The Rainbow

The days went by, they ran on dark-padded feet in silence. He

went to see Anna, but again there had come a reserve between

them. Tom Brangwen was gloomy, his blue eyes sombre. Anna was

strange and delivered up. Her face in its delicate colouring was

mute, touched dumb and poignant. The mother bowed her head and

moved in her own dark world, that was pregnant again with

fulfilment.

Will Brangwen worked at his wood-carving. It was a passion, a

passion for him to have the chisel under his grip. Verily the

passion of his heart lifted the fine bite of steel. He was

carving, as he had always wanted, the Creation of Eve. It was a

panel in low relief, for a church. Adam lay asleep as if

suffering, and God, a dim, large figure, stooped towards him,

stretching forward His unveiled hand; and Eve, a small vivid,

naked female shape, was issuing like a flame towards the hand of

God, from the torn side of Adam.

Now, Will Brangwen was working at the Eve. She was thin, a

keen, unripe thing. With trembling passion, fine as a breath of

air, he sent the chisel over her belly, her hard, unripe, small

belly. She was a stiff little figure, with sharp lines, in the

throes and torture and ecstasy of her creation. But he trembled

as he touched her. He had not finished any of his figures. There

was a bird on a bough overhead, lifting its wings for flight,

and a serpent wreathing up to it. It was not finished yet. He

trembled with passion, at last able to create the new, sharp

body of his Eve.

At the sides, at the far sides, at either end, were two

Angels covering their faces with their wings. They were like

trees. As he went to the Marsh, in the twilight, he felt that

the Angels, with covered faces, were standing back as he went

by. The darkness was of their shadows and the covering of their

faces. When he went through the Canal bridge, the evening glowed

in its last deep colours, the sky was dark blue, the stars

glittered from afar, very remote and approaching above the

darkening cluster of the farm, above the paths of crystal along

the edge of the heavens.

She waited for him like the glow of light, and as if his face

were covered. And he dared not lift his face to look at her.

Corn harvest came on. One evening they walked out through the

farm buildings at nightfall. A large gold moon hung heavily to

the grey horizon, trees hovered tall, standing back in the dusk,

waiting. Anna and the young man went on noiselessly by the

hedge, along where the farm-carts had made dark ruts in the

grass. They came through a gate into a wide open field where

still much light seemed to spread against their faces. In the

under-shadow the sheaves lay on the ground where the reapers had

left them, many sheaves like bodies prostrate in shadowy bulk;

others were riding hazily in shocks, like ships in the haze of

moonlight and of dusk, farther off.