling on them, moved, as they filed out. Then 
 she gave her monitors their term sixpences, and they too 
 departed. Cupboards were locked, blackboards washed, ink- 
 wells and dusters removed. The place stood bare and va- 
 cated. She had triumphed over it. It was a shell now. She 
 had fought a good fight here, and it had not been altogether 
 
400 THE RAINBOW 
 
 unenjoyable. She owed some gratitude even to this hard, 
 vacant place, that stood like a memorial or a trophy. So 
 much of her life had been fought for and won and lost here. 
 Something of this school would always belong to her, some- 
 thing of her to it. She acknowledged it. And now came 
 the leave-taking. 
 
 In the teachers' room the teachers were chatting and loiter- 
 ing, talking excitedly of where they were going: to the Isle 
 of Man, to Llandudno, to Yarmouth. They were eager, and 
 attached to each other, like comrades leaving a ship. 
 
 Then it was Mr. Harby's turn to make a speech to Ursula. 
 He looked handsome, with his silver-grey temples and black 
 brows, and his imperturbable male solidity. 
 
 "Well," he said, "we must say good-bye to Miss Brang- 
 wen and wish her all good fortune for the future. I suppose 
 we shall see her again some time, and hear how she is getting 
 on." 
 
 " Oh, yes/' said Ursula, stammering, blushing, laughing. 
 " Oh, yes, I shall come and see you." 
 
 Then she realized that this sounded too personal, and she 
 felt foolish. 
 
 "Miss Schofield suggested these two books/' he said, put- 
 ting a couple of volumes on the table : " I hope you will like 
 them." 
 
 Ursula feeling very shy picked up the books. There was 
 a volume of Swinburne's poetry, and a volume of Meredith's. 
 
 "Oh, I shall love them/' .she said. "Thank you very 
 much thank you all so much it is so " 
 
 She stuttered to an end, and very red, turned the leaves 
 of the books eagerly, pretending to be taking the first pleas- 
 ure, but really seeing nothing. 
 
 Mr. Harby's eyes were twinkling. He alone was at his 
 ease, master of the situation. It was pleasing to him to 
 make Ursula the gift, and for once extend good feeling to his 
 teachers. As a rule, it was so difficult, each one was so 
 strained in resentment under this rule. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " we hoped you would like the choice " 
 
 He looked with his peculiar, challenging smile for a mo- 
 ment, then returned to his cupboards. 
 
 Ursula felt very confused. She hugged her books, loving 
 them. And she felt that she loved all the teachers, and 
 Mr. Harby. It was very confusing. 
 
 At last she was out. She cast one hasty glance over the 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 401 
 
 school buildings squatting on the asphalt yard in the hot, 
 glistening sun, one look down the well-known road, and turned 
 her back on it all. Something strained in her heart. She 
 was going away. 
 
 "Well, good luck," said the last of the teachers, as she 
 shook hands at the end of the road. " We'll expect you back 
 some day." 
 
 He spoke in irony. She laughed, and broke away. She 
 was free. As she sat on the top of the tram in the sunlight, 
 she looked round her with tremendous delight. She had 
 left something which had meant much to her. She would 
 not go to. school any more, and do the familiar things. 
 Queer ! There was a little pang amid her exultation, of fear, 
 not of regret. Yet how she exulted this morning! 
 
 She was tremulous with pride and joy. She loved the two 
 books. They were tokens to her, representing the fruit and 
 trophies of her two years which, thank God, were over. 
 
 "To Ursula Brangwen, with best wishes for her future, 
 and in warm memory of the time she spent in St. Philip's 
 School," was written in the headmaster's neat, scrupulous 
 handwriting. She could see the careful hand holding the 
 pen, the thick fingers with tufts of black hair on the back of 
 each one. 
 
 He had signed, all the teachers had signed. She liked 
 having all their signatures. She felt she loved them all. 
 They were her fellow-workers. She carried away from the 
 school a pride she could never lose. She had her place as 
 comrade and sharer in the work of the school, her fellow 
 teachers had signed to her, as one of them. And she was one 
 of all workers, she had put in her tiny brick to the fabric 
 man was building, she had qualified herself as co-builder. 
 
 Then the day for the home removal came. Ursula rose 
 early, to pack up the remaining goods. The carts arrived, 
 lent by her uncle at the Marsh, in the lull between hay and 
 corn harvest. The goods roped in the cart, Ursula mounted 
 her bicycle and sped away to Beldover. 
 
 The house was hers. She entered its clean-scrubbed si- 
 lence. The dining-room had been covered with a thick rush 
 matting, hard and of the beautiful, luminous, clean colour 
 of sun-dried reeds. The walls were pale grey, the doors 
 were darker grey. Ursula admired it very much, as the sun 
 came through the large windows, streaming in. 
 
 She flung open doors and windows to the sunshine. Flowers 
 
402 THE RAINBOW 
 
 were bright and shining round the small lawn, which stood 
 above the road, looking over the raw field opposite, which 
 would later be built upon. No one came. So she wandered 
 down the garden at the back to the wall. The eight bells 
 of the church rang the hour. She could hear the many sounds 
 of the town about her. 
 
 At last, the cart was seen coming round the corner, familiar 
 furniture piled undignified on top, Tom, her brother, and 
 Theresa, marching on foot beside the mass, proud of having 
 walked ten miles or more, from the tram terminus. Ursula 
 poured out beer, and the men drank thirstily, by the door. 
 A second cart was coming. Her father appeared on his mo- 
 tor bicycle. There was the staggering transport of furniture 
 up the steps to the little lawn, where it was deposited all pell- 
 mell in the sunshine, very queer and discomforting. 
 
 Brangwen was a pleasant man to work with, cheerful and 
 easy. Ursula loved deciding him where the heavy things 
 should stand. She watched anxiously the struggle up the 
 steps and through the doorways. Then the big things were 
 in, the carts set off again. Ursula and her father worked 
 away carrying in all the light things that remained upon 
 the lawn, and putting them in place. Dinner time came. 
 They ate bread and cheese in the kitchen. 
 
 "Well, we're getting on/' said Brangwen, cheerfully. 
 
 Two more loads arrived. The afternoon passed away in 
 a struggle with the furniture, upstairs. Towards five o'clock, 
 appeared the last loads, consisting also of Mrs. Brangwen 
 and the younger children, driven by Uncle Fred in the trap. 
 Gudrun had walked with Margaret from the station. The 
 whole family had come. 
 
 " There ! " said Brangwen, as his wife got down from the 
 cart : " Now we're all here." 
 
 " Ay," said his wife pleasantly. 
 
 And the very brevity, the silence of intimacy between the 
 two made a home in the hearts of the children, who clustered 
 round feeling strange in the new place. 
 
 Everything was at sixes and sevens. But a fire was made 
 in the kitchen, the hearth-rug put down, the kettle set on the 
 hob, and Mrs. Brangwen began towards sunset to prepare 
 the first meal. Ursula and Gudrun were slaving in the bed- 
 rooms, candles were rushing about. Then from the kitchen 
 came the smell of ham and eggs and coffee, and in the gas- 
 light, the scrambled meal began. The family seemed to hud- 
 
THE WIDENING CIRCLE 403 
 
 die together like a little camp in a strange place. Ursula 
 felt a load of responsibility upon her, caring for the half- 
 little ones. The smallest kept near the mother. 
 
 It was dark, and the children went sleepy but excited to 
 bed. It was a long time before the sound of voices died out. 
 There was a tremendous sense of adventure. 
 
 In the morning everybody was awake soon after dawn, 
 the children crying: 
 
 " When I wakened up I didn't know where I was." 
 
 There were the strange sounds of the town, and the re- 
 peated chiming of the big church bells, so much harsher and 
 more insistent than the little bells of Cossethay. They looked 
 through the windows past the other new red houses to the 
 wooded hill across the valley. They had all a delightful sense 
 of space and liberation, space and light and air. 
 
 But gradually all set to work. They were a careless, un- 
 tidy family. Yet when once they set about to get the house 
 in order, the thing went with felicity and quickness. By 
 evening the place was roughly established. 
 
 They would not have a servant to live in the house, only 
 a woman who could go home at night. And they would 
 not even have the woman yet. They wanted to do as they 
 liked in their own home, with no stranger in the midst. 
 
CHAPTER xv 
 
 THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 
 
 A STORM of industry raged on in the house. Ursula 
 did not go to college till October. So, with a dis- 
 tinct feeling of responsibility, as if she must express 
 herself in this house, she laboured arranging, re- 
 arranging, selecting, contriving. 
 
 She could use her father's ordinary tools, both for wood- 
 work and metal-work, so she hammered and tinkered. Her 
 mother was quite content to have the thing done. Brangwen 
 was interested. He had a ready belief in his daughter. He 
 himself was at work putting up his work-shed in the garden. 
 
 At last she had finished for the time being. The drawing- 
 room was big and empty. It had the good Wilton carpet, 
 of which the family was so proud, and the large couch and 
 large chairs covered with shiny chintz, and the piano, a little 
 sculpture in plaster that Brangwen had done, and not very 
 much more. It was too large and empty-feeling for the family 
 to occupy very much. Yet they liked to know it was there, 
 large and empty. 
 
 The home was the dining-room. There the hard rush floor- 
 covering made the ground light, reflecting light upon the 
 bottom of their hearts ; in the window-bay was a broad, sunny 
 seat, the table was so solid one could not jostle it, and the 
 chairs so strong one could knock them over without hurting 
 them. The familiar organ that Brangwen had made stood 
 on one side, looking peculiarly small, the sideboard was com- 
 fortably reduced to normal proportions. This was the family 
 living-room. 
 
 Ursula had a bedroom to herself. It was really a servants' 
 bedroom, small and plain. Its window looked over the back 
 garden at other back gardens, some of them old and very 
 nice, some of them littered with packing-cases, then at the 
 backs of the houses whose fronts were the shops in High 
 Street, or the genteel homes of the under-manager or the 
 chief cashier, facing the chapel. 
 
 404 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 405 
 
 She had six weeks still before going to college. In this 
 time she nervously read over some Latin and some botany, 
 and fitfully worked at some mathematics. She was going 
 into college as a teacher, for her training. But, having al- 
 ready taken her matriculation examination, she was entered 
 for a university course. At the end of a year she would 
 sit for the Intermediate Arts, then two years after for her 
 B.A. So her case was not that of the ordinary school-teacher. 
 She would be working among the private students who came 
 only for pure education, not for mere professional training. 
 She would be of the elect. 
 
 For the next three years she would be more or less de- 
 pendent on her parents again. Her training was free. All 
 college fees were paid by the government, she had moreover a 
 few pounds grant every year. This would just pay for her 
 train fares and her clothing. Her parents would only have 
 to feed her. She did not want to cost them much. They 
 would not be well off. Her father would earn only two hun- 
 dred a year, and a good deal of her mother's capital was spent 
 in buying the house. Still, there was enough to get along 
 with. 
 
 Gudrun was attending the Art School at Nottingham. She 
 was working particularly at sculpture. She had a gift for 
 this. She loved making little models in clay, of children 
 or of animals. Already some of these had appeared in the 
 Students' Exhibition in the Castle, and Gudrun was a dis- 
 tinguished person. She was chafing at the Art School and 
 wanted to go to London. But there was not enough money. 
 Neither would her parents let her go so far. 
 
 Theresa had left the High School. She was a great, strap- 
 ping, bold hussy, indifferent to all higher claims. She would 
 stay at home. The others were at school, except the youngest. 
 When term started, they would all be transferred to the 
 Grammar School at Willey Green. 
 
 Ursula was excited at making acquaintances in Beldover. 
 The excitement soon passed. She had tea at the clergyman's, 
 at the chemist's, at the other chemist's, at the doctor's, at 
 the under-manager's, then she knew practically everybody. 
 She could not take people very seriously, though at the time 
 she wanted to. 
 
 She wandered the country, on foot and on her bicycle, 
 finding it very beautiful in the forest direction, between 
 Mansfield and Southwell and Worksop. But she was here 
 
466 THE RAINBOW 
 
 only skirmishing for amusement. Her real exploration would 
 begin in college. 
 
 Term began. She went into town each day by train. The 
 cloistered quiet of the college began to close around her. 
 
 She was not at first disappointed. The big college built 
 of stone, standing in the quiet street, with a rim of grass 
 and lime-trees all so peaceful: she felt it remote, a magic 
 land. Its architecture was foolish, she knew from her father. 
 Still, it was different from that of all other buildings. Its 
 rather pretty, plaything, Gothic form was almost a style, in 
 the dirty industrial town. 
 
 She liked the hall, with its big stone chimney-piece and its 
 Gothic arches supporting the balcony above. To be sure 
 the arches were ugly, the chimney-piece of cardboard-like 
 carved stone, with its armorial decoration, looked silly just 
 opposite the bicycle stand and the radiator, whilst the great 
 notice-board with its fluttering papers seemed to slam away 
 all sense of retreat and mystery from the far wall. Neverthe- 
 less, amorphous as it might be, there was in it a reminiscence 
 of the wondrous, cloistral origin of education. Her soul flew 
 straight back to the mediaeval times, when the monks of God 
 held the learning of men and imparted it within the shadow 
 of religion. In this spirit she entered college. 
 
 The harshness and vulgarity of the lobbies and cloak-rooms 
 hurt her at first. Why was it not all beautiful? But she 
 could not openly admit her criticism. She was on holy 
 ground. 
 
 She wanted all the students to have a high, pure spirit, 
 she wanted them to say only the real, genuine things, she 
 wanted their faces to be still and luminous as the nuns' and 
 the monks' faces. 
 
 Alas, the girls chattered and giggled and were nervous, 
 they were dressed up and frizzed, the men looked mean and 
 clownish. 
 
 Still, it was lovely to pass along the corridor with one's 
 books in one's hands, to push the swinging, glass-panelled 
 door, and enter the big room where the first lecture would be 
 given. The windows were large and lofty, the myriad brown 
 students' desks stood waiting, the great blackboard was smooth 
 behind the rostrum. 
 
 Ursula sat beside her window, rather far back. Looking 
 down, she saw the lime-trees turning yellow, the tradesman's 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 407 
 
 boy passing silent down the still, autumn-sunny street. There 
 was the world, remote, remote. 
 
 Here, within the great, whispering sea-shell, that whispered 
 all the while with reminiscence of all the centuries, time faded 
 away, and the echo of knowledge filled the timeless silence. 
 
 She listened, she scribbled her notes with joy, almost with 
 ecstasy, never for a moment criticising what she heard. The 
 lecturer was a mouth-piece, a priest. As he stood, black- 
 gowned, on the rostrum, some strands of the whispering con- 
 fusion of knowledge that filled the whole place seemed to be 
 singled out and woven together by him, till they became a 
 lecture. 
 
 At first, she preserved herself from criticism. She would 
 not consider the professors as men, ordinary men who ate 
 bacon, and pulled on their boots before coming to college. 
 They were the black-gowned priests of knowledge, serving 
 for ever in a remote, hushed temple. They were the initiated, 
 and the beginning and the end of the mystery was in their 
 keeping. 
 
 Curious joy she had of the lectures. It was a joy to hear 
 the theory of education, there was such freedom and pleas- 
 ure in ranging over the very stuff of knowledge, and seeing 
 how it moved and lived and had its being. How happy 
 Racine made her! She did not know why. But as the big 
 lines of the drama unfolded themselves, so steady, so meas- 
 ured, she felt a thrill as of being in the realm of the reality. 
 Of Latin, she was doing Livy and Horace. The curious, 
 intimate, gossiping tone of the Latin class suited Horace. 
 Yet she never cared for him, nor even for Livy. There was 
 an entire lack of sternness in the gossipy class-room. She 
 tried hard to keep her old grasp of the Roman spirit. But 
 gradually the Latin became mere gossip-stuff and artificiality 
 to her, a question of manners and verbosities. 
 
 Her terror was the mathematics class. The lecturer went 
 so fast, her heart beat excitedly, she seemed to be straining 
 every nerve. And she struggled hard, during private study, 
 to get the stuff into control. 
 
 Then came the lovely, peaceful afternoons in the botany 
 laboratory. There were few students. How she loved to 
 sit on her high stool before the bench, with her pith and her 
 razor and her material, carefully mounting her slides, care- 
 fully bringing her microscope into focus, then turning with 
 
468 THE RAINBOW 
 
 joy to record her observation, drawing joyfully in her book, 
 if the slide were good. 
 
 She soon made a college friend, a girl who had lived in 
 Florence, a girl who wore a wonderful purple or figured scarf 
 draped over a plain, dark dress. She was Dorothy Kussell, 
 daughter of a south-country advocate. Dorothy lived with 
 a maiden aunt in Nottingham, and spent her spare moments 
 slaving for the Women's Social and Political Union. She was 
 quiet and intense, with an ivory face and dark hair looped 
 plain over her ears. Ursula was very fond of her, but afraid 
 of her. She seemed so old and so relentless towards herself. 
 Yet she was only twenty-two. Ursula always felt her to 
 be a creature of fate, like Cassandra. 
 
 The two girls had a close, stern friendship. Dorothy 
 worked at all things with the same passion, never sparing 
 herself. She came closest to Ursula during the Botany hours. 
 For she could not draw. Ursula made beautiful and wonder- 
 ful drawings of the sections under the microscope, and Dorothy 
 always came to learn the manner of the drawing. 
 
 So the first year went by, in magnificent seclusion and ac- 
 tivity of learning. It was strenuous as a battle, her college 
 life, yet remote as peace. 
 
 She came to Nottingham in the morning with Gudrun. 
 The two sisters were distinguished wherever they went, slim, 
 strong girls, eager and extremely sensitive. Gudrun was 
 the more beautiful of the two, with her sleepy, half-languid 
 girlishness that looked so soft, and yet was balanced and 
 inalterable underneath. She wore soft, easy clothing, and 
 hats which fell by themselves into a careless grace. 
 
 Ursula was much more carefully dressed, but she was self- 
 conscious, always falling into depths of admiration of some- 
 body else, and modelling herself upon this other, and so 
 producing a hopeless incongruity. When she dressed for 
 practical purposes she always looked well. In winter, wearing 
 a tweed coat-and-skirt and a small hat of black fur pulled 
 over her eager, palpitant face, she seemed to move down the 
 street in a drifting motion of suspense and exceeding sensitive 
 receptivity. 
 
 At the end of the first year Ursula got through her Inter- 
 mediate Arts examination, and there came a lull in her eager 
 activities. She slackened off, she relaxed altogether. Worn 
 nervous and inflammable by the excitement of the preparation 
 for the examination, and by the sort of exaltation which 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 409 
 
 carried her through the crisis itself, she now fell into a quiver- 
 ing passivity, her will all loosened. 
 
 The family went to Scarborough for a month. Gudrun 
 and the father were busy at the handicraft holiday school 
 there, Ursula was left a good deal with the children. But 
 when she could, she went off by herself. 
 
 She stood and looked out over the shining sea. It was 
 very beautiful to her. The tears rose hot in her heart. 
 
 Out of the far, far space there drifted slowly in to her a 
 passionate, unborn yearning. " There are so many dawns 
 that have not yet risen." It seemed as if, from over the edge 
 of the sea, all the unrisen dawns were appealing to her, all 
 her unborn soul was crying for the unrisen dawns. 
 
 As she sat looking out at the tender sea, with its lovely, 
 swift glimmer, the sob rose in her breast, till she caught her 
 lip suddenly under her teeth, and the tears were forcing them- 
 selves from her. And in her very sob, she laughed. Why 
 did she cry? She did not want to cry. It was so beautiful 
 that she laughed. It was so beautiful that she cried. 
 
 She glanced apprehensively round, hoping no one would 
 see her in this state. 
 
 Then came a time when the sea was rough. She watched 
 the water travelling in to the coast, she watched a big wave 
 running unnoticed, to burst in a shock of foam against a rock, 
 enveloping all in a great white beauty, to pour away again, 
 leaving the rock emerged black and teeming. Oh, and if, 
 when the wave burst into whiteness, it were only set free ! 
 
 Sometimes she loitered along the harbour, looking at the sea- 
 browned sailors, who, in their close blue jerseys, lounged 
 on the harbour-wall, and laughed at her with impudent, com- 
 municative eyes. 
 
 There was established a little relation between her and 
 them. She never would speak to them or know any more 
 of them. Yet as she walked by and they leaned on the sea- 
 wall, there was something between her and them, something 
 keen and delightful and painful. She liked best the young 
 one whose fair, salty hair tumbled over his blue eyes. He 
 was 50 new and fresh and salt and not of this world. 
 
 From Scarborough she went to her Uncle Tom's. Winifred 
 had a small baby, born at the end of the summer. She had 
 become strange and alien to Ursula. There was an unmen- 
 tionable reserve between the two women. Tom Brangwen 
 was an attentive father, a very domestic husband. But there 
 
410 THE RAINBOW 
 
 was something spurious about his domesticity, Ursula did not 
 like him any more. Something ugly, blatant in his nature 
 had come out now, making him shift everything over to a 
 sentimental basis. A materialistic unbeliever, he carried it 
 all off by becoming full of human feeling, a warm, attentive 
 host, a generous husband, a model citizen. And he was 
 clever enough to rouse admiration everywhere, and to take in 
 his wife sufficiently. She did not love him. She was glad 
 to live in a state of complacent self-deception with him, she 
 worked according to him. 
 
 Ursula was relieved to go home. She had still two peaceful 
 years before her. Her future was settled for two years. She 
 returned to college to prepare for her final examination. 
 
 But during this year the glamour began to depart from 
 college. The professors were not priests initiated into the 
 deep mysteries of life and knowledge. After all, they were 
 only middle-men handling wares they had become so accus- 
 tomed to that they were oblivious of them. What was Latin ? 
 So much dry goods of knowledge. What was the Latin 
 class altogether but a sort of second-hand curio shop, where one 
 bought curios and learned the market-value of curios; dull 
 curios too, on the whole. She was as bored by the Latin 
 curiosities as she was by Chinese and Japanese curiosities in 
 the antique shops. " Antiques " the very word made her 
 soul fall flat and dead. 
 
 The life went out of her studies, why, she did not know. 
 But the whole thing seemed sham, spurious ; spurious Gothic 
 arches, spurious peace, spurious Latinity, spurious dignity of 
 France, spurious naivete of Chaucer. It was a second-hand 
 dealer's shop, and one bought an equipment for an examina- 
 tion. This was only a little side-show to the factories of the 
 town. Gradually the perception stole into her. This was 
 no religious retreat, no seclusion of pure learning. It was a 
 little apprentice-shop where one was further equipped for 
 making money. The college itself was a little, slovenly labora- 
 tory for the factory. 
 
 A harsh and ugly disillusion came over her again, the same 
 darkness and bitter gloom from which she was never safe now, 
 the realization of the permanent substratum of ugliness under 
 everything. As she came to the college in the afternoon, the 
 lawns were frothed with daisies, the lime-trees hung tender 
 and sunlit and green; and oh, the deep, white froth of the 
 daisies was anguish to see. 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 411; 
 
 For inside, inside the college, she knew she must enter 
 the sham workshop. All the while, it was a sham store, a 
 sham warehouse, with a single motive of material gain, 
 and no productivity. It pretended to exist by the reli- 
 gious virtue of knowledge. But the religious virtue of 
 knowledge was become a flunkey to the god of material suc- 
 cess. 
 
 A sort of inertia came over her. Mechanically, from habit, 
 she went on with her studies. But it was almost hopeless. 
 She could scarcely attend to anything. At the Anglo-Saxon 
 lecture in the afternoon, she sat looking down, out of the 
 window, hearing no word, of Beowulf or of anything else. 
 Down below, in the street, the sunny grey pavement went be- 
 side the palisade. A woman in a pink frock, with a scarlet 
 sunshade, crossed the road, a little white dog running like a 
 fleck of light about her. The woman with the scarlet sunshade 
 came over the road, a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attend- 
 ing her. Ursula watched spell-bound. The woman with the 
 scarlet sunshade and the flickering terrier was gone and 
 whither? Whither? 
 
 In what world of reality was the woman in the pink dress 
 walking? To what warehouse of dead unreality was she her- 
 self confined? 
 
 What good was this place, this college? What good was 
 Anglo-Saxon, when one only learned it in order to answer 
 examination questions, in order that one should have a higher 
 commercial value later on? She was sick with this long 
 service at the inner commercial shrine. Yet what else was 
 there ? Was life all this, and this only ? Everywhere, every- 
 thing was debased to the same service. Everything went to 
 produce vulgar things, to encumber material life. 
 
 Suddenly she threw over French. She would take honours 
 in botany. This was the one study that lived for her. She 
 had entered into the lives of the plants. She was fascinated 
 by the strange laws of the vegetable world. She had here a 
 glimpse of something working entirely apart from the purpose 
 of the human world. 
 
 College was barren, cheap, a temple converted to the most 
 vulgar, petty commerce. Had she not gone to hear the 
 echo of learning pulsing back to the source of the mystery ? 
 The source of mystery! And barrenly, the professors in 
 their gowns offered commercial commodity that could be 
 turned to good account in the examination room; ready-made 
 
412 THE RAINBOW 
 
 stuff too, and not really worth the money it was intended to 
 fetch ; which they all knew. 
 
 All the time in the college now, save when she was labour- 
 ing in her botany laboratory, for there the mystery still glim- 
 mered, she felt she was degrading herself in a kind of trade 
 of sham jew jaws. 
 
 Angry and stiff, she went through her last term. She 
 would rather be out again earning her own living. Even 
 Brinsley Street and Mr. Harby seemed real in comparison. 
 Her violent hatred of the Ilkeston School was nothing com- 
 pared with the sterile degradation of college. But she was 
 not going back to Brinsley Street either. She would take 
 her B.A., and become a mistress in some Grammar School for 
 a time. 
 
 The last year of her college career was wheeling slowly 
 round. She could see ahead her examination and her de- 
 parture. She had the ash of disillusion gritting under her 
 teeth. Would the next move turn out the same ? Always the 
 shining doorway ahead; and then, upon approach, always the 
 shining doorway was a gate into another ugly yard, dirty and 
 active and dead. Always the crest of the hill gleaming ahead 
 under heaven : and then, from the top of the hill only another 
 sordid valley full of amorphous, squalid activity. 
 
 No matter! Every hill-top was a little different, every 
 valley was somehow new. Cossethay and her childhood with 
 her father; the Marsh and the little Church school near the 
 Marsh, and her grandmother and her uncles ; the High School 
 at Nottingham and Anton Skrebensky; Anton Skrebensky 
 and the dance in the moonlight between the fires; then the 
 time she could not think of without being blasted, Winifred 
 Inger, and the months before becoming a school-teacher; 
 then the horrors of Brinsley Street, lapsing into comparative 
 peacefulness, Maggie, and Maggie's brother, whose influence 
 she could still feel in her veins, when she conjured him up; 
 then college, and Dorothy Russell, who was now in France, 
 then the next move into the world again! 
 
 Already it was a history. In every phase she was so differ- 
 ent. Yet she was always Ursula Brangwen. But what did 
 it mean, Ursula Brangwen? She did not know what she 
 was. Only she was full of rejection, of refusal. Always, 
 always she was spitting out of her mouth the ash and grit 
 of disillusion, of falsity. She could only stiffen in rejection, 
 in rejection. She seemed always negative in her action. 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 413 
 
 That which she was, positively, was dark and unrevealed, 
 it could not come forth. It was like a seed buried in dry ash. 
 This world in which she lived was like a circle lighted by a 
 lamp. This lighted area, lit up by man's completest con- 
 sciousness, she thought was all the world: that here all was 
 disclosed for ever. Yet all the time, within the darkness she 
 had been aware of points of light, like the eyes of wild beasts, 
 gleaming, penetrating, vanishing. And her soul had acknowl- 
 edged in a great heave of terror only the outer darkness. 
 This inner circle of light in which she lived and moved, 
 wherein the trains rushed and the factories ground out their 
 machine-produce and the plants and the animals worked by 
 the light of science and knowledge, suddenly it seemed like 
 the area under an arc-lamp, wherein the moths and children 
 played in the security of blinding light, not even knowing 
 there was any darkness, because they stayed in the light. 
 
 But she could see the glimmer of dark movement just out 
 of range, she saw the eyes of the wild beast gleaming from the 
 darkness, watching the vanity of the camp fire and the sleep- 
 ers; she felt the strange, foolish vanity of the camp, which 
 said " Beyond our light and our order there is nothing," turn- 
 ing their faces always inward towards the sinking fire of 
 illuminating consciousness, which comprised sun and stars, 
 and the Creator, and the System of Kighteousness, ignoring 
 always the vast darkness that wheeled round about, with 
 half-revealed shapes lurking on the edge. 
 
 Yea, and no man dared even throw a firebrand into the 
 darkness. For if he did he was jeered to death by the others, 
 who cried " Fool, anti-social knave, why would you disturb 
 us with bogeys? There is no darkness. We move and live 
 and have our being within the light, and unto us is given 
 the eternal light of knowledge, we comprise and comprehend 
 the innermost core and issue of knowledge. Fool and knave, 
 how dare you belittle us with the darkness ? " 
 
 Nevertheless the darkness wheeled round about, with grey 
 shadow-shapes of wild beasts, and also with dark shadow- 
 shapes of the angels, whom the light fenced out, as it fenced 
 out the more familiar beasts of darkness. And some, having 
 for a moment seen the darkness, saw it bristling with the tufts 
 of the hyaena and the wolf; and some, having given up 
 their vanity of the light, having died in their own conceit, 
 saw the gleam in the eyes of the wolf and the hysena, that 
 it was the flash of the sword of angels, flashing at the door 
 
414 THE RAINBOW 
 
 to come in, that the angels in the darkness were lordly and 
 terrible and not to be denied, like the flash of fangs. 
 
 It was a little while before Easter, in her last year of col- 
 lege, when Ursula was twenty-two years old, that she heard 
 again from Skrebensky. He had written to her once or twice 
 from South Africa, during the first months of his service 
 out there in the war, and since had sent her a post-card every 
 now and then, at ever longer intervals. He had become a 
 first lieutenant, and had stayed out in Africa. She had not 
 heard of him now for more than two years. 
 
 Often her thoughts returned to him. He seemed like the 
 gleaming dawn, yellow, radiant, of a long, grey, ashy day. 
 The memory of him was like the thought of the first radiant 
 hours of morning. And here was the blank grey ashiness of 
 later daytime. Ah, if he had only remained true to her, 
 she might have known the sunshine, without all this toil 
 and hurt and degradation of a spoiled day. He would have 
 been her angel. He held the keys of the sunshine. Still he 
 held them. He could open to her the gates of succeeding 
 freedom and delight. Nay, if he had remained true to her, 
 he would have been the doorway to her, into the boundless 
 sky of happiness and plunging, inexhaustible freedom which 
 was the paradise of her soul. Ah, the great range he would 
 have opened to her, the illimitable endless space for self- 
 realization and delight for ever. 
 
 The one thing she believed in was in the love she had held 
 for him. It remained shining and complete, a thing to hark 
 back to. And she said to herself, when present things seemed 
 a failure: 
 
 " Ah, I was fond of him/' 
 as if with him the leading flower of her life had died. 
 
 Now she heard from him again. The chief effect was pain. 
 The pleasure, the spontaneous joy was not there any longer. 
 But her will rejoiced. Her will had fixed itself to him. And 
 the old excitement of her dreams stirred and woke up. He 
 was come, the man with the wondrous lips that could send 
 the kiss wavering to the very end of all space. Was he come 
 back to her ? She did not believe. 
 
 " MY DEAR URSULA, I am back in England again for a few 
 months before going out again, this time to India. I wonder 
 if you still keep the memory of our times together. I have 
 stiil got the little photograph of you. You must be qhanged 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 415 
 
 since then, for it is about six years ago. I am fully six 
 years older, I have lived through another life since I knew 
 you at Cossethay. I wonder if you would care to see me. 
 I shall come up to Derby next week, and I would call in 
 Nottingham, and we might have tea together. Will you let 
 me know ? I shall look for your answer. 
 
 "ANTON SKREBENSKY." 
 
 Ursula had taken this letter from the rack in the hall at 
 college, and torn it open as she crossed to the Women's 
 room. The world seemed to dissolve away from around her, 
 she stood alone in clear air. 
 
 Where could she go to, to be alone? She fled away, up- 
 stairs, and through the private way to the reference library. 
 Seizing a book, she sat down and pondered the letter. Her 
 heart beat, her limbs trembled. As in a dream, she heard one 
 gong sound in the college, then, strangely, another. The 
 first lecture had gone by. 
 
 Hurriedly she took one of her note books and began to 
 write. 
 
 "DEAR ANTON, Yes, I still have the ring. I should be 
 very glad to see you again. You can come here to college 
 for me, or I will meet you somewhere in the town. Will 
 you let me know? Your sincere friend " 
 
 Trembling, she asked the librarian, who was her friend, if 
 he would give her an envelope. She sealed and addressed 
 her letter, and went out, bare-headed, to post it. When it 
 was dropped into the pillar-box, the world became a very still, 
 pale place, without confines. She wandered back to college, 
 to her pale dream, like a first wan light of dawn. 
 
 Skrebensky came one afternoon the following week. Day 
 after day, she had hurried swiftly to the letter-rack on her 
 arrival at college in the morning, and during the intervals 
 between lectures. Several times, swiftly, with secretive 
 fingers, she had plucked his letter down from its public 
 prominence, and fled across the hall holding it fast and hidden. 
 She read her letters in the botany laboratory, where her corner 
 was always reserved to her. 
 
 Several letters, and then he was coming. It was Friday 
 afternoon he appointed. She worked over her microscope 
 with fe.verish activity, able to give only half her attention, yet 
 
416 THE RAINBOW 
 
 working closely and rapidly. She had on her slide some spe- 
 cial stuff come up from London that day, and the professor 
 was fussy and excited about it. At the same time, as she 
 focussed the light on her field, and saw the plant-animal 
 lying shadowy in a boundless light, she was fretting over a 
 conversation she had had a few days ago with Dr. Frankstone, 
 who was a woman doctor of physics in the college. 
 
 "No, really," Dr. Frankstone had said, "I don't see why 
 we should attribute some special mystery to life do you? 
 We don't understand it as we understand electricity, even, 
 but that doesn't warrant our saying it is something special, 
 something different in kind and distinct from everything else 
 in the universe do you think it does ? May it not be that 
 life consists in a complexity of physical and chemical activities, 
 of the same order as the activities we already know in science ? 
 I don't see, really, why we should imagine there is a special 
 order of life, and life alone " 
 
 The conversation had ended on a note of uncertainty, in- 
 definite, wistful. But the purpose, what was the purpose? 
 Electricity had no soul, light and heat had no soul. Was 
 she herself an impersonal force, or conjunction of forces, 
 like one of these ? She looked still at the unicellular shadow 
 that lay within the field of light, under her microscope. . It 
 was alive. She saw it move she saw the bright mist of 
 its ciliary activity, she saw the gleam of its nucleus, as it 
 slid across the plane of light. What then was its will? If 
 it was a conjunction of forces, physical and chemical, what 
 held these forces unified, and for what purpose were they 
 unified ? 
 
 For what purpose were the incalculable physical and chemi- 
 cal activities nodalized in this shadowy, moving speck under 
 her microscope? What was the will which nodalized them 
 and created the one thing she saw ? What was its intention ? 
 To be itself? Was its purpose just mechanical and limited 
 to itself? 
 
 It intended to be itself. But what self ? Suddenly in her 
 mind the world gleamed strangely, with an intense light, 
 like the nucleus of the creature under the microscope. Sud- 
 denly she had passed away into an intensely-gleaming light 
 of knowledge. She could not understand what it all was. 
 She only knew that it was not limited mechanical energy, 
 nor mere purpose of self-preservation and self-assertion. It 
 was a consummation, a being infinite. Self was a oneness 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 417 
 
 with the infinite. To be oneself was a supreme, gleaming 
 triumph of infinity. 
 
 Ursula sat abstracted over her microscope, in suspense. 
 Her soul was busy, infinitely busy, in the new world. In 
 the new world, Skrebensky was waiting for her he would be 
 waiting for her. She could not go yet, because her soul was 
 engaged. Soon she would go. 
 
 A stillness, like passing away, took hold of her. Far off, 
 down the corridors, she heard the gong booming five o'clock. 
 She must go. Yet she sat still. 
 
 The other students were pushing back their stools and put- 
 ting their microscopes away. Everything broke into tur- 
 moil. She saw, through the window, students going down 
 the steps, with books under their arms, talking, all talking. 
 
 A great craving to depart came upon her. She wanted also 
 to be gone. She was in dread of the material world, and in 
 dread of her own transfiguration. She wanted to run to meet 
 Skrebensky the new life, the reality. 
 
 Very rapidly she wiped her slides and put them back, 
 cleared her place at the bench, active, active, active. She 
 wanted to run to meet Skrebensky, hasten hasten. She 
 did not know what she was to meet. But it would be a new 
 beginning. She must hurry. 
 
 She flitted down the corridor on swift feet, her razor and 
 note books and pencil in one hand, her pinafore over her 
 arm. Her face was lifted and tense with eagerness. He 
 might not be there. 
 
 Issuing from the corridor, she saw him at once. She knew 
 him at once. Yet he was so strange. He stood with the 
 curious self-effacing diffidence which so frightened her in 
 well-bred young men whom she knew. He stood as if he 
 wished to be unseen. He was very well-dressed. She would 
 not admit to herself the chill like a sunshine of frost that 
 came over her. This was he, the key, the nucleus to the new 
 world. 
 
 He saw her coming swiftly across the hall, a slim girl in a 
 white flannel blouse and dark skirt, with some of the abstrac- 
 tion and gleam of the unknown upon her, and he started, 
 excited. He was very nervous. Other students were loiter- 
 ing about the hall. 
 
 She laughed, with a blind, dazzled face, as she gave him 
 her hand. He too could not perceive her. 
 
 In a moment she was gone, to get her outdoor things. Then 
 
418 THE RAINBOW 
 
 again, as when she had been at school, they walked out into 
 the town to tea. And they went to the same tea-shop. 
 
 She knew a great difference in him. The kin-ship was 
 there, the old kin-ship, but he had belonged to a different 
 world from hers. It was as if they had cried a state of truce 
 between him and her, and in this truce they had met. She 
 knew, vaguely, in the first minute, that they were enemies 
 come together in a truce. Every movement and word of his 
 was alien to her being. 
 
 Yet still she loved the fine texture of his face, of his skin. 
 He was rather browner, physically stronger. He was a. man 
 now. She thought his manliness made the strangeness in 
 him. When he was only a youth, fluid, he was nearer to her. 
 She thought a man must inevitably set into this strange 
 separateness, cold otherness of being. He talked, but not to 
 her. She tried to speak to him, but she could not reach him. 
 
 He seemed so balanced and sure, he made such a confident 
 presence. He was a great rider, so there was about him some 
 of a horseman's sureness and habitual definiteness of decision, 
 also some of the horseman's animal darkness. Yet his soul 
 was only the more wavering, vague. He seemed made up of a 
 set of habitual actions and decisions. The vulnerable, variable 
 quick of the man was inaccessible. She knew nothing of it. 
 She could only feel the dark, heavy fixity of his animal desire. 
 
 This dumb desire on his part had brought him to her? 
 She was puzzled, hurt by some hopeless fixity in him, that 
 terrified her with a cold feeling of despair. What did he want ? 
 His desires were so underground. Why did he not admit him- 
 self ? What did he want ? He wanted something that should 
 be nameless. She shrank in fear. 
 
 Yet she flashed with excitement. In his dark, subterranean, 
 male soul, he was kneeling before her, darkly exposing him- 
 self. She quivered, the dark flame ran over her. He was 
 waiting at her feet. He was helpless, at her mercy. She 
 could take or reject. If she rejected him, something would 
 die in him. For him it was life or death. And yet, all must 
 be kept so dark, the consciousness must admit nothing. 
 
 " How long," she said, " are you staying in England ? " 
 
 " I am not sure but not later than July, I believe." 
 
 Then they were both silent. He was here, in England, for 
 six months. They had a space of six months between them. 
 H$ waited. The same iron rigidity, as if the world were 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 419 
 
 made of steel, possessed her again. It was no use turning 
 with flesh and blood to this arrangement of forged metal. 
 
 Quickly, her imagination adjusted itself to the situation. 
 
 " Have you an appointment in India ?" she asked. 
 
 " Yes I have just the six months' leave." 
 
 " Will you like being out there ? " 
 
 " I think so there's a good deal of social life, and plenty 
 going on hunting, polo and always a good horse and 
 plenty of work, any amount of work." 
 
 He was always side-tracking, always side-tracking his own 
 soul. She could see him so well out there, in India one of 
 the governing class, superimposed upon an old civilization, 
 lord and master of a clumsier civilization than his own. It 
 was his choice. He would become again an aristocrat, in- 
 vested with authority and responsibility, having a great 
 helpless populace beneath him. One of the ruling class, his 
 whole being would be given over to the fulfilling and the 
 executing of the better idea of the state. And in India, 
 there would be real work to do. The country did need 
 the civilization which he himself represented : it did need his 
 roads and bridges, and the enlightenment of which he was part. 
 He would go to India. But that was not her road. 
 
 Yet she loved him, the body of him, whatever his decisions 
 might be. He seemed to want something of her. He was 
 waiting for her to decide of him. It had been decided in 
 her long ago, when he had kissed her first. He was her 
 lover, though good and evil should cease. Her will never 
 relaxed, though her heart and soul must be imprisoned and 
 silenced. He waited upon her, and she accepted him. For 
 he had come back to her. 
 
 A glow came into his face, into his fine, smooth skin, his 
 eyes, gold-grey, glowed intimately to her. He burned up, 
 he caught fire and became splendid, royal, something like a 
 tiger. She caught his brilliant, burnished glamour. Her 
 heart and her soul were shut away fast down below, hidden. 
 She was free of them. She was to have her satisfaction. 
 
 She became proud and erect, like a flower, putting itself 
 forth in its proper strength. His warmth invigorated her. 
 His beauty of form, which seemed to glow out in contrast 
 with the rest of people, made her proud. It was like defer- 
 ence to her, and made her feel as if she represented before 
 him all the grace and flower of humanity. She was no mere 
 
THE RAINBOW 
 
 Ursula Brangwen. She was Woman, she was the whole of 
 Woman in the human order. All-containing, universal, how 
 should she be limited to individuality ? 
 
 She was exhilarated, she did not want to go away from him. 
 She had her place by him. Who should take her away ? 
 
 They came out of the cafe. 
 
 " Is there anything you would like to do ? " he said. " Is 
 there anything we can do ? " 
 
 It was a dark, windy night in March. 
 
 " There is nothing to do," she said. 
 
 Which was the answer he wanted. 
 
 " Let us walk then where shall we walk ? " he asked. 
 
 " Shall we go to the river ? " she suggested, timidly. 
 
 In a moment they were on the tram, going down to Trent 
 Bridge. She was so glad. The thought of walking in the 
 dark, far-reaching water-meadows, beside the full river, trans- 
 ported her. Dark water flowing in silence through the big, 
 restless night made her feel wild. 
 
 They crossed the bridge, descended, and went away from 
 the lights. In an instant, in the darkness, he took her hand 
 and they went in silence, with subtle feet treading the dark- 
 ness. The town fumed away on their left, there were strange 
 lights and sounds, the wind rushed against the trees, and under 
 the bridge. They walked close together, powerful in unison. 
 He drew her very close, held her with a subtle, stealthy, power- 
 ful passion, as if they had a secret agreement which held good 
 in the profound darkness. The profound darkness was their 
 universe. 
 
 " It is like it was before," she said. 
 
 Yet it was not in the least as it was before. Nevertheless 
 his heart was perfectly in accord with her. They thought 
 one thought. 
 
 " I knew I should come back/' he said at length. 
 
 She quivered. 
 
 " Did you always love me ? " she asked. 
 
 The directness of the question overcame him, submerged 
 him for a moment. The darkness travelled massively along. 
 
 " I had to come back to you," he said, as if hypnotized. 
 " You were always at the back of everything." 
 
 She was silent with triumph, like fate. 
 
 " I loved you," she said, " always." 
 
 The dark flame leaped up in him. . He must give her him- 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 421 
 
 self. He must give her the very foundations of himself. He 
 drew her very close, and they went on in silence. 
 
 She started violently, hearing voices. They were near a 
 stile across the dark meadows. 
 
 " It's only lovers," he said to her, softly. 
 
 She looked to see the dark figures against the fence, won- 
 dering that the darkness was inhabited. 
 
 " Only lovers will walk here to-night," he said. 
 
 Then in a low, vibrating voice he told her about Africa, 
 the strange darkness, the strange, blood fear. 
 
 "I am not afraid of the darkness in England," he said. 
 " It is soft, and natural to me, it is my medium, especially 
 when you are here. But in Africa it seems massive and fluid 
 with terror not fear of anything just fear. One breathes 
 it, like a smell of blood. The blacks know it. They worship 
 it, really, the darkness. One almost likes it the fear 
 something sensual." 
 
 She thrilled again to him. He was to her a voice out of 
 the darkness. He talked to her all the while, in low tones, 
 about Africa, conveying something strange and sensual to 
 her : the negro, with his loose, soft passion that could envelop 
 one like a bath. Gradually he transferred to her the hot, 
 fecund darkness that possessed his own blood. He was 
 strangely secret. The whole world must be abolished. He 
 maddened her with his soft, cajoling, vibrating tones. He 
 wanted her to answer, to understand. A turgid, teeming 
 night, heavy with fecundity in which every molecule of mat- 
 ter grew big with increase, secretly urgent with fecund desire, 
 seemed to come to pass. She quivered, taut and vibrating, 
 almost pained. And gradually, he ceased telling her of Africa, 
 there came a silence, whilst they walked the darkness beside 
 the massive river. Her limbs were rich and tense, she felt 
 they must be vibrating with a low, profound vibration. She 
 could scarcely walk. The deep vibration of the darkness could 
 only be felt, not heard. 
 
 Suddenly, as they walked, she turned to him and held him 
 fast, as if she were turned to steel. 
 
 " Do you love me ? " she cried in anguish. 
 
 " Yes," he said, in a curious, lapping voice, unlike himself. 
 "Yes, I love you." 
 
 He seemed like the living darkness upon her, she was in 
 the embrace of the strong darkness. He held her enclosed, 
 
422 THE RAINBOW 
 
 soft, unutterably soft, and with the unrelaxing softness of 
 fate, the relentless softness of fecundity. She quivered, and 
 quivered, like a tense thing that is struck. But he held her 
 all the time, soft, unending, like darkness closed upon her, 
 omnipresent as the night. He kissed her, and she quivered 
 as if she were being destroyed, shattered. The lighted vessel 
 vibrated, and broke in her soul, the light fell, struggled, and 
 went dark. She was all dark, will-less, having only the re- 
 ceptive will. 
 
 He kissed her, with his soft, enveloping kisses, and she 
 responded to them completely, her mind, her soul gone out. 
 Darkness cleaving to darkness, she hung close to him, pressed 
 herself into soft flow of his kiss, pressed herself down, down 
 to the source and core of his kiss, herself covered and en- 
 veloped in the warm, fecund flow of his kiss, that travelled 
 over her, flowed over her, covered her, flowed over the last 
 fibre of her, so they were one stream, one dark fecundity, and 
 she clung at the core of him, with her lips holding open the 
 very bottommost source of him. 
 
 So they stood in the utter, dark kiss, that triumphed over 
 them both, subjected them, knitted them into one fecund 
 nucleus of the fluid darkness. 
 
 It was bliss, it was the nucleolating of the fecund darkness. 
 Once the vessel had vibrated till it was shattered, the light 
 of consciousness gone, then the darkness reigned, and the 
 unutterable satisfaction. 
 
 They stood enjoying the unmitigated kiss, taking it, giving 
 to it endlessly, and still it was not exhausted. Their veins 
 fluttered, their blood ran together as one stream. 
 
 Till gradually a sleep, a heaviness settled on them, a drowse, 
 and out of the drowse, a small light of consciousness woke 
 up. Ursula became aware of the night around her, the water 
 lapping and running full just near, the trees roaring and 
 soughing in gusts of wind. 
 
 She kept near to him, in contact with him, but she became 
 ever more and more herself. And she knew she must go to 
 catch her train. But she did not want to draw away from 
 contact with him. 
 
 At length they roused and set out. No longer they existed 
 in the unblemished darkness. There was the glitter of a 
 bridge, the twinkle of lights across the river, the big flare of 
 the town in front and on their right. 
 
 But still, dark and soft and incontestable, their bodies 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 423 
 
 walked untouched by the lights, darkness supreme and arro- 
 gant. 
 
 " The stupid lights," Ursula said to herself, in her dark 
 sensual arrogance. " The stupid, artificial, exaggerated town, 
 fuming its lights. It does not exist really. It rests upon the 
 unlimited darkness, like a gleam of coloured oil on dark water, 
 but what is it ? nothing, just nothing." 
 
 In the tram, in the train, she felt the same. The lights, 
 the civic uniform was a trick played, the people as they moved 
 or sat were only dummies exposed. She could see, beneath 
 their pale, wooden pretence of composure and civic purpose- 
 fulness, the dark stream that contained them all. They were 
 like little paper ships in their motion. But in reality each one 
 was a dark, blind, eager wave urging blindly forward, dark 
 with the same homogeneous desire. And all their talk and 
 all their behaviour was sham, they were dressed-up creatures. 
 She was reminded of the Invisible Man, who was a piece of 
 darkness made visible only by his clothes. 
 
 During the next weeks, all the time she went about in the 
 same dark richness, her eyes dilated and shining like the eyes 
 of a wild animal, a curious half-smile which seemed to be 
 gibing at the civic pretence of all the human life about her. 
 
 "What are you, you pale citizens?" her face seemed to 
 say, gleaming. " You subdued beast in sheep's clothing, you 
 primeval darkness falsified to a social mechanism." 
 
 She went about in the sensual sub-consciousness all the time, 
 mocking at the ready-made, artificial daylight of the rest. 
 
 " They assume selves as they assume suits of clothing," she 
 said to herself, looking in mocking contempt at the stiffened, 
 neutralized men. " They think it better to be clerks or pro- 
 fessors than to be the dark, fertile beings that exist in the 
 potential darkness. What do you think you are?" her soul 
 asked of the professor as she sat opposite him in class. " What 
 do you think you are, as you sit there in your gown and your 
 spectacles? You are a lurking, blood-sniffing creature with 
 eyes peering out of the jungle darkness, snuffing for your 
 desires. That is what you are, though nobody would believe 
 it, and you would be the very last to allow it." 
 
 Her soul mocked at all this pretence. Herself, she kept on 
 pretending. She dressed herself and made herself fine, she 
 attended her lectures and scribbled her notes. But all in a 
 mood of superficial, mocking facility. She understood well 
 enough their two-and-two-make-f our tricks. She was as clever 
 
424 THE RAINBOW 
 
 as they were. But care ! did she care about their monkey 
 tricks of knowledge or learning or civic deportment ? She did 
 not care in the least. 
 
 There was Skrebensky, there was her dark, vital self. Out- 
 side the college, the outer darkness, Skrebensky was waiting. 
 On the edge of the night, he was attentive. Did he care? 
 
 She was free as a leopard that sends up its raucous cry 
 in the night. She had the potent, dark stream of her own 
 blood, she had the glimmering core of fecundity, she had 
 her mate, her complement, her sharer in fruition. So, she had 
 all, everything. 
 
 Skrebensky was staying in Nottingham all the time. He 
 too was free. He knew no one in this town, he had no civic 
 self to maintain. He was free. Their trams and markets 
 and theatres and public meetings were a shaken kaleidoscope 
 to him, he watched as a lion or a tiger may lie with narrowed 
 eyes watching the people pass before its cage, the kaleido- 
 scopic unreality of people, or a leopard lie blinking, watching 
 the incomprehensible feats of the keepers. He despised it all 
 it was all non-existent. Their good professors, their good 
 clergymen, their good political speakers, their good, earnest 
 women all the time he felt his soul was grinning, grinning 
 at the sight of them. So many performing puppets, all wood 
 and rag for the performance! 
 
 He watched the citizen, a pillar of society, a model, saw 
 the stiff goafs legs, which have become almost stiffened to 
 wood in the desire to make them puppet in their action, he 
 saw the trousers formed to the puppet-action : man's legs, but 
 man's legs become rigid and deformed, ugly, mechanical. 
 
 He was curiously happy, being alone, now. The glimmer- 
 ing grin was on his face. He had no longer any necessity to 
 take part in the performing tricks of the rest. He had 
 discovered the clue to himself, he had escaped from the show, 
 like a wild beast escaped straight back into its jungle. Hav- 
 ing a room in a quiet hotel, he hired a horse and rode out into 
 the country, staying sometimes for the night in some village, 
 and returning the next day. 
 
 He felt rich and abundant in himself. Everything he did 
 was a voluptuous pleasure to him either to ride on horse- 
 back, or to walk, or to lie in the sun, or to drink in a public- 
 house. He had no use for people, nor for words. He had 
 an amused pleasure in everything, a great sense of voluptuous 
 richness in himself, and of the fecundity of the universal 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 425 
 
 night he inhabited. The puppet shapes of people, their wood- 
 mechanical voices, he was remote from them. 
 
 For there were always his meetings with Ursula. Very 
 often, she did not go to college in the afternoon, but walked 
 with him instead. Or he took a motor-car or a dog-cart and 
 they drove into the country, leaving the car and going away 
 by themselves into the woods. He had not taken her yet. 
 With subtle, instinctive economy, they went to the end of 
 each kiss, each embrace, each pleasure in intimate contact, 
 knowing subconsciously that the last was coming. It was 
 to be their final entry into the source of creation. 
 
 She took him home, and he stayed a week-end at Beldover 
 with her family. She loved having him in the house. 
 Strange how he seemed to come into the atmosphere of her 
 family, with his laughing, insidious grace. They all loved 
 him, he was kin to them. His raillery, his warm, voluptuous 
 mocking presence was meat and joy to the Brangwen house- 
 hold. For this house was always quivering with darkness, 
 they put off their puppet form when they came home, to lie 
 and drowse in the sun. 
 
 There was a sense of freedom amongst them all, of the 
 undercurrent of darkness among them all. Yet here, at home, 
 Ursula resented it. It became distasteful to her. And she 
 knew that if they understood the real relationship between her 
 and Skrebensky, her parents, her father in particular, would 
 go mad with rage. So subtly, she seemed to be like any other 
 girl who is more or less courted by a man. And she was like 
 any other girl. But in her, the antagonism to the social im- 
 position was for the time complete and final. 
 
 She waited, every moment of the day, for his next kiss. 
 She admitted it to herself in shame and bliss. Almost con- 
 sciously, she waited. He waited, but, until the time came, 
 more unconsciously. When the time came that he should kiss 
 her again, a prevention was an annihilation to him. He felt 
 his flesh go grey, he was heavy with a corpse-like inanition, 
 he did not exist, if the time passed unfulfilled. 
 
 He came to her finally in a superb consummation. It was 
 very dark, and again a windy, heavy night. They had come 
 down the lane towards Beldover, down to the valley. They 
 were at the end of their kisses, and there was the silence 
 between them. They stood as at the edge of a cliff, with 
 a great darkness beneath. 
 
 Coming out of the lane along the darkness, with the dark 
 
426 THE RAINBOW 
 
 space spreading down to the wind, and the twinkling lights 
 of the station below, the far-off windy chuff of a shunting 
 train, the tiny clink-clink-clink of the wagons blown between 
 the wind, the light of Beldover-edge twinkling upon the 
 blackness of the hill opposite, the glow of the furnaces along 
 the railway to the right, their steps began to falter. They 
 would soon come out of the darkness into the lights. It was 
 like turning back. It was unfulfilment. Two quivering, un- 
 willing creatures, they lingered on the edge of the darkness, 
 peering out at the lights and the machine-glimmer beyond. 
 They could not turn back to the world they could not. 
 
 So lingering along, they came to a great oak-tree by the 
 path. In all its budding mass it roared to the wind, and its 
 trunk vibrated in every fibre, powerful, indomitable. 
 
 " We will sit down," he said. 
 
 And in the roaring circle under the tree, that was almost 
 invisible yet whose powerful presence received them, they 
 lay a moment looking at the twinkling lights on the darkness 
 opposite, saw the sweeping brand of a train past the edge of 
 their darkened field. 
 
 Then he turned and kissed her, and she waited for him. 
 The pain to her was the pain she wanted, the agony was the 
 agony she wanted. She was caught up, entangled in the 
 powerful vibration of the night. The man, what was he ? 
 a dark, powerful vibration that encompassed her. She passed 
 away as on a dark wind, far, far away, into the pristine dark- 
 ness of paradise, ink) the original immortality. She entered 
 the dark fields of immortality. 
 
 When she rose, she felt strangely free, strong. She was 
 not ashamed, why should she be? He was walking beside 
 her, the man who had been with her. She had taken him, 
 they had been together. Whither they had gone, she did 
 not know. But it was as if she had received another nature. 
 She belonged to the eternal, changeless place into which they 
 had leapt together. 
 
 Her soul was sure and indifferent of the opinion of the 
 world of artificial light. As they went up the steps of the 
 foot-bridge over the railway, and met the train-passengers, 
 she felt herself belonging to another world, she walked past 
 them immune, a whole darkness dividing her from them. 
 When she went into the lighted dining-room at home, she 
 was impervious to the lights and the eyes of her parents. 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 427 
 
 Her everyday self was just the same. She merely Had an- 
 other, stronger self that knew the darkness. 
 
 This curious separate strength, that existed in darkness and 
 pride of night, never forsook her. She had never been more 
 herself. It could not occur to her that anybody, not even the 
 young man of the world, Skrebensky, should have anything 
 at all to do with her permanent self. As for her temporal, 
 social self, she let it look after itself. 
 
 Her whole soul was implicated with Skrebensky not the 
 young man of the world, but the undifferentiated man he was. 
 She was perfectly sure of herself, perfectly strong, stronger 
 than all the world. The world was not strong she was 
 strong. The world existed only in a secondary sense : she 
 existed supremely. 
 
 She continued at college, in her ordinary routine, merely 
 as a cover to her dark, powerful under-life. The fact of her- 
 self, and with her Skrebensky, was so powerful, that she took 
 rest in the other. She went to college in the morning, and 
 attended her classes, flowering, and remote. 
 
 She had lunch with him in his hotel; every evening she 
 spent with him, either in town, at his rooms, or in the country. 
 She made the excuse at home of evening study for her degree. 
 But she paid not the slightest attention to her study. 
 
 They were both absolute and happy and calm. The fact of 
 their own consummate being made everything else so entirely 
 subordinate that they were free. The only thing they wanted, 
 as the days went by, was more time to themselves. They 
 wanted the time to be absolutely their own. 
 
 The Easter vacation was approaching. They agreed to go 
 right away. It would not matter if they did not come back. 
 They were indifferent to the actual facts. 
 
 " I suppose we ought to get married," he said, rather wist- 
 fully. It was so magnificently free and in a deeper world, as 
 it was. To make public their connection would be to put it in 
 range with all the things which nullified him, and from which 
 he was for the moment entirely dissociated. If he married he 
 would have to assume his social self. And the thought of 
 assuming his social self made him at once diffident and ab- 
 stract. If she were his social wife, if she were part of that 
 complication of dead reality, then what had his under-life to 
 do with her ? One's social wife was almost a material symbol. 
 Whereas now she was something more vivid to him than any- 
 
428 THE RAINBOW 
 
 thing in conventional life could be. She gave the complete 
 lie to all conventional life, he and she stood together, dark, 
 fluid, infinitely potent, giving the living lie to the dead whole 
 which contained them. 
 
 He watched her pensive, puzzled face. 
 
 "I don't think I want to marry you," she said, her brow 
 clouded. 
 
 It piqued him rather. 
 
 "Why not? "he asked. 
 
 " Let's think about it afterwards, shall we ? " she said. 
 
 He was crossed, yet he loved her violently. 
 
 " You've got a museau, not a face," he said. 
 
 " Have I ? " she cried, her face lighting up like a pure flame. 
 She thought she had escaped. Yet he returned he was not 
 satisfied. 
 
 "Why?" he asked, "why don't you want to marry me?" 
 
 " I don't want to be with other people," she said. " I want 
 to be like this. I'll tell you if ever I want to marry you." 
 
 " All right," he said. 
 
 He would rather the thing was left indefinite, and that she 
 took the responsibility. 
 
 They talked of the Easter vacation. She thought only of 
 complete enjoyment. 
 
 They went to an hotel in Piccadilly. She was supposed to 
 be his wife. They bought a wedding-ring for a shilling, from 
 a shop in a poor quarter. 
 
 They had revoked altogether the ordinary mortal world. 
 Their confidence was like a possession upon them. They 
 were possessed. Perfectly and supremely free they felt, proud 
 beyond all question, and surpassing mortal conditions. 
 
 They were perfect, therefore nothing else existed. The 
 world was a world of servants whom one civilly ignored. 
 Wherever they went, they were the sensuous aristocrats, warm, 
 bright, glancing with pure pride of the senses. 
 
 The effect upon other people was extraordinary. The glam- 
 our was cast from the young couple upon all they came into 
 contact with, waiters or chance acquaintances. 
 
 " Oui, Monsieur le baron/' she would reply with a mocking 
 courtesy to her husband. 
 
 So they came to be treated as titled people. He was an 
 officer in the engineers. They were just married, going to 
 India immediately. 
 
 Thus a tissue of romance was round them. She believed 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 429 
 
 she was a young wife of a titled husband on the eve of de- 
 parture for India. This, the social fact, was a delicious make- 
 belief. The living fact was that he and she were man and 
 woman, absolute and beyond all limitation. 
 
 The days went by they were to have three weeks together 
 in perfect success. All the time, they themselves were 
 reality, all outside was tribute to them. They were quite 
 careless about money, but they did nothing very extravagant. 
 He was rather surprised when he found that he had spent 
 twenty pounds in a little under a week, but it was only the 
 irritation of having to go to the bank. The machinery of 
 the old system lasted for him, not the system. The money 
 simply did not exist. 
 
 Neither did any of the old obligations. They came home 
 from the theatre, had supper, then flitted about in their dress- 
 ing-gowns. They had a large bedroom and a corner sitting- 
 room high up, remote and very cosy. They ate all their meals 
 in their own rooms, attended by a young German called Hans, 
 who thought them both wonderful, and answered assiduously : 
 
 " Geiviss, Herr Baron bitte sehr, Frau Baronin" 
 
 Often, they saw the pink of dawn away across the park. 
 The tower of Westminster Cathedral was emerging, the lamps 
 of Piccadilly, stringing away beside the trees of the park, 
 were becoming pale and moth-like, the morning traffic was 
 clock-clocking down the shadowy road, which had gleamed all 
 night like metal, down below, running far ahead into the 
 night, beneath the lamps, and which was now vague, as in a 
 mist, because of the dawn. 
 
 Then, as the flush of dawn became stronger, they opened 
 the glass doors and went out on to the giddy balcony, feeling 
 triumphant as two angels in bliss, looking down at the still 
 sleeping world, which would wake to a dutiful, rumbling, 
 sluggish turmoil of unreality. 
 
 Soon they were fast asleep, asleep till mid-day, close together, 
 sleeping one sleep. Then they awoke to the ever-changing 
 reality of their state. They alone inhabited the world of 
 reality. All the rest lived on a lower sphere. 
 
 Whatever they wanted to do, they did. They saw a few 
 people Dorothy, whose guest she was supposed to be, and 
 a couple of friends of Skrebensky, young Oxford men, who 
 called her Mrs. Skrebensky with entire simplicity. They 
 treated her, indeed, with such respect, that she began to 
 think she was really quite of the whole universe, of the old 
 
430 THE RAINBOW 
 
 world as well as of the new. She forgot she was outside 
 the pale of the old world. She thought she had brought it 
 under the spell of her own, real world. And so she had. 
 
 In such ever-changing reality the weeks went by. All the 
 time, they were an unknown world to each other. Every 
 movement made by the one was a reality and an adventure 
 to the other. They did not want outside excitements. They 
 went to very few theatres, they were often in their sitting- 
 room high up over Piccadilly, with windows open on two 
 sides, and the door open on to the balcony, looking over 
 the Green Park, or down upon the minute travelling of the 
 traffic. 
 
 Then suddenly, looking at a sunset, she wanted to go. She 
 must be gone. She must be gone at once. And in two hours' 
 time they were at Charing Cross taking train for Paris. Paris 
 was his suggestion. She did not care where it was. The 
 great joy was in setting out. And for a few days she was 
 happy in the novelty of Paris. 
 
 Then, for some reason, she must call in Rouen on the way 
 back to London. He had an instinctive mistrust of her desire 
 for the place. But, perversely, she wanted to go there. It 
 was as if she wanted to try its effect upon her. 
 
 For the first time, in Rouen, he had a cold feeling of death ; 
 not afraid of any other man, but of her. She seemed to leave 
 him. She followed after something that was not him. She 
 did not want him. The old streets, the cathedral, the age and 
 the monumental peace of the town took her away from him. 
 She turned to it as if to something she had forgotten, and 
 wanted. This was now the reality; this great stone cathedral 
 slumbering there in its mass, which knew no transience nor 
 heard any denial. It was majestic in its stability, its splendid 
 absoluteness. 
 
 Her soul began to run by itself. He did not realize, nor 
 did she. Yet in Rouen he had the first deadly anguish, the 
 first sense of the death towards which they were wandering. 
 And she felt the first heavy yearning, heavy, heavy hopeless 
 warning, almost like a deep, uneasy sinking into apathy, hope- 
 lessness. 
 
 They returned to London. But still they had two days. 
 He began to tremble, he grew feverish with the fear of her 
 departure. She had in her some fatal prescience, that made 
 her calm. What would be, would be, 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 431 
 
 He remained fairly easy, however, still in his state of height- 
 ened glamour, till she had gone, and he had turned away from 
 St. Pancras, and sat on the tram-car going up Pimlico to the 
 Angel, to Moorgate Street on Sunday evening. 
 
 Then the cold horror gradually soaked into him. He saw 
 the horror of the City Eoad, he realized the ghastly cold 
 sordidness of the tram-car in which he sat. Cold, stark, ashen 
 sterility had him surrounded. Where then was the luminous, 
 wonderful world he belonged to by rights ? How did he come 
 to be thrown on this refuse-heap where he was? 
 
 He was as if mad. The horror of the brick buildings, of 
 the tram-car, of the ashen-grey people in the street made 
 him reeling and blind as if drunk. He went mad. He had 
 lived with her in a close, living, pulsing world, where every- 
 thing pulsed with rich being. Now he found himself strug- 
 gling amid an ashen-dry, cold world of rigidity, dead walls 
 and mechanical traffic, and creeping, spectre-like people. The 
 life was extinct, only ash moved and stirred or stood rigid, 
 there was a horrible, clattering activity, a rattle like the falling 
 of dry slag, cold and sterile. It was as if the sunshine that fell 
 were unnatural light exposing the ash of the town, as if the 
 lights at night were the sinister gleam of decomposition. 
 
 Quite mad, beside himself, he went to his club and sat with 
 a glass of whiskey, motionless, as if turned to clay. He felt 
 like a corpse that is inhabited with just enough life to make it 
 appear as any other of the spectral, unliving beings which we 
 call people in our dead language. Her absence was worse than 
 pain to him. It destroyed his being. 
 
 Dead, he went on from lunch to tea. His face was all the 
 time fixed and stiff and colourless, his life was a dry, mechani- 
 cal movement. Yet even he wondered slightly at the awful 
 misery that had overcome him. How could he be so ash-like 
 and extinct ? He wrote her a letter. 
 
 " I have been thinking that we must get married before long. 
 My pay will be more when I get out to India, we shall be able 
 to get along. Or if you don't want to go to India, I could 
 very probably stay here in England. But I think you would 
 like India. You could ride, and you would know just every- 
 body out there. Perhaps if you stay on to take your degree, 
 we might marry immediately after that. I will write to your 
 father as soon as I hear from you " 
 
 He went on, disposing of her. If only he could be with 
 
432 THE RAINBOW 
 
 her ! All he wanted now was to marry her, to be sure of her. 
 Yet all the time he was perfectly, perfectly hopeless, cold, 
 extinct, without emotion or connection. 
 
 He felt as if his life were dead. His soul was extinct. The 
 whole being of him had become sterile, he was a spectre, 
 divorced from life. He had no fulness, he was just a flat 
 shape. Day by day the madness accumulated in him. The 
 horror of not-being possessed him. 
 
 He went here, there, and everywhere. But whatever he 
 did, he knew that only the cipher of him was there, nothing 
 was filled in. He went to the theatre ; what he heard and saw 
 fell upon a cold surface of consciousness, which was now all 
 that he was, there was nothing behind it, he could have no 
 experience of any sort. Mechanical registering took place in 
 him, no more. He had no being, no contents. Neither had 
 the people he came into contact with. They were mere per- 
 mutations of known quantities. There was no roundness or 
 fulness in this world he now inhabited, everything was a dead 
 shape mental arrangement, without life or being. 
 
 Much of the time, he was with friends and comrades. Then 
 he forgot everything. Their activities made up for his own 
 negation, they engaged his negative horror. 
 
 He only became happy when he drank, and he drank a good 
 deal. Then he was just the opposite to what he had been. 
 He became a warm, diffuse, glowing cloud, in a warm, diffuse, 
 aerial world. He was one with everything, in a diffuse 
 formless fashion. Everything melted down into a rosy glow, 
 and he was the glow, and everything was the glow, everybody 
 else was the glow, and it was very nice, very nice. He would 
 sing songs, it was so nice. 
 
 Ursula went back to Beldover shut and firm. She loved 
 Skrebensky, of that she was resolved. She would allow noth- 
 ing else. 
 
 She read his long, obsessed letter about getting married 
 and going to India, without any particular response. She 
 seemed to ignore what he said about marriage. It did not 
 come home to her. He seemed, throughout the greater part 
 of his letter, to be talking without much meaning. 
 
 She replied to him pleasantly and easily. She rarely wrote 
 long letters. 
 
 " India sounds lovely. I can just see myself on an elephant 
 swaying between lanes of obsequious natives. But I don't 
 know if father would let me go. We must see. 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 433 
 
 " I keep living over again the lovely times we have. had. 
 But I don't think you liked me quite so much towards the 
 end, did you ? You did not like me when we left Paris. Why 
 didn't you ? 
 
 " I love you very much. I love your body. It is so clear 
 and fine. I am glad you do not go naked, or all the women 
 would fall in love with you. I am very jealous of it, I love 
 it so much." 
 
 He was more or less satisfied with this letter. But day 
 after day he was walking about, dead, non-existent. 
 
 He could not come again to Nottingham until the end of 
 April. Then he persuaded her to go with him for a week- 
 end to a friend's house near Oxford. By this time they were 
 engaged. He had written to her father, and the thing was set- 
 tled. He brought her an emerald ring, of which she was very 
 proud. 
 
 Her people treated her now with a little distance, as if she 
 had already left them. They left her very much alone. 
 
 She went with him for the three days in the country house 
 near Oxford. It was delicious, and she was very happy. But 
 the thing she remembered most was when, getting up in the 
 morning after he had gone back quietly to his own room, hav- 
 ing spent the night with her, she found herself very rich 
 in being alone, and enjoying to the full her solitary room, she 
 drew up her blind and saw the plum-trees in the garden below 
 all glittering and snowy and delighted with the sunshine, 
 in full bloom under a blue sky. They threw out their blossom, 
 they flung it about under the blue heavens, the whitest blossom ! 
 How excited it made her. 
 
 She had to hurry through her dressing to go and walk in 
 the garden under the plum-trees, before any one should come 
 and talk to her. Out she slipped, and paced like a queen in 
 fairy pleasaunces. The blossom was silver-shadowy when she 
 looked up from under the tree at the blue sky. There was a 
 faint scent, a faint noise of bees, a wonderful quickness of 
 happy morning. 
 
 She heard the breakfast gong and went indoors. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " asked the others. 
 
 " I had to go out under the plum-trees," she said, her face 
 glowing like a flower. " It is so lovely." 
 
 A shadow of anger crossed Skrebensky's soul. She had not 
 wanted him to be there. He hardened his will. 
 
 At night there was a moon, and the blossom glistened 
 
434 THE RAINBOW 
 
 ghostly, they went iogether to look at it. She saw the moon- 
 light on his face as he waited near her, and his features were 
 like silver and his eyes in shadow were unfathomable. She 
 was in love with him. He was very quiet. 
 
 They went indoors and she pretended to be tired. So she 
 went quickly to bed. 
 
 " Don't be long coming to me/' she whispered, as she was 
 supposed to be kissing him good-night. 
 
 And he waited, intent, obsessed, for the moment when he 
 could come to her. 
 
 She enjoyed him, she made much of him. She liked to 
 put her fingers on the soft skin of his sides, or on the softness 
 of his back, when he made the muscles hard underneath, 
 the muscles developed very strong through riding; and she 
 had a great thrill of excitement and passion, because of the 
 unimpressible hardness of his body, that was so soft and 
 smooth under her fingers, that came to her with such absolute 
 service. 
 
 She owned his body and enjoyed it with all the delight 
 and carelessness of a possessor. But he had become gradually 
 afraid of her body. He wanted her, he wanted her endlessly. 
 But there had come a tension into his desire, a constraint 
 which prevented his enjoying the delicious approach and the 
 lovable close of the endless embrace. He was afraid. His 
 will was always tense, fixed. 
 
 Her final examination was at midsummer. She insisted 
 on sitting for it, although she had neglected her work during 
 the past months. He also wanted her to go in for the degree. 
 Then, he thought, she would be satisfied. Secretly he hoped 
 she would fail, so that she would be more glad of him. 
 
 "Would you rather live in India or in England when we 
 are married ? " he asked her. 
 
 " Oh, in India by far/' she said, with a careless lack of 
 consideration which annoyed him. 
 
 Once she said, with heat : 
 
 " I shall be glad to leave England. Everything is so 
 meagre and paltry, it is so unspiritual I hate democracy." 
 
 He became angry to hear her talk like this, he did not know 
 why. Somehow, he could not bear it, when she attacked 
 things. It was as if she were attacking him. 
 
 "What do you mean?" he asked her, hostile. "Why do 
 you hate democracy ? " 
 
 " Only the greedy and ugly people come to the top in a 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 455 
 
 democracy," she said, "because they're the only people who 
 will push themselves there. Only degenerate races are demo- 
 cratic." 
 
 " What do you want then an aristocracy ? " he asked, 
 secretly moved. He always felt that by rights he belonged 
 to the ruling aristocracy. Yet to hear her speak for his class 
 pained him with a curious, painful pleasure. He felt he was 
 acquiescing in something illegal, taking to himself some wrong, 
 reprehensible advantage. 
 
 " I do want an aristocracy," she cried. " And I'd far 
 rather have an aristocracy of birth than of money. Who are 
 the aristocrats now who are chosen as the best to rule? 
 Those who have money and the brains for money. It doesn't 
 matter what else they have : but they must have money-brains, 
 because they are ruling in the name of money/' 
 
 " The people elect the government," he said. 
 
 "I know they do. But what are the people? Each one 
 of them is a money interest. I hate it, that anybody is my 
 equal who has the same amount of money as I have. I 
 know I am better than all of them. I hate them. They are 
 not my equals. I hate equality on a money basis. It is the 
 equality of dirt." 
 
 Her eyes blazed at him, he felt as if she wanted to destroy 
 him. She had gripped him and was trying to break him. 
 His anger sprang up, against her. At least he would fight 
 for his existence with her. A hard, blind resistance possessed 
 him. 
 
 " I don't care about money," he said, " neither do I want 
 to put my finger in the pie. I am too sensitive about my 
 finger." 
 
 "What is your finger to me?" she cried, in a passion. 
 "You with your dainty fingers, and your going to India 
 because you will be one of the somebodies there ! It's a mere 
 dodge, your going to India." 
 
 " In what way a dodge ? " he cried, white with anger and 
 fear. 
 
 " You think the Indians are simpler than us, and so you'll 
 enjoy being near them and being a lord over them," she said. 
 " And you'll feel so righteous, governing them for their own 
 good. Who are you, to feel righteous? What are you right- 
 eous about, in your governing? Your governing stinks. 
 What do you govern for, but to make things there as dead 
 and mean as they are here ! " 
 
436 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " I don't feel righteous in the least," he said. 
 
 " Then what do you feel ? It's all such a nothingness, what 
 you feel and what you don't feel." 
 
 " What do you feel yourself ? " he asked. " Aren't you 
 righteous in your own mind ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am, because I'm against you, and all your old, dead 
 things," she cried. 
 
 She seemed, with the last words, uttered in hard knowledge, 
 to strike down the flag that he kept flying. He felt cut off 
 at the knees, a figure made worthless. A horrible sickness 
 gripped him, as if his legs were really cut away, and he could 
 not move, but remained a crippled trunk, dependent, worth- 
 less. The ghastly sense of helplessness, as if he were a mere 
 figure that did not exist vitally, made him mad, beside him- 
 self. 
 
 Now, even whilst he was with her, this death of himself 
 came over him, when he walked about like a body from which 
 all individual life is gone. In this state he neither heard nor 
 saw nor felt, only the mechanism of his life continued. 
 
 He hated her, as far as, in this state, he could hate. His 
 cunning suggested to him all the ways of making her esteem 
 him. For she did not esteem him. He left her and did not 
 write to her. He flirted with other women, with Gudrun. 
 
 This last made her very fierce. She was still fiercely jealous 
 of his body. In passionate anger she upbraided him because, 
 not being man enough to satisfy one woman, he hung round 
 others. She lifted her shoulders and turned aside her face in a 
 motion of cold, indifferent worthlessness. He felt he would 
 kill her. 
 
 When she had roused him to a pitch of madness, when she 
 saw his eyes all dark and mad with suffering, then a great 
 suffering overcame her soul, a great, inconquerable suffering. 
 And she loved him. For, oh, she wanted to love him. 
 Stronger than life or death was her craving to be able to 
 love him. 
 
 And at such moments, when he was mad with her destroying 
 him, when all his complacency was destroyed, all his every- 
 day self was broken, and only the stripped, rudimentary, 
 primal man remained, demented with torture, her passion to 
 love him became love, she took him again, they came together 
 in an overwhelming passion, in which he knew he satisfied her. 
 But it all contained a developing germ of death. After 
 each contact, her anguished desire for him or for that which 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 437 
 
 she never had from him was stronger, her love was more 
 hopeless. After each contact his mad dependence on her was 
 deepened, his hope of standing strong and taking her in his 
 own strength was weakened. He felt himself a mere attribute 
 of her. 
 
 Whitsuntide came, just before her examination. She was 
 to have a few days of rest. Dorothy had inherited her patri- 
 mony, and had taken a cottage in Sussex. She invited them 
 to stay with her. 
 
 They went down to Dorothy's neat, low cottage at the foot 
 of the downs. Here they could do as they liked. Ursula 
 was always yearning to go to the top of the downs. The 
 white track wound up to the rounded summit. And she 
 must go. 
 
 Up there, she could see the Channel a few miles away, the 
 sea raised up and faintly glittering in the sky, the Isle of 
 Wight a shadow lifted in the far distance, the river winding 
 bright through the patterned plain to seaward, Arundel Castle 
 a shadowy bulk, and then the rolling of the high, smooth 
 downs, making a high, smooth land under heaven, acknowl- 
 edging only the heavens in their great, sun-glowing strength, 
 and suffering only a few bushes to trespass on the intercourse 
 between their great, unabateable body and the changeful body 
 of the sky. 
 
 Below she saw the villages and the woods of the weald, 
 and the train running bravely, a gallant little thing, running 
 with all the importance of the world over the water meadows 
 and into the gap of the downs, waving its white steam, yet 
 all the while so little. So little, yet its courage carried it 
 from end to end of the earth, till there was no place where it 
 did not go. Yet the downs, in magnificant indifference, bear- 
 ing limbs and body to the sun, drinking sunshine and sea- 
 wind and sea-wet cloud into its golden skin, with superb still- 
 ness and calm of being, was not the downs still more wonder- 
 ful ? The blind, pathetic, energetic courage of the train as it 
 steamed tinily away through the patterned levels to the sea's 
 dimness, so fast and so energetic, made her weep. Where was 
 it going ? It was going nowhere, it was just going. So blind, 
 so without goal or aim, yet so hasty ! She sat on an old pre- 
 historic earth-work and cried, and the tears ran down her face. 
 The train had tunnelled all the earth, blindly, and uglily. 
 
 And she lay face downwards on the downs, that were so 
 strong, that cared only for their intercourse with the ever- 
 
43$ THE RAINBOW 
 
 lasting skies, and she wished she could become a strong mound 
 smooth under the sky, bosom and limbs bared to all winds 
 and clouds and bursts of sunshine. 
 
 But she must get up again and look down from her foot- 
 hold of sunshine, down and away at the patterned, level earth, 
 with its villages and its smoke and its energy. So shortsighted 
 the train seemed, running to the distance, so terrifying in 
 their littleness the villages, with such pettiness in their ac- 
 tivity. 
 
 Skrebensky wandered dazed, not knowing where he was 
 or what he was doing with her. All her passion seemed to 
 be to wander up there on the downs, and when she must 
 descend to earth, she was heavy. Up there she was exhilar- 
 ated and free. 
 
 She would not love him in a house any more. She said 
 she hated houses, and particularly she hated beds. There 
 was something distasteful in his coming to her bed. 
 
 She would stay the night on the downs, up there, he with 
 her. It was midsummer, the days were glamorously long. 
 At about half-past ten, when the bluey-black darkness had 
 at last fallen, they took rugs and climbed the steep track to 
 the summit of the downs, he and she. 
 
 Up there, the stars were big, the earth below was gone into 
 darkness. She was free up there with the stars. Far out 
 they saw tiny yellow lights but it was very far out, at sea, 
 or on land. She was free up among the stars. 
 
 She took off her clothes, and made him take off all his, and 
 they ran over the smooth, moonless turf, a long way, more than 
 a mile from where they had left their clothing, running in the 
 dark, soft wind, utterly naked, as naked as the downs them- 
 selves. Her hair was loose and blew about her shoulders, she 
 ran swiftly, wearing sandals when she set off on the long run 
 to the dew-pond. 
 
 In the round dew-pond the stars were untroubled. She 
 ventured softly into the water, grasping at the stars with her 
 hands. 
 
 And then suddenly she started back, running swiftly. He 
 was there, beside her, but only on sufferance. He was a 
 screen for her fears. He served her. She took him, she 
 clasped him, clenched him close, but her eyes were open look- 
 ing at the stars, it was as if the stars were lying with her and 
 entering the unfathomable darkness of her womb, fathoming 
 her at last. It was not him. 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 43d 
 
 The dawn came. They stood together on a high place, 
 an earthwork of the stone-age men, watching for the light. 
 It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched 
 a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The 
 darkness became bluer. A little wind was running in from 
 the sea behind. It seemed to be running to the pale rift of the 
 dawn. And she and he darkly, on an outpost of the darkness, 
 stood watching for the dawn. 
 
 The light grew stronger, gushing up against the dark sap- 
 phire of the transparent night. The light grew stronger, 
 whiter, then over it hovered a flush of rose. A flush of rose, 
 and then yellow, pale, new-created yellow, the whole quiver- 
 ing and poising momentarily over the fountain on the sky's 
 rim. 
 
 The rose hovered and quivered, burned, fused to flame, to 
 a transient red, whilst the yellow urged out in great waves, 
 thrown from the ever-increasing fountain, great waves of 
 yellow flinging into the sky, scattering its spray over the 
 darkness, which became bluer and bluer, paler, till soon it 
 would itself be a radiance, which had been darkness. 
 
 The sun was coming. There was a quivering, a powerful, 
 terrifying swim of molten light. Then the molten source 
 itself surged forth, revealing itself. The sun was in the sky, 
 too powerful to look at. 
 
 And the ground beneath lay so still, so peaceful. Only 
 now and again a cock crew. Otherwise, from the distant 
 yellow hills to the pine-trees at the foot of the downs, every- 
 thing was newly washed into being, in a flood of new, golden 
 creation. 
 
 It was so unutterably still and perfect with promise, the 
 golden-lighted, distinct land, that Ursula's soul rocked and 
 wept. Suddenly he glanced at her. The tears were running 
 over her cheeks, her mouth was working strangely. 
 
 " What is the matter? " he asked. 
 
 After a moment's struggle with her voice, 
 
 " It is so beautiful," she said, looking at the glowing, beau- 
 tiful land. It was so beautiful, so perfect, and so unsullied. 
 
 He too realized what England would be in a few hours' 
 time a blind, sordid, strenuous activity, all for nothing, 
 fuming with dirty smoke and running trains and groping in 
 the bowels of the earth, all for nothing. A ghastliness came 
 over him. 
 
 He looked at Ursula. Her face was wet with tears, very 
 
446 THE RAINBOW 
 
 bright, like a transfiguration in the refulgent light. Nor was 
 his the hand to wipe away the burning, bright tears. He stood 
 apart, overcome by a cruel ineffeetuality. 
 
 Gradually a great, helpless sorrow was rising in him. But 
 as yet he was fighting it away, he was struggling for his own 
 life. He became very quiet and unaware of the things about 
 him, awaiting, as it were, her judgment on him. 
 
 They returned to Nottingham, the time of her examina- 
 tion came. She must go to London. But she would not stay 
 with him in an hotel. She would go to a quiet little pension 
 near the British Museum. 
 
 Those quiet residential squares of London made a great 
 impression on her mind. They were very complete. Her 
 mind seemed imprisoned in their quietness. Who was going 
 to liberate her? 
 
 In the evening, her practical examination being over, he 
 went with her to dinner at one of the hotels down the river, 
 near Richmond. It was golden and beautiful, with yellow 
 water and white and scarlet-striped boat-awnings, and blue 
 shadows under the trees. 
 
 " When shall we be married ? " he asked her, quietly, simply, 
 as if it were a mere question of comfort. 
 
 She watched the changing pleasure-traffic of the river. He 
 looked at her golden, puzzled museau. The knot gathered in 
 his throat. 
 
 " I don't know," she said. 
 
 A hot grief gripped his throat. 
 
 " Why don't you know don't you want to be married ? " 
 he asked her. 
 
 Her head turned slowly, her face, puzzled, like a boy's face, 
 expressionless because she was trying to think, looked towards 
 his face. She did not see him, because she was pre-occupied. 
 She did not quite know what she was going to say. 
 
 " I don't think I want to be married," she said, and her 
 nai've, troubled, puzzled eyes rested a moment on his, then 
 travelled away, pre-occupied. 
 
 " Do you mean never, or not just yet ? " he asked. 
 
 The knot in his throat grew harder, his face was drawn as 
 if he were being strangled. 
 
 " I mean never," she said, out of some far self which spoke 
 for once beyond her. 
 
 His drawn, strangled face watched her blankly for a few 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 441 
 
 moments, then a strange sound took place in his throat. She 
 started, came to herself, and, horrified, saw him. His head 
 made a queer motion, the chin jerked back against the throat, 
 the curious, crowing, hiccupping sound came again, his face 
 twisted like insanity, and he was crying, crying blind and 
 twisted as if something were broken which kept him in control. 
 
 " Tony don't," she cried, starting up. 
 
 It tore every one of her nerves to see him. He made grop- 
 ing movements to get out of his chair. But he was crying 
 uncontrollably, noiselessly, with his face twisted like a mask, 
 contorted and the tears running down the amazing grooves in 
 his cheeks. Blindly, his face always this horrible working 
 mask, he groped for his hat, for his way down from the ter- 
 race. It was eight o'clock, but still brightly light. The other 
 people were staring. In great agitation, part of which was ex- 
 asperation, she stayed behind, paid the waiter with a half- 
 sovereign, took her yellow silk coat, then followed Skrebensky. 
 
 She saw him walking with brittle, blind steps along the 
 path by the river. She could tell by the strange stiffness and 
 brittleness of his figure that he was still crying. Hurrying 
 after him, running, she took his arm. 
 
 "Tony," she cried, "don't! Why are you like this? 
 What are you doing this for? Don't. It's not necessary." 
 
 He heard, and his manhood was cruelly, coldly defaced. 
 Yet it was no good. He could not gain control of his face. 
 His face, his breast, were weeping violently, as if automati- 
 cally. His will, his knowledge had nothing to do with it. He 
 simply could not stop. 
 
 She walked holding his arm, silent with exasperation and 
 perplexity and pain. He took the uncertain steps of a blind 
 man, because his mind was blind with weeping. 
 
 " Shall we go home ? Shall we have a taxi ? " she said. 
 
 He could pay no attention. Very flustered, very agitated, 
 she signalled indefinitely to a taxi-cab that was going slowly 
 by. The driver saluted and drew up. She opened the door 
 and pushed Skrebensky in, then took her own place. Her 
 face was uplifted, the mouth closed down, she looked hard 
 and cold and ashamed. She winced as the driver's dark, red 
 face was thrust round upon her, a full-blooded, animal face 
 with black eyebrows and a thick, short-cut moustache. 
 
 " Where to, lady ? " he said, his white teeth showing. 
 Again for a moment she was flustered. 
 
442 THE RAINBOW 
 
 " Forty, Rutland Square," she said. 
 
 He touched his cap and stolidly set the car in motion. He 
 seemed to have a league with her to ignore Skrebensky. 
 
 The latter sat as if trapped within the taxi-cab, his face 
 still working, whilst occasionally he made quick slight move- 
 ments of the head, to shake away his tears. He never moved 
 his hands. She could not bear to look at him. She sat with 
 face uplifted and averted to the window. 
 
 At length, when she had regained some control over her- 
 self, she turned again to him. He was much quieter. His 
 face was wet, and twitched occasionally, his hands still lay 
 motionless. But his eyes were quite still, like a washed sky 
 after rain, full of a wan light, and quite steady, almost ghost- 
 like. 
 
 A pain flamed in her womb, for him. 
 
 " I didn't think I should hurt you," she said, laying her 
 hand very lightly, tentatively, on his arm. " The words came 
 without my knowing. They didn't mean anything, really." 
 
 He remained quite still, hearing, but washed all wan and 
 without feeling. She waited, looking at him, as if he were 
 some curious, not-understandable creature. 
 
 " You won't cry again, will you, Tony ? " 
 
 Some shame and bitterness against her burned him in the 
 question. She noticed how his moustache was soddened wet 
 with tears. Taking her handkerchief, she wiped his face. 
 The driver's heavy, stolid back remained always turned to 
 them, as if conscious but indifferent. Skrebensky sat motion- 
 less whilst Ursula wiped his face, softly, carefully, and yet 
 clumsily, not as well as he would have wiped it himself. 
 
 Her handkerchief was too small. It was soon wet through. 
 She groped in his pocket for his own. Then, with its more 
 ample capacity, she carefully dried his face. He remained 
 motionless all the while. Then she drew his cheek to hers 
 and kissed him. His face was cold. Her heart was hurt. 
 She saw the tears welling quickly to his eyes again. As if he 
 were a child, she again wiped away his tears. By now she 
 herself was on the point of weeping. Her underlip was 
 caught between her teeth. 
 
 So she sat still, for fear of her own tears, sitting close by 
 him, holding his hand warm and close and loving. Mean- 
 while the car ran on, and a soft, midsummer dusk began to 
 gather. For a long while they sat motionless. Only now and 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 443 
 
 again her hand closed more closely, lovingly, over his hand, 
 then gradually relaxed. 
 
 The dusk began to fall. One or two lights appeared. The 
 driver drew up to light his lamps. Skrebensky moved for 
 the first time, leaning forward to watch the driver. His face 
 had always the same still, clarified, almost childlike look, im- 
 personal. 
 
 They saw the driver's strange, full, dark face peering into 
 the lamps under drawn brows. Ursula shuddered. It was 
 the face almost of an animal, yet of a quick, strong, wary 
 animal that had them within its knowledge, almost within its 
 power. She clung closer to Skrebensky. 
 
 " My love ? " sjie said to him, questioningly, when the car 
 was again running in full motion. 
 
 He made no movement or sound. He let her hold his 
 hand, he let her reach forward, in the gathering darkness, 
 and kiss his still cheek. The crying had gone by he would 
 not cry any more. He was whole and himself again. 
 
 "My love/' she repeated, trying to make him notice her. 
 But as yet he could not. 
 
 He watched the road. They were running by Kensington 
 Gardens. For the first time his lips opened. 
 
 " Shall we get out and go into the park ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," she said, quietly, not sure what was coming. 
 
 After a moment he took the tube from its peg. She saw 
 the stout, strong, self-contained driver lean his head. 
 
 " Stop at Hyde Park Corner." 
 
 The dark head nodded, the car ran on just the same. 
 
 Presently they pulled up. Skrebensky paid the man. 
 Ursula stood back. She saw the driver salute as he received 
 his tip, and then, before he set the car in motion, turn and 
 look at her, with his quick, powerful, animal's look, his eyes 
 very concentrated and the whites of his eyes flickering. Then 
 he drove away into the crowd. He had let her go. She had 
 been afraid. 
 
 Skrebensky turned with her into the park. A band was 
 still playing and the place was thronged with people. They 
 listened to the ebbing music, then went aside to a dark seat, 
 where they sat closely, hand in hand. 
 
 Then at length, as out of the silence, she said to him, won- 
 dering : 
 
 "What hurt you so?" 
 
444 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She really did not know, at this moment. 
 
 " When you said you wanted never to marry me," he re- 
 plied, with a childish simplicity. 
 
 " But why did that hurt you so ? " she said. " You needn't 
 mind everything I say so particularly." 
 
 " I don't know I didn't want to do it," he said, humbly, 
 ashamed. 
 
 She pressed his hand warmly. They sat close together, 
 watching the soldiers go by with their sweethearts, the lights 
 trailing in myriads down the great thoroughfares that beat 
 on the edge of the park. 
 
 " I didn't know you cared so much," she said, also humbly. 
 
 " I didn't," he said. " I was knocked over myself. But 
 I care all the world." 
 
 His voice was so quiet and colourless, it made her heart go 
 pale with fear. 
 
 " My love ! " she said, drawing near to him. But she spoke 
 out of fear, not out of love. 
 
 "I care all the world I care for nothing else neither 
 in life nor in death," he said, in the same steady, colourless 
 voice of essential truth. 
 
 " Than for what ? " she murmured duskily. 
 
 l< Than for you to be with me." 
 
 And again she was afraid. Was she to be conquered by 
 this? She cowered close to him, very close to him. They 
 sat perfectly still, listening to the great, heavy, beating sound 
 of the town, the murmur of lovers going by, the footsteps of 
 soldiers. 
 
 She shivered against him. 
 
 "You are cold?" he said. 
 
 "A little." 
 
 " We will go and have some supper." 
 
 He was now always quiet and decided and remote, very 
 beautiful. He seemed to have some strange, cold power over 
 her. 
 
 They went to a restaurant, and drank chianti. But his 
 pale, wan look did not go away. 
 
 " Don't leave me to-night," he said at length, looking at 
 her, pleading. He was so strange and impersonal, she was 
 afraid. 
 
 " But the people of my place," she said, quivering. 
 
 " I will explain to them they know we are engaged." 
 
 She sat pale and mute. He waited. 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 445 
 
 " Shall we go?" he said at length. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " To an hotel." 
 
 Her heart was hardened. Without answering, she rose to 
 acquiesce. But she was now cold and unreal. Yet she could 
 not refuse him. It seemed like fate, a fate she did not want. 
 
 They went to an Italian hotel somewhere, and had a sombre 
 bedroom with a very large bed, clean, but sombre. The ceiling 
 was painted with a bunch of flowers in a big medallion over 
 the bed. She thought it was pretty. 
 
 He came to her, and cleaved to her very close, like steel 
 cleaving and clinching on to her. Her passion was roused, 
 it was fierce but cold. But it was fierce, and extreme, and 
 good, their passion this night. He slept with her fast in his 
 arms. All night long he held her fast against him. She was 
 passive, acquiescent. But her sleep was not very deep nor 
 very real. 
 
 She woke in the morning to a sound of water dashed on a 
 courtyard, to sunlight streaming through a lattice. She 
 thought she was in a foreign country. And Skrebensky was 
 there an incubus upon her. 
 
 She lay still, thinking, whilst his arm was round her, his 
 head against her shoulders, his body against hers, just behind 
 her. He was still asleep. 
 
 She watched the sunshine coming in bars through the 
 persiennes, and her immediate surroundings again melted 
 away. 
 
 She was in some other land, some other world, where the 
 old restraints had dissolved and vanished, where one moved 
 freely, not afraid of one's fellow men, nor wary, nor on the 
 defensive, but calm, indifferent, at one's ease. Vaguely, in 
 a sort of silver light, she wandered at large and at ease. The 
 bonds of the world were broken. This world of England had 
 vanished away. She heard a voice in the yard below calling : 
 
 " Giovann' O'-O'-O'-Giovann' ! " 
 
 And she knew she was in a new country, in a new life. It 
 was very delicious to lie thus still, with one's soul wandering 
 freely and simply in the silver light of some other, simpler, 
 more finely natural world. 
 
 But always there was a foreboding waiting to command 
 her. She became more aware of Skrebensky. She knew he 
 was waking up. She must modify her soul, depart from her 
 further world, for him. 
 
446 THE RAINBOW 
 
 She knew he was awake. He lay still, witH a concrete still- 
 ness, not as when he slept. Then his arm tightened almost 
 convulsively upon her, and he said, half timidly : 
 
 "Did you sleep well?" 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 " So did I." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " And do you love me ? " he asked. 
 
 She turned and looked at him searchingly. He seemed out- 
 side her. 
 
 " I do," she said. 
 
 But she said it out of complacency and a desire not to be 
 harried. There was a curious breach of silence between them, 
 which frightened him. 
 
 They lay rather late, then he rang for breakfast. She 
 wanted to be able to go straight downstairs and away from 
 the place, when she got up. She was happy in this room, but 
 the thought of the publicity of the hall downstairs rather trou- 
 bled her. 
 
 A young Italian, a Sicilian, dark and slightly pock-marked, 
 buttoned up in a sort of grey tunic, appeared with the tray. 
 His face had an almost African imperturbability, impassive, 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 " One might be in Italy/' Skrebensky said to him, genially. 
 A vacant look, almost like fear, came on the fellow's face. 
 He did not understand. 
 
 " This is like Italy," Skrebensky explained. 
 
 The face of the Italian flashed with a non-comprehending 
 smile, he finished setting out the tray, and was gone. He 
 did not understand : he would understand nothing : he disap- 
 peared from the door like a half-domesticated wild animal. 
 It made Ursula shudder slightly, the quick, sharp-sighted, 
 intent animality of the man. 
 
 Skrebensky was beautiful to her this morning, his face 
 softened and transfused with suffering and with love, his 
 movements very still and gentle. He was beautiful to her, 
 but she was detached from him by a chill distance. Always 
 she seemed to be bearing up against the distance that separated 
 them. But he was unaware. This morning he was trans- 
 fused and beautiful. She admired his movements, the way 
 he spread honey on his roll, or poured out the coffee. 
 
 When breakfast was over, she lay still again on the pillows, 
 whilst he went through his toilet. She watched him, as he 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 447 
 
 sponged himself, and quickly dried himself with the towel. 
 His body was beautiful, his movements intent and quick, 
 she admired him and she appreciated him without reserve. 
 He seemed completed now. He aroused no fruitful fecundity 
 in her. He seemed added up, finished. She knew him all 
 round, not on any side did he lead into the unknown. Poign- 
 ant, almost passionate appreciation she felt for him, but 
 none of the dreadful wonder, none of the rich fear, the con- 
 nection with the unknown, or the reverence of love. He was, 
 however, unaware this morning. His body was quiet and ful- 
 filled, his veins complete with satisfaction, he was happy, 
 finished. 
 
 Again she went home. But this time he went with her. 
 He wanted to stay by her. He wanted her to marry him. 
 It was already July. In early September he must sail for 
 India. He could not bear to think of going alone. She 
 must come with him. Nervously, he kept beside her. 
 
 Her examination was finished, her college career was over. 
 There remained for her now to marry or to work again. She 
 applied for no post. It was concluded she would marry. 
 India tempted her the strange, strange land. But with 
 the thought of Calcutta, or Bombay, or of Simla, and of the 
 European population, India was no more attractive to her than 
 Nottingham. 
 
 She had failed in her examination : she had gone down : she 
 had not taken her degree. It was a blow to her. It hardened 
 her soul. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," he said. " What are the odds, whether 
 you are a Bachelor of Arts or not, according to the London 
 University? All you know, you know, and if you are Mrs. 
 Skrebensky, the B.A. is meaningless." 
 
 Instead of consoling her, this made her harder, more ruth- 
 less. She was now up against her own fate. It was for her 
 to choose between being Mrs. Skrebensky, even Baroness Skre- 
 bensky, wife of a lieutenant in the Koyal Engineers, the Sap- 
 pers, as he called them, living with the European population 
 in India -or being Ursula Brangwen, spinster, school-mis- 
 tress. She was qualified by her Intermediate Arts examina- 
 tion. She would probably even now get a post quite easily 
 as assistant in one of the higher grade schools, or even in 
 Willey Green School. Which was she to do? 
 
 She hated most of all entering the bondage of teaching once 
 more. Very heartily she detested it. Yet at the thought of 
 
448 THE RAINBOW 
 
 marriage and living with Skrebensky amid the European popu- 
 lation in India, her soul was locked and would not budge. 
 She had very little feeling about it: only there was a dead- 
 lock. 
 
 Skrebensky waited, she waited, everybody waited for the 
 decision. When Anton talked to her, and seemed insidiously 
 to suggest himself as a husband to her, she knew how utterly 
 locked out he was. On the other hand, when she saw Dorothy, 
 and discussed the matter, she felt she would marry him 
 promptly, at once, as a sharp disavowal of adherence with 
 Dorothy's views. 
 
 The situation was almost ridiculous. 
 
 "But do you love him?" asked Dorothy. 
 
 " It isn't a question of loving him," said Ursula. " I love 
 him well enough certainly more than I love anybody else in 
 the world. And I shall never love anybody else the same 
 again. We have had the flower of each other. But I don't 
 care about love. I don't value it. I don't care whether I 
 love or whether I don't, whether I have love or whether I 
 haven't. What is it to me?" 
 
 And she shrugged her shoulders in fierce, angry contempt. 
 
 Dorothy pondered, rather angry and afraid. 
 
 "Then what do you care about?" she asked, exasperated. 
 
 " I don't know," said Ursula. " But something impersonal. 
 Love love love what does it mean what does it 
 amount to ? So much personal gratification. It doesn't lead 
 anywhere." 
 
 " It isn't supposed to lead anywhere, is it ? " said Dorothy, 
 satirically. " I thought it was the one thing which is an end 
 in itself." 
 
 "Then what does it matter to me?" cried Ursula. "As 
 an end in itself, I could love a hundred men, one after the 
 other. Why should I end with a Skrebensky? Why should 
 I not go on, and love all the types I fancy, one after another, 
 if love is an end in itself? There are plenty of men who 
 aren't Anton, whom I could love whom I would like to 
 love." 
 
 "Then you don't love him" said Dorothy. 
 
 " I tell you I do ; quite as much, and perhaps more than 
 I should love any of the others. Only there are plenty of 
 things that aren't in Anton that I would love in the other 
 men." 
 
 "What, for instance?" 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 449 
 
 " It doesn't matter. But a sort of strong understanding, in 
 some men, and then a dignity, a directness, something un- 
 questioned that there is in working men, and then a jolly, 
 reckless passionateness that you see a man who could really 
 let go " 
 
 Dorothy could feel that Ursula was already hankering after 
 something else, something that this man did not give her. 
 
 " The question is, what do you want," propounded Dorothy. 
 " Is it just other men ? " 
 
 Ursula was silenced. This was her own dread. Was she 
 just promiscuous? 
 
 " Because if it is," continued Dorothy, " you'd better marry 
 Anton. The other can only end badly." 
 
 So out of fear of herself Ursula was to marry Skrebensky. 
 
 He was very busy now, preparing to go to India. He must 
 visit relatives and contract business. He was almost sure of 
 Ursula now. She seemed to have given in. And he seemed 
 to become again an important, self-assured man. 
 
 It was the first week in August, and he was one of a large 
 party in a bungalow on the Lincolnshire coast. It was a 
 tennis, golf, motor-car, motor-boat party, given by his great- 
 aunt, a lady of social pretensions. Ursula was invited to 
 spend the week with the party. 
 
 She went rather reluctantly. Her marriage was more or 
 less fixed for the twenty-eighth of the month. They were to 
 sail for India on September the fifth. One thing she knew, 
 in her subconsciousness, and that was, she would never sail 
 for India. 
 
 She and Anton, being important guests on account of the 
 coming marriage, had rooms in the large bungalow. It was 
 a big place, with a great central hall, two smaller writing- 
 rooms, and then two corridors from which opened eight or 
 nine bedrooms. Skrebensky was put on one corridor, Ursula 
 on the other. They felt very lost, in the crowd. 
 
 Being lovers, however, they were allowed to be out alone 
 together as much as they liked. Yet she felt very strange, 
 in this crowd of strange people, uneasy, as if she had no 
 privacy. She was not used to these homogeneous crowds. 
 She was afraid. 
 
 She felt different from the rest of them, with their hard, 
 easy, shallow intimacy, that seemed to cost them so little. 
 She felt she was not pronounced enough. It was a kind of 
 hold-your-own unconventional atmosphere. She did not like 
 
450 THE RAINBOW 
 
 it. In crowds, in assemblies of people, she liked formality. 
 She felt she did not produce the right effect. She was not 
 effective: she was not beautiful: she was nothing. Even be- 
 fore Skrebensky she felt unimportant, almost inferior. He 
 could take his part very well with the rest. 
 
 He and she went out into the night. There was a moon 
 behind clouds, shedding a diffused light, gleaming now and 
 again in bits of smoky mother-of-pearl. So they walked to- 
 gether on the wet, ribbed sands near the sea, hearing the run 
 of the long, heavy waves, that made a ghostly whiteness and a 
 whisper. 
 
 He was sure of himself. As she walked, the soft silk of her 
 dress she wore a blue shantung, full-skirted blew away 
 from the sea and flapped and clung to her legs. She wished 
 it would not. Everything seemed to give her away, and she 
 could not rouse herself to deny, she was so confused. 
 
 He would lead her away to a pocket in the sand-hills, secret 
 amid the grey thorn-bushes and the grey, glassy grass. He 
 held her close against him, felt all her firm, unutterably de- 
 sirable mould of body through the fine fire of the silk that fell 
 about her limbs. The silk, slipping fierily on the hidden, yet 
 revealed roundness and firmness of her body, her loins, seemed 
 to run in him like fire, make his brain burn like brimstone. 
 She liked it, the electric fire of the silk under his hands upon 
 her limbs, the fire flew over her, as he drew nearer and nearer 
 to discovery. She vibrated like a jet of electric, firm fluid in 
 response. Yet she did not feel beautiful. All the time, she 
 felt she was not beautiful to him, only exciting. 
 
 She did not know how she suffered in this house. She was 
 healthy and exorbitantly full of interest. So she played tennis 
 and learned golf, she rowed out and swam in the deep sea, and 
 enjoyed it very much indeed, full of zest. Yet all the time, 
 among those others, she felt shocked and wincing, as if her 
 violently-sensitive nakedness were exposed to the hard, brutal, 
 material impact of the rest of the people. 
 
 The days went by unmarked, in a full, almost strenuous 
 enjoyment of one's own physique. Skrebensky was one among 
 the others, till evening came, and he took her for himself. 
 She was allowed a great deal of freedom and was treated with 
 a good deal of respect, as a girl on the eve of marriage, about 
 to depart for another continent. 
 
 The trouble began at evening. Then a yearning for some- 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 451 
 
 thing unknown came over her, a passion for something she 
 knew not what. She would walk the foreshore alone after 
 dusk, expecting, expecting something, as if she had gone to a 
 rendezvous. The salt, bitter passion of the sea, its indiffer- 
 ence to the earth, its swinging, definite motion, its strength, 
 its attack, and its salt burning, seemed to provoke her to a 
 pitch of madness, tantalizing her with vast suggestions of ful- 
 filment. And then, for personification, would come Skreben- 
 sky, Skrebensky, whom she knew, whom she was fond of, who 
 was attractive, but whose soul could not contain her in its 
 waves of strength, nor his breast compel her in burning, salty 
 passion. 
 
 One evening they went out after dinner, across the low golf 
 links to the dunes and the sea. The sky had small, faint stars, 
 all was still and faintly dark. They walked together in si- 
 lence, then ploughed, labouring, through the heavy loose sand 
 of the gap between the dunes. They went in silence under 
 the even, faint darkness, in the darker shadow of the sand- 
 hills. 
 
 Suddenly, cresting the heavy, sandy pass, Ursula lifted 
 her head, and shrank back, momentarily frightened. There 
 was a great whiteness confronting her, the moon was incan- 
 descent as a round furnace door, out of which came the high 
 blast of moonlight, over the seaward half of the world, a 
 dazzling, terrifying glare of white light. They shrank back 
 for a moment into shadow, uttering a cry. He felt his chest 
 laid bare, where the secret was heavily hidden. He felt him- 
 self fusing down to nothingness, like a bead that rapidly dis- 
 appears in an incandescent flame. 
 
 " How wonderful ! " cried Ursula, in low, calling tones. 
 " How wonderful ! " 
 
 And she went forward, plunging into it. He followed be- 
 hind. She too seemed to melt into the glare, towards the 
 moon. 
 
 The sands were as ground silver, the sea moved in solid 
 brightness, coming towards them, and she went to meet the 
 advance of the flashing, buoyant water. He stood behind, 
 encompassed, a shadow ever dissolving. 
 
 She stood on the edge of the water, at the edge of the solid, 
 flashing body of the sea, and the wave rushed over her feet. 
 
 " I want to go," she cried, in a strong, dominant voice. 
 " I want to go." 
 
45* THE RAINBOW 
 
 He saw the moonlight on her face, so she was like metal, 
 lie heard her ringing, metallic voice, like the voice of a harpy 
 to him. 
 
 She prowled, ranging on the edge of the water like a pos- 
 sessed creature, and he followed her. He saw the froth of 
 the wave followed by the hard, bright water swirl over her 
 feet and her ankles, she swung out her arms, to balance, he 
 expected every moment to see her walk into the sea, dressed 
 as she was, and be carried swimming out. 
 
 But she turned, she walked to him. 
 
 " I want to go," she cried again, in the high, hard voice, like 
 the scream of gulls. 
 
 "Where?" he asked. 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 And she seized hold of his arm, held him fast, as if captive, 
 and walked him a little way by the edge of the dazzling, 
 dazing water. 
 
 Then there in the great flare of light, she clinched hold of 
 him, hard, as if suddenly she had the strength of destruction, 
 she fastened her arms round him and tightened him in her 
 grip, whilst her mouth sought his in a hard, rending, ever- 
 increasing kiss, till his body was powerless in her grip, his 
 heart melted in fear from the fierce, beaked, harpy's kiss. 
 The water washed again over their feet, but she took no notice. 
 She seemed unaware, she seemed to be pressing in her beaked 
 mouth till she had the heart of him. Then, at last, she drew 
 away and looked at him looked at him. He knew what she 
 wanted. He took her by the hand and led her across the 
 foreshore back to the sandhills. She went silently. He felt 
 as if the ordeal of proof was upon him, for life or death. He 
 led her to a dark hollow. 
 
 " No, here," she said, going out to the slope full under the 
 moonshine. She lay motionless, with wide-open eyes looking 
 at the moon. He came direct to her, without preliminaries. 
 She held him pinned down at the chest, awful. The fight, 
 the struggle for consummation was terrible. It lasted till it 
 was agony to his soul, till he succumbed, till he gave way as 
 if dead, and lay with his face buried, partly in her hair, partly 
 in the sand, motionless, as if he would be motionless now 
 for ever, hidden away in the dark, buried, only buried, he only 
 wanted to be buried in the goodly darkness, only that, and no 
 more. 
 
 He seemed to swoon. It was a long time before he came 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 45S 
 
 to himself. He was aware of an unusual motion of her 
 breast. He looked up. Her face lay like an image in the 
 moonlight, the eyes wide open, rigid. But out of the eyes, 
 slowly, there rolled a tear, that glittered in the moonlight as 
 it ran down her cheek. 
 
 He felt as if the knife were being pushed into his already 
 dead body. With head strained back, he watched, drawn 
 tense, for some minutes, watched the unaltering, rigid face 
 like metal in the moonlight, the fixed, unseeing eyes, in which 
 slowly the water gathered, shook with glittering moonlight, 
 then surcharged, brimmed over and ran trickling, a tear with 
 its burden of moonlight, into the darkness, to fall in the sand. 
 
 He drew gradually away as if afraid, drew away she did 
 not move. He glanced at her she lay the same. Could he 
 break away? He turned, saw the open foreshore, clear in 
 front of him, and he plunged away, on and on, ever further 
 from the horrible figure that lay stretched in the moonlight 
 on the sands with the tears gathering and travelling on the 
 motionless, eternal face. 
 
 He felt, if ever he must see her again, his bones must be 
 broken, his body crushed, obliterated for ever. And as yet, 
 he had the love of his own living body. He wandered on a 
 long, long way, till his brain grew dark and he was uncon- 
 scious with weariness. Then he curled in the deepest dark- 
 ness he could find, under the sea-grass, and lay there without 
 consciousness. 
 
 She broke from her tense cramp of agony gradually, though 
 each movement was a goad of heavy pain. Gradually, she 
 lifted her dead body from the sands, and rose at last. There 
 was now no moon for her, no sea. All had passed away. She 
 trailed her dead body to the house, to her room, where she lay 
 down inert. 
 
 Morning brought her a new access of superficial life. But 
 all within her was cold, dead, inert. Skrebensky appeared 
 at breakfast. He was white and obliterated. They did not 
 look at each other nor speak to each other. Apart from the 
 ordinary, trivial talk of civil people, they were separate, they 
 did not speak of what was between them during the remaining 
 two days of their stay. They were like two dead people who 
 dare not recognize, dare not see each other. 
 
 Then she packed her bag and put on her things. There 
 were several guests leaving together, for the same train. He 
 would have no opportunity to speak to her. 
 
454 THE RAINBOW 
 
 He tapped at her bedroom door at the last minute. She 
 'stood with her umbrella in her hand. He closed the door. 
 He did not know what to say. 
 
 " Have you done with me ? " he asked her at length, lifting 
 his head. 
 
 "It isn't me," she said. "You have done with me we 
 have done with each other." 
 
 He looked at her, at the closed face, which he thought so 
 cruel. And he knew he could never touch her again. His 
 will was broken, he was seared, but he clung to the life of his 
 body. 
 
 " Well, what have I done ? " he asked, in a rather querulous 
 voice. 
 
 " I don't know," she said, in the same dull, f eelingless voice. 
 " It is finished. It had been a failure." 
 
 He was silent. The words still burned his bowels. 
 
 " Is it my fault ? " he said, looking up at length, challenging 
 the last stroke. 
 
 " You couldn't " she began. But she broke down. 
 
 He turned away, afraid to hear more. She began to gather 
 her bag, her handkerchief, her umbrella. She must be gone 
 now. He was waiting for her to be gone. 
 
 At length the carriage came and she drove away with the 
 rest. When she was out of sight, a great relief came over 
 him, a pleasant banality. In an instant, everything was ob- 
 literated. He was childishly amiable and companionable all 
 the day long. He was astonished that life could be so nice. 
 It was better than it had been before. What a simple thing 
 it was to be rid of her ! How friendly and simple everything 
 felt to him. What false thing had she been forcing on him ? 
 
 But at night he dared not be alone. His room-mate had 
 gone, and the hours of darkness were an agony to him. He 
 watched the window in suffering and terror. When would 
 this horrible darkness be lifted off him? Setting all his 
 nerves, he endured it. He went to sleep with the dawn. 
 
 He never thought of her. Only his terror of the hours of 
 night grew on him, obsessed him like a mania. He slept fit- 
 fully, with constant wakings of anguish. The fear wore away 
 the core of him. 
 
 His plan was to sit up very late : to drink in company until 
 one or half -past one in the morning ; then he would get three 
 hours of sleep, of oblivion. It was light by five o'clock. But 
 
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY 455 
 
 he was shocked almost to madness if he opened his eyes on the 
 darkness. 
 
 In the daytime he was all right, always occupied with the 
 thing of the moment, adhering to the trivial present, which 
 seemed to him ample and satisfying. No matter how little 
 and futile his occupations were, he gave himself to them en- 
 tirely, and felt normal and fulfilled. He was always active, 
 cheerful, gay, charming, trivial. Only he dreaded the dark- 
 ness and silence of his own bedroom, when the darkness should 
 challenge him upon his own soul. That he could not bear, 
 as he could not bear to think about Ursula. He had no soul, 
 no background. He never thought of Ursula, not once, he 
 gave her no sign. She was the darkness, the challenge, the 
 horror. He turned to immediate things. He wanted to 
 marry quickly, to screen himself from the darkness, the chal- 
 lenge of his own soul. He would marry his Colonel's daugh- 
 ter. Quickly, without hesitation, pursued by his obsession for 
 activity, he wrote to this girl, telling her his engagement was 
 broken it had been a temporary infatuation which he less 
 than any one else could understand now it was over and 
 could he see his very dear friend soon? He would not be 
 happy till he had an answer. 
 
 He received a rather surprised reply from the girl, but she 
 would be glad to see him. She was living with her aunt. He 
 went down to her at once, and proposed to her the first even- 
 ing. He was accepted. The marriage took place quietly 
 within fourteen days' time. Ursula was not notified of the 
 event. In another week, Skrebensky sailed with his new wife 
 to India. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 THE KAINBOW 
 
 URSULA went home to Beldover faint, dim, closed up. 
 She could scarcely speak or notice. It was as if her 
 energy were frozen. Her people asked her what was 
 the matter. She told them she had broken off the 
 engagement with Skrebensky. They looked blank and angry. 
 But she could not feel any more. 
 
 The weeks crawled by in apathy. He would have sailed for 
 India now. She was scarcely interested. She was inert, 
 without strength or interest. 
 
 Suddenly a shock ran through her, so violent that she 
 thought she was struck down. Was she with child? She 
 had been so stricken under the pain of herself and of him, 
 this had never occurred to her. Now like a flame it took hold 
 of her limbs and body. Was she with child? 
 
 In the first flaming hours of wonder, she did not know what 
 she felt. She was as if tied to the stake. The flames were 
 licking her and devouring her. But the flames were also 
 good. They seemed to wear her away to rest. What she felt 
 in her heart and her womb she did not know. It was a kind 
 of swoon. 
 
 Then gradually the heaviness of her heart pressed and 
 pressed into consciousness. What was she doing? Was she 
 bearing a child ? Bearing a child? To what? 
 
 Her flesh thrilled, but her soul was sick. It seemed, this 
 child, like the seal set on her own nullity. Yet she was glad 
 in her flesh that she was with child. She began to think, 
 that she would write to Skrebensky, that she would go out to 
 him, and marry him, and live simply as a good wife to him. 
 What did the self, the form of life, matter ? Only the living 
 from day to day mattered, the beloved existence in the body, 
 rich, peaceful, complete, with no beyond, no further trouble, 
 no further complication. She had been wrong, she had been 
 arrogant and wicked, wanting that other thing, that fantastic 
 freedom, that illusory, conceited fulfilment which she had 
 
 456 
 
THE RAINBOW 457 
 
 imagined she could not have with Skrebensky. Who was she 
 to be wanting some fantastic fulfilment in her life? Was it 
 not enough that she had her man, her children, her place of 
 shelter under the sun? Was it not enough for her, as it had 
 been enough for her mother? She would marry and love her 
 husband and fill her place simply. That was the ideal. 
 
 Suddenly she saw her mother in a just and true light. Her 
 mother was simple and radically true. She had taken the life 
 that was given. She had not, in her arrogant conceit, in- 
 sisted on creating life to fit herself. Her mother was right, 
 profoundly right, and she herself had been false, trashy, con- 
 ceited. 
 
 A great mood of humility came over her, and in this humil- 
 ity a bondaged sort of peace. She gave her limbs to the 
 bondage, she loved the bondage, she called it peace. In this 
 state she sat down to write to Skrebensky. 
 
 "Since you left me I have suffered a great deal, and so 
 have come to myself. I cannot tell you the remorse I feel 
 for my wicked, perverse behaviour. It was given to me to 
 love you, and to know your love for me. But instead of 
 thankfully, on my knees, taking what God had given, I must 
 have the moon in my keeping, I must insist on having the 
 moon for my own. Because I could not have it, everything 
 else must go. 
 
 "I do not know if you can ever forgive me. I could die 
 with shame to think of my behaviour with you during our 
 last times, and I don't know if I could ever bear to look you 
 in the face again. Truly the best thing would be for me to 
 die, and cover my fantasies for ever. But I find I am with 
 child, so that cannot be. 
 
 " It is your child, and for that reason I must revere it and 
 submit my body entirely to its welfare, entertaining no 
 thought of death, which once more is largely conceit. There- 
 fore, because you once loved me, and because this child is your 
 child, I ask you to have me back. If you will cable me one 
 word, I will come to you as soon as I can. I swear to you to 
 be a dutiful wife, and to serve you in all things. For now 
 I only hate myself and my own conceited foolishness. I love 
 you I love the thought of you you were natural and 
 decent all through, whilst I was so false. Once I am with 
 you again, I shall ask no more than to rest in your shelter 
 all my life 
 
 This letter she wrote, sentence by sentence, as if from her 
 
458 THE RAINBOW. 
 
 deepest, sincerest heart. She felt that now, now, she was at 
 the depths of herself. This was her true self, forever. With 
 this document she would appear before God at the Judgment 
 Day. 
 
 For what had a woman but to submit? What was her flesh 
 but for childbearing, her strength for her children and her 
 husband, the giver of life ? At last she was a woman. 
 
 She posted her letter to his club, to be forwarded to him in 
 Calcutta. He would receive it soon after his arrival in India 
 within three weeks of his arrival there. In a month's time 
 she would receive word from him. Then she would go. 
 
 She was quite sure of him. She thought only of preparing 
 her garments and of living quietly, peacefully, till the time 
 when she should join him again and her history would be con- 
 cluded for ever. The peace held like an unnatural calm for a 
 long time. She was aware, however, of a gathering restive- 
 ness, a tumult impending within her. She tried to run away 
 from it. She wished she could hear from Skrebensky, in 
 answer to her letter, so that her course should be resolved, 
 she should be engaged in fulfilling her fate. It was this inac- 
 tivity which made her liable to the revulsion she dreaded. 
 
 It was curious how little she cared about his not having 
 written to her before. It was enough that she had sent her 
 letter. She would get the required answer, that was all. 
 
 One afternoon in early October, feeling the seething rising 
 to madness within her, she slipped out in the rain, to walk 
 abroad, lest the house should suffocate her. Everywhere was 
 drenched wet and deserted, the grimed houses glowed dull 
 red, the butt houses burned scarlet in a gleam of light, under 
 the glistening, blackish purple slates. Ursula went on towards 
 Willey Green. She lifted her face and walked swiftly, seeing 
 the passage of light across the shallow valley, seeing the col- 
 liery and its clouds of steam for a moment visionary in dim 
 brilliance, away in the chaos of rain. Then the veils closed 
 again. She was glad of the rain's privacy and intimacy. 
 
 Making on towards the wood, she saw the pale gleam of 
 Willey Water through the cloud below, she walked the open 
 space where hawthorn trees streamed like hair on the wind 
 and round bushes were presences showing through the atmos- 
 phere. It was very splendid, free and chaotic. 
 
 Yet she hurried to the wood for shelter. There, the vast 
 booming overhead vibrated down and encircled her, tree-trunks 
 spanned the circle of tremendous sound, myriads of tree- 
 
THE RAINBOW 459 
 
 trunks, enormous and streaked black with water, thrust like 
 stanchions upright between the roaring overhead and the 
 sweeping of the circle underfoot. She glided between the 
 tree-trunks, afraid of them. They might turn and shut her 
 in as she went through their martialled silence. 
 
 So she flitted along, keeping an illusion that she was un- 
 noticed. She felt like a bird that has flown in through the 
 window of a hall where vast warriors sit at the board. Be- 
 tween their grave, booming ranks she was hastening, assuming 
 she was unnoticed, till she emerged, with beating heart, 
 through the far window and out into the open, upon the vivid 
 green, marshy meadow. 
 
 She turned under the shelter of the common, seeing the 
 great veils of rain swinging with slow, floating waves across 
 the landscape. She was very wet and a long way from home, 
 far enveloped in the rain and the waving landscape. She 
 must beat her way back through all this fluctuation, back 
 to stability and security. 
 
 A solitary thing, she took the track straight across the wil- 
 derness, going back. The path was a narrow groove in the 
 turf between high, sere, tussocky grass; it was scarcely more 
 than a rabbit run. So she moved swiftly along, watching her 
 footing, going like a bird on the wind, with no thought, con- 
 tained in motion. But her heart had a small, living seed of 
 fear, as she went through the wash of hollow space. 
 
 Suddenly she knew there was something else. Some horses 
 were looming in the rain, not near yet. But they were going 
 to be near. She continued her path, inevitably. They were 
 horses in the lee of a clump of trees beyond, above her. She 
 pursued her way with bent head. She did not want to lift her 
 face to them. She did not want to know they were there. 
 She went on in the wild track. 
 
 She knew the heaviness on her heart. It was the weight 
 of the horses. But she would circumvent them. She would 
 bear the weight steadily, and so escape. She would go straight 
 on, and on, and be gone by. 
 
 Suddenly the weight deepened and her heart grew tense to 
 bear it. Her breathing was laboured. But this weight also 
 she could bear. She knew without looking that the horses 
 were moving nearer. What were they ? She felt the thud of 
 their heavy hoofs on the ground. What was it that was draw- 
 ing near her, what weight oppressing her heart ? She did not 
 know, she did not look. 
 
460 THE RAINBOW 
 
 Yet now her way was cut off. They were blocking her 
 back. She knew they had gathered on a log bridge over the 
 sedgy dike, a dark, heavy, powerfully heavy knot. Yet her 
 feet went on and on. They would burst before her. They 
 would burst before her. Her feet went on and on. And 
 tense, and more tense became her nerves and her veins, they 
 ran hot, they ran white hot, they must fuse and she must die. 
 
 But the horses had burst before her. In a sort of lightning 
 of knowledge their movement travelled through her, the quiver 
 and strain and thrust of their powerful flanks, as they burst 
 before her and drew on, beyond. 
 
 She knew they had not gone, she knew they awaited her 
 still. But she went on over the log bridge that their hoofs 
 had churned and drummed, she went on, knowing things 
 about them. She was aware of their breasts gripped, clenched 
 narrow in a hold that never relaxed, she was aware of their 
 red nostrils flaming with long endurance, and of their 
 haunches, so rounded, so massive, pressing, pressing, pressing 
 to burst the grip upon their breasts, pressing forever till they 
 went mad, running against the walls of time, and never burst- 
 ing free. Their great haunches were smoothed and darkened 
 with rain. But the darkness and wetness of rain could not 
 put out the hard, urgent, massive fire that was locked within 
 these flanks, never, never. 
 
 She went on, drawing near. She was aware of the great 
 flash of hoofs, a bluish, iridescent flash surrounding a hollow 
 of darkness. Large, large seemed the bluish, incandescent 
 flash of the hoof -iron, large as a halo of lightning round the 
 knotted darkness of the flanks. Like circles of lightning came 
 the flash of hoofs from out of the powerful flanks. 
 
 They were awaiting her again. They had gathered under 
 an oak-tree, knotting their awful, blind, triumphing flanks 
 together, and waiting, waiting. They were waiting for her ap- 
 proach. As if from a far distance she was drawing near, 
 towards the line of twiggy oak-trees where they made their 
 intense darkness, gathered on a single bank. 
 
 She must draw near. But they broke away, they cantered 
 round, making a wide circle to avoid noticing her, and can- 
 tered back into the open hillside behind her. 
 
 They were behind her. The way was open before her, to 
 the gate in the high hedge in the near distance, so she could 
 pass into the smaller, cultivated field, and so out to the high- 
 road and the ordered world of man. Her way was clear. 
 
THE RAINBOW 461 
 
 She lulled her heart. Yet her heart was couched with fear, 
 couched with fear all along. 
 
 Suddenly she hesitated as if seized by lightning. She 
 seemed to fall, yet found herself faltering forward with small 
 steps. The thunder of horses galloping down the path behind 
 her shook her, the weight came down upon her, down, to the 
 moment of extinction. She could not look round, so the 
 horses thundered upon her. 
 
 Cruelly, they swerved and crashed by her on her left hand. 
 She saw the fierce flanks crinkled and as yet inadequate, the 
 great hoofs flashing bright as yet only brandished about her, 
 and one by one the horses crashed by, intent, working them- 
 selves up. 
 
 They had gone by, brandishing themselves thunderously 
 about her, enclosing her. They slackened their burst trans- 
 port, they slowed down, and cantered together into a knot 
 once more, in the corner by the gate and the trees ahead of 
 her. They stirred, they moved uneasily, they settled their 
 uneasy flanks into one group, one purpose. They were up 
 against her. 
 
 Her heart was gone, she had no more heart. She knew she 
 dare not draw near. That concentrated, knitted flank of the 
 horse-group had conquered. It stirred uneasily, awaiting her, 
 knowing its triumph. It stirred uneasily, with the uneasi- 
 ness of awaited triumph. Her heart was gone, her limbs were 
 dissolved, she was dissolved like water. All the hardness and 
 looming power was in the massive body of the horse-group. 
 
 Her feet faltered, she came to a standstill. It was the 
 crisis. The horses stirred their flanks uneasily. She looked 
 away, failing. On her left, two hundred yards down the 
 slope, the thick hedge ran parallel. At one point there was 
 an oak tree. She might climb into the boughs of that oak- 
 tree, and so round and drop on the other side of the hedge. 
 
 Shuddering, with limbs like water, dreading every moment 
 to fall, she began to work her way as if making a wide detour 
 round the horse-mass. The horses stirred their flanks in a 
 knot against her. She trembled forward as if in a trance. 
 
 Then suddenly, in a flame of agony, she darted, seized the 
 rugged knots of the oak-tree and began to climb. Her body 
 was weak but her hands were as hard as steel. She knew she 
 was strong. She struggled in a great effort till she hung on 
 the bough. She knew the horses were aware. She gained 
 her foot-hold on the bough. The horses were loosening their 
 
462 THE RAINBOW 
 
 knot, stirring, trying to realize. She was working her way 
 round to the other side of the tree. As they started to canter 
 towards her, she fell in a heap on the other side of the hedge. 
 
 For some moments she could not move. Then she saw 
 through the rabbit-cleared bottom of the hedge the great, 
 working hoofs of the horses as they cantered near. She could 
 not bear it. She rose and walked swiftly, diagonally across 
 the field. The horses galloped along the other side of the 
 hedge to the corner, where they were held up. She could feel 
 them there in their huddled group all the while she hastened 
 across the bare field. They were almost pathetic, now. Her 
 will alone carried her, till, trembling, she climbed the fence 
 under a leaning thorn-tree that overhung the grass by the 
 high-road. The use went from her, she sat on the fence lean- 
 ing back against the trunk of the thorn-tree, motionless. 
 
 As she sat there, spent, time and the flux of change passed 
 away from her, she lay as if unconscious upon the bed of the 
 stream, like a stone, unconscious, unchanging, unchangeable, 
 whilst everything rolled by in transience, leaving her there, a 
 etone at rest on the bed of the stream, inalterable and passive, 
 sunk to the bottom of all change. 
 
 She lay still a long time, with her back against the thorn- 
 tree trunk, in her final isolation. Some colliers passed, tramp- 
 ing heavily up the wet road, their voices sounding out, their 
 shoulders up to their ears, their figures blotched and spectral 
 in the rain. Some did not see her. She opened her eyes 
 languidly as they passed by. Then one man going alone saw 
 her. The whites of his eyes showed in his black face as he 
 looked in wonderment at her. He hesitated in his walk, as if 
 to speak to her, out of frightened concern for her. How she 
 dreaded his speaking to her, dreaded his questioning her. 
 
 She slipped from her seat and went vaguely along the path 
 vaguely. It was a long way home. She had an idea that 
 she must walk for the rest of her life, wearily, wearily. Step 
 after step, step after step, and always along the wet, rainy 
 road between the hedges. Step after step, step after step, the 
 monotony produced a deep, cold sense of nausea in her. How 
 profound was her cold nausea, how profound! That too 
 plumbed the bottom. She seemed destined to find the bottom 
 of all things to-day : the bottom of all things. Well, at any 
 rate she was walking along the bottom-most bed she was 
 quite safe: quite safe, if she had to go on and on for ever, 
 seeing this was the very bottom, and there was nothing deeper. 
 
THE RAINBOW 463 
 
 There was nothing deeper, you see, so one could not but feel 
 certain, passive. 
 
 She arrived home at last. The climb up the hill to Beldover 
 had been very trying. Why must one climb the hill? Why 
 must one climb ? Why not stay below ? Why force one's way 
 up the slope ? Why force one's way up and up, when one is at 
 the bottom ? Oh, it was very trying, very wearying, very bur- 
 densome. Always burdens, always, always burdens. Still, 
 she must get to the top and go home to bed. She must go to 
 bed. 
 
 She got in and went upstairs in the dusk without its being 
 noticed she was in such a sodden condition. She was too tired 
 to go downstairs again. She got into bed and lay shuddering 
 with cold, yet too apathetic to get up or call for relief. Then 
 gradually she became more ill. 
 
 She was very ill for a fortnight, delirious, shaken and 
 racked. But always, amid the ache of delirium, she had a 
 dull firmness of being, a sense of permanency. She was in 
 some way like the stone at the bottom of the river, inviolable 
 and unalterable, no matter what storm raged in her body. 
 Her soul lay still and permanent, full of pain, but itself for 
 ever. Under all her illness, persisted a deep, inalterable 
 knowledge. 
 
 She knew, and she cared no more. Throughout her illness, 
 distorted into vague forms, persisted the question of herself 
 and Skrebensky, like a gnawing ache that was still superficial, 
 and did not touch her isolated, impregnable core of reality. 
 But the corrosion of him burned in her till it burned itself out. 
 
 Must she belong to him, must she adhere to him? Some- 
 thing compelled her, and yet it was not real. Always the 
 ache, the ache of unreality, of her belonging to Skrebensky. 
 What bound her to him when she was not bound to him? 
 Why did the falsity persist ? Why did the falsity gnaw, gnaw, 
 gnaw at her, why could she not wake up to clarity, to reality. 
 If she could but wake up, if she could but wake up, the falsity 
 of the dream, of her connection with Skrebensky, would be 
 gone. But the sleep, the delirium pinned her down. Even 
 when she was calm and sober she was in its spell. 
 
 Yet she was never in its spell. What extraneous thing 
 bound her to him? There was some bond put upon her. 
 Why could she not break it through? What was it? What 
 was it? 
 
 In her delirium she beat and beat at the question. And at 
 
464. THE RAINBOW 
 
 last her weariness gave her the answer it was the child. The 
 child bound her to him. The child was like a bond round her 
 brain, tightened on her brain. It bound her to Skrebensky. 
 
 But why, why did it bind her to Skrebensky? Could she 
 not have a child of herself? Was not the child her own af- 
 fair ? all her own affair ? What had it to do with him ? Why 
 must she be bound, aching and cramped with the bondage, to 
 Skrebensky and Skrebensky's world? Anton's world: it be- 
 came in her feverish brain a compression which enclosed her. 
 If she could not get out of the compression she would go mad. 
 The compression was Anton and Anton's world, not the Anton 
 she possessed, but the Anton she did not possess, that which 
 was owned by some other influence, by the world. 
 
 She fought and fought and fought all through her illness 
 to be free of him and his world, to put it aside, to put it aside, 
 into its place. Yet ever anew it gained ascendency over her, 
 it laid new hold on her. Oh, the unutterable weariness of her 
 flesh, which she could not cast off, nor yet extricate. If she 
 could but extricate herself, if she could but disengage herself 
 from feeling, from her body, from all the vast encumbrances 
 of the world that was in contact with her, from her father, 
 and her mother, and her lover, and all her acquaintance. 
 
 Kepeatedly, in an ache of utter weariness she repeated: 
 " I have no father nor mother nor lover, I have no allocated 
 place in the world of things, I do not belong to Beldover nor 
 to Nottingham nor to England nor to this world, they none 
 of them exist, I am trammelled and entangled in them, but 
 they are all unreal. I must break out of it, like a nut from its 
 shell which is an unreality ." 
 
 And again, to her feverish brain, came the vivid reality of 
 acorns in February lying on the floor of a wood with their 
 shells burst and discarded and the kernel issued naked to put 
 itself forth. She was the naked, clear kernel thrusting forth 
 the clear, powerful shoot, and the world was a bygone winter, 
 discarded, her mother and father and Anton, and college and 
 all her friends, all cast off like a year that has gone by, whilst 
 the kernel was free and naked and striving to take new root, 
 to create a new knowledge of Eternity in the flux of Time. 
 And the kernel was the only reality ; the rest was cast off into 
 oblivion. 
 
 This grew and grew upon her. When she opened her eyes 
 in the afternoon and saw the window of her room and the faint, 
 smoky landscape beyond, this was all husk and shell lying by, 
 
THE RAINBOW 465 
 
 all husk and shell, she could see nothing else, she was enclosed 
 still, but loosely enclosed. There was a space between her and 
 the shell. It was burst, there was a rift in it. Soon she 
 would have her root fixed in a new Day, her nakedness would 
 take itself the bed of a new sky and a new air, this old, de- 
 caying, fibrous husk would be gone. 
 
 Gradually she began really to sleep. She slept in the confi- 
 dence of her new reality. She slept breathing with her soul 
 the new air of a new world. The peace was very deep and 
 enrichening. She had her root in new ground, she was grad- 
 ually absorbed into growth. 
 
 When she woke at last it seemed as if a new day had come 
 on the earth. How long, how long had she fought through 
 the dust and obscurity, for this new dawn? How frail and 
 fine and clear she felt, like the most fragile flower that opens 
 in the end of winter. But the pole of night was turned and 
 the dawn was coming in. 
 
 Very far off was her old experience Skrebensky, her part- 
 ing with him very far off. Some things were real; those 
 first glamorous weeks. Before, these had seemed like halluci- 
 nation. Now they seemed like common reality. The rest was 
 unreal. She knew that Skrebensky had never become finally 
 real. In the weeks of passionate ecstasy he had been with 
 her in her desire, she had created him for the time being. 
 But in the end he had failed and broken down. 
 
 Strange, what a void separated him and her. She liked 
 him now, as she liked a memory, some bygone self. He was 
 something of the past, finite. He was that which is known. 
 She felt a poignant affection for him, as for that which is past. 
 But, when she looked with her face forward, he was not. 
 Nay, when she looked ahead, into the undiscovered land before 
 her, what was there she could recognize but a fresh glow of 
 light and inscrutable trees going up from the earth like smoke. 
 It was the unknown, the unexplored, the undiscovered upon 
 whose shore she had landed, alone, after crossing the void, the 
 darkness which washed the New World and the Old. 
 
 There would be no child : she was glad. If there had been 
 a child, it would have made little difference, however. She 
 would have kept the child and herself, she would not have gone 
 to Skrebensky. Anton belonged to the past. 
 
 There came the cablegram from Skrebensky : " I am mar- 
 ried." An old pain and anger and contempt stirred in her. 
 Did he belong so utterly to the cast-off past? She repudiated 
 
466 THE RAINBOW 
 
 him. He was as he was. It was good that he was as he was. 
 Who was she to have a man according to her own desire ? It 
 was not for her to create, but to recognize a man created by 
 God. The man should come from the Infinite and she should 
 hail him. She was glad she could not create her man. She 
 was glad she had nothing to do with his creation. She was 
 glad that this lay within the scope of that vaster power in 
 which she rested at last. The man would come out of Eter- 
 nity to which she herself belonged. 
 
 As she grew better, she sat to watch a new creation. As 
 she sat at her window, she saw the people go by in the street 
 below, colliers, women, children, walking each in the husk of 
 an old fruition, but visible through the husk, the swelling and 
 the heaving contour of the new germination. In the still, 
 silenced forms of the colliers she saw a sort of suspense, a 
 waiting in pain for the new liberation; she saw the same in 
 the false hard confidence of the women. The confidence of 
 the women was brittle. It would break quickly to reveal the 
 strength and patient effort of the new germination. 
 
 In everything she saw she grasped and groped to find the 
 creation of the living God, instead of the old, hard barren 
 form of bygone living. Sometimes great terror possessed her. 
 Sometimes she lost touch, she lost her feeling, she could only 
 know the old horror of the husk which bound in her and all 
 mankind. They were all in prison, they were all going mad. 
 
 She saw the stiffened bodies of the colliers, which seemed 
 already enclosed in a coffin, she saw their unchanging eyes, 
 the eyes of those who are buried alive : she saw the hard, cut- 
 ting edges of the new houses, which seemed to spread over the 
 hillside in their insentient triumph, the triumph of horrible, 
 amorphous angles and straight lines, the expression of cor- 
 ruption triumphant and unopposed, corruption so pure that it 
 is hard and brittle: she saw the dun atmosphere over the 
 blackened hills opposite, the dark blotches of houses, slate 
 roofed and amorphous, the old church-tower standing up in 
 hideous obsoleteness above raw new houses on the crest of the 
 hill, the amorphous, brittle, hard edged new houses advancing 
 from Beldover to meet the corrupt new houses from Lethley, 
 the houses of Lethley advancing to mix with the houses of 
 Hainor, a dry, brittle, terrible corruption spreading over the 
 face of the land, and she was sick with a nausea so deep that 
 she perished as she sat. And then, in the blowing clouds, 
 she saw a band of faint iridescence colouring in faint colours 
 
THE RAINBOW 467 
 
 a portion of the hill. And forgetting, startled, she looked 
 for the hovering colour and saw a rainbow forming itself. In 
 one place it gleamed fiercely, and, her heart anguished with 
 hope, she sought the shadow of iris where the bow should be. 
 Steadily the colour gathered, mysteriously, from nowhere, it 
 took presence upon itself, there was a faint, vast rainbow. 
 The arc bended and strengthened itself till it arched indomi- 
 table, making great architecture of light and colour and the 
 space of heaven, its pedestals luminous in the corruption of 
 new houses on the low hill, its arch the top of heaven. 
 
 And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the 
 sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face 
 of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow 
 was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their 
 spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disinte- 
 gration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new 
 germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind 
 and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the 
 earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses 
 and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric 
 of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven. 
 
 THE END