The Rainbow

Tom Brangwen never loved his own son as he loved his

stepchild Anna. When they told him it was a boy, he had a thrill

of pleasure. He liked the confirmation of fatherhood. It gave

him satisfaction to know he had a son. But he felt not very much

outgoing to the baby itself. He was its father, that was

enough.

He was glad that his wife was mother of his child. She was

serene, a little bit shadowy, as if she were transplanted. In

the birth of the child she seemed to lose connection with her

former self. She became now really English, really Mrs.

Brangwen. Her vitality, however, seemed lowered.

She was still, to Brangwen, immeasurably beautiful. She was

still passionate, with a flame of being. But the flame was not

robust and present. Her eyes shone, her face glowed for him, but

like some flower opened in the shade, that could not bear the

full light. She loved the baby. But even this, with a sort of

dimness, a faint absence about her, a shadowiness even in her

mother-love. When Brangwen saw her nursing his child, happy,

absorbed in it, a pain went over him like a thin flame. For he

perceived how he must subdue himself in his approach to her. And

he wanted again the robust, moral exchange of love and passion

such as he had had at first with her, at one time and another,

when they were matched at their highest intensity. This was the

one experience for him now. And he wanted it, always, with

remorseless craving.

She came to him again, with the same lifting of her mouth as

had driven him almost mad with trammelled passion at first. She

came to him again, and, his heart delirious in delight and

readiness, he took her. And it was almost as before.

Perhaps it was quite as before. At any rate, it made him know

perfection, it established in him a constant eternal

knowledge.

But it died down before he wanted it to die down. She was

finished, she could take no more. And he was not exhausted, he

wanted to go on. But it could not be.

So he had to begin the bitter lesson, to abate himself, to

take less than he wanted. For she was Woman to him, all other

women were her shadows. For she had satisfied him. And he wanted

it to go on. And it could not. However he raged, and, filled

with suppression that became hot and bitter, hated her in his

soul that she did not want him, however he had mad outbursts,

and drank and made ugly scenes, still he knew, he was only

kicking against the pricks. It was not, he had to learn, that

she would not want him enough, as much as he demanded that she

should want him. It was that she could not. She could only want

him in her own way, and to her own measure. And she had spent

much life before he found her as she was, the woman who could

take him and give him fulfilment. She had taken him and given

him fulfilment. She still could do so, in her own times and

ways. But he must control himself, measure himself to her.