The Rainbow

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.

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.