The Rainbow

They did not take much notice of each other, consciously.

"I'm betimes," he said.

"Yes," she answered.

He turned to the dogs, or to the child if she was there. The

little Anna played about the farm, flitting constantly in to

call something to her mother, to fling her arms round her

mother's skirts, to be noticed, perhaps caressed, then,

forgetting, to slip out again.

Then Brangwen, talking to the child, or to the dog between

his knees, would be aware of his wife, as, in her tight, dark

bodice and her lace fichu, she was reaching up to the corner

cupboard. He realized with a sharp pang that she belonged to

him, and he to her. He realized that he lived by her. Did he own

her? Was she here for ever? Or might she go away? She was not

really his, it was not a real marriage, this marriage between

them. She might go away. He did not feel like a master, husband,

father of her children. She belonged elsewhere. Any moment, she

might be gone. And he was ever drawn to her, drawn after her,

with ever-raging, ever-unsatisfied desire. He must always turn

home, wherever his steps were taking him, always to her, and he

could never quite reach her, he could never quite be satisfied,

never be at peace, because she might go away.

At evening, he was glad. Then, when he had finished in the

yard, and come in and washed himself, when the child was put to

bed, he could sit on the other side of the fire with his beer on

the hob and his long white pipe in his fingers, conscious of her

there opposite him, as she worked at her embroidery, or as she

talked to him, and he was safe with her now, till morning. She

was curiously self-sufficient and did not say very much.

Occasionally she lifted her head, her grey eyes shining with a

strange light, that had nothing to do with him or with this

place, and would tell him about herself. She seemed to be back

again in the past, chiefly in her childhood or her girlhood,

with her father. She very rarely talked of her first husband.

But sometimes, all shining-eyed, she was back at her own home,

telling him about the riotous times, the trip to Paris with her

father, tales of the mad acts of the peasants when a burst of

religious, self-hurting fervour had passed over the country.

She would lift her head and say: "When they brought the railway across the country, they made

afterwards smaller railways, of shorter width, to come down to

our town-a hundred miles. When I was a girl, Gisla, my German

gouvernante, was very shocked and she would not tell me. But I

heard the servants talking. I remember, it was Pierre, the

coachman. And my father, and some of his friends, landowners,

they had taken a wagon, a whole railway wagon--that you

travel in----"