The Rainbow

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

practicing 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.

"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 shall go 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 blackness and brutal

silence again.