第 45 页

A superficial readiness took her to her Uncle Tom, who kissed

her, greeting her with warmth, making a show of intimate

possession of her, and at the same time leaving evident his own

complete detachment.

But she wanted to turn to the stranger. He was standing back

a little, waiting. He was a young man with very clear greyish

eyes that waited until they were called upon, before they took

expression.

Something in his self-possessed waiting moved her, and she

broke into a confused, rather beautiful laugh as she gave him

her hand, catching her breath like an excited child. His hand

closed over hers very close, very near, he bowed, and his eyes

were watching her with some attention. She felt proud--her

spirit leapt to life.

"You don't know Mr. Skrebensky, Ursula," came her Uncle Tom's

intimate voice. She lifted her face with an impulsive flash to

the stranger, as if to declare a knowledge, laughing her

palpitating, excited laugh.

His eyes became confused with roused lights, his detached

attention changed to a readiness for her. He was a young man of

twenty-one, with a slender figure and soft brown hair brushed up

on the German fashion straight from his brow.

"Are you staying long?" she asked.

"I've got a month's leave," he said, glancing at Tom

Brangwen. "But I've various places I must go to--put in

some time here and there."

He brought her a strong sense of the outer world. It was as

if she were set on a hill and could feel vaguely the whole world

lying spread before her.

"What have you a month's leave from?" she asked.

"I'm in the Engineers--in the Army."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, glad.

"We're taking you away from your studies," said her

Uncle Tom.

"Oh, no," she replied quickly.

Skrebensky laughed, young and inflammable.

"She won't wait to be taken away," said her father. But that

seemed clumsy. She wished he would leave her to say her own

things.

"Don't you like study?" asked Skrebensky, turning to her,

putting the question from his own case.

"I like some things," said Ursula. "I like Latin and

French--and grammar."

He watched her, and all his being seemed attentive to her,

then he shook his head.

"I don't," he said. "They say all the brains of the army are

in the Engineers. I think that's why I joined them--to get

the credit of other people's brains."

He said this quizzically and with chagrin. And she became

alert to him. It interested her. Whether he had brains or not,

he was interesting. His directness attracted her, his

independent motion. She was aware of the movement of his life

over against hers.

"I don't think brains matter," she said.

"What does matter then?" came her Uncle Tom's intimate,

caressing, half-jeering voice.

She turned to him.

"It matters whether people have courage or not," she

said.

"Courage for what?" asked her uncle.

"For everything."

Tom Brangwen gave a sharp little laugh. The mother and father

sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was

speaking for him.

"Everything's nothing," laughed her uncle.

She disliked him at that moment.

"She doesn't practice what she preaches," said her father,

stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. "She

has courage for mighty little."

But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. His

face was irregular, almost ugly, flattish, with a rather thick

nose. But his eyes were pellucid, strangely clear, his brown

hair was soft and thick as silk, he had a slight moustache. His

skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Beside him, her

Uncle Tom looked full-blown, her father seemed uncouth. Yet he

reminded her of her father, only he was finer, and he seemed to

be shining. And his face was almost ugly.

He seemed simply acquiescent in the fact of his own being, as

if he were beyond any change or question. He was himself. There

was a sense of fatality about him that fascinated her. He made

no effort to prove himself to other people. Let it be accepted

for what it was, his own being. In its isolation it made no

excuse or explanation for itself.

So he seemed perfectly, even fatally established, he did not

asked to be rendered before he could exist, before he could have

relationship with another person.

This attracted Ursula very much. She was so used to unsure

people who took on a new being with every new influence. Her

Uncle Tom was always more or less what the other person would

have him. In consequence, one never knew the real Uncle Tom,

only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux with a more or less consistent

appearance.

But, let Skrebensky do what he would, betray himself

entirely, he betrayed himself always upon his own

responsibility. He permitted no question about himself. He was

irrevocable in his isolation.

So Ursula thought him wonderful, he was so finely

constituted, and so distinct, self-contained, self-supporting.

This, she said to herself, was a gentleman, he had a nature like

fate, the nature of an aristocrat.

She laid hold of him at once for her dreams. Here was one

such as those Sons of God who saw the daughters of men, that

they were fair. He was no son of Adam. Adam was servile. Had not

Adam been driven cringing out of his native place, had not the

human race been a beggar ever since, seeking its own being? But

Anton Skrebensky could not beg. He was in possession of himself,

of that, and no more. Other people could not really give him

anything nor take anything from him. His soul stood alone.

She knew that her mother and father acknowledged him. The

house was changed. There had been a visit paid to the house.

Once three angels stood in Abraham's doorway, and greeted him,

and stayed and ate with him, leaving his household enriched for

ever when they went.

The next day she went down to the Marsh according to

invitation. The two men were not come home. Then, looking

through the window, she saw the dogcart drive up, and Skrebensky

leapt down. She saw him draw himself together, jump, laugh to

her uncle, who was driving, then come towards her to the house.

He was so spontaneous and revealed in his movements. He was

isolated within his own clear, fine atmosphere, and as still as

if fated.

His resting in his own fate gave him an appearance of

indolence, almost of languor: he made no exuberant movement.

When he sat down, he seemed to go loose, languid.

"We are a little late," he said.

"Where have you been?"

"We went to Derby to see a friend of my father's."

"Who?"

It was an adventure to her to put direct questions and get

plain answers. She knew she might do it with this man.

"Why, he is a clergyman too--he is my guardian--one

of them."

Ursula knew that Skrebensky was an orphan.

"Where is really your home now?" she asked.

"My home?--I wonder. I am very fond of my

colonel--Colonel Hepburn: then there are my aunts: but my

real home, I suppose, is the army."

"Do you like being on your own?"

His clear, greenish-grey eyes rested on her a moment, and, as

he considered, he did not see her.

"I suppose so," he said. "You see my father--well, he

was never acclimatized here. He wanted--I don't know what

he wanted--but it was a strain. And my mother--I

always knew she was too good to me. I could feel her being too

good to me--my mother! Then I went away to school so early.

And I must say, the outside world was always more naturally a

home to me than the vicarage--I don't know why."

"Do you feel like a bird blown out of its own latitude?" she

asked, using a phrase she had met.

"No, no. I find everything very much as I like it."

He seemed more and more to give her a sense of the vast

world, a sense of distances and large masses of humanity. It

drew her as a scent draws a bee from afar. But also it hurt

her.

It was summer, and she wore cotton frocks. The third time he

saw her she had on a dress with fine blue-and-white stripes,

with a white collar, and a large white hat. It suited her

golden, warm complexion.

"I like you best in that dress," he said, standing with his

head slightly on one side, and appreciating her in a perceiving,

critical fashion.

She was thrilled with a new life. For the first time she was

in love with a vision of herself: she saw as it were a fine

little reflection of herself in his eyes. And she must act up to

this: she must be beautiful. Her thoughts turned swiftly to

clothes, her passion was to make a beautiful appearance. Her

family looked on in amazement at the sudden transformation of

Ursula. She became elegant, really elegant, in figured cotton

frocks she made for herself, and hats she bent to her fancy. An

inspiration was upon her.

He sat with a sort of languor in her grandmother's rocking

chair, rocking slowly, languidly, backward and forward, as

Ursula talked to him.

"You are not poor, are you?" she said.

"Poor in money? I have about a hundred and fifty a year of my

own--so I am poor or rich, as you like. I am poor enough,

in fact."

"But you will earn money?"

"I shall have my pay--I have my pay now. I've got my

commission. That is another hundred and fifty."

"You will have more, though?"

"I shan't have more than 200 pounds a year for ten years to

come. I shall always be poor, if I have to live on my pay."

"Do you mind it?"

"Being poor? Not now--not very much. I may later.

People--the officers, are good to me. Colonel Hepburn has a

sort of fancy for me--he is a rich man, I suppose."

A chill went over Ursula. Was he going to sell himself in

some way?

"Is Colonel Hepburn married?"

"Yes--with two daughters."

But she was too proud at once to care whether Colonel

Hepburn's daughter wanted to marry him or not.

There came a silence. Gudrun entered, and Skrebensky still

rocked languidly on the chair.

"You look very lazy," said Gudrun.

"I am lazy," he answered.

"You look really floppy," she said.

"I am floppy," he answered.

"Can't you stop?" asked Gudrun.

"No--it's the perpetuum mobile."

"You look as if you hadn't a bone in your body."

"That's how I like to feel."

"I don't admire your taste."

"That's my misfortune."

And he rocked on.

Gudrun seated herself behind him, and as he rocked back, she

caught his hair between her finger and thumb, so that it tugged

him as he swung forward again. He took no notice. There was only

the sound of the rockers on the floor. In silence, like a crab,

Gudrun caught a strand of his hair each time he rocked back.

Ursula flushed, and sat in some pain. She saw the irritation

gathering on his brow.

At last he leapt up, suddenly, like a steel spring going off,

and stood on the hearthrug.

"Damn it, why can't I rock?" he asked petulantly,

fiercely.

Ursula loved him for his sudden, steel-like start out of the

languor. He stood on the hearthrug fuming, his eyes gleaming

with anger.

Gudrun laughed in her deep, mellow fashion.

"Men don't rock themselves," she said.

"Girls don't pull men's hair," he said.

Gudrun laughed again.

Ursula sat amused, but waiting. And he knew Ursula was

waiting for him. It roused his blood. He had to go to her, to

follow her call.

Once he drove her to Derby in the dog-cart. He belonged to

the horsey set of the sappers. They had lunch in an inn, and

went through the market, pleased with everything. He bought her

a copy of Wuthering Heights from a bookstall. Then they found a

little fair in progress and she said:

"My father used to take me in the swingboats."

"Did you like it?" he asked.

"Oh, it was fine," she said.

"Would you like to go now?"

"Love it," she said, though she was afraid. But the prospect

of doing an unusual, exciting thing was attractive to her.

He went straight to the stand, paid the money, and helped her

to mount. He seemed to ignore everything but just what he was

doing. Other people were mere objects of indifference to him.

She would have liked to hang back, but she was more ashamed to

retreat from him than to expose herself to the crowd or to dare

the swingboat. His eyes laughed, and standing before her with

his sharp, sudden figure, he set the boat swinging. She was not

afraid, she was thrilled. His colour flushed, his eyes shone

with a roused light, and she looked up at him, her face like a

flower in the sun, so bright and attractive. So they rushed

through the bright air, up at the sky as if flung from a

catapult, then falling terribly back. She loved it. The motion

seemed to fan their blood to fire, they laughed, feeling the

flames.

After the swingboats, they went on the roundabouts to calm

down, he twisting astride on his jerky wooden steed towards her,

and always seeming at his ease, enjoying himself. A zest of

antagonism to the convention made him fully himself. As they sat

on the whirling carousal, with the music grinding out, she was

aware of the people on the earth outside, and it seemed that he

and she were riding carelessly over the faces of the crowd,

riding for ever buoyantly, proudly, gallantly over the upturned

faces of the crowd, moving on a high level, spurning the common

mass.

When they must descend and walk away, she was unhappy,

feeling like a giant suddenly cut down to ordinary level, at the

mercy of the mob.

They left the fair, to return for the dog-cart. Passing the