The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence Page B

playing with glass beads, the house, empty, it seemed, or exposed to the winter night, as if it had no walls.
    Sometimes there sounded, long and remote in the house, vibrating through everything, the moaning cry of a woman in labour. Brangwen, sitting downstairs, was divided. His lower, deeper self was with her, bound to her, suffering. But the big shell of his body remembered the sound of owls that used to fly round the farmstead when he was a boy. He was back in his youth, a boy, haunted by the sound of the owls, waking up his brother to speak to him. And his mind drifted away to the birds, their solemn, dignified faces, their flight so soft and broad-winged. And then to the birds his brother had shot, fluffy, dust-coloured, dead heaps of softness with faces absurdly asleep. It was a queer thing, a dead owl.
    He lifted his cup to his lips, he watched the child with the beads. But his mind was occupied with owls, and the atmosphere of his boyhood, with his brothers and sisters. Elsewhere, fundamental, he was with his wife in labour, the child was being brought forth out of their one flesh. He and she, one flesh, out of which life must be put forth. The rent was not in his body, but it was of his body. On her the blows fell, but the quiver ran through to him, to his last fibre. She must be torn asunder for life to come forth, yet still they were one flesh, and still, from further back, the life came out of him to her, and still he was the unbroken that has the broken rock in its arms, their flesh was one rock from which the life gushed, out of her who was smitten and rent, from him who quivered and yielded.
    He went upstairs to her. As he came to the bedside she spoke to him in Polish.
    "Is it very bad?" he asked.
    She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the effort to understand another language, the weariness of hearing him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he stood there fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew something of him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. She closed her eyes.
    He turned away, white to the gills.
    "It's not so very bad," said the midwife.
    He knew he was a strain on his wife. He went downstairs.
    The child glanced up at him, frightened.
    "I want my mother," she quavered.
    "Ay, but she's badly," he said mildly, unheeding.
    She looked at him with lost, frightened eyes.
    "Has she got a headache?"
    "No-she's going to have a baby."
    The child looked round. He was unaware of her. She was alone again in terror.
    "I want my mother," came the cry of panic.
    "Let Tilly undress you," he said. "You're tired."
    There was another silence. Again came the cry of labour.
    "I want my mother," rang automatically from the wincing, panic-stricken child, that felt cut off and lost in a horror of desolation.
    Tilly came forward, her heart wrung.
    "Come an' let me undress her then, pet-lamb," she crooned. "You s'll have your mother in th' mornin', don't you fret, my duckie; never mind, angel."
    But Anna stood upon the sofa, her back to the wall.
    "I want my mother," she cried, her little face quivering, and the great tears of childish, utter anguish falling.
    "She's poorly, my lamb, she's poorly to-night, but she'll be better by mornin'. Oh, don't cry, don't cry, love, she doesn't want you to cry, precious little heart, no, she doesn't."
    Tilly took gently hold of the child's skirts. Anna snatched back her dress, and cried, in a little hysteria:
    "No, you're not to undress me-I want my mother,"-and her child's face was running with grief and tears, her body shaken.
    "Oh, but let Tilly undress you. Let Tilly undress you, who loves you, don't be wilful to-night. Mother's poorly, she doesn't want you to cry."
    The child sobbed distractedly, she could not hear.
    "I want my mother," she wept.
    "When you're undressed, you s'll go up to see your mother--when you're undressed, pet, when you've let Tilly undress you, when you're a little jewel in your nightie, love. Oh, don't you cry, don't