The Rainbow

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 distance;

which was a beauty in him, and which made Anna so angry.

"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 his

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 oriflamme 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 forgotten,

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 colouring.

He went bald, rather bald, when he was quite young," replied her

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

their hearts. They were separate people with separate destinies.

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 the 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.