The Rainbow (100th Anniversary ed.) Read online

  “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you,” replied Tilly, on her dignity.

  “An’ is that all as you’ve gathered, as she’s housekeeping at the vicarage?”

  “I’ve ’eered mention of ’er name, but I couldn’t remember it for my life.”

  “Why yer riddle-skulled woman o’ nonsense, what have you got a head for?”

  “For what other folks ’as got theirs for,” retorted Tilly, who loved nothing more than these tilts when he would call her names.

  There was a lull.

  “I don’t believe as anybody could keep it in their head,” the woman-servant continued, tentatively.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Why, ’er name.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She’s fra some foreign parts or other.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “That’s all I do know, as she is.”

  “An’ wheer do you reckon she’s from, then?”

  “I don’t know. They do say as she hails fra th’ Pole. I don’t know,” Tilly hastened to add, knowing he would attack her.

  “Fra th’ Pole, why do you hail fra th’ Pole? Who set up that menagerie confabulation?”

  “That’s what they say—I don’t know—”

  “Who says?”

  “Mrs Bentley says as she’s fra th’ Pole—else she is a Pole, or summat.”

  Tilly was only afraid she was landing herself deeper now.

  “Who says she’s a Pole?”

  “They all say so.”

  “Then what’s brought her to these parts?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. She’s got a little girl with her.”

  “Got a little girl with her?”

  “Of three or four, with a head like a fuzz-ball.”

  “Black?”

  “White—fair as can be, an’ all of a fuzz.”

  “Is there a father, then?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I don’t know.”

  “What brought her here?”

  “I couldn’t say, without th’ vicar axed her.”

  “Is the child her child?”

  “I s’d think so—they say so.”

  “Who told you about her?”

  “Why Lizzie—a-Monday—we seed her goin’ past.”

  “You’d have to be rattling your tongues if anything went past.”

  Brangwen stood musing. That evening he went up to Cossethay to the Red Lion, half with the intention of hearing more.

  She was the widow of a Polish doctor, he gathered. Her husband had died, a refugee, in London. She spoke a bit foreign-like, but you could easily make out what she said. She had one little girl named Anna. Lensky was the woman’s name, Mrs Lensky.

  Brangwen felt that here was the unreality established at last. He felt also a curious certainty about her, as if she were destined to him. It was to him a profound satisfaction that she was a foreigner.

  A swift change had taken place on the earth for him, as if a new creation were fulfilled, in which he had real existence. Things had all been stark, unreal, barren, mere nullities before. Now they were actualities that he could handle.

  He dared scarcely think of the woman. He was afraid. Only all the time he was aware of her presence not far off, he lived in her. But he dared not know her, even acquaint himself with her by thinking of her.

  One day he met her walking along the road with her little girl. It was a child with a face like a bud of apple-blossom, and glistening fair hair like thistle-down sticking out in straight, wild, flamy pieces, and very dark eyes. The child clung jealously to her mother’s side when he looked at her, staring with resentful black eyes. But the mother glanced at him again, almost vacantly. And the very vacancy of her look inflamed him. She had wide grey-brown eyes with very dark, fathomless pupils. He felt the fine flame running under his skin, as if all his veins had caught fire on the surface. And he went on walking without knowledge.

  It was coming, he knew, his fate. The world was submitting to its transformation. He made no move: it would come, what would come.

  When his sister Effie came to the Marsh for a week, he went with her for once to church. In the tiny place, with its mere dozen pews, he sat not far from the stranger. There was a fineness about her, a poignancy about the way she sat and held her head lifted. She was strange, from far off, yet so intimate. She was from far away, a presence, so close to his soul. She was not really there, sitting in Cossethay church beside her little girl. She was not living the apparent life of her days. She belonged to somewhere else. He felt it poignantly, as something real and natural. But a pang of fear for his own concrete life, that was only Cossethay, hurt him, and gave him misgiving.

  Her thick dark brows almost met above her irregular nose, she had a wide, rather thick mouth. But her face was lifted to another world of life: not to heaven or death: but to some place where she still lived, in spite of her body’s absence.

  The child beside her watched everything with wide, black eyes. She had an odd little defiant look, her little red mouth was pinched shut. She seemed to be jealously guarding something, to be always on the alert for defence. She met Brangwen’s near, vacant, intimate gaze, and a palpitating hostility, almost like a flame of pain, came into the wide, over-conscious dark eyes.

  The old clergyman droned on, Cossethay sat unmoved as usual. And there was the foreign woman with a foreign air about her, inviolate, and the strange child, also foreign, jealously guarding something.

  When the service was over, he walked in the way of another existence out of the church. As he went down the church-path with his sister, behind the woman and child, the little girl suddenly broke from her mother’s hand, and slipped back with quick, almost invisible movement, and was picking at something almost under Brangwen’s feet. Her tiny fingers were fine and quick, but they missed the red button.

  “Have you found something?” said Brangwen to her.

  And he also stooped for the button. But she had got it, and she stood back with it pressed against her little coat, her black eyes flaring at him, as if to forbid him to notice her. Then, having silenced him, she turned with a swift

  “Mother—,” and was gone down the path.

  The mother had stood watching impassive, looking not at the child, but at Brangwen. He became aware of the woman looking at him, standing there isolated yet for him dominant in her foreign existence.

  He did not know what to do, and turned to his sister. But the wide grey eyes, almost vacant yet so moving, held him beyond himself.

  “Mother, I may have it, mayn’t I?” came the child’s proud, silvery tones. “Mother”—she seemed always to be calling her mother to remember her—“mother”—and she had nothing to continue now her mother had replied, “Yes, my child.” But, with ready invention, the child stumbled and ran on “What are those people’s names?”

  Brangwen heard the abstract:

  “I don’t know, dear.”

  He went on down the road as if he were not living inside himself, but somewhere outside.

  “Who was that person?” his sister Effie asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he answered unknowing.

  “She’s somebody very funny,” said Effie, almost in condemnation. “That child’s like one bewitched.”

  “Bewitched—how bewitched?” he repeated.

  “You can see for yourself. The mother’s plain, I must say—but the child is like a changeling. She’d be about thirty-five.”

  But he took no notice. His sister talked on.

  “There’s your woman for you,” she continued. “You’d better marry her.” But still he took no notice. Things were as they were.

  Another day, at tea-time, as he sat alone at table, there came a knock at the front door. It startled him like a portent. No-one ever knocked at the front door. He
rose and began slotting back the bolts, turning the big key. When he had opened the door, the strange woman stood on the threshold.

  “Can you give me a pound of butter?” she asked, in a curious detached way of one speaking a foreign language.

  He tried to attend to her question. She was looking at him questioningly. But underneath the question, what was there, in her very standing motionless, which affected him?

  He stepped aside and she at once entered the house, as if the door had been opened to admit her. That startled him. It was the custom for everybody to wait on the doorstep till asked inside. He went into the kitchen and she followed.

  His tea-things were spread on the scrubbed deal table, a big fire was burning, a dog rose from the hearth and went to her. She stood motionless just inside the kitchen.

  “Tilly,” he called loudly, “have we got any butter?”

  The stranger stood there like a silence in her black cloak.

  “Eh?” came the shrill cry from the distance.

  He shouted his question again.

  “We’ve got what’s on t’ table,” answered Tilly’s shrill voice out of the dairy.

  Brangwen looked at the table. There was a large pat of butter on a plate, almost a pound. It was round, and stamped with acorns and oak-leaves.

  “Can’t you come when you’re wanted?” he shouted.

  “Why what d’you want?” Tilly protested, as she came peeking inquisitively through the other door.

  She saw the strange woman, stared at her with cross-eyes, but said nothing.

  “Haven’t we any butter?” asked Brangwen again, impatiently, as if he could command some by his question.

  “I tell you there’s what’s on t’ table,” said Tilly, impatient that she was unable to create any to his demand. “We haven’t a morsel besides.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  The stranger spoke, in her curiously distinct, detached manner of one who must think her speech first.

  “Oh, then thank you very much. I am sorry that I have come to trouble you.”

  She could not understand the entire lack of manners, was slightly puzzled. Any politeness would have made the situation quite impersonal. But here it was a case of wills in confusion. Brangwen flushed at her polite speech. Still he did not let her go.

  “Get summat an’ wrap that up for her,” he said to Tilly, looking at the butter on the table.

  And taking a clean knife, he cut off that side of the butter where it was touched.

  His speech, the “for her,” penetrated slowly into the foreign woman and angered Tilly.

  “Vicar has his butter fra Brown’s by rights,” said the insuppressible servant-woman. “We s’ll be churnin’ to-morrow mornin’ first thing.”

  “Yes”—the long-drawn foreign yes—“yes,” said the Polish woman, “I went to Mrs Brown’s. She hasn’t any more.”

  Tilly bridled her head, bursting to say that, according to the etiquette of people who bought butter, it was no sort of manners whatever coming to a place cool as you like and knocking at the front door asking for a pound as a stop-gap while your other people were short. If you go to Brown’s you go to Brown’s, an’ my butter isn’t just to make shift when Brown’s has got none.

  Brangwen understood perfectly this unspoken speech of Tilly’s. The Polish lady did not. And as she wanted butter for the vicar, and as Tilly was churning in the morning, she waited.

  “Sluther up now,” said Brangwen loudly after this silence had resolved itself out; and Tilly disappeared through the inner door.

  “I am afraid that I should not come, so,” said the stranger, looking at him enquiringly, as if referring to him for what it was usual to do.

  He felt confused.

  “How’s that?” he said, trying to be genial and being only protective.

  “Do you—?” she began deliberately. But she was not sure of her ground, and the conversation came to an end. Her eyes looked at him all the while, because she could not speak the language.

  They stood facing each other. The dog walked away from her to him. He bent down to it.

  “And how’s your little girl?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you, she is very well,” was the reply, a phrase of polite speech in a foreign language merely.

  “Sit you down,” he said.

  And she sat in a chair, her slim arms, coming through the slits of her cloak, resting on her lap.

  “You’re not used to these parts,” he said, still standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, coatless, looking with curious directness at the woman. Her self-possession pleased him and inspired him, set him curiously free. It seemed to him almost brutal to feel so master of himself and of the situation.

  Her eyes rested on him for a moment, questioning, as she thought of the meaning of his speech.

  “No,” she said, understanding. “No—it is strange.”

  “You find it middlin’ rough?” he said.

  Her eyes waited on him, so that he should say it again.

  “Our ways are rough to you,” he repeated.

  “Yes—yes, I understand. Yes, it is different, it is strange. But I was in Yorkshire—”

  “Oh well then,” he said, “it’s no worse here than what they are up there.”

  She did not quite understand. His protective manner, and his sureness, and his intimacy, puzzled her. What did he mean? If he was her equal, why did he behave so without formality?

  “No—” she said, vaguely, her eyes resting on him.

  She saw him fresh and naïve, uncouth, almost entirely beyond relationship with her. Yet he was good-looking, with his fair hair and blue eyes full of energy, and with his healthy body that seemed to take equality with her. She watched him steadily. He was difficult for her to understand, warm, uncouth, and confident as he was, sure on his feet as if he did not know what it was to be unsure. What then was it that gave him this curious stability?

  She did not know. She wondered. She looked round the room he lived in. It had a close intimacy that fascinated and almost frightened her. The furniture was old and familiar as old people, the whole place seemed so kin to him, as if it partook of his being, that she was uneasy.

  “It is already a long time that you have lived in this house—yes?” she asked.

  “I’ve always lived here,” he said.

  “Yes—but your people—your family?”

  “We’ve been here above two hundred years,” he said. Her eyes were on him all the time, wide-open and trying to grasp him. He felt that he was there for her.

  “It is your own place, the house, the farm—?”

  “Yes,” he said. He looked down at her and met her look. It disturbed her. She did not know him. He was a foreigner, they had nothing to do with each other. Yet his look disturbed her to knowledge of him. He was so strangely confident and direct.

  “You live quite alone?”

  “Yes—if you call it alone.”

  She did not understand. It seemed unusual to her. What was the meaning of it?

  And whenever her eyes, after watching him for some time, inevitably met his, she was aware of a heat beating up over her consciousness. She sat motionless and in conflict. Who was this strange man who was at once so near to her? What was happening to her? Something in his young, warm-twinkling eyes seemed to assume a right to her, to speak to her, to extend her his protection. But how? Why did he speak to her! Why were his eyes so certain, so full of light and confident, waiting for no permission nor signal.

  Tilly returned with a large leaf and found the two silent. At once he felt it incumbent on him to speak, now the serving-woman had come back.

  “How old is your little girl?” he asked.

  “Four years,” she replied.

  “Her father hasn’t been dead long, then?” he asked.
/>   “She was one year when he died.”

  “Three years?”

  “Yes, three years that he is dead—yes.”

  Curiously quiet she was, almost abstracted, answering these questions. She looked at him again, with some maidenhood opening in her eyes. He felt he could not move, neither towards her nor away from her. Something about her presence hurt him, till he was almost rigid before her. He saw the girl’s wondering look rise in her eyes.

  Tilly handed her the butter and she rose.

  “Thank you very much,” she said. “How much is it?”

  “We’ll make th’ vicar a present of it,” he said. “It’ll do for me goin’ to church.”

  “It ’ud look better of you if you went to church and took th’ money for your butter,” said Tilly, persistent in her claim to him.

  “You’d have to put in shouldn’t you?” he said.

  “How much, please?” said the Polish woman to Tilly. Brangwen stood by and let be.

  “Then, thank you very much,” she said.

  “Bring your little girl down sometime to look at th’ fowls and horses,” he said,—“if she’d like it.”

  “Yes, she would like it,” said the stranger.

  And she went. Brangwen stood dimmed by her departure. He could not notice Tilly, who was looking at him uneasily, wanting to be reassured. He could not think of anything. He felt that he had made some invisible connection with the strange woman.

  A daze had come over his mind, he had another centre of consciousness. In his breast, or in his bowels, somewhere in his body, there had started another activity. It was as if a strong light were burning there, and he was blind within it, unable to know anything, except that this transfiguration burned between him and her, connecting them, like a secret power.

  Since she had come to the house he went about in a daze, scarcely seeing even the things he handled, drifting, quiescent, in a state of metamorphosis. He submitted to that which was happening to him, letting go his will, suffering the loss of himself, dormant always on the brink of ecstasy, like a creature evolving to a new birth.

  She came twice with her child to the farm, but there was this lull between them, an intense calm and passivity like a torpor upon them, so that there was no active change took place. He was almost unaware of the child, yet by his native good humour he gained her confidence, even her affection, setting her on the horse to ride, giving her corn for the fowls.