The Rainbow

Terrified, Ursula slipped away. And when her Uncle Tom was in

the house again, grave and very quiet, so that he seemed almost

to affect gravity, to pretend grief, she watched his still,

handsome face, imagining it again in its distortion. But she saw

the nose was rather thick, rather Russian, under its transparent

skin, she remembered the teeth under the carefully cut moustache

were small and sharp and spaced. She could see him, in all his

elegant demeanour, bestial, almost corrupt. And she was

frightened. She never forgot to look for the bestial,

frightening side of him, after this.

He said "Good-bye" to his mother and went away at once.

Ursula almost shrank from his kiss, now. She wanted it,

nevertheless, and the little revulsion as well.

At the funeral, and after the funeral, Will Brangwen was

madly in love with his wife. The death had shaken him. But death

and all seemed to gather in him into a mad, over-whelming

passion for his wife. She seemed so strange and winsome. He was

almost beside himself with desire for her.

And she took him, she seemed ready for him, she wanted

him.

The grandmother stayed a while at the Yew Cottage, till the

Marsh was restored. Then she returned to her own rooms, quiet,

and it seemed, wanting nothing. Fred threw himself into the work

of restoring the farm. That his father was killed there, seemed

to make it only the more intimate and the more inevitably his

own place.

There was a saying that the Brangwens always died a violent

death. To them all, except perhaps Tom, it seemed almost

natural. Yet Fred went about obstinate, his heart fixed. He

could never forgive the Unknown this murder of his father.

After the death of the father, the Marsh was very quiet. Mrs.

Brangwen was unsettled. She could not sit all the evening

peacefully, as she could before, and during the day she was

always rising to her feet and hesitating, as if she must go

somewhere, and were not quite sure whither.

She was seen loitering about the garden, in her little

woollen jacket. She was often driven out in the gig, sitting

beside her son and watching the countryside or the streets of

the town, with a childish, candid, uncanny face, as if it all

were strange to her.

The children, Ursula and Gudrun and Theresa went by the

garden gate on their way to school. The grandmother would have

them call in each time they passed, she would have them come to

the Marsh for dinner. She wanted children about her.

Of her sons, she was almost afraid. She could see the sombre

passion and desire and dissatisfaction in them, and she wanted

not to see it any more. Even Fred, with his blue eyes and his

heavy jaw, troubled her. There was no peace. He wanted

something, he wanted love, passion, and he could not find them.

But why must he trouble her? Why must he come to her with his

seething and suffering and dissatisfactions? She was too

old.