 CHAPTER 1 HOW TOM BRANGWIN MARRIED A POLISH LADY CHAPTER 1 THE BRANGWINS HAD LIVED FOR GENERATIONS ON THE MARSH FARM, IN THE MEDDOS WHERE THE AIR WASH TWISTED SLUGGISHLY THROUGH ALDER TREES, SEPARATING DARBISHER FROM NOTTINGHAM SHIRE. Two miles away, a church tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwins in the fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church tower at Elkeston in the empty sky, so that, as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in the distance. There was a look in the eyes of the Brangwins as if they were expecting something unknown about which they were eager. They had that air of readiness for what would come to them, a kind of surety, an expectancy, the look of an inheritor. They were fresh, blond, slow-speaking people, revealing themselves plainly but slowly, so that one could watch the change in their eyes from laughter to anger, blue, lit-up laughter to a hard, blue-staring anger, through all the irresolute stages of the sky when the weather is changing. Living on rich land, on their own land, near to a growing town, they had forgotten what it was to be in straightened circumstances. They had never become rich because there were always children, and the patrimony was divided every time, but always at the marsh there was ample. So the Brangwins came and went without fear of necessity, working hard because of the life that was in them, not for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They were aware of the last half-penny, and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, for it would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and falling back leaves the young born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations were such, feeling the pulse and body of the soil that opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their plowing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn away. The young corn waved and was silken, and the luster slid along the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the cows yielded milk, and pulse against the hands of the men. The pulse of the blood of the teets of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses and held life between the grip of their knees. They harnessed their horses at the wagon, and with hand on the bridal rings drew the heaving of the horses after their will. In autumn the partridges word up. Birds in flocks, blue like spray across the fallow. Rooks appeared on the gray, watery heavens, and flew calling into the winter. Then the men sat by the fire in the house where the women moved about with surety, and the limbs and the body of the men were impregnated with the day. Cattle and earth and vegetation and the sky. The men sat by the fire and their brains were inert as their blood flowed heavy with the accumulation from the living day. The women were different. On them too was the drows of blood intimacy, calves sucking and hens running together in droves and young geese palpitating in the hand while the food was pushed down their throttle. But the women looked out from the heated blind intercourse of farm life to the spoken world beyond. They were aware of the lips and the mind of the world speaking and giving utterance. They heard the sound in the distance and they strained to listen. It was enough for the men that the earth heaved and opened its furrow to them, that the wind blew to dry the wet wheat and set the young years of corn wheeling freshly round about. It was enough that they helped the cow in labor or ferreted the rats from under the barn or broke the back of a rabbit with a sharp knock of the hand. So much warmth and generating and pain and death did they know in their blood, earth and sky and beast and green plants, so much exchange and interchange they had with these that they lived full and surcharged. Their senses full fed, their faces always turned to the heat of the blood staring into the sun, dazed with looking towards the source of generation unable to turn round. But the woman wanted another form of life than this, something that was not blood intimacy. Her house faced out from the farm buildings and fields, looked out to the road in the village with church and hall and the world beyond. She stood to see the far off world of cities and governments and the active scope of man, the magic land to her where secrets were made known and desires fulfilled. She faced outwards to where men moved dominant and creative, having turned their back on the pulsing heat of creation and with this behind them were set out to discover what was beyond, to enlarge their own scope and range and freedom whereas the Brangwin men faced inwards to the teeming life of creation which poured unresolved into their veins. Looking out, as she must, from the front of her house towards the activity of man in the world at large, whilst her husband looked out to the back at sky and harvest and beast and land, she strained her eyes to see what man had done in fighting outwards to knowledge. She strained to hear how he uttered himself in his conquest. Her deepest desire hung on the battle that she heard, far off, being waged on the edge of the unknown. She also wanted to know and to be of the fighting host. At home, even so near as Casate was the vicar who spoke the other magic language and had the other finer bearing, both of which she could perceive but could never attain to. The vicar moved in worlds beyond where her own menfolk existed. Did she not know her own menfolk, fresh, slow, full-built men, masterful enough, but easy, native to the earth, lacking outwardness and range of motion, whereas the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her husband, had yet a quickness and a range of being that made Brangwin in his large genealogy seem dull and local. She knew her husband, but in the vicar's nature was that which passed beyond her knowledge, as Brangwin had power over the cattle, so the vicar had power over her husband. What was it in the vicar that raised him above the common man, as man is raised above the beast? She craved to know, she craved to achieve this higher being, if not in herself, than in her children. That which makes a man strong, even if he be little and frail in body, just as any man is little and frail beside a bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what was it? It was not money nor power nor position. What power had the vicar over Tom Brangwin? None. Yet stripped them and set them on a desert island, and the vicar was the master. His soul was master of the other man's, and why? Why? She decided it was a question of knowledge. The curate was poor enough, and not very efficacious as a man, either. Yet he took rank with those others, the superior. She watched his children being born. She saw them running as tiny things beside their mother, and already they were separate from her own children, distinct. Why were her own children marked below the others? Why should the curate children inevitably take precedence over her children? Why should dominance be given them from the start? It was not money nor even class. It was education and experience, she decided. It was this, this education, this higher form of being, that the mother wished to give to her children so that they too could live the supreme life on earth. For her children, at least the children of her heart, had the complete nature that should take place in equality with the living, vital people in the land, not be left behind, obscure among the laborers. Why must they remain obscured and stifled all their lives? Why should they suffer from lack of freedom to move? How should they learn the entry into the finer, more vivid circle of life? Her imagination was fired by the squire's lady at Shelley Hall, who came to church at Cosset Hay with her little children, girls in tidy capes of beaver fur, smart little hats, herself like a winter rose, so fair and delicate, so fair, so fine and mold, so luminous. What was it that Mrs. Hardy felt which she, Mrs. Brangwyn, did not feel? How was Mrs. Hardy's nature different from that of the common women of Cosset Hay? In what was it beyond them? All the women of Cosset Hay talked eagerly about Mrs. Hardy, of her husband, her children, her guests, her dress, of her servants and her housekeeping. The lady of the hall was the living dream of their lives. Her life was the epic that inspired their lives. In her they lived imaginatively and in gossiping of her husband, who drank of her scandalous brother of Lord William Bentley, her friend, member of parliament for the division. They had their own odyssey enacting itself. Penelope and Ulysses before them, and Searsie and the swine and the endless web. So the women of the village were fortunate. They saw themselves in the lady of the manor. Each of them lived her own fulfillment of the life of Mrs. Hardy. And the Brangwyn wife of the marsh aspired beyond herself towards the further life of the finer woman, towards the extended being she revealed as a traveler in his self-contained manner reveals far off countries present in himself. But why should a knowledge of far off countries make a man's life a different thing, finer, bigger, and why is a man more than the beast and the cattle that serve him? It is the same thing. The male part of the poem was filled in by such men as the vicar and Lord William, lean eager men with strange movements, men who had command of the further fields, whose lives ranged over a great extent. It was something very desirable to know, this touch of the wonderful men who had the power of thought and comprehension. The women of the village might be much fonder of Tom Brangwyn and more at their ease with him. Yet if their lives had been robbed of the vicar and of Lord William, the leading chute would have been cut away from them. They would have been heavy and uninspired and inclined to hate. So long as the wonder of the beyond was before them, they could get along, whatever their lot. And Mrs. Hardy and the vicar and Lord William, these moved in the wonder of the beyond and were visible to the eyes of Casate and their motion. About 1840 a canal was constructed across the meadows of the Marsh farm, connecting the newly opened collieries of the Airwash Valley. A high embankment traveled along the fields to carry the canal which passed close to the homestead and reaching the road went over in a heavy bridge. So the marsh was shut off from Ilkiston and enclosed in the small valley bed which ended in a bushy hill in the village spire of Casate. The Brangwins received a fair sum of money from this trespass across their land. Then a short time afterwards a colliery was sunk on the other side of the canal. And in a while the Midland Railway came down the valley at the foot of the Ilkiston hill and the invasion was complete. The town grew rapidly. The Brangwins were kept busy producing supplies. They became richer. They were almost tradesmen. Still the marsh remained remote and original on the old quiet side of the canal embankment. In the sunny valley where slow water wound along in company of stiff alders and the road went under ash trees past the Brangwins' garden gate. But looking from the garden gate down the road to the right there through the dark archway of the canal's square aqueduct was a colliery spinning away in the near distance. And further red crude houses plastered on the valley and masses and beyond all the dim smoking hill of the town. The homestead was just on the safe side of civilization outside the gate. The house stood bare from the road approached by a straight garden path along which at spring the daffodils were thick in green and yellow. At the sides of the house were bushes of lilac and gulder rose and privet entirely hiding the farm buildings behind. At the back a confusion of sheds spread into the home close from out of two or three indistinct yards. The duck pond lay beyond the furthest wall littering its white feathers on the padded earthen banks blowing its stray soiled feathers into the grass and the gorse bushes below the canal embankment which rose like a high rampart near at hand so that occasionally a man's figure passed in silhouette or a man and a towing horse traversed the sky. At first the Brangwins were astonished by all this commotion around them. The building of a canal across their land made them strangers in their own place. This raw bank of earth shutting them off disconcerted them. As they worked in the fields from beyond the now familiar embankment came the rhythmic run of the winding engines startling at first but afterwards an archotic to the brain. Then the shrill whistle of the trains re-echoed through the heart with fearsome pleasure announcing the fire off come near and imminent. As they drove home from town the farmers of the land met the blackened colliers trooping from the pit mouth. As they gathered the harvest the west wind brought a faint sulfurous smell of pit refuse burning. As they pulled the turnips in November the sharp clink clink clink clink of empty trucks shunting on the line vibrated in their hearts with the fact of other activity going on beyond them. The Alfred Brangwin of this period had married a woman from Hienor a daughter of the black horse. She was a slim pretty dark woman quaint in her speech whimsical so that the sharp things she said did not hurt. She was oddly a thing to herself rather quarrel less in her manner but intrinsically separate and indifferent so that her long lamentable complaints when she raised her voice against her husband in particular and against everybody else after him only made those who heard her wonder and feel affectionately towards her even while they were irritated and impatient with her. She railed long and loud about her husband but always with a balanced easy flying voice in a quaint manner of speech that warmed his belly with pride and male triumph while he sculled with mortification at the things she said. Consequently Brangwin himself had a humorous puckering at the eyes a sort of fat laugh very quiet and full and he was spoiled like a lord of creation. He calmly did as he liked laughed at their railing excused himself in a teasing tone that she loved followed his natural inclinations and sometimes pricked too near the quick frightened and broke her by a deep tense fury which seemed to fix on him and hold him for days and which she would give anything to placate in him. They were two very separate beings vitally connected knowing nothing of each other yet living in their separate ways from one route. There were four sons and two daughters. The eldest boy ran away early to see and did not come back. After this the mother was more the node and center of attraction in the home. The second boy Alfred whom the mother admired most was the most reserved. He was sent to school in Ilkiston and made some progress. But in spite of his dogged yearning effort he could not get beyond the rudiments of anything save of drawing. At this in which he had some power he worked as if it were his hope. After much grumbling and savage rebellion against everything after much trying and shifting about when his father was incensed against him and his mother almost despairing he became a draftsman in a lace factory in Nottingham. He remained heavy and somewhat uncouth speaking with broad Derbyshire accent adhering with all his tenacity to his work and to his town position making good designs and becoming fairly well off. But at drawing his hand swung naturally in big bold lines rather lax so that it was cruel for him to pedgill away at the lace designing working from the tiny squares of his paper counting and plotting and niggling. He did it stubbornly with anguish crushing the bowels within him adhering to his chosen lot whatever it should cost and he came back into life set and rigid a rare spoken almost surly man. He married the daughter of a chemist who affected some social superiority and he became something of a snob in his dogged fashion with a passion for outward refinement in the household mad when anything clumsy or gross occurred. Later when his three children were growing up and he seemed a staid almost middle aged man he turned after strange women and became a silent inscrutable follower of forbidden pleasure neglecting his indignant bourgeois wife without a qualm. Frank the third son refused from the first to have anything to do with learning. From the first he hung round the slaughterhouse which stood away in the third yard at the back of the farm. The brandwins had always killed their own meat and supplied the neighborhood. Out of this grew a regular butcher's business in connection with the farm. As a child Frank had been drawn by the trickle of dark blood that ran across the pavement from the slaughterhouse to the crew yard by the sight of the man carrying across to the meat shed a huge side of beef with the kidney showing embedded in their heavy laps of fat. He was a handsome lad with soft brown hair and regular features something like a later Roman youth. He was more easily excitable more readily carried away than the rest weaker in character. At 18 he married a little factory girl a pale plump quiet thing with sly eyes and a weatling voice who insinuated herself into him and bore him a child every year and made a fool of him. When he had taken over the butchery business already a growing callousness to it and a sort of contempt made him neglectful of it. He drank and was often to be found in his public house blathering away as if he knew everything when in reality he was a noisy fool. Of the daughters Alice the elder married a collier and lived for a time stormily in Ilkiston before moving away to Yorkshire with her numerous young family. Effie the younger remained at home. The last child Tom was considerably younger than his brothers so had belonged rather to the company of his sisters. He was his mother's favorite. She roused herself to determination and sent him forcibly away to a grammar school in Derby when he was 12 years old. He did not want to go and his father would have given way. But Mrs. Brangwin had set her heart on it. Her slender pretty tightly covered body with full skirts was now the center of resolution in the house. And when she had once set upon anything which was often the family failed before her. So Tom went to school an unwilling failure from the first. He believed his mother was right in decreeing school for him but he knew she was only right because she would not acknowledge his constitution. He knew with the child's deep instinctive foreknowledge of what is going to happen to him that he would cut a sorry figure at school. But he took the inflection as inevitable as if he were guilty of his own nature as if his being were wrong and his mother's conception right. If he could have been what he liked he would have been that which his mother fondly but deludedly hoped he was. He would have been clever and capable of becoming a gentleman. It was her aspiration for him therefore he knew it as the true aspiration for any boy. But you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear as he told his mother very early with regard to himself much to her mortification and chagrin. When he got to school he made a violent struggle against his physical inability to study. He sat gripped making himself pale and ghastly in his effort to concentrate on the book to take in what he had to learn but it was no good. If he beat down his first repulsion and got like a suicide to the stuff he went very little further. He could not learn deliberately his mind simply did not work. In feeling he was developed sensitive to the atmosphere around him brutal perhaps but at the same time delicate very delicate so he had a low opinion of himself. He knew his own limitation he knew that his brain was a slow hopeless good for nothing so he was humble. But at the same time his feelings were more discriminating than those of most of the boys and he was confused. He was more sensuously developed more refined and instinct than they for their mechanical stupidity he hated them and suffered cruel contempt for them. But when it came to mental things then he was at a disadvantage he was at their mercy he was a fool. He had not the power to controvert even the most stupid argument so that he was forced to admit things he did not in the least believe. And having admitted them he did not know whether he believed them or not he rather thought he did. But he loved anyone who could convey enlightenment to him through feeling. He sat betrayed with emotion when the teacher of literature read in a moving fashion Tennyson's Ulysses or Shelly's Ode to the West Wind. His lips parted his eyes filled with a strained almost suffering light and the teacher read on fired by his power over the boy. Tom Branglin was moved by this experience beyond all calculation he almost dreaded it it was so deep. But when almost secretly and shamefully he came to take the book himself and began the words a wild west wind thou breath of autumn's being. The very fact of the print caused a prickly sensation of repulsion to go over his skin. The blood came to his face his heart filled with the bursting passion of rage and incompetence. He threw the book down and walked over it and went out to the cricket field and he hated books as if they were his enemies. He hated them worse than ever he hated any person. He could not voluntarily control his attention. His mind had no fixed habits to go by. He had nothing to get hold of nowhere to start from. For him there was nothing palpable nothing known in himself that he could apply to learning. He did not know how to begin therefore he was helpless when it came to deliberate understanding or deliberate learning. He had an instinct for mathematics but if this failed him he was helpless as an idiot so that he felt that the ground was never sure under his feet. He was nowhere. His final downfall was his complete inability to attend to a question put without suggestion. If he had to write a formal composition on the army he did at last learn to repeat the few facts he knew. You can join the army at 18. You have to be over five foot eight. But he had all the time a living conviction that this was a dodge and that his common places were beneath contempt. Then he read and furiously felt his bowels sink with shame, scratched out what he had written, made an agonized effort to think of something in the real composition style, failed, became sullen with rage and humiliation, put the pen down and would have been torn to pieces rather than attempt to write another word. He soon got used to the grammar school and the grammar school got used to him. Setting him down is a hopeless duffer at learning but respecting him for a generous, honest nature. Only one narrow, domineering fellow, the Latin master, bullied him and made the blue eyes mad with shame and rage. There was a horrid scene when the boy laid open the master's head with a slate and then things went on as before. The teacher got little sympathy but Branglun winced and could not bear to think of the deed not even long after when he was a grown man. He was glad to leave school. It had not been unpleasant. He had enjoyed the companionship of the other youths or had thought he enjoyed it. The time had passed very quickly in endless activity but he knew all the time that he was in an ignominious position in this place of learning. He was aware of failure all the while, of incapacity, but he was too healthy and sanguine to be wretched. He was too much alive yet his soul was wretched almost to hopelessness. He had loved one warm, clever boy who was frail and body, a consumptive type. The two had had an almost classic friendship, David and Jonathan, wherein Branglun was a Jonathan, the server. But he had never felt equal with his friend because the other's mind outpaced his and left him ashamed, far in the rear. So the two boys went at once apart on leaving school, but Branglun always remembered his friend that had been, kept him as a sort of light, a fine experience to remember. Tom Branglun was glad to get back to the farm where he was in his own again. I have got to turn upon my shoulders, let me stick to the fallow, he said to his exasperated mother. He had too low an opinion of himself, but he went about at his work on the farm gladly enough. Glad of the active labor and the smell of the land again, having youth and vigor and humor and a comic wit, having the will and the power to forget his own shortcomings. Finding himself violent with occasional rages, but usually on good terms with everybody and everything. When he was seventeen, his father fell from a stack and broke his neck. Then the mother and son and daughter lived on at the farm, interrupted by occasional loud mouth lamenting, jealous spirited visitations from the butcher Frank, who had a grievance against the world which he felt was always giving him less than his dues. Frank was particularly against the young Tom, whom he called a Marty baby, and Tom returned the hatred violently, his face growing red and his blue eyes staring. Effie sided with Tom against Frank, but when Alfred came from Nottingham, heavy jowled and lowering, speaking very little but treating those at home with some contempt, Effie and the mother sided with him and put Tom into the shade. It irritated the youth that his elder brother should be made something of a hero by the women just because he didn't live at home and was a lace designer and almost a gentleman. But Alfred was something of a Prometheus bound, so the women loved him. Tom came later to understand his brother better. As youngest son, Tom felt some importance when the care of the farm devolved onto him. He was only eighteen, but he was quite capable of doing everything his father had done. And, of course, his mother remained as center to the house. The young man grew up very fresh and alert, with zest for every moment of life. He worked and rode and drove to market. He went out with companions and got tipsy occasionally and played skittles and went to the little traveling theaters. Once when he was drunk at a public house, he went upstairs with a prostitute who seduced him. He was then nineteen. The thing was something of a shock to him. In the close intimacy of the farm kitchen, the woman occupied the supreme position. The men deferred to her in the house, on all household points, on all points of morality and behavior. The woman was the symbol for that further life which comprised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands their own conscience. They said to her, Be my conscience keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming. And the woman fulfilled her trust. The men rested implicitly in her, receiving her praise or her blame with pleasure or with anger. Rebelling and storming, but never for a moment, really escaping in their own souls from her prerogative. They depended on her for their stability. Without her they would have felt like straws in the wind to be blown hither and thither at random. She was the anchor and the security. She was the restraining hand of God at times highly to be executed. Now when Tom Brangwin at nineteen, a youth fresh like a plant, rooted in his mother and his sister, found that he had lain with a prostitute woman in a common public house, he was very much startled. For him there was until that time only one kind of woman, his mother and sister. But now he did not know what to feel. There was a slight wonder, a pang of anger, of disappointment, a first taste of ash and of cold fear, lest this was all that would happen, lest his relations with women were going to be no more than this nothingness. There was a slight sense of shame before the prostitute, fear that she would despise him for his inefficiency. There was a coldest taste for her and a fear of her. There was a moment of paralyzed horror when he felt he might have taken a disease from her and upon all this startled tumult of emotion was laid the steadying hand of common sense which said it did not matter very much so long as he had no disease. He soon recovered balance and really it did not matter so very much. But it had shocked him and put a mistrust into his heart and emphasized his fear of what was within himself. He was, however, in a few days going about again in his own careless, happy-go-lucky fashion, his blue eyes just as clear and honest as ever, his face just as fresh, his appetite just as keen. Or apparently so. He had, in fact, lost some of his buoyant confidence and doubt hindered his outgoing. End of Chapter 1 Part 1 Chapter 1 Part 2 of The Rainbow This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence Chapter 1 Part 2 For some time after this he was quieter, more conscious when he drank, more backward from companionship. The disillusion of his first carnal contact with woman, strengthened by his innate desire to find in a woman the embodiment of all his inarticulate powerful religious impulses, put a bit in his mouth. He had something to lose which he was afraid of losing, which he was not sure even of possessing. This first affair did not matter much, but the business of love was, at the bottom of his soul, the most serious and terrifying of all to him. He was tormented now with sex desire. His imagination reverted always to lustful scenes. But what really prevented his returning to a loose woman over and above the natural squeamishness was the recollection of the paucity of the last experience. It had been so nothing, so dribbling and functional, that he was ashamed to expose himself to the risk of a repetition of it. He made a strong instinctive fight to retain his native cheerfulness unimpaired. He had naturally a plentiful stream of life and humor, a sense of sufficiency and exuberance, giving ease. But now it tended to cause tension. A strained light came into his eyes. He had a slight knitting of the brows. His boisterous humor gave place to lowering silences and days passed by in a sort of suspense. He did not know there was any difference in him, exactly. For the most part he was filled with slow anger and resentment. But he knew he was always thinking of women, or a woman, day in, day out, and that infuriated him. He could not get free and he was ashamed. He had one or two sweethearts, starting with them in the hope of speedy development. But when he had a nice girl he found that he was incapable of pushing the desired development. The very presence of the girl beside him made it impossible. He could not think of her like that. He could not think of her actual nakedness. She was a girl and he liked her and dreaded violently even the thought of uncovering her. He knew that in these last issues of nakedness he did not exist to her nor she to him. Again if he had a loose girl and things began to develop, she offended him so deeply all the time that he never knew whether he was going to get away from her as quickly as possible, or whether he were going to take her out of inflamed necessity. Again he learned his lesson. If he took her it was a paucity which he was forced to despise. He did not despise himself nor the girl, but he despised the net result in him of the experience. He despised it deeply and bitterly. Then when he was twenty-three his mother died and he was left at home with Effie. His mother's death was another blow out of the dark. He could not understand it. He knew it was no good his trying. One had to submit to these unforeseen blows that come unawares and leave a bruise that remains and hurts whenever it is touched. He began to be afraid of all that which was up against him. He had loved his mother. After this Effie and he quarreled fiercely. They meant a very great deal to each other, but they were both under a strange unnatural tension. He stayed out of the house as much as possible. He got a special corner for himself at the Red Lion at Cossate and became a usual figure by the fire. A fresh, very young fellow with heavy limbs and head held back, mostly silent, though alert and attentive, very hearty in his greeting of everybody he knew, shy of strangers. He teased all the women who liked him extremely and he was very attentive to the talk of the men. Very respectful. To drink made him quickly flushed very red in the face and brought out the look of self-consciousness and unsureness, almost bewilderment in his blue eyes. When he came home in this state of tipsy confusion his sister hated him and abused him and he went off his head like a mad bull with rage. He had still another turn with a light of love. One witsentide he went a jaunt with two other young fellows on horseback to Matlock and Thence to Bakewell. Matlock was at that time just becoming a famous beauty spot, visited from Manchester and from the Staffordshire towns. In the hotel where the young men took lunch were two girls and the parties struck up a friendship. The miss who made up to Tom Brangwin, then twenty-four years old, was a handsome reckless girl neglected for an afternoon by the man who had brought her out. She saw Brangwin and liked him, as all women did, for his warmth and his generous nature and for the inate delicacy in him. But she saw he was one who would have to be brought to the scratch. However she was roused and unsatisfied and made mischievous, so she dared anything. It would be an easy interlude restoring her pride. She was a handsome girl with a bosom and dark hair and blue eyes, a girl full of easy laughter, flushed from the sun, inclined to wipe her laughing face in a very natural and taking manner. Brangwin was in a state of wonder. He treated her with his chaffing deference, roused but very unsure of himself, afraid to death of being too forward, ashamed lest he might be thought backward, mad with desire yet restrained by instinctive regard for women for making any definite approach, feeling all the while that his attitude was ridiculous and flushing deep with confusion. She, however, became hard and daring as he became confused, and amused her to see him come on. When must you get back? she asked. I'm not particular, he said. There the conversation again broke down. Brangwin's companions were ready to go on. Are they coming, Tom? They called, or aren't they for stopping? Hey, I'm coming, he replied, rising reluctantly, an angry sense of futility and disappointment spreading over him. He met the full, almost taunting look of the girl, and he trembled with unusedness. Shall you come and have a look at my mare, he said to her, with his hearty kindliness that was now shaken with trepidation? Oh, I should like to, she said, rising. And she followed him, his rather sloping shoulders and his cloth-riding gaiters, out of the room. The young men got their own horses out of the stable. Can you ride, Brangwin asked her? I should like to, if I could, I have never tried, she said. Come then and have a try, he said. And he lifted her, he blushing, she laughing into the saddle. I shall slip off, it's not a lady's saddle, she cried. Hold your tight, he said, and he let her out of the hotel gate. The girl sat very insecurely, clinging fast. He put a hand on her waist to support her, and he held her closely. He clasped her as in an embrace. He was weak with desire as he strode beside her. The horse walked by the river. You want to sit straddle-leg, he said to her? I know I do, she said. It was the time of very full skirts. She managed to get astride the horse quite decently, showing an intent concern for covering her pretty leg. It's a lot better this road, she said, looking down at him. Aye, it is, he said, feeling the marrow melt in his bones from the look in her eyes. I don't know why they have that side-saddle business, twisting a woman in two. Should us leave you then? You seem to be fixed up there, called Brandwin's companions from the road. He went red with anger. Aye, don't worry, he called back. How long are you stopping, they asked. Not after Christmas, he said, and the girl gave a tinkling peel of laughter. All right, bye-bye, called his friends, and they cantered off, leaving him very flushed, trying to be quite normal with the girl. But presently he had gone back to the hotel and given his horse into the charge of an osler, and had gone off with the girl into the woods, not quite knowing where he was or what he was doing. His heart thumped, and he thought it the most glorious adventure, and was mad with desire for the girl. Afterwards he glowed with pleasure, by Joe, but that was something like. He stayed the afternoon with the girl and wanted to stay the night, she, however, told him this was impossible. Her own man would be back by dark, and she must be with him. He, Brandwin, must not let on that there had been anything between them. She gave him an intimate smile, which made him feel confused and gratified. He could not tear himself away, though he had promised not to interfere with the girl. He stayed on at the hotel overnight. He saw the other fellow at the evening meal, a small, middle-aged man with iron-gray hair and a curious face like a monkey's, but interesting, in its way almost beautiful. Brandwin guessed that he was a foreigner. He was in company with another, an Englishman, dry and hard. The four sat at table, two men and two women. Brandwin watched with all his eyes. He saw how the foreigner treated the women with courteous contempt, as if they were pleasing animals. Brandwin's girl had put on a ladylike manner, but her voice betrayed her. She wanted to win back her man. When dessert came on, however, the little foreigner turned round from his table and calmly surveyed the room like one unoccupied. Brandwin marveled over the cold, animal intelligence of the face. The brown eyes were round, showing all the brown pupil, like a monkey's, and just calmly looking, perceiving the other person without referring to him at all. They rested on Brandwin. The latter marveled at the old face turned round on him, looking at him without considering it necessary to know him at all. The eyebrows of the round, perceiving but unconcerned eyes were rather high up, with slight wrinkles above them, just as a monkey's had. It was an old, ageless face. The man was most amazingly a gentleman all the time, an aristocrat. Brandwin stared fascinated. The girl was pushing her crumbs about on the cloth uneasily, flushed and angry. As Brandwin sat motionless in the hall afterwards, too much moved and lost to know what to do, the little stranger came up to him with a beautiful smile and manner, offering a cigarette and saying, Will you smoke? Brandwin never smoked cigarettes, yet he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, littered eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began to talk, chiefly of horses. Brandwin loved the other man for his exquisite graciousness, for his tact and reserve, and for his ageless, monkey-like self-surity. They talked of horses and of darbyshire and of farming. The stranger warmed to the young fellow with real warmth, and Brandwin was excited. He was transported at meeting this odd, middle-aged, dry-skinned man personally. The talk was pleasant, but that did not matter so much. It was the gracious manner, the fine contact, that was all. They talked a long while together. Brandwin flushing like a girl when the other did not understand his idiom. Then they said good night and shook hands. Again the foreigner bowed and repeated his good night. Good night and bon voyage. Then he turned to the stairs. Brandwin went up to his room and lay staring out at the stars of the summer night, his whole being in a whirl. What was it all? There was a life so different from what he knew it. What was there outside his knowledge? How much? What was this that he had touched? What was he in this new influence? What did everything mean? Where was life, in that which he knew or all outside him? He fell asleep and in the morning had ridden away before any other visitors were awake. He shrank from seeing any of them again in the morning. His mind was one big excitement, the girl and the foreigner. He knew neither of their names, yet they had set fire to the homestead of his nature and he would be burned out of cover. Of the two experiences perhaps the meeting with the foreigner was the more significant, but the girl, he had not settled about the girl. He did not know he had to leave it there as it was. He could not sum up his experiences. The result of these encounters was that he dreamed day and night, absorbedly of a voluptuous woman and of the meeting with a small withered foreigner of ancient breeding. No sooner was his mind free, no sooner had he left his own companions, than he began to imagine an intimacy with fine textured, subtle mannered people such as the foreigner at Matlock. And amidst this subtle intimacy was always the satisfaction of a voluptuous woman. He went about absorbed in the interest and the actuality of this dream. His eyes glowed. He walked with his head up, full of the exquisite pleasure of aristocratic subtlety and grace tormented with the desire for the girl. Then gradually the glow began to fade and the cold material of his customary life to show through. He resented it. Was he cheated in his illusion? He balked the mean enclosure of reality, stood stubbornly like a bull at a gate, refusing to re-enter the well-known round of his own life. He drank more than usual to keep up the glow, but it faded more and more for all that. He set his teeth at the commonplace to which he would not submit. It resolved itself starkly before him for all that. He wanted to marry, to get settled somehow, to get out of the quandary he found himself in. But how? He felt unable to move his limbs. He had seen a little creature caught in bird-lime and the sight was a nightmare to him. He began to feel mad with the rage of impotency. He wanted something to get hold of, to pull himself out, but there was nothing. Steadfastly he looked at the young women to find a one he could marry, but not one of them did he want. And he knew that the idea of a life among such people as a foreigner was ridiculous. Yet he dreamed of it and stuck to his dreams and would not have the reality of Kassate and Elkston. There he sat stubbornly in his quarter at the red lion, smoking and musing and occasionally lifting his beer pot and saying nothing. For all the world like a gorping farm laborer, as he said himself. Then a fever of restless anger came upon him. He wanted to go away, right away. He dreamed of foreign parts, but somehow he had no contact with them. And it was a very strong root which held him to the marsh, to his own house and land. Then Effie got married and he was left in the house with only Tilly, the cross-eyed woman-servant who had been with them for fifteen years. He felt things coming to a close. All the time he had held himself stubbornly resistant to the action of the commonplace unreality which wanted to absorb him. But now he had to do something. He was by nature temperate. Being sensitive and emotional his nausea prevented him from drinking too much. But in futile anger with the greatest of determination and apparent good humor he began to drink in order to get drunk. Dammit, he said to himself, you must have at one road or another. You can't hitch your horse to the shadow of a gate post. If you've got legs you've got to rise off your backside sometime or other. So he rose and went down to Elkston. Rather awkwardly took his place among a gang of young bloods, stood drinks to the company and discovered he could carry it off quite well. He had an idea that everybody in the room was a man after his own heart. That everything was glorious, everything was perfect. When somebody in alarm told him his coat pocket was on fire he could only be from a red blissful face and say, It's all right, it's all right, it's all right, let it be, let it be. And he laughed with pleasure and was rather indignant that the others should think it unnatural for his coat pocket to burn. It was the happiest and most natural thing in the world, what? He went home talking to himself and to the moon that was very high and small, stumbling at the flashes of moonlight from the puddles at his feet, wondering what the hand over, then laughing confidently to the moon assuring her this was first class this was. In the morning he woke up and thought about it and for the first time in his life, knew what it was to feel really acutely irritable in a misery of real bad temper. After bawling and snarling at tilly he took himself off for very shame to be alone and looking at the ash in fields and the putty roads he wondered what in the name of hell he could do to get out of this prickly sense of disgust and physical repulsion and he knew that this was the result of his glorious evening. And his stomach did not want any more brandy. He went doggedly across the fields with his terrier and looked at everything with a jaundiced eye. The next evening found him back again in his place at the red lion, moderate and decent. There he sat and stubbornly waited for what would happen next. Did he or did he not believe that he belonged to this world of Kasathe and Elkistan? There was nothing in it he wanted yet could he ever get out of it? Was there anything in himself that would carry him out of it? Or was he a dunderheaded baby not man enough to be like the other young fellows who drank a good deal and ate a little without any question and were satisfied? He went on stubbornly for a time. Then the strain became too great for him. A hot accumulated consciousness was always awake in his chest. His wrists felt swelled and quivering. His mind became full of lustful images. His eyes seemed blood flushed. He fought with himself furiously to remain normal. He did not seek any woman. He just went on as if he were normal. Till he must either take some action or beat his head against the wall. Then he went deliberately to Elkistan in silence, intent and beaten. He drank to get drunk. He gulped down the brandy and more brandy till his face became pale, his eyes burning. And still he could not get free. He went to sleep and drunk in unconsciousness. Woke up at four o'clock in the morning and continued drinking. He would get free. Gradually the tension in him began to relax. He began to feel happy. His riveted silence was unfastened. He began to talk and babble. He was happy and at one with all the world. He was united with all flesh in a hot blood relationship. So after three days of incessant brandy drinking he had burned out the youth from his blood. He had achieved this kindled state of oneness with all the world which is the end of youth's most passionate desire. But he had achieved his satisfaction by obliterating his own individuality that which it depended on his manhood to preserve and develop. So he became a bout drinker. Having at intervals these bouts of three or four days of brandy drinking when he was drunk for the whole time. He did not think about it. A deep resentment burned in him. He kept aloof from any women antagonistic. When he was twenty-eight a thick-limbed stiff fair man with fresh complexion and blue eyes staring very straight ahead. He was coming one day down from Kasathe with a load of seed out of Nottingham. It was a time when he was getting ready for another bout of drinking so he stared fixedly before him watchful yet absorbed seeing everything and aware of nothing coiled in himself. It was early in the year. He walked steadily beside the horse. The load clanked behind as the hill descended steeper. The road curved downhill before him under banks and hedges seen only for a few yards ahead. Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope his horse bridging between the shafts he saw a woman approaching. But he was thinking for the moment of the horse. Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, was apparently rather small and slight beneath her long black cloak, and she wore a black bonnet. She walked hastily as if unseeing. Her head rather forward. It was her curious absorbed flitting motion as if she were passing unseen by everybody that first arrested him. She had heard the cart and looked up. Her face was pale and clear. She had thick dark eyebrows. And a wide mouth curiously held. He saw her face clearly as if by a light in the air. He saw her face so distinctly that he ceased to coil on himself and was suspended. That's her! He said involuntarily. As the cart passed by, splashing through the thin mud, she stood back against the bank. Then as he walked still beside his bridging horse his eyes met hers. Then he saw her face clearly as if by a light in the air. He saw her face so distinctly that his eyes met hers. He looked quickly away, pressing back his head, a pain of joy running through him. He could not bear to think of anything. He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, her shape in the black cloak, the movement as she walked. Then she was gone round the bend. She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a far world, not Kasate, a far world, the fragile reality. He went on quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved within the knowledge of her in the world that was beyond reality. The feeling that they had exchanged recognition possessed him like a madness, like a torment. How could he be sure? What confirmation had he? The doubt was like a sense of infinite space, a nothingness, annihilating. He kept within his breast the will to surety they had exchanged recognition. He walked about in this state for the next few days, and then again, like a mist, it began to break to let through the common barren world. He was very gentle with man and beast, but he dreaded the starkness of disillusion cropping through again. As he was standing with his back to the fire after dinner a few days later, he saw the woman passing. He wanted to know that she knew him, that she was aware. He wanted it said that there was something between them. So he stood anxiously watching, looking at her as she went down the road. He called to Tilly. Who might that be? He asked. Tilly, the cross-eyed woman of forty who adored him, ran gladly to the window to look. She was glad when he asked her for anything. She craned her head over the short curtain, the little tight knob of her black hair sticking out pathetically as she bobbed about. Oh, why? She lifted her head and peered with her twisted keen brown eyes. Why, you know who it is. It's her from the vicarage, you know. How do I know you, hen-bird? He shouted. Tilly blushed and drew her neck in and looked at him with her squinting, sharp, almost reproachful look. Why, you do. A. And what by that? Well, and what by that? rejoined the indignant Tilly. She's a woman, isn't she? Housekeeper or no housekeeper. She's got more to wear than that. Who is she? She's got a name. Well, if she has, I don't know, retorted Tilly, not to be badgered by this lad who had grown up into a man. What's her name? He asked more gently. I'm sure I couldn't tell you. That all is you've gathered as she's housekeeping at the vicarage. I've heard mention of her name, but I couldn't remember it for my life. Why, you riddle-skulled woman of nonsense, what have you got ahead for? But what other folks has 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 her name? How's that? She's for some foreign parts or other. Who told you that? That's all I do know as she is. And where do you reckon she's from, then? I don't know. They do say as she hails for the pole. I don't know. Tilly hastened to add knowing he would attack her. For the pole? Why do you hail from the pole? Who set up that menagerie confabulation? That's what they say, I don't know. Who says? Mrs. Bentley says as she's for the pole. Else she is a pole, or summit. 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 three or four with a head like a fuzz ball. Black? White. Fair as can be in 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 the vicar-axter. Is the child her child? I said think so. They say so. Who told you about her? Why, Lizzie, on Monday, we see her going past. You'd have to be rattling your tongues if anything went past. Brangwen stood musing. That evening he went up to Kasate 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 she could easily make out what she said. She had one little girl named Anna. Lenski was the woman's name. Mrs. Lenski. 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 there 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. End of Chapter 1 Part 2 Chapter 1 Part 3 of The Rainbow This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence Chapter 1 Part 3 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, flaming 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. The child looked again 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 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 cassette church beside her little girl. She was not living the apparent life of her days. She belonged to somewhere else. He felt it poignantly real and natural but a pang of fear for his own concrete life that was only cassette 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 her 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 defense. She met Brangwin'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. Kasate sat unmoved as usual and there was the foreign woman with a foreign air about her in violet 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 Brangwin's feet. Her tiny fingers were fine and quick but they missed the red button. Have you found something? said Brangwin 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 going down the path. The mother had stood watching impassive looking not at the child but at Brangwin 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 gray eyes almost vacant yet so moving held him beyond himself. Mother I may have at Manta 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? Brangwin heard the abstract I don't know dear he went on down the road as if he were not living on the other side 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 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 sliding back the bolts turning the big key a strange woman stood on the threshold can you give me a pound of butter she asked in a curious detached way of one speaking of 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 and hit 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 the dog rose from the hearth and went to her she stood motionless just inside the kitchen she stood there like a silence in her black cloak hey came the shrill cry from the distance he shouted his question again we've got what's on the 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 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 the table said Tilly impatient that she was unable to create any to his demand we have an amorcel beside 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 and confusion Brangwen flushed at her polite speech still he did not let her go get summoned and 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 for browns by rights we shall be churning tomorrow morning first thing yes the long drawn foreign yes yes said the Polish woman I went to Mrs. Browns she hasn't anymore 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 if you go to Browns you go to Browns and my butter isn't just to make shift when Browns 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 slother up now said Brangwen loudly after the 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 inquiringly 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 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 hearth rug 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 his speech no she said understanding no it is strange you find it middle and rough he said her eyes waited on him so that he should say it again are 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 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 naive 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 around 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 kind 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 she asked I've always lived here he said yes but your people your family we've been here above 200 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 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 distracted 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 Tilly was almost rigid before her he saw the girls 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 the vicar a present of it he said it'll do for me going to church it'd look better of you if you went to church and took the 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 Grandwin stood by and let be then thank you very much she said a girl down sometime to look at the foals and horses he said if she'd like it yes she would like it said the stranger and she went Grandwin 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 center 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 that were happening 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 there was no active change took place he was almost unaware of the child yet by his native good humor he gained her confidence even her affection setting her on a horse to ride giving her corn for the fowls once he drove the mother and child from ilkston picking them up on the road the child huddled close to him as if for love the mother sat very still there was a vagueness of them and a silence as if their wills were suspended only he saw her hands ungloved folded in her lap and he noticed the wedding ring on her finger it excluded him there was a closed circle it bound her life the wedding ring it stood for her life in which he could have no part nevertheless beyond all this there was herself and himself which should meet as he helped her down he felt he had some right to take her thus between his hands she belonged as yet to that other to that which was behind but he must care for her also she was too living to be neglected sometimes her vagueness in which he was lost made him angry made him rage but he held himself still as yet she had no response no being towards him and enraged him but he submitted for a long time then from the accumulated troubling of her ignoring him gradually a fury broke out destructive and he wanted to go away to escape her it happened she came down to the marsh with the child whilst he was in this state then he stood over against her strong and heavy in his revolt and though he said nothing still she felt his anger and heavy impatience again and again as out of a torpor again her heart stirred with a quick outrunning impulse she looked at him at the stranger who was not a gentleman yet who insisted on coming into her life and the pain of a new birth and herself strung all her veins to a new form she would have to begin again to find a new being a new form to respond to that blind insistent figure standing over against her a shiver a sickness of new birth passed over her the flame leaped up him under his skin she wanted it this new life from him with him yet she must defend herself against it for it was a destruction as he worked alone on the land or sat up with his youth at lambing time the facts and material of his daily life fell away leaving the kernel of his purpose clean and then it came upon him his life gradually even without seeing her he came to know her he would have liked to think of her as something given into his protection like a child without parents but it was forbidden him he had to come down from this pleasant view of the case she might refuse him and besides he was afraid of her but during the long February nights with the youth in labor looking out from the shelter he knew he did not belong to himself he must admit that he was only fragmentary something incomplete and subject there were the stars in the dark heaven traveling the whole host passing by on some eternal voyage so he sat small and submissive to the greater ordering unless she would come to him he must remain as a nothingness it was a hard experience but after her repeated obliviousness to him after he had seen so often that he did not exist for her after he had raged and tried to escape and said he was good enough by himself he was a man and could stand alone he must in the starry multiplicity of the night humble himself and admit and know that without her he was nothing but with her he would be real if she were now walking across the frosty grass through the fretful bleeding of the ewes and lambs she would bring him completeness and perfection and if it should be so that she should come to him it should be so it was ordained so he was a long time resolving definitely to ask her to marry him and he knew if he asked her she must really acquiesce she must it could not be otherwise he had learned a little of her she was poor and had had a hard time in London both before and after her husband died but in Poland she was a lady well born a land owner's daughter all these things were only words to him the fact of her superior birth the fact that her husband had been a brilliant doctor the fact that he himself was her inferior in almost every way of distinction there was an inner reality a logic of the soul one evening in March when the wind was roaring outside came the moment to ask her he had sat with his hands before him leaning to the fire and as he watched the fire he knew almost without thinking that he was going this evening have you got a clean shirt he asked Tilly you know you've got clean shirts she said hey bring me a white one Tilly brought down one of the linen shirts he had inherited from his father putting it before him to air at the fire she loved him with a dumb aching love as he sat leaning with his arms on his knees still and absorbed unaware of her lately a quivering inclination to cry hit him over her when she did anything for him in his presence now her hands trembled as she spread the shirt he was never shouting and teasing now the deep stillness there was in the house made her tremble he went to wash himself queer little breaks of consciousness seemed to rise and burst like bubbles out of the depths of his stillness it's got to be done he said as he stooped to take the shirt out of the fender it's got to be done so why balk it and as he combed his hair before the mirror on the wall he retorted to himself superficially she was not speechless dumb she's not cluttering at the nipple she's got the right to please herself and displease whosoever she likes this streak of common sense carried him a little further did you want anything as Tilly suddenly appearing having heard him speak she stood watching him comb his fair beard his eyes were calm and uninterrupted hey he said where have you put the scissors she brought them to him and stood watching as he combed his beard don't go and crop yourself as if he was at a shearing contest she said anxiously he blew the fine curled hair quickly off his lips he put on all clean clothes folded his stock carefully and donned his best coat then being ready as gray twilight was falling he went across to the orchard to gather the daffodils the wind was roaring in the apple trees the yellow flowers swayed violently in the fine whisper of their spears as he stooped to break the flattened brittle stems of the flowers what's to do shouted a friend who met him as he left the garden gate bit of courting like said Brangwin and Tilly in a great state of trepidation and excitement let the wind whisk her over the field to the big gate once she could watch him go he went up the hill and on towards the vicarage roaring through the hedges whilst he tried to shelter his bunch of daffodils by his side he did not think of anything only knew that the wind was blowing night was falling the bare trees drummed and whistled the vicar he knew would be in his study the Polish woman in the kitchen a comfortable room with her child in the darkest of twilight he went through the gate and down the path the crooked crocuses made a pale colorless ravel there was a light streaming onto the bushes at the back from the kitchen window he began to hesitate how could he do this looking through the window he saw her seated in the rocking chair with the child already in its night dress sitting on her knee the fair head with its wild fierce hair was drooping towards the fire warmth which reflected on the bright cheeks seemed to be musing almost like a grown-up person the mother's face was dark and still and he saw with a pang that she was away back in the life that had been the child's hair gleamed like spun glass her face was illuminated till it seemed like wax lit up from the inside the wind boomed strongly mother and child sat motionless silent the child staring with vacant dark eyes into the fire her face the little girl was almost asleep it was her will which kept her eyes so wide suddenly she looked round troubled as the wind shook the house and Brangwen saw the small lips move the mother began to rock he heard the slight crunch of the rockers of the chair then he heard the loam monotonous murmur of a song in a foreign language then a great burst of wind the child's eyes were black and dilated Brangwen looked up at the clouds which packed in great alarming haste across the dark sky then there came the child's high complaining in imperative voice don't sing that stuff mother I don't want to hear it the singing died away you will go to bed said the mother he saw the clinging protest of the child the unmoved far awareness of the mother the clinging grasping effort of the child then suddenly the clear childish challenge I want you to tell me a story the wind blew the story began the child nestled against the mother Brangwen waited outside suspended looking at the wild waving of the trees and the wind and the gathering darkness he had his fate to follow he lingered there at the threshold the child crouched distinct and motionless curled in against her mother dark and unblinking among the keen wisps of hair like a curled up animal asleep but for the eyes the mother sat as if in shadow the story went on as if by itself Brangwen stood outside seeing the nightfall he did not notice the passage of time the hand that held the daffodils was fixed and cold the story came to an end the mother rose at last with the child clinging round her neck she must be strong to carry so large a child so easily the little Anna clung round her mother's neck the fair strange face of the child looked over the shoulder of the mother all asleep with the eyes and these wide and dark kept up the resistance in the fight with something unseen when they were gone Brangwen stirred for the first time from the place where he stood and looked round at the night he wished it were really as beautiful and familiar as it seemed in these few moments of release along with the child he felt a curious strain on him a suffering like a fate the mother came down again and began folding the child's clothes he knocked she opened wondering a little bit at bay like a foreigner uneasy good evening he said I'll just come in a minute a change went quickly over her face she was unprepared she looked down at him as he stood in the light from the window holding the daffodils the darkness behind in his black clothes she again did not know him she was almost afraid but he was already stepping on to the threshold and closing the door behind him she turned into the kitchen startled out of herself by this invasion from the night he took off his hat and came towards her then he stood in the light his black stock had in one hand and yellow flowers in the other she stood away at his mercy snatched out of herself she did not know him only she knew he was a man come for her she could only see the dark clad man's figure standing there upon her and the gripped fist of flowers she could not see the face and the living eyes he was watching her without knowing her only aware underneath of her presence I come to have a word with you he said striding forward to the table laying down his hat and the flowers which tumbled apart and lay in a loose heap she had flinched from his advance she had no will no being the wind boomed in the chimney and he waited he had disembarrassed his hands now he shut his fists he was aware of her standing there unknown dread yet related to him I came up he said speaking curiously matter of fact and level to ask if you'd marry me you are free aren't you there was a long silence whilst his blue eyes strangely impersonal looked into her eyes to seek an answer to the truth he was looking for the truth out of her and she as if hypnotized must answer at length yes I am free to marry the expression of his eyes changed became less impersonal as if he were looking almost at her for the truth of her steady and intent and eternal they were as if they would never change they seemed to fix and to resolve her she quivered feeling herself created willless lapsing into him into a common will with him you want me she said she came over his face yes he said still there was no response and silence no she said not of herself no I don't know he felt the tension breaking up in him his fists slackened he was unable to move he stood there looking at her helpless in his vague collapse for the moment she had become unreal to him curiously direct and as if without movement in a sudden flow she put her hand to his coat yes I want to she said impersonal looking at him with wide candid newly opened eyes opened now with supreme truth he went very white as he stood and did not move only his eyes were held by hers and he suffered she seemed to see him with her newly opened wide eyes with her child and with a strange movement there was agony to him she reached slowly forward her dark face and her breast to him with a slow insinuation of a kiss that made something break in his brain and it was darkness over him for a few moments he had her in his arms and obliterated was kissing her and it was sheer bleached agony to him to break away from himself she was there so small and accepting in his arms like a child and yet with such an insinuation of embrace of infinite embrace that he could not bear it he could not stand he turned and looked for a chair and keeping her still in his arms sat down with her close to him to his breast then for a few seconds he went utterly to sleep asleep and sealed in the darkest sleep utter extreme oblivion from which he came to gradually turn close upon him and she as utterly silent as he involved in the same oblivion the second darkness he returned gradually but newly created as after a gestation a new birth in the womb of darkness aerial and light everything was new as a morning fresh and newly begun like a dawn the newness and the bliss filled in as if in the same then she looked up at him the wide young eyes blazing with light and he bent down and kissed her on the lips and the dawn blazed in them their new life came to pass it was beyond all conceiving good it was so good that it was almost like a passing away a trespass he drew her suddenly closer to him for soon the light began to fade in her gradually and as she was in his arms her head sank she leaned it against him and lay still with sunk head a little tired he faced because she was tired and in her tiredness was a certain negation of him there was the child she said out of the long silence he did not understand it was a long time since he had heard a voice now also he heard the wind roaring he said not understanding there was a slight contraction of pain at his heart a slight tension on his brows something he wanted to grasp and could not you will love her she said the quick contraction like pain went over him again I love her now he said she lay still against him taking his physical warmth without heat leaving the warmth from him giving him back her weight and her strange confidence but where was she that she seemed so absent his mind was open with wonder he did not know her but I am much older than you she said how old he asked I am 34 she said I am 28 he said six years she was oddly concerned as if it pleased her a little he sat and listened and wondered it was rather splendid to be so ignored by her whilst she lay against him and he lifted her with his breathing and felt her weight upon his living so he had a completeness and an enviable power he did not interfere with her he did not even know her it was so strange that she lay there with her weight abandoned upon him he was silent with delight he felt strong physically carrying her on his breathing the strange enviable completeness of the two of them made him feel as sure and as stable as God amused he wondered what the vicar would say if he knew you needn't stop here much longer housekeeping he said I like it also here she said when one has been in many places it is very nice here he was silent again at this so close on him she lay and yet she answered him from so far away but he did not mind what was your own home like when you were little he asked my father was a landowner she replied it was near a river this did not convey much to him always as vague as before but he did not care whilst she was so close I am a landowner a little one he said yes she said he had not dared to move he sat there with his arms round her her lying motionless on his breathing and for a long time he did not stir then softly, timidly his hand settled on the roundness of her arm on the unknown she seemed to lie a little closer a hot flame licked up from his belly to his chest but it was too soon she rose and went across the room to a drawer taking out a little tray cloth there was something quite and professional about her she had been a nurse beside her husband both in Warsaw and in the rebellion afterwards she proceeded to set a tray it was as if she ignored Brangwyn he sat up unable to bear a contradiction in her she moved about inscrutably then as he sat there all mused and wondering she came near to him looking at him with wide grey eyes that almost smiled with a low light but her ugly beautiful mouth was still unmoved and sad he was afraid his eyes strained and roused with unusedness quailed a little before her he felt himself quailing and yet he rose as if obedient to her he had wide mouth that was kissed and did not alter fear was too strong in him again he had not got her she turned away the vicarage kitchen was untidy and yet to him beautiful with the untidiness of her and her child such a wonderful remoteness there was about her and then something in touch with him that made his heart knock in his chest he stood there and waited suspended again she came to him as he stood in his black clothes with blue eyes very bright and puzzled for her his face tensely alive his hair disheveled she came close up to him to his intent black clothed body and laid her hand on his arm he remained unmoved her eyes with a blackness of memory struggling with passion primitive and electric away at the back of them rejected him and absorbed him at once in himself he breathed with difficulty and sweat came out at the roots of his hair on his forehead do you want to marry me she asked slowly always uncertain he was afraid lest he could not speak he drew breath hard saying I do then again what was agony to him with one hand lightly resting on his arm she leaned forward a little the strange primeval suggestion of embrace held him her mouth it was ugly beautiful and he could not bear it he put his mouth on hers and slowly the response came gathering force and passion till it seemed to him she was thundering at him till he could bear no more he drew away white unbreathing only in his blue eyes was something of himself concentrated and in her eyes she had a bright smile upon a black void she was drifting away from him again and he wanted to go away it was intolerable he could bear no more he must go yet he was irresolute but she turned away from him with a little pang of anguish of denial it was decided I'll come and speak to the vicar tomorrow he said taking his hat she looked at him expressionless and full of darkness he could see no answer that'll do won't it he said yes she answered mere echo without body or meaning good night he said good night he left her standing there expressionless and void as she was then she went on laying the tray for the vicar kneading the table she put the daffodils aside on the dresser without noticing them the coolness touching her hand remained echoing there a long while they were such strangers they must forever be such strangers that his passion was a clanging torment to him such intimacy of embrace and such utter foreignness of contact it was unbearable he could not bear to be near her and know the utter foreignness between them know how entirely they were strangers to each other he went out into the wind big holes were blown into the sky the moonlight blew about sometimes a high moon liquid brilliance scattered across a hollow space and took cover under electric ground iridescent cloud edges then there was a blot of cloud and shadow then somewhere in the night a radiance again like a vapor and all the sky was teeming and tearing along a vast disorder of flying shapes and darkness and ragged fumes of light and a great brown circling halo then the terror of a moon running liquid brilliant into the open for a moment hurting the eyes before she plunged under cover of cloud again end of chapter one