The Rainbow

She came twice with her child to the farm, but there was this

lull between them, an intense calm and passivity like a torpor

upon them, so that there was no active change took place. He was

almost unaware of the child, yet by his native good humour he

gained her confidence, even her affection, setting her on a

horse to ride, giving her corn for the fowls.

Once he drove the mother and child from Ilkeston, picking

them up on the road. The child huddled close to him as if for

love, the mother sat very still. There was a vagueness, like a

soft mist over all of them, and a silence as if their wills were

suspended. Only he saw her hands, ungloved, folded in her lap,

and he noticed the wedding-ring on her finger. It excluded him:

it was a closed circle. It bound her life, the wedding-ring, it

stood for her life in which he could have no part. Nevertheless,

beyond all this, there was herself and himself which should

meet.

As he helped her down from the trap, almost lifting her, he

felt he had some right to take her thus between his hands. She

belonged as yet to that other, to that which was behind. But he

must care for her also. She was too living to be neglected.

Sometimes her vagueness, in which he was lost, made him

angry, made him rage. But he held himself still as yet. She had

no response, no being towards him. It puzzled and enraged him,

but he submitted for a long time. Then, from the accumulated

troubling of her ignoring him, gradually a fury broke out,

destructive, and he wanted to go away, to escape her.

It happened she came down to the Marsh with the child whilst

he was in this state. Then he stood over against her, strong and

heavy in his revolt, and though he said nothing, still she felt

his anger and heavy impatience grip hold of her, she was shaken

again as out of a torpor. Again her heart stirred with a quick,

out-running impulse, she looked at him, at the stranger who was

not a gentleman yet who insisted on coming into her life, and

the pain of a new birth in herself strung all her veins to a new

form. She would have to begin again, to find a new being, a new

form, to respond to that blind, insistent figure standing over

against her.

A shiver, a sickness of new birth passed over her, the flame

leaped up him, under his skin. She wanted it, this new life from

him, with him, yet she must defend herself against it, for it

was a destruction.