The Rainbow - Page 116/493

He surveyed the rind of the world: houses, factories, trams,

the discarded rind; people scurrying about, work going on, all

on the discarded surface. An earthquake had burst it all from

inside. It was as if the surface of the world had been broken

away entire: Ilkeston, streets, church, people, work,

rule-of-the-day, all intact; and yet peeled away into unreality,

leaving here exposed the inside, the reality: one's own being,

strange feelings and passions and yearnings and beliefs and

aspirations, suddenly become present, revealed, the permanent

bedrock, knitted one rock with the woman one loved. It was

confounding. Things are not what they seem! When he was a child,

he had thought a woman was a woman merely by virtue of her

skirts and petticoats. And now, lo, the whole world could be

divested of its garment, the garment could lie there shed away

intact, and one could stand in a new world, a new earth, naked

in a new, naked universe. It was too astounding and

miraculous.

This then was marriage! The old things didn't matter any

more. One got up at four o'clock, and had broth at tea-time and

made toffee in the middle of the night. One didn't put on one's

clothes or one did put on one's clothes. He still was not quite

sure it was not criminal. But it was a discovery to find one

might be so supremely absolved. All that mattered was that he

should love her and she should love him and they should live

kindled to one another, like the Lord in two burning bushes that

were not consumed. And so they lived for the time.

She was less hampered than he, so she came more quickly to

her fulness, and was sooner ready to enjoy again a return to the

outside world. She was going to give a tea-party. His heart

sank. He wanted to go on, to go on as they were. He wanted to

have done with the outside world, to declare it finished for

ever. He was anxious with a deep desire and anxiety that she

should stay with him where they were in the timeless universe of

free, perfect limbs and immortal breast, affirming that the old

outward order was finished. The new order was begun to last for

ever, the living life, palpitating from the gleaming core, to

action, without crust or cover or outward lie. But no, he could

not keep her. She wanted the dead world again-she wanted to walk

on the outside once more. She was going to give a tea-party. It

made him frightened and furious and miserable. He was afraid all

would be lost that he had so newly come into: like the youth in

the fairy tale, who was king for one day in the year, and for

the rest a beaten herd: like Cinderella also, at the feast. He

was sullen. But she blithely began to make preparations for her

tea-party. His fear was too strong, he was troubled, he hated

her shallow anticipation and joy. Was she not forfeiting the

reality, the one reality, for all that was shallow and

worthless? Wasn't she carelessly taking off her crown to be an

artificial figure having other artificial women to tea: when she

might have been perfect with him, and kept him perfect, in the

land of intimate connection? Now he must be deposed, his joy

must be destroyed, he must put on the vulgar, shallow death of

an outward existence.