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books. They were tokens to her, representing the fruit and

trophies of her two years which, thank God, were over.

"To Ursula Brangwen, with best wishes for her future, and in

warm memory of the time she spent in St. Philip's School," was

written in the headmaster's neat, scrupulous handwriting. She

could see the careful hand holding the pen, the thick fingers

with tufts of black hair on the back of each one.

He had signed, all the teachers had signed. She liked having

all their signatures. She felt she loved them all. They were her

fellow-workers. She carried away from the school a pride she

could never lose. She had her place as comrade and sharer in the

work of the school, her fellow teachers had signed to her, as

one of them. And she was one of all workers, she had put in her

tiny brick to the fabric man was building, she had qualified

herself as co-builder.

Then the day for the home removal came. Ursula rose early, to

pack up the remaining goods. The carts arrived, lent by her

uncle at the Marsh, in the lull between hay and corn harvest.

The goods roped in the cart, Ursula mounted her bicycle and sped

away to Beldover.

The house was hers. She entered its clean-scrubbed silence.

The dining-room had been covered with a thick rush matting, hard

and of the beautiful, luminous, clean colour of sun-dried reeds.

The walls were pale grey, the doors were darker grey. Ursula

admired it very much, as the sun came through the large windows,

streaming in.

She flung open doors and windows to the sunshine. Flowers

were bright and shining round the small lawn, which stood above

the road, looking over the raw field opposite, which would later

be built upon. No one came. So she wandered down the garden at

the back of the wall. The eight bells of the church rang the

hour. She could hear the many sounds of the town about her.

At last, the cart was seen coming round the corner, familiar

furniture piled undignified on top, Tom, her brother, and

Theresa, marching on foot beside the mass, proud of having

walked ten miles or more, from the tram terminus. Ursula poured

out beer, and the men drank thirstily, by the door. A second

cart was coming. Her father appeared on his motor bicycle. There

was the staggering transport of furniture up the steps to the

little lawn, where it was deposited all pell-mell in the

sunshine, very queer and discomforting.

Brangwen was a pleasant man to work with, cheerful and easy.

Ursula loved deciding him where the heavy things should stand.

She watched anxiously the struggle up the steps and through the

doorways. Then the big things were in, the carts set off again.

Ursula and her father worked away carrying in all the light

things that remained upon the lawn, and putting them in place.

Dinner time came. They ate bread and cheese in the kitchen.

"Well, we're getting on," said Brangwen, cheerfully.

Two more loads arrived. The afternoon passed away in a

struggle with the furniture, upstairs. Towards five o'clock,

appeared the last loads, consisting also of Mrs. Brangwen and

the younger children, driven by Uncle Fred in the trap. Gudrun

had walked with Margaret from the station. The whole family had

come.

"There!" said Brangwen, as his wife got down from the cart:

"Now we're all here."

"Ay," said his wife pleasantly.

And the very brevity, the silence of intimacy between the two

made a home in the hearts of the children, who clustered round

feeling strange in the new place.

Everything was at sixes and sevens. But a fire was made in

the kitchen, the hearth-rug put down, the kettle set on the hob,

and Mrs. Brangwen began towards sunset to prepare the first

meal. Ursula and Gudrun were slaving in the bedrooms, candles

were rushing about. Then from the kitchen came the smell of ham

and eggs and coffee, and in the gaslight, the scrambled meal

began. The family seemed to huddle together like a little camp

in a strange place. Ursula felt a load of responsibility upon

her, caring for the half-little ones. The smallest kept near the

mother.

It was dark, and the children went sleepy but excited to bed.

It was a long time before the sound of voices died out. There

was a tremendous sense of adventure.

In the morning everybody was awake soon after dawn, the

children crying:

"When I wakened up I didn't know where I was."

There were the strange sounds of the town, and the repeated

chiming of the big church bells, so much harsher and more

insistent than the little bells of Cossethay. They looked

through the windows past the other new red houses to the wooded

hill across the valley. They had all a delightful sense of space

and liberation, space and light and air.

But gradually all set to work. They were a careless, untidy

family. Yet when once they set about to get the house in order,

the thing went with felicity and quickness. By evening the place

was roughly established.

They would not have a servant to live in the house, only a

woman who could go home at night. And they would not even have

the woman yet. They wanted to do as they liked in their own

home, with no stranger in the midst.

CHAPTER XV

THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY

A storm of industry raged on in the house. Ursula did not go

to college till October. So, with a distinct feeling of

responsibility, as if she must express herself in this house,

she laboured arranging, re-arranging, selecting, contriving.

She could use her father's ordinary tools, both for woodwork

and metal-work, so she hammered and tinkered. Her mother was

quite content to have the thing done. Brangwen was interested.

He had a ready belief in his daughter. He himself was at work

putting up his work-shed in the garden.

At last she had finished for the time being. The drawing-room

was big and empty. It had the good Wilton carpet, of which the

family was so proud, and the large couch and large chairs

covered with shiny chintz, and the piano, a little sculpture in

plaster that Brangwen had done, and not very much more. It was

too large and empty-feeling for the family to occupy very much.

Yet they liked to know it was there, large and empty.

The home was the dining-room. There the hard rush

floor-covering made the ground light, reflecting light upon the

bottom their hearts; in the window-bay was a broad, sunny seat,

the table was so solid one could not jostle it, and the chairs

so strong one could knock them over without hurting them. The

familiar organ that Brangwen had made stood on one side, looking

peculiarly small, the sideboard was comfortably reduced to

normal proportions. This was the family living-room.

Ursula had a bedroom to herself. It was really a servants'

bedroom, small and plain. Its window looked over the back garden

at other back gardens, some of them old and very nice, some of

them littered with packing-cases, then at the backs of the

houses whose fronts were the shops in High Street, or the

genteel homes of the under-manager or the chief cashier, facing

the chapel.

She had six weeks still before going to college. In this time

she nervously read over some Latin and some botany, and fitfully

worked at some mathematics. She was going into college as a

teacher, for her training. But, having already taken her

matriculation examination, she was entered for a university

course. At the end of a year she would sit for the Intermediate

Arts, then two years after for her B.A. So her case was not that

of the ordinary school-teacher. She would be working among the

private students who came only for pure education, not for mere

professional training. She would be of the elect.

For the next three years she would be more or less dependent

on her parents again. Her training was free. All college fees

were paid by the government, she had moreover a few pounds grant

every year. This would just pay for her train fares and her

clothing. Her parents would only have to feed her. She did not

want to cost them much. They would not be well off. Her father

would earn only two hundred a year, and a good deal of her

mother's capital was spent in buying the house. Still, there was

enough to get along with.

Gudrun was attending the Art School at Nottingham. She was

working particularly at sculpture. She had a gift for this. She

loved making little models in clay, of children or of animals.

Already some of these had appeared in the Students' Exhibition

in the Castle, and Gudrun was a distinguished person. She was

chafing at the Art School and wanted to go to London. But there

was not enough money. Neither would her parents let her go so

far.

Theresa had left the High School. She was a great strapping,

bold hussy, indifferent to all higher claims. She would stay at

home. The others were at school, except the youngest. When term

started, they would all be transferred to the Grammar School at

Willey Green.

Ursula was excited at making acquaintances in Beldover. The

excitement soon passed. She had tea at the clergyman's, at the

chemist's, at the other chemist's, at the doctor's, at the

under-manager's--then she knew practically everybody. She

could not take people very seriously, though at the time she

wanted to.

She wandered the country, on foot and on her bicycle, finding

it very beautiful in the forest direction, between Mansfield and

Southwell and Worksop. But she was here only skirmishing for

amusement. Her real exploration would begin in college.

Term began. She went into town each day by train. The

cloistered quiet of the college began to close around her.

She was not at first disappointed. The big college built of

stone, standing in the quiet street, with a rim of grass and

lime trees all so peaceful: she felt it remote, a magic land.

Its architecture was foolish, she knew from her father. Still,

it was different from that of all other buildings. Its rather

pretty, plaything, Gothic form was almost a style, in the dirty

industrial town.

She liked the hall, with its big stone chimney-piece and its

Gothic arches supporting the balcony above. To be sure the

arches were ugly, the chimney-piece of cardboard-like carved

stone, with its armorial decoration, looked silly just opposite

the bicycle stand and the radiator, whilst the great

notice-board with its fluttering papers seemed to slam away all

sense of retreat and mystery from the far wall. Nevertheless,

amorphous as it might be, there was in it a reminiscence of the

wondrous, cloistral origin of education. Her soul flew straight

back to the medieval times, when the monks of God held the

learning of men and imparted it within the shadow of religion.

In this spirit she entered college.

The harshness and vulgarity of the lobbies and cloak-rooms

hurt her at first. Why was it not all beautiful? But she could

not openly admit her criticism. She was on holy ground.

She wanted all the students to have a high, pure spirit, she

wanted them to say only the real, genuine things, she wanted

their faces to be still and luminous as the nuns' and the monks'

faces.

Alas, the girls chattered and giggled and were nervous, they

were dressed up and frizzed, the men looked mean and

clownish.

Still, it was lovely to pass along the corridor with one's

books in one's hands, to push the swinging, glass-panelled door,

and enter the big room where the first lecture would be given.

The windows were large and lofty, the myriad brown students'

desks stood waiting, the great blackboard was smooth behind the

rostrum.

Ursula sat beside her window, rather far back. Looking down,

she saw the lime trees turning yellow, the tradesman's boy

passing silent down the still, autumn-sunny street. There was

the world, remote, remote.

Here, within the great, whispering sea-shell, that whispered

all the while with reminiscence of all the centuries, time faded

away, and the echo of knowledge filled the timeless silence.

She listened, she scribbled her notes with joy, almost with

ecstasy, never for a moment criticizing what she heard. The

lecturer was a mouth-piece, a priest. As he stood, black-gowned,

on the rostrum, some strands of the whispering confusion of

knowledge that filled the whole place seemed to be singled out

and woven together by him, till they became a lecture.

At first, she preserved herself from criticism. She would not

consider the professors as men, ordinary men who ate bacon, and

pulled on their boots before coming to college. They were the

black-gowned priests of knowledge, serving for ever in a remote,

hushed temple. They were the initiated, and the beginning and

the end of the mystery was in their keeping.

Curious joy she had of the lectures. It was a joy to hear the

theory of education, there was such freedom and pleasure in

ranging over the very stuff of knowledge, and seeing how it

moved and lived and had its being. How happy Racine made her!

She did not know why. But as the big lines of the drama unfolded

themselves, so steady, so measured, she felt a thrill as of

being in the realm of the reality. Of Latin, she was doing Livy

and Horace. The curious, intimate, gossiping tone of the Latin

class suited Horace. Yet she never cared for him, nor even Livy.

There was an entire lack of sternness in the gossipy class-room.

She tried hard to keep her old grasp of the Roman spirit. But

gradually the Latin became mere gossip-stuff and artificiality

to her, a question of manners and verbosities.

Her terror was the mathematics class. The lecturer went so

fast, her heart beat excitedly, she seemed to be straining every

nerve. And she struggled hard, during private study, to get the

stuff into control.

Then came the lovely, peaceful afternoons in the botany

laboratory. There were few students. How she loved to sit on her

high stool before the bench, with her pith and her razor and her

material, carefully mounting her slides, carefully bringing her

microscope into focus, then turning with joy to record her