The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence [books for new readers .txt] 📗

hearing a small voice outside the door saying plaintively:

“Mother!”

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

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

“Come on then,” he said gently.

“Where’s my mother?”

“She’s here⁠—come on.”

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

“Mother!”

“Come, my dear.”

The small bare feet approached swiftly.

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

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

“What, my pet?”

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

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

“Have you just wakened up?” he said.

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

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

“Go away,” came the sharp little command.

“There’s room for you,” he said.

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

The child glowered at him, miserable in her impotence.

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

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

During the day she asked her mother several times:

“When are we going home, mother?”

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

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

“Where are you going to sleep, mother?”

“I sleep with the father now.”

And when Brangwen came in, the child asked fiercely:

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

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

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

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

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

Anna glowered at him. She seemed to cogitate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Go on,” he said.

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

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