The Rainbow

At home, even so near as Cossethay, was the vicar, who spoke

the other, magic language, and had the other, finer bearing,

both of which she could perceive, but could never attain to. The

vicar moved in worlds beyond where her own menfolk existed. Did

she not know her own menfolk: fresh, slow, full-built men,

masterful enough, but easy, native to the earth, lacking

outwardness and range of motion. Whereas the vicar, dark and dry

and small beside her husband, had yet a quickness and a range of

being that made Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and

local. She knew her husband. But in the vicar's nature was that

which passed beyond her knowledge. As Brangwen had power over

the cattle so the vicar had power over her husband. What was it

in the vicar, that raised him above the common men as man is

raised above the beast? She craved to know. She craved to

achieve this higher being, if not in herself, then in her

children.

That which makes a man strong even if he be little and

frail in body, just as any man is little and frail beside a

bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what was it? It was not

money nor power nor position. What power had the vicar over Tom

Brangwen--none. Yet strip them and set them on a desert

island, and the vicar was the master. His soul was master of the

other man's. And why--why? She decided it was a question of

knowledge.

The curate was poor enough, and not very efficacious as a

man, either, yet he took rank with those others, the superior.

She watched his children being born, she saw them running as

tiny things beside their mother. And already they were separate

from her own children, distinct. Why were her own children

marked below the others? Why should the curate's children

inevitably take precedence over her children, why should

dominance be given them from the start? It was not money, nor

even class. It was education and experience, she decided.

It was this, this education, this higher form of being, that

the mother wished to give to her children, so that they too

could live the supreme life on earth. For her children, at least

the children of her heart, had the complete nature that should

take place in equality with the living, vital people in the

land, not be left behind obscure among the labourers. Why must

they remain obscured and stifled all their lives, why should

they suffer from lack of freedom to move? How should they learn

the entry into the finer, more vivid circle of life?