The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence (novels for beginners .txt) 📕

was there outside? The fabricated world, that he did not believe in? What should he bring to her, from outside? Nothing? Was it enough, as it was? He was troubled in his acquiescence. She was not with him. Yet he scarcely believed in himself, apart from her, though the whole Infinite was with him. Let the whole world slide down and over the edge of oblivion, he would stand alone. But he was unsure of her. And he existed also in her. So he was unsure.

He hovered near to her, never quite able to forget the vague, haunting uncertainty, that seemed to challenge him, and which he would not hear. A pang of dread, almost guilt, as of insufficiency, would go over him as he heard her talking to the baby. She stood before the window, with the month-old child in her arms, talking in a musical, young singsong that he had not heard before, and which rang on his heart like a claim from the distance, or the voice of another world sounding its claim on him. He stood near, listening, and his heart surged, surged to rise and submit. Then it shrank back and stayed aloof. He could not move, a denial was upon him, as if he could not deny himself. He must, he must be himself.

“Look at the silly blue-caps, my beauty,” she crooned, holding up the infant to the window, where shone the white garden, and the blue-tits scuffling in the snow: “Look at the silly blue-caps, my darling, having a fight in the snow! Look at them, my bird⁠—beating the snow about with their wings, and shaking their heads. Oh, aren’t they wicked things, wicked things! Look at their yellow feathers on the snow there! They’ll miss them, won’t they, when they’re cold later on.

“Must we tell them to stop, must we say ‘stop it’ to them, my bird? But they are naughty, naughty! Look at them!” Suddenly her voice broke loud and fierce, she rapped the pane sharply.

“Stop it,” she cried, “stop it, you little nuisances. Stop it!” She called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. Her voice was fierce and imperative.

“Have more sense,” she cried.

“There, now they’re gone. Where have they gone, the silly things? What will they say to each other? What will they say, my lambkin? They’ll forget, won’t they, they’ll forget all about it, out of their silly little heads, and their blue caps.”

After a moment, she turned her bright face to her husband.

“They were really fighting, they were really fierce with each other!” she said, her voice keen with excitement and wonder, as if she belonged to the birds’ world, were identified with the race of birds.

“Ay, they’ll fight, will blue-caps,” he said, glad when she turned to him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and stood beside her and looked out at the marks on the snow where the birds had scuffled, and at the yew trees’ burdened, white and black branches. What was the appeal it made to him, what was the question of her bright face, what was the challenge he was called to answer? He did not know. But as he stood there he felt some responsibility which made him glad, but uneasy, as if he must put out his own light. And he could not move as yet.

Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still she was not quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feeling, as of a door half opened. Here she was, safe and still in Cossethay. But she felt as if she were not in Cossethay at all. She was straining her eyes to something beyond. And from her Pisgah mount, which she had attained, what could she see? A faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a rainbow like an archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured coping above it. Must she be moving thither?

Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could not arrive at. There was something beyond her. But why must she start on the journey? She stood so safely on the Pisgah mountain.

In the winter, when she rose with the sunrise, and out of the back windows saw the east flaming yellow and orange above the green, glowing grass, while the great pear tree in between stood dark and magnificent as an idol, and under the dark pear tree, the little sheet of water spread smooth in burnished, yellow light, she said, “It is here.” And when, at evening, the sunset came in a red glare through the big opening in the clouds, she said again, “It is beyond.”

Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned the day, and she saw the hope, the promise. Why should she travel any further?

Yet she always asked the question. As the sun went down in his fiery winter haste, she faced the blazing close of the affair, in which she had not played her fullest part, and she made her demand still: “What are you doing, making this big shining commotion? What is it that you keep so busy about, that you will not let us alone?”

She did not turn to her husband, for him to lead her. He was apart from her, with her, according to her different conceptions of him. The child she might hold up, she might toss the child forward into the furnace, the child might walk there, amid the burning coals and the incandescent roar of heat, as the three witnesses walked with the angel in the fire.

Soon, she felt sure of her husband. She knew his dark face and the extent of its passion. She knew his slim, vigorous body, she said it was hers. Then there was no denying her. She was a rich woman enjoying her riches.

And soon again she was with child. Which made her satisfied and took away her discontent. She forgot that she had watched the sun climb up and pass his way, a magnificent traveller surging