The Rainbow
Page 74There were a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, the
tension, the withholding relaxed in him, and he began to flow
towards her. She was beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go
his hold on himself, he relinquished himself, and knew the
subterranean force of his desire to come to her, to be with her,
to mingle with her, losing himself to find her, to find himself
in her. He began to approach her, to draw near.
His blood beat up in waves of desire. He wanted to come to
her, to meet her. She was there, if he could reach her. The
reality of her who was just beyond him absorbed him. Blind and
destroyed, he pressed forward, nearer, nearer, to receive the
consummation of himself, he received within the darkness which
should swallow him and yield him up to himself. If he could come
be destroyed, burnt away till he lit with her in one
consummation, that were supreme, supreme.
Their coming together now, after two years of married life,
was much more wonderful to them than it had been before. It was
the entry into another circle of existence, it was the baptism
to another life, it was the complete confirmation. Their feet
trod strange ground of knowledge, their footsteps were lit-up
with discovery. Wherever they walked, it was well, the world
re-echoed round them in discovery. They went gladly and
forgetful. Everything was lost, and everything was found. The
new world was discovered, it remained only to be explored.
They had passed through the doorway into the further space,
constraints and labours, and still was complete liberty. She was
the doorway to him, he to her. At last they had thrown open the
doors, each to the other, and had stood in the doorways facing
each other, whilst the light flooded out from behind on to each
of their faces, it was the transfiguration, glorification, the
admission.
And always the light of the transfiguration burned on in
their hearts. He went his way, as before, she went her way, to
the rest of the world there seemed no change. But to the two of
them, there was the perpetual wonder of the transfiguration.
He did not know her any better, any more precisely, now that
he knew her altogether. Poland, her husband, the war--he
foreign nature, half German, half Polish, nor her foreign
speech. But he knew her, he knew her meaning, without
understanding. What she said, what she spoke, this was a blind
gesture on her part. In herself she walked strong and clear, he
knew her, he saluted her, was with her. What was memory after
all, but the recording of a number of possibilities which had
never been fulfilled? What was Paul Lensky to her, but an
unfulfilled possibility to which he, Brangwen, was the reality
and the fulfilment? What did it matter, that Anna Lensky was
born of Lydia and Paul? God was her father and her mother. He
had passed through the married pair without fully making Himself
known to them.