The Rainbow

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

destructively. 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 teaparty

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 nowhere 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 zigzagging

lines of deep little foot-prints across his work. The child 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 became

shut off and senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul had

gone hard and unresponsive. The sense of her own unreality

hardened her like a frost. She cared no longer.

And the sight of her face, shut and superior with

self-asserting 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

indifference, 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 childhood.