The Rainbow

Almost in horror, she began to take the wet things from him,

to pull off him the incongruous market-clothes of a well-to-do

farmer. The children were sent away to the Vicarage, the dead

body lay on the parlour floor, Anna quickly began to undress

him, laid his fob and seals in a wet heap on the table. Her

husband and the woman helped her. They cleared and washed the

body, and laid it on the bed.

There, it looked still and grand. He was perfectly calm in

death, and, now he was laid in line, inviolable, unapproachable.

To Anna, he was the majesty of the inaccessible male, the

majesty of death. It made her still and awe-stricken, almost

glad.

Lydia Brangwen, the mother, also came and saw the impressive,

inviolable body of the dead man. She went pale, seeing death. He

was beyond change or knowledge, absolute, laid in line with the

infinite. What had she to do with him? He was a majestic

Abstraction, made visible now for a moment, inviolate, absolute.

And who could lay claim to him, who could speak of him, of the

him who was revealed in the stripped moment of transit from life

into death? Neither the living nor the dead could claim him, he

was both the one and the other, inviolable, inaccessibly

himself.

"I shared life with you, I belong in my own way to eternity,"

said Lydia Brangwen, her heart cold, knowing her own

singleness.

"I did not know you in life. You are beyond me, supreme now

in death," said Anna Brangwen, awe-stricken, almost glad.

It was the sons who could not bear it. Fred Brangwen went

about with a set, blanched face and shut hands, his heart full

of hatred and rage for what had been done to his father,

bleeding also with desire to have his father again, to see him,

to hear him again. He could not bear it.

Tom Brangwen only arrived on the day of the funeral. He was

quiet and controlled as ever. He kissed his mother, who was

still dark-faced, inscrutable, he shook hands with his brother

without looking at him, he saw the great coffin with its black

handles. He even read the name-plate, "Tom Brangwen, of the

Marsh Farm. Born ----. Died ----."

The good-looking, still face of the young man crinkled up for

a moment in a terrible grimace, then resumed its stillness. The

coffin was carried round to the church, the funeral bell tanged

at intervals, the mourners carried their wreaths of white

flowers. The mother, the Polish woman, went with dark, abstract

face, on her son's arm. He was good-looking as ever, his face

perfectly motionless and somehow pleasant. Fred walked with

Anna, she strange and winsome, he with a face like wood, stiff,

unyielding.

Only afterwards Ursula, flitting between the currant bushes

down the garden, saw her Uncle Tom standing in his black

clothes, erect and fashionable, but his fists lifted, and his

face distorted, his lips curled back from his teeth in a

horrible grin, like an animal which grimaces with torment,

whilst his body panted quick, like a panting dog's. He was

facing the open distance, panting, and holding still, then

panting rapidly again, but his face never changing from its

almost bestial look of torture, the teeth all showing, the nose

wrinkled up, the eyes, unseeing, fixed.