The Rainbow

So he became a bout-drinker, having at intervals these bouts

of three or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was drunk for

the whole time. He did not think about it. A deep resentment

burned in him. He kept aloof from any women, antagonistic.

When he was twenty-eight, a thick-limbed, stiff, fair man

with fresh complexion, and blue eyes staring very straight

ahead, he was coming one day down from Cossethay with a load of

seed out of Nottingham. It was a time when he was getting ready

for another bout of drinking, so he stared fixedly before him,

watchful yet absorbed, seeing everything and aware of nothing,

coiled in himself. It was early in the year.

He walked steadily beside the horse, the load clanked behind

as the hill descended steeper. The road curved down-hill before

him, under banks and hedges, seen only for a few yards

ahead.

Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope,

his horse britching between the shafts, he saw a woman

approaching. But he was thinking for the moment of the

horse.

Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, was

apparently rather small and slight, beneath her long black

cloak, and she wore a black bonnet. She walked hastily, as if

unseeing, her head rather forward. It was her curious, absorbed,

flitting motion, as if she were passing unseen by everybody,

that first arrested him.

She had heard the cart, and looked up. Her face was pale and

clear, she had thick dark eyebrows and a wide mouth, curiously

held. He saw her face clearly, as if by a light in the air. He

saw her face so distinctly, that he ceased to coil on himself,

and was suspended.

"That's her," he said involuntarily. As the cart passed by,

splashing through the thin mud, she stood back against the bank.

Then, as he walked still beside his britching horse, his eyes

met hers. He looked quickly away, pressing back his head, a pain

of joy running through him. He could not bear to think of

anything.

He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, her

shape in the black cloak, the movement as she walked. Then she

was gone round the bend.

She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a

far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He

went on, quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think

or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed

motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved

within the knowledge of her, in the world that was beyond

reality.