The Rainbow (100th Anniversary ed.)

by D. H. Lawrence

  During the last months of her pregnancy, he went about in a surcharged, imminent state that did not exhaust itself. She was also depressed, and sometimes she cried. It needed so much life to begin afresh, after she had lost so lavishly. Sometimes she cried. Then he stood stiff, feeling his heart would burst. For she did not want him, she did not want even to be made aware of him. By the very puckering of her face he knew that he must stand back, leave her intact, alone. For it was the old grief come back in her, the old loss, the pain of the old life, the dead husband, the dead children. This was sacred to her, and he must not violate her with his comfort. For what she wanted she would come to him. He stood aloof with turgid heart.

  He had to see her tears come, fall over her scarcely moving face, that only puckered sometimes, down on to her breast, that was so still, scarcely moving. And there was no noise, save now and again, when, with a strange, somnambulant movement, she took her handkerchief and wiped her face and blew her nose, and went on with the noiseless weeping. He knew that any offer of comfort from himself would be worse than useless, hateful to her, jangling her. She must cry. But it drove him insane. His heart was scalded, his brain hurt in his head, he went away, out of the house.

  His great and chiefest source of solace was the child. She had been at first aloof from him, reserved. However friendly she might seem one day, the next she would have lapsed to her original disregard of him, cold, detached, at her distance.

  The first morning after his marriage he had discovered it would not be so easy with the child. At the break of dawn he had started awake hearing a small voice outside the door saying plaintively:

  “Mother!”

  He rose and opened the door. She stood on the threshold in her night-dress, as she had climbed out of bed, black eyes staring round and hostile, her fair hair sticking out in a wild fleece. The man and child confronted each other.

  “I want my mother,” she said, jealously accenting the “my.”

  “Come on then,” he said gently.

  “Where’s my mother?”

  “She’s here—come on.”

  The child’s eyes, staring at the man with ruffled hair and beard, did not change. The mother’s voice called softly. The little bare feet entered the room with trepidation.

  “Mother!”

  “Come, my dear.”

  The small bare feet approached swiftly.

  “I wondered where you were,” came the plaintive voice. The mother stretched out her arms. The child stood beside the high bed. Brangwen lightly lifted the tiny girl, with an “up-a-daisy,” then took his own place in the bed again.

  “Mother!” cried the child sharply, as in anguish.

  “What, my pet?”

  Anna wriggled close into her mother’s arms, clinging tight, hiding from the fact of the man. Brangwen lay still, and waited. There was a long silence.

  Then suddenly, Anna looked round, as if she thought he would be gone. She saw the face of the man lying upturned to the ceiling. Her black eyes stared antagonistic from her exquisite face, her arms clung tightly to her mother, afraid. He did not move for some time, not knowing what to say. His face was smooth and soft-skinned with love, his eyes full of soft light. He looked at her, scarcely moving his head, his eyes smiling.

  “Have you just wakened up?” he said.

  “Go away,” she retorted, with a little darting forward of the head, something like a viper.

  “Nay,” he answered, “I’m not going. You can go.”

  “Go away,” came the sharp little command.

  “There’s room for you,” he said.

  “You can’t send your father from his own bed, my little bird,” said her mother, pleasantly.

  The child glowered at him, miserable in her impotence.

  “There’s room for you as well,” he said. “It’s a big bed enough.”

  She glowered without answering, then turned and clung to her mother. She would not allow it.

  During the day she asked her mother several times:

  “When are we going home, mother?”

  “We are at home, darling, we live here now. This is our house, we live here with your father.”

  The child was forced to accept it. But she remained against the man. As night came on, she asked:

  “Where are you going to sleep, mother?”

  “I sleep with the father now.”

  And when Brangwen came in, the child asked fiercely:

  “Why do you sleep with my mother? My mother sleeps with me,” her voice quivering.

  “You come as well, an’ sleep with both of us,” he coaxed.

  “Mother!” she cried, turning, appealing against him.

  “But I must have a husband, darling. All women must have a husband.”

  “And you like to have a father with your mother, don’t you?” said Brangwen.

  Anna glowered at him. She seemed to cogitate.

  “No,” she cried fiercely at length, “no, I don’t want.’’ And slowly her face puckered, she sobbed bitterly. He stood and watched her, sorry. But there could be no altering it.

  Which, when she knew, she became quiet. He was easy with her, talking to her, taking her to see the live creatures, bringing her the first chickens in his cap, taking her to gather the eggs, letting her throw crusts to the horse. She would easily accompany him, and take all he had to give, but she remained neutral still.

  She was curiously, incomprehensibly jealous of her mother, always anxiously concerned about her. If Brangwen drove with his wife to Nottingham, Anna ran about happily enough, or unconcerned, for a long time. Then, as afternoon came on, there was only one cry—“I want my mother, I want my mother—” and a bitter, pathetic sobbing that soon had the soft-hearted Tilly sobbing too. The child’s anguish was that her mother was gone, gone.

  Yet as a rule, Anna seemed cold, resenting her mother, critical of her. It was:

  “I don’t like you to do that, mother,” or, “I don’t like you to say that.” She was a sore problem to Brangwen and to all the people at the Marsh. As a rule, however, she was active, lightly flitting about the farmyard, only appearing now and again to assure herself of her mother. Happy she never seemed, but quick, sharp, absorbed, full of imagination and changeability. Tilly said she was bewitched. But it did not matter so long as she did not cry. There was something heartrending about Anna’s crying, her childish anguish seemed so utter and so timeless, as if it were a thing of all the ages.

  She made playmates of the creatures of the farmyard, talking to them, telling them the stories she had from her mother, counselling them and correcting them. Brangwen found her at the gate leading to the paddock and to the duckpond. She was peering through the bars and shouting to the stately white geese, that stood in a curving line:

  “You’re not to call at people when they want to come. You must not do it.”

  The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face and the fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and they raised their heads and swayed off, producing the long, can-canking, protesting noise of geese, rocking their ship-like, beautiful white bodies in a line beyond the gate.

  “You’re naughty, you’re naughty,” cried Anna, tears of dismay and vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her slipper.

  “Why, what are they doing?” said Brangwen.

  “They won’t let me come in,” she said, turning her flushed little face to him.

  “Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to,” and he pushed open the gate for her.

  She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey-white geese standing monumental under the grey, cold day.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body started convulsively at the sudden, derisive Can-cank-ank of the geese. A blankness spread over her. The geese trailed away with uplifted he
ads under the low grey sky.

  “They don’t know you,” said Brangwen. “You should tell ’em what your name is.”

  “They’re naughty to shout at me,” she flashed.

  “They think you don’t live here,” he said.

  Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and imperiously:

  “My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because Mr Brangwen’s my father now. He is, yes he is. And I live here.”

  This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, without knowing it herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish, desolate moments, when it was good to creep up to something big and warm, and bury her little self in his big, unlimited being. Instinctively he was careful of her, careful to recognise her and to give himself to her disposal.

  She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a childish, essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor woman was such a servant. The child would not let the serving-woman attend to her, do intimate things for her, not for a long time. She treated her as one of an inferior race. Brangwen did not like it.

  “Why aren’t you fond of Tilly?” he asked.

  “Because—because—because she looks at me with her eyes bent.”

  Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the household, never as a person.

  For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were forever on the watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient, spoiled by Tilly, was an easy blusterer. If for a few minutes he upset the household with his noisy impatience, he found at the end the child glowering at him with intense black eyes, and she was sure to dart forward her little head, like a serpent, with her biting:

  “Go away.”

  “I’m not going away,” he shouted, irritated at last. “Go yourself—hustle—stir thysen—hop.” And he pointed to the door. The child backed away from him, pale with fear. Then she gathered up courage, seeing him become patient.

  “We don’t live with you,” she said, thrusting forward her little head at him. “You—you’re—you’re a bomakle.”

  “A what?” he shouted.

  Her voice wavered—but it came.

  “A bomakle.”

  “Ay, an’ you’re a comakle.”

  She meditated. Then she hissed forwards her head.

  “I’m not.”

  “Not what?”

  “A comakle.”

  “No more am I a bomakle.”

  He was really cross.

  Other times she would say:

  “My mother doesn’t live here.”

  “Oh ay?”

  “I want her to go away.”

  “Then want’s your portion,” he replied laconically.

  So they drew nearer together. He would take her with him when he went out in the trap. The horse ready at the gate, he came noisily into the house, which seemed quiet and peaceful till he appeared to set everything awake.

  “Now then, Topsy, pop into thy bonnet.”

  The child drew herself up, resenting the indignity of the address.

  “I can’t fasten my bonnet myself,” she said haughtily.

  “Not man enough yet,” he said, tying the ribbons under her chin with clumsy fingers.

  She held up her face to him. Her little bright-red lips moved as he fumbled under her chin.

  “You talk—nonsents,” she said, re-echoing one of his phrases.

  “That face shouts for th’ pump,” he said, and taking out a big red handkerchief, that smelled of strong tobacco, began wiping round her mouth.

  “Is Kitty waiting for me?” she asked.

  “Ay,” he said. “Let’s finish wiping your face—it’ll pass wi’ a cat-lick.”

  She submitted prettily. Then, when he let her go, she began to skip, with a curious flicking up of one leg behind her.

  “Now my young buck-rabbit,” he said. “Slippy!”

  She came and was shaken into her coat, and the two set off. She sat very close beside him in the gig, tucked tightly, feeling his big body sway against her, very splendid. She loved the rocking of the gig, when his big, live body swayed upon her, against her. She laughed, a poignant little shrill laugh, and her black eyes glowed.

  She was curiously hard, and then passionately tenderhearted. Her mother was ill, the child stole about on tip-toe in the bedroom for hours, being nurse, and doing the thing thoughtfully and diligently. Another day, her mother was unhappy. Anna would stand with legs apart, glowering, balancing on the sides of her slippers. She laughed when the goslings wriggled in Tilly’s hand, as the pellets of food were rammed down their throats with a skewer, she laughed nervously. She was hard and imperious with the animals, squandering no love, running about amongst them like a cruel mistress.

  Summer came, and hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish mite dancing about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more than she loved her.

  But always in the child was some anxious connection with the mother. So long as Mrs Brangwen was all right, the little girl played about and took very little notice of her. But corn-harvest went by, the autumn drew on, and the mother, the later months of her pregnancy beginning, was strange and detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, the old, unhealthy uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility came on the child again. If she went to the fields with her father, then, instead of playing about carelessly, it was:

  “I want to go home.”

  “Home, why tha’s nobbut this minute come.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “What for? What ails thee?”

  “I want my mother.”

  “Thy mother! Thy mother none wants thee.”

  “I want to go home.”

  There would be tears in a moment.

  “Can ter find t’road, then?”

  And he watched her scudding, silent and intent, along the hedge-bottom, at a steady, anxious pace, till she turned and was gone through the gate-way. Then he saw her two fields off, still pressing forward, small and urgent. His face was clouded as he turned to plough up the stubble.

  The year drew on, in the hedges the berries shone red and twinkling above bare twigs, robins were seen, great droves of birds dashed like spray from the fallow, rooks appeared, black and flapping down to earth, the ground was cold as he pulled the turnips, the roads were churned deep in mud. Then the turnips were pitted and work was slack.

  Inside the house it was dark, and quiet. The child flitted uneasily round, and now and again came her plaintive, startled cry:

  “Mother!”

  Mrs Brangwen was heavy and unresponsive, tired, lapsed back. Brangwen went on working out of doors.

  At evening, when he came in to milk, the child would run behind him. Then, in the cosy cow-sheds, with the doors shut and the air looking warm by the light of the hanging lantern, above the branching horns of the cows, she would stand watching his hands squeezing rhythmically the teats of the placid beast, watch the froth and the leaping squirt of milk, watch his hand sometimes rubbing slowly, understandingly, upon a hanging udder. So they kept each other company, but at a distance, rarely speaking.

  The darkest days of the year came on, the child was fretful, sighing as if some oppression were on her, running hither and thither without relief. And Brangwen went about at his work, heavy, his heart heavy as the sodden earth.

  The winter nights fell early, the lamp was lighted before tea-time, the shutters were closed, they were all shut into the room with the tension and stress. Mrs Brangwen went early to bed, Anna playing on the floor beside her. Brangwen sat in the emptiness of the downstairs room, smoking, scarcely conscious even of his own misery. And very often he went out to escape it.

  Christmas passed, the wet, drenched, cold days of January recurred monotonously, with now and then a brilliance of blue flashing in, when Brangwen went out into a morning like crystal, when every sound r
ang again, and the birds were many and sudden and brusque in the hedges. Then an elation came over him in spite of everything, whether his wife were strange or sad, or whether he craved for her to be with him, it did not matter, the air rang with clear noises, the sky was like crystal, like a bell, and the earth was hard. Then he worked and was happy, his eyes shining, his cheeks flushed. And the zest of life was strong in him.

  The birds pecked busily round him, the horses were fresh and ready, the bare branches of the trees flung themselves up like a man yawning, taut with energy, the twigs radiated off into the clear light. He was alive and full of zest for it all. And if his wife were heavy, separated from him, extinguished, then, let her be, let him remain himself. Things would be as they would be. Meanwhile he heard the ringing crow of a cockerel in the distance, he saw the pale shell of the moon effaced on a blue sky.

  So he shouted to the horses, and was happy. If, driving into Ilkeston, a fresh young woman were going in to do her shopping, he hailed her, and reined in his horse, and picked her up. Then he was glad to have her near him, his eyes shone, his voice, laughing, teasing in a warm fashion, made the poise of her head more beautiful, her blood ran quicker. They were both stimulated, the morning was fine.

  What did it matter that, at the bottom of his heart, was care and pain? It was at the bottom, let it stop at the bottom. His wife, her suffering, her coming pain—well, it must be so. She suffered, but he was out of doors, full in life, and it would be ridiculous, indecent, to pull a long face and to insist on being miserable. He was happy, this morning, driving to town, with the hoofs of the horse spanking the hard earth. Well he was happy, if half the world were weeping at the funeral of the other half. And it was a jolly girl sitting beside him. And Woman was immortal, whatever happened, whoever turned towards death. Let the misery come when it could not be resisted.