The Rainbow

"Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even

as the green herb have I given you all things."

But Ursula was not moved by the history this morning.

Multiplying and replenishing the earth bored her. Altogether it

seemed merely a vulgar and stock-raising sort of business. She

was left quite cold by man's stock-breeding lordship over beast

and fishes.

"And you, be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly

in the earth, and multiply therein."

In her soul she mocked at this multiplication, every cow

becoming two cows, every turnip ten turnips.

"And God said; This is the token of the covenant which I make

between me and you and every living creature that is with you,

for perpetual generations; "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a

covenant between me and the earth.

"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the

earth, that a bow shall be seen in the cloud; "And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you

and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall no

more become a flood to destroy all flesh."

"Destroy all flesh," why "flesh" in particular? Who was this

lord of flesh? After all, how big was the Flood? Perhaps a few

dryads and fauns had just run into the hills and the farther

valleys and woods, frightened, but most had gone on blithely

unaware of any flood at all, unless the nymphs should tell them.

It pleased Ursula to think of the naiads in Asia Minor meeting

the nereids at the mouth of the streams, where the sea washed

against the fresh, sweet tide, and calling to their sisters the

news of Noah's Flood. They would tell amusing accounts of Noah

in his ark. Some nymphs would relate how they had hung on the

side of the ark, peeped in, and heard Noah and Shem and Ham and

Japeth, sitting in their place under the rain, saying, how they

four were the only men on earth now, because the Lord had

drowned all the rest, so that they four would have everything to

themselves, and be masters of every thing, sub-tenants under the

great Proprietor.

Ursula wished she had been a nymph. She would have laughed

through the window of the ark, and flicked drops of the flood at

Noah, before she drifted away to people who were less important

in their Proprietor and their Flood.

What was God, after all? If maggots in a dead dog be but God

kissing carrion, what then is not God? She was surfeited of this

God. She was weary of the Ursula Brangwen who felt troubled

about God. What ever God was, He was, and there was no need for

her to trouble about Him. She felt she had now all licence.