第 56 页

"Age and date of birth:..."

After a long time considering, she filled in that line.

"Qualifications, with date of Examination:..."

With a little pride she wrote:

"London Matriculation Examination."

"Previous experience and where obtained:..."

Her heart sank as she wrote:

"None."

Still there was much to answer. It took her two hours to fill

in the three forms. Then she had to copy her testimonials from

her head-mistress and from the clergyman.

At last, however, it was finished. She had sealed the three

long envelopes. In the afternoon she went down to Ilkeston to

post them. She said nothing of it all to her parents. As she

stamped her long letters and put them into the box at the main

post-office she felt as if already she was out of the reach of

her father and mother, as if she had connected herself with the

outer, greater world of activity, the man-made world.

As she returned home, she dreamed again in her own fashion

her old, gorgeous dreams. One of her applications was to

Gillingham, in Kent, one to Kingston-on-Thames, and one to

Swanwick in Derbyshire.

Gillingham was such a lovely name, and Kent was the Garden of

England. So that, in Gillingham, an old, old village by the

hopfields, where the sun shone softly, she came out of school in

the afternoon into the shadow of the plane trees by the gate,

and turned down the sleepy road towards the cottage where

cornflowers poked their blue heads through the old wooden fence,

and phlox stood built up of blossom beside the path.

A delicate, silver-haired lady rose with delicate, ivory

hands uplifted as Ursula entered the room, and:

"Oh, my dear, what do you think!"

"What is it, Mrs. Wetherall?"

Frederick had come home. Nay, his manly step was heard on the

stair, she saw his strong boots, his blue trousers, his

uniformed figure, and then his face, clean and keen as an

eagle's, and his eyes lit up with the glamour of strange seas,

ah, strange seas that had woven through his soul, as he

descended into the kitchen.

This dream, with its amplifications, lasted her a mile of

walking. Then she went to Kingston-on-Thames.

Kingston-on-Thames was an old historic place just south of

London. There lived the well-born dignified souls who belonged

to the metropolis, but who loved peace. There she met a

wonderful family of girls living in a large old Queen Anne

house, whose lawns sloped to the river, and in an atmosphere of

stately peace she found herself among her soul's intimates. They

loved her as sisters, they shared with her all noble

thoughts.

She was happy again. In her musings she spread her poor,

clipped wings, and flew into the pure empyrean.

Day followed day. She did not speak to her parents. Then came

the return of her testimonials from Gillingham. She was not

wanted, neither at Swanwick. The bitterness of rejection

followed the sweets of hope. Her bright feathers were in the

dust again.

Then, suddenly, after a fortnight, came an intimation from

Kingston-on-Thames. She was to appear at the Education Office of

that town on the following Thursday, for an interview with the

Committee. Her heart stood still. She knew she would make the

Committee accept her. Now she was afraid, now that her removal

was imminent. Her heart quivered with fear and reluctance. But

underneath her purpose was fixed.

She passed shadowily through the day, unwilling to tell her

news to her mother, waiting for her father. Suspense and fear

were strong upon her. She dreaded going to Kingston. Her easy

dreams disappeared from the grasp of reality.

And yet, as the afternoon wore away, the sweetness of the

dream returned again. Kingston-on-Thames--there was such

sound of dignity to her. The shadow of history and the glamour

of stately progress enveloped her. The palaces would be old and

darkened, the place of kings obscured. Yet it was a place of

kings for her--Richard and Henry and Wolsey and Queen

Elizabeth. She divined great lawns with noble trees, and

terraces whose steps the water washed softly, where the swans

sometimes came to earth. Still she must see the stately,

gorgeous barge of the Queen float down, the crimson carpet put

upon the landing stairs, the gentlemen in their purple-velvet

cloaks, bare-headed, standing in the sunshine grouped on either

side waiting.

"Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song."

Evening came, her father returned home, sanguine and alert

and detached as ever. He was less real than her fancies. She

waited whilst he ate his tea. He took big mouthfuls, big bites,

and ate unconsciously with the same abandon an animal gives to

its food.

Immediately after tea he went over to the church. It was

choir-practice, and he wanted to try the tunes on his organ.

The latch of the big door clicked loudly as she came after

him, but the organ rolled more loudly still. He was unaware. He

was practicing the anthem. She saw his small, jet-black head and

alert face between the candle-flames, his slim body sagged on

the music-stool. His face was so luminous and fixed, the

movements of his limbs seemed strange, apart from him. The sound

of the organ seemed to belong to the very stone of the pillars,

like sap running in them.

Then there was a close of music and silence.

"Father!" she said.

He looked round as if at an apparition. Ursula stood

shadowily within the candle-light.

"What now?" he said, not coming to earth.

It was difficult to speak to him.

"I've got a situation," she said, forcing herself to

speak.

"You've got what?" he answered, unwilling to come out of his

mood of organ-playing. He closed the music before him.

"I've got a situation to go to."

Then he turned to her, still abstracted, unwilling.

"Oh, where's that?" he said.

"At Kingston-on-Thames. I must go on Thursday for an

interview with the Committee."

"You must go on Thursday?"

"Yes."

And she handed him the letter. He read it by the light of the

candles.

"Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, Cossethay,

Derbyshire.

"Dear Madam, You are requested to call at the above offices

on Thursday next, the 10th, at 11.30 a.m., for an interview with

the committee, referring to your application for the post of

assistant mistress at the Wellingborough Green Schools."

It was very difficult for Brangwen to take in this remote and

official information, glowing as he was within the quiet of his

church and his anthem music.

"Well, you needn't bother me with it now, need you?' he said

impatiently, giving her back the letter.

"I've got to go on Thursday," she said.

He sat motionless. Then he reached more music, and there was

a rushing sound of air, then a long, emphatic trumpet-note of

the organ, as he laid his hands on the keys. Ursula turned and

went away.

He tried to give himself again to the organ. But he could

not. He could not get back. All the time a sort of string was

tugging, tugging him elsewhere, miserably.

So that when he came into the house after choir-practice his

face was dark and his heart black. He said nothing however,

until all the younger children were in bed. Ursula, however,

knew what was brewing.

At length he asked:

"Where's that letter?"

She gave it to him. He sat looking at it. "You are requested

to call at the above offices on Thursday next----" It

was a cold, official notice to Ursula herself and had nothing to

do with him. So! She existed now as a separate social

individual. It was for her to answer this note, without regard

to him. He had even no right to interfere. His heart was hard

and angry.

"You had to do it behind our backs, had you?" he said, with a

sneer. And her heart leapt with hot pain. She knew she was

free--she had broken away from him. He was beaten.

"You said, 'let her try,'" she retorted, almost apologizing

to him.

He did not hear. He sat looking at the letter.

"Education Office, Kingston-on-Thames"--and then the

typewritten "Miss Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, Cossethay."

It was all so complete and so final. He could not but feel the

new position Ursula held, as recipient of that letter. It was an

iron in his soul.

"Well," he said at length, "you're not going."

Ursula started and could find no words to clamour her

revolt.

"If you think you're going dancin' off to th' other side of

London, you're mistaken."

"Why not?" she cried, at once hard fixed in her will to

go.

"That's why not," he said.

And there was silence till Mrs. Brangwen came downstairs.

"Look here, Anna," he said, handing her the letter.

She put back her head, seeing a typewritten letter,

anticipating trouble from the outside world. There was the

curious, sliding motion of her eyes, as if she shut off her

sentient, maternal self, and a kind of hard trance, meaningless,

took its place. Thus, meaningless, she glanced over the letter,

careful not to take it in. She apprehended the contents with her

callous, superficial mind. Her feeling self was shut down.

"What post is it?" she asked.

"She wants to go and be a teacher in Kingston-on-Thames, at

fifty pounds a year."

"Oh, indeed."

The mother spoke as if it were a hostile fact concerning some

stranger. She would have let her go, out of callousness. Mrs.

Brangwen would begin to grow up again only with her youngest

child. Her eldest girl was in the way now.

"She's not going all that distance," said the father.

"I have to go where they want me," cried Ursula. "And it's a

good place to go to."

"What do you know about the place?" said her father

harshly.

"And it doesn't matter whether they want you or not, if your

father says you are not to go," said the mother calmly.

How Ursula hated her!

"You said I was to try," the girl cried. "Now I've got a

place and I'm going to go."

"You're not going all that distance," said her father.

"Why don't you get a place at Ilkeston, where you can live at

home?" asked Gudrun, who hated conflicts, who could not

understand Ursula's uneasy way, yet who must stand by her

sister.

"There aren't any places in Ilkeston," cried Ursula. "And I'd

rather go right away."

"If you'd asked about it, a place could have been got for you

in Ilkeston. But you had to play Miss High-an'-mighty, and go

your own way," said her father.

"I've no doubt you'd rather go right away," said her mother,

very caustic. "And I've no doubt you'd find other people didn't

put up with you for very long either. You've too much opinion of

yourself for your good."

Between the girl and her mother was a feeling of pure hatred.

There came a stubborn silence. Ursula knew she must break

it.

"Well, they've written to me, and I s'll have to go," she

said.

"Where will you get the money from?" asked her father.

"Uncle Tom will give it me," she said.

Again there was silence. This time she was triumphant.

Then at length her father lifted his head. His face was

abstracted, he seemed to be abstracting himself, to make a pure

statement.

"Well, you're not going all that distance away," he said.

"I'll ask Mr. Burt about a place here. I'm not going to have you

by yourself at the other side of London."

"But I've got to go to Kingston," said Ursula.

"They've sent for me."

"They'll do without you," he said.

There was a trembling silence when she was on the point of

tears.

"Well," she said, low and tense, "you can put me off this,

but I'm going to have a place. I'm not going to

stop at home."

"Nobody wants you to stop at home," he suddenly shouted,

going livid with rage.

She said no more. Her nature had gone hard and smiling in its

own arrogance, in its own antagonistic indifference to the rest

of them. This was the state in which he wanted to kill her. She

went singing into the parlour.

C'est la mere Michel qui a perdu son chat,

Qui cri par la fenetre qu'est-ce qui le lue renda----"

During the next days Ursula went about bright and hard,

singing to herself, making love to the children, but her soul

hard and cold with regard to her parents. Nothing more was said.

The hardness and brightness lasted for four days. Then it began

to break up. So at evening she said to her father:

"Have you spoken about a place for me?"

"I spoke to Mr. Burt."

"What did he say?"

"There's a committee meeting to-morrow. He'll tell me on

Friday."

So she waited till Friday. Kingston-on-Thames had been an

exciting dream. Here she could feel the hard, raw reality. So

she knew that this would come to pass. Because nothing was ever

fulfilled, she found, except in the hard limited reality. She

did not want to be a teacher in Ilkeston, because she knew

Ilkeston, and hated it. But she wanted to be free, so she must

take her freedom where she could.

On Friday her father said there was a place vacant in

Brinsley Street school. This could most probably be secured for

her, at once, without the trouble of application.

Her heart halted. Brinsley Street was a school in a poor

quarter, and she had had a taste of the common children of

Ilkeston. They had shouted after her and thrown stones. Still,

as a teacher, she would be in authority. And it was all unknown.

She was excited. The very forest of dry, sterile brick had some