The Rainbow

The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face

and the fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and they

raised their heads and swayed off, producing the long,

can-canking, protesting noise of geese, rocking their ship-like,

beautiful white bodies in a line beyond the gate.

"You're naughty, you're naughty," cried Anna, tears of dismay

and vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her slipper.

"Why, what are they doing?" said Brangwen.

"They won't let me come in," she said, turning her flushed

little face to him.

"Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to," and he pushed

open the gate for her.

She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey-white

geese standing monumental under the grey, cold day.

"Go on," he said.

She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body started

convulsively at the sudden, derisive can-cank-ank of the geese.

A blankness spread over her. The geese trailed away with

uplifted heads under the low grey sky.

"They don't know you," said Brangwen. "You should tell 'em

what your name is."

"They're naughty to shout at me," she flashed.

"They think you don't live here," he said.

Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and

imperiously: "My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because Mr.

Brangwen's my father now. He is, yes he is. And I

live here."

This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, without

knowing it herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish,

desolate moments, when it was good to creep up to something big

and warm, and bury her little self in his big, unlimited being.

Instinctively he was careful of her, careful to recognize her

and to give himself to her disposal.

She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a

childish, essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor

woman was such a servant. The child would not let the

serving-woman attend to her, do intimate things for her, not for

a long time. She treated her as one of an inferior race.

Brangwen did not like it.

"Why aren't you fond of Tilly?" he asked.

"Because--because--because she looks at me with her

eyes bent."

Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the

household, never as a person.

For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were for

ever on the watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient,

spoiled by Tilly, was an easy blusterer. If for a few minutes he

upset the household with his noisy impatience, he found at the

end the child glowering at him with intense black eyes, and she

was sure to dart forward her little head, like a serpent, with

her biting: "Go away."

"I'm not going away," he shouted, irritated at last.

"Go yourself--hustle--stir thysen--hop." And he

pointed to the door. The child backed away from him, pale with

fear. Then she gathered up courage, seeing him become

patient.