The Rainbow

Will Brangwen 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 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 huckster's 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.