The Rainbow

He was not even very much surprised. He held her in his arms,

and his bones melted. He leaned back against the wall. The door

of the loft was open. Outside, the rain slanted by in fine,

steely, mysterious haste, emerging out of the gulf of darkness.

He held her in his arms, and he and she together seemed to be

swinging in big, swooping oscillations, the two of them clasped

together up in the darkness. Outside the open door of the loft

in which they stood, beyond them and below them, was darkness,

with a travelling veil of rain.

"I love you, Will, I love you," she moaned, "I love you,

Will."

He held her as thought they were one, and was silent.

In the house, Tom Brangwen waited a while. Then he got up and

went out. He went down the yard. He saw the curious misty shaft

coming from the loft door. He scarcely knew it was the light in

the rain. He went on till the illumination fell on him dimly.

Then looking up, through the blurr, he saw the youth and the

girl together, the youth with his back against the wall, his

head sunk over the head of the girl. The elder man saw them,

blurred through the rain, but lit up. They thought themselves so

buried in the night. He even saw the lighted dryness of the loft

behind, and shadows and bunches of roosting fowls, up in the

night, strange shadows cast from the lantern on the floor.

And a black gloom of anger, and a tenderness of

self-effacement, fought in his heart. She did not understand

what she was doing. She betrayed herself. She was a child, a

mere child. She did not know how much of herself she was

squandering. And he was blackly and furiously miserable. Was he

then an old man, that he should be giving her away in marriage?

Was he old? He was not old. He was younger than that young

thoughtless fellow in whose arms she lay. Who knew her--he

or that blind-headed youth? To whom did she belong, if not to

himself?

He thought again of the child he had carried out at night

into the barn, whilst his wife was in labour with the young Tom.

He remembered the soft, warm weight of the little girl on his

arm, round his neck. Now she would say he was finished. She was

going away, to deny him, to leave an unendurable emptiness in

him, a void that he could not bear. Almost he hated her. How

dared she say he was old. He walked on in the rain, sweating

with pain, with the horror of being old, with the agony of

having to relinquish what was life to him.

Will Brangwen went home without having seen his uncle. He

held his hot face to the rain, and walked on in a trance. "I

love you, Will, I love you." The words repeated themselves

endlessly. The veils had ripped and issued him naked into the

endless space, and he shuddered. The walls had thrust him out

and given him a vast space to walk in. Whither, through this

darkness of infinite space, was he walking blindly? Where, at

the end of all the darkness, was God the Almighty still darkly,

seated, thrusting him on? "I love you, Will, I love you." He

trembled with fear as the words beat in his heart again. And he

dared not think of her face, of her eyes which shone, and of her

strange, transfigured face. The hand of the Hidden Almighty,

burning bright, had thrust out of the darkness and gripped him.

He went on subject and in fear, his heart gripped and burning

from the touch.