第 44 页

become something. And she was afraid, troubled. Why, oh why must

one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing

responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the

nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of

herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a

direction! But whither? How take even one step? And yet, how

stand still? This was torment indeed, to inherit the

responsibility of one's own life.

The religion which had been another world for her, a glorious

sort of play-world, where she lived, climbing the tree with the

short-statured man, walking shakily on the sea like the

disciple, breaking the bread into five thousand portions, like

the Lord, giving a great picnic to five thousand people, now

fell away from reality, and became a tale, a myth, an illusion,

which, however much one might assert it to be true an historical

fact, one knew was not true--at least, for this

present--day life of ours. There could, within the limits

of this life we know, be no Feeding of the Five Thousand. And

the girl had come to the point where she held that that which

one cannot experience in daily life is not true for oneself.

So, the old duality of life, wherein there had been a weekday

world of people and trains and duties and reports, and besides

that a Sunday world of absolute truth and living mystery, of

walking upon the waters and being blinded by the face of the

Lord, of following the pillar of cloud across the desert and

watching the bush that crackled yet did not burn away, this old,

unquestioned duality suddenly was found to be broken apart. The

weekday world had triumphed over the Sunday world. The Sunday

world was not real, or at least, not actual. And one lived by

action.

Only the weekday world mattered. She herself, Ursula

Brangwen, must know how to take the weekday life. Her body must

be a weekday body, held in the world's estimate. Her soul must

have a weekday value, known according to the world's

knowledge.

Well, then, there was a weekday life to live, of action and

deeds. And so there was a necessity to choose one's action and

one's deeds. One was responsible to the world for what one

did.

Nay, one was more than responsible to the world. One was

responsible to oneself. There was some puzzling, tormenting

residue of the Sunday world within her, some persistent Sunday

self, which insisted upon a relationship with the now shed-away

vision world. How could one keep up a relationship with that

which one denied? Her task was now to learn the week-day

life.

How to act, that was the question? Whither to go, how to

become oneself? One was not oneself, one was merely a

half-stated question. How to become oneself, how to know the

question and the answer of oneself, when one was merely an

unfixed something--nothing, blowing about like the winds of

heaven, undefined, unstated.

She turned to the visions, which had spoken far-off words

that ran along the blood like ripples of an unseen wind, she

heard the words again, she denied the vision, for she must be a

weekday person, to whom visions were not true, and she demanded

only the weekday meaning of the words.

There were words spoken by the vision: and words must

have a weekday meaning, since words were weekday stuff. Let them

speak now: let them bespeak themselves in weekday terms. The

vision should translate itself into weekday terms.

"Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor," she heard on

Sunday morning. That was plain enough, plain enough for Monday

morning too. As she went down the hill to the station, going to

school, she took the saying with her.

"Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor."

Did she want to do that? Did she want to sell her

pearl-backed brush and mirror, her silver candlestick, her

pendant, her lovely little necklace, and go dressed in drab like

the Wherrys: the unlovely uncombed Wherrys, who were the "poor"

to her? She did not.

She walked this Monday morning on the verge of misery. For

she did want to do what was right. And she didn't want to do

what the gospels said. She didn't want to be poor--really

poor. The thought was a horror to her: to live like the Wherrys,

so ugly, to be at the mercy of everybody.

"Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor."

One could not do it in real life. How dreary and hopeless it

made her!

Nor could one turn the other cheek. Theresa slapped Ursula on

the face. Ursula, in a mood of Christian humility, silently

presented the other side of her face. Which Theresa, in

exasperation at the challenge, also hit. Whereupon Ursula, with

boiling heart, went meekly away.

But anger, and deep, writhing shame tortured her, so she was

not easy till she had again quarrelled with Theresa and had

almost shaken her sister's head off.

"That'll teach you," she said, grimly.

And she went away, unchristian but clean.

There was something unclean and degrading about this humble

side of Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted to the other

extreme.

"I hate the Wherrys, and I wish they were dead. Why does my

father leave us in the lurch like this, making us be poor and

insignificant? Why is he not more? If we had a father as he

ought to be, he would be Earl William Brangwen, and I should be

the Lady Ursula? What right have I to be poor? crawling

along the lane like vermin? If I had my rights I should be

seated on horseback in a green riding-habit, and my groom would

be behind me. And I should stop at the gates of the cottages,

and enquire of the cottage woman who came out with a child in

her arms, how did her husband, who had hurt his foot. And I

would pat the flaxen head of the child, stooping from my horse,

and I would give her a shilling from my purse, and order

nourishing food to be sent from the hall to the cottage."

So she rode in her pride. And sometimes, she dashed into

flames to rescue a forgotten child; or she dived into the canal

locks and supported a boy who was seized with cramp; or she

swept up a toddling infant from the feet of a runaway horse:

always imaginatively, of course.

But in the end there returned the poignant yearning from the

Sunday world. As she went down in the morning from Cossethay and

saw Ilkeston smoking blue and tender upon its hill, then her

heart surged with far-off words:

"Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem--how often would I have

gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens

under her wings, and ye would not--"

The passion rose in her for Christ, for the gathering under

the wings of security and warmth. But how did it apply to the

weekday world? What could it mean, but that Christ should clasp

her to his breast, as a mother clasps her child? And oh, for

Christ, for him who could hold her to his breast and lose her

there. Oh, for the breast of man, where she should have refuge

and bliss for ever! All her senses quivered with passionate

yearning.

Vaguely she knew that Christ meant something else: that in

the vision-world He spoke of Jerusalem, something that did not

exist in the everyday world. It was not houses and factories He

would hold in His bosom: nor householders nor factory-workers

nor poor people: but something that had no part in the weekday

world, nor seen nor touched with weekday hands and eyes.

Yet she must have it in weekday terms--she must.

For all her life was a weekday life, now, this was the whole. So

he must gather her body to his breast, that was strong with a

broad bone, and which sounded with the beating of the heart, and

which was warm with the life of which she partook, the life of

the running blood.

So she craved for the breast of the Son of Man, to lie there.

And she was ashamed in her soul, ashamed. For whereas Christ

spoke for the Vision to answer, she answered from the weekday

fact. It was a betrayal, a transference of meaning, from the

vision world, to the matter-of-fact world. So she was ashamed of

her religious ecstasy, and dreaded lest any one should see

it.

Early in the year, when the lambs came, and shelters were

built of straw, and on her uncle's farm the men sat at night

with a lantern and a dog, then again there swept over her this

passionate confusion between the vision world and the weekday

world. Again she felt Jesus in the countryside. Ah, he would

lift up the lambs in his arms! Ah, and she was the lamb. Again,

in the morning, going down the lane, she heard the ewe call, and

the lambs came running, shaking and twinkling with new-born

bliss. And she saw them stooping, nuzzling, groping to the

udder, to find the teats, whilst the mother turned her head

gravely and sniffed her own. And they were sucking, vibrating

with bliss on their little, long legs, their throats stretched

up, their new bodies quivering to the stream of blood-warm,

loving milk.

Oh, and the bliss, the bliss! She could scarcely tear herself

away to go to school. The little noses nuzzling at the udder,

the little bodies so glad and sure, the little black legs,

crooked, the mother standing still, yielding herself to their

quivering attraction--then the mother walked calmly

away.

Jesus--the vision world--the everyday

world--all mixed inextricably in a confusion of pain and

bliss. It was almost agony, the confusion, the inextricability.

Jesus, the vision, speaking to her, who was non-visionary! And

she would take his words of the spirit and make them to pander

to her own carnality.

This was a shame to her. The confusing of the spirit world

with the material world, in her own soul, degraded her. She

answered the call of the spirit in terms of immediate, everyday

desire.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I

will give you rest."

It was the temporal answer she gave. She leapt with sensuous

yearning to respond to Christ. If she could go to him really,

and lay her head on his breast, to have comfort, to be made much

of, caressed like a child!

All the time she walked in a confused heat of religious

yearning. She wanted Jesus to love her deliciously, to take her

sensuous offering, to give her sensuous response. For weeks she

went in a muse of enjoyment.

And all the time she knew underneath that she was playing

false, accepting the passion of Jesus for her own physical

satisfaction. But she was in such a daze, such a tangle. How

could she get free?

She hated herself, she wanted to trample on herself, destroy

herself. How could one become free? She hated religion, because

it lent itself to her confusion. She abused everything. She

wanted to become hard, indifferent, brutally callous to

everything but just the immediate need, the immediate

satisfaction. To have a yearning towards Jesus, only that she

might use him to pander to her own soft sensation, use him as a

means of reacting upon herself, maddened her in the end. There

was then no Jesus, no sentimentality. With all the bitter hatred

of helplessness she hated sentimentality.

At this period came the young Skrebensky. She was nearly

sixteen years old, a slim, smouldering girl, deeply reticent,

yet lapsing into unreserved expansiveness now and then, when she

seemed to give away her whole soul, but when in fact she only

made another counterfeit of her soul for outward presentation.

She was sensitive in the extreme, always tortured, always

affecting a callous indifference to screen herself.

She was at this time a nuisance on the face of the earth,

with her spasmodic passion and her slumberous torment. She

seemed to go with all her soul in her hands, yearning, to the

other person. Yet all the while, deep at the bottom of her was a

childish antagonism of distrust. She thought she loved everybody

and believed in everybody. But because she could not love

herself nor believe in herself, she mistrusted everybody with

the mistrust of a serpent or a captured bird. Her starts of

revulsion and hatred were more inevitable than her impulses of

love.

So she wrestled through her dark days of confusion, soulless,

uncreated, unformed.

One evening, as she was studying in the parlour, her head

buried in her hands, she heard new voices in the kitchen

speaking. At once, from its apathy, her excitable spirit started

and strained to listen. It seemed to crouch, to lurk under

cover, tense, glaring forth unwilling to be seen.

There were two strange men's voices, one soft and candid,

veiled with soft candour, the other veiled with easy mobility,

running quickly. Ursula sat quite tense, shocked out of her

studies, lost. She listened all the time to the sound of the

voices, scarcely heeding the words.

The first speaker was her Uncle Tom. She knew the naive

candour covering the girding and savage misery of his soul. Who

was the other speaker? Whose voice ran on so easy, yet with an

inflamed pulse? It seemed to hasten and urge her forward, that

other voice.

"I remember you," the young man's voice was saying. "I

remember you from the first time I saw you, because of your dark

eyes and fair face."

Mrs. Brangwen laughed, shy and pleased.

"You were a curly-headed little lad," she said.

"Was I? Yes, I know. They were very proud of my curls."

And a laugh ran to silence.

"You were a very well-mannered lad, I remember," said her

father.

"Oh! did I ask you to stay the night? I always used to ask

people to stay the night. I believe it was rather trying for my

mother."

There was a general laugh. Ursula rose. She had to go.

At the click of the latch everybody looked round. The girl

hung in the doorway, seized with a moment's fierce confusion.

She was going to be good-looking. Now she had an attractive

gawkiness, as she hung a moment, not knowing how to carry her

shoulders. Her dark hair was tied behind, her yellow-brown eyes

shone without direction. Behind her, in the parlour, was the

soft light of a lamp upon open books.