The Rainbow

He returned to his lodging at night treading quick, his eyes

glittering, and his face shining darkly as if he came from some

passionate, vital tryst.

The glow remained in him, the fire burned, his heart was

fierce like a sun. He enjoyed his unknown life and his own self.

And he was ready to go back to the Marsh.

Without knowing it, Anna was wanting him to come. In him she

had escaped. In him the bounds of her experience were

transgressed: he was the hole in the wall, beyond which the

sunshine blazed on an outside world.

He came. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, talking again,

there recurred the strange, remote reality which carried

everything before it. Sometimes, he talked of his father, whom

he hated with a hatred that was burningly close to love, of his

mother, whom he loved, with a love that was keenly close to

hatred, or to revolt. His sentences were clumsy, he was only

half articulate. But he had the wonderful voice, that could ring

its vibration through the girl's soul, transport her into his

feeling. Sometimes his voice was hot and declamatory, sometimes

it had a strange, twanging, almost cat-like sound, sometimes it

hesitated, puzzled, sometimes there was the break of a little

laugh. Anna was taken by him. She loved the running flame that

coursed through her as she listened to him. And his mother and

his father became to her two separate people in her life.

For some weeks the youth came frequently, and was received

gladly by them all. He sat amongst them, his dark face glowing,

an eagerness and a touch of derisiveness on his wide mouth,

something grinning and twisted, his eyes always shining like a

bird's, utterly without depth. There was no getting hold of the

fellow, Brangwen irritably thought. He was like a grinning young

tom-cat, that came when he thought he would, and without

cognizance of the other person.

At first the youth had looked towards Tom Brangwen when he

talked; and then he looked towards his aunt, for her

appreciation, valuing it more than his uncle's; and then he

turned to Anna, because from her he got what he wanted, which

was not in the elder people.

So that the two young people, from being always attendant on

the elder, began to draw apart and establish a separate kingdom.

Sometimes Tom Brangwen was irritated. His nephew irritated him.

The lad seemed to him too special, self-contained. His nature

was fierce enough, but too much abstracted, like a separate

thing, like a cat's nature. A cat could lie perfectly peacefully

on the hearthrug whilst its master or mistress writhed in agony

a yard away. It had nothing to do with other people's affairs.

What did the lad really care about anything, save his own

instinctive affairs?