第 75 页

night grew on him, obsessed him like a mania. He slept fitfully,

with constant wakings of anguish. The fear wore away the core of

him.

His plan was to sit up very late: drink in company until one

or half-past one in the morning; then he would get three hours

of sleep, of oblivion. It was light by five o'clock. But he was

shocked almost to madness if he opened his eyes on the

darkness.

In the daytime he was all right, always occupied with the

thing of the moment, adhering to the trivial present, which

seemed to him ample and satisfying. No matter how little and

futile his occupations were, he gave himself to them entirely,

and felt normal and fulfilled. He was always active, cheerful,

gay, charming, trivial. Only he dreaded the darkness and silence

of his own bedroom, when the darkness should challenge him upon

his own soul. That he could not bear, as he could not bear to

think about Ursula. He had no soul, no background. He never

thought of Ursula, not once, he gave her no sign. She was the

darkness, the challenge, the horror. He turned to immediate

things. He wanted to marry quickly, to screen himself from the

darkness, the challenge of his own soul. He would marry his

Colonel's daughter. Quickly, without hesitation, pursued by his

obsession for activity, he wrote to this girl, telling her his

engagement was broken--it had been a temporary infatuation

which he less than any one else could understand now it was

over--and could he see his very dear friend soon? He would

not be happy till he had an answer.

He received a rather surprised reply from the girl, but she

would be glad to see him. She was living with her aunt. He went

down to her at once, and proposed to her the first evening. He

was accepted. The marriage took place quietly within fourteen

days' time. Ursula was not notified of the event. In another

week, Skrebensky sailed with his new wife to India.

CHAPTER XVI

THE RAINBOW

Ursula went home to Beldover faint, dim, closed up. She could

scarcely speak or notice. It was as if her energy were frozen.

Her people asked her what was the matter. She told them she had

broken off the engagement with Skrebensky. They looked blank and

angry. But she could not feel any more.

The weeks crawled by in apathy. He would have sailed for

India now. She was scarcely interested. She was inert, without

strength or interest.

Suddenly a shock ran through her, so violent that she thought

she was struck down. Was she with child? She had been so

stricken under the pain of herself and of him, this had never

occurred to her. Now like a flame it took hold of her limbs and

body. Was she with child?

In the first flaming hours of wonder, she did not know what

she felt. She was as if tied to the stake. The flames were

licking her and devouring her. But the flames were also good.

They seemed to wear her away to rest. What she felt in her heart

and her womb she did not know. It was a kind of swoon.

Then gradually the heaviness of her heart pressed and pressed

into consciousness. What was she doing? Was she bearing a child?

Bearing a child? To what?

Her flesh thrilled, but her soul was sick. It seemed, this

child, like the seal set on her own nullity. Yet she was glad in

her flesh that she was with child. She began to think, that she

would write to Skrebensky, that she would go out to him, and

marry him, and live simply as a good wife to him. What did the

self, the form of life matter? Only the living from day to day

mattered, the beloved existence in the body, rich, peaceful,

complete, with no beyond, no further trouble, no further

complication. She had been wrong, she had been arrogant and

wicked, wanting that other thing, that fantastic freedom, that

illusory, conceited fulfilment which she had imagined she could

not have with Skrebensky. Who was she to be wanting some

fantastic fulfilment in her life? Was it not enough that she had

her man, her children, her place of shelter under the sun? Was

it not enough for her, as it had been enough for her mother? She

would marry and love her husband and fill her place simply. That

was the ideal.

Suddenly she saw her mother in a just and true light. Her

mother was simple and radically true. She had taken the life

that was given. She had not, in her arrogant conceit, insisted

on creating life to fit herself. Her mother was right,

profoundly right, and she herself had been false, trashy,

conceited.

A great mood of humility came over her, and in this humility

a bondaged sort of peace. She gave her limbs to the bondage, she

loved the bondage, she called it peace. In this state she sat

down to write to Skrebensky.

Since you left me I have suffered a great deal, and so have

come to myself. I cannot tell you the remorse I feel for my

wicked, perverse behaviour. It was given to me to love you, and

to know your love for me. But instead of thankfully, on my

knees, taking what God had given me, I must have the moon in my

keeping, I must insist on having the moon for my own. Because I

could not have it, everything else must go.

I do not know if you can ever forgive me. I could die with

shame to think of my behaviour with you during our last times,

and I don't know if I could ever bear to look you in the face

again. Truly the best thing would be for me to die, and cover my

fantasies for ever. But I find I am with child, so that cannot

be.

It is your child, and for that reason I must revere it and

submit my body entirely to its welfare, entertaining no thought

of death, which once more is largely conceit. Therefore, because

you once loved me, and because this child is your child, I ask

you to have me back. If you will cable me one word, I will come

to you as soon as I can. I swear to you to be a dutiful wife,

and to serve you in all things. For now I only hate myself and

my own conceited foolishness. I love you--I love the

thought of you--you were natural and decent all through,

whilst I was so false. Once I am with you again, I shall ask no

more than to rest in your shelter all my life----

This letter she wrote, sentence by sentence, as if from her

deepest, sincerest heart. She felt that now, now, she was at the

depths of herself. This was her true self, forever. With this

document she would appear before God at the Judgment Day.

For what had a woman but to submit? What was her flesh but

for childbearing, her strength for her children and her husband,

the giver of life? At last she was a woman.

She posted her letter to his club, to be forwarded to him in

Calcutta. He would receive it soon after his arrival in

India--within three weeks of his arrival there. In a

month's time she would receive word from him. Then she would

go.

She was quite sure of him. She thought only of preparing her

garments and of living quietly, peacefully, till the time when

she should join him again and her history would be concluded for

ever. The peace held like an unnatural calm for a long time. She

was aware, however, of a gathering restiveness, a tumult

impending within her. She tried to run away from it. She wished

she could hear from Skrebensky, in answer to her letter, so that

her course should be resolved, she should be engaged in

fulfilling her fate. It was this inactivity which made her

liable to the revulsion she dreaded.

It was curious how little she cared about his not having

written to her before. It was enough that she had sent her

letter. She would get the required answer, that was all.

One afternoon in early October, feeling the seething rising

to madness within her, she slipped out in the rain, to walk

abroad, lest the house should suffocate her. Everywhere was

drenched wet and deserted, the grimed houses glowed dull red,

the butt houses burned scarlet in a gleam of light, under the

glistening, blackish purple slates. Ursula went on towards

Willey Green. She lifted her face and walked swiftly, seeing the

passage of light across the shallow valley, seeing the colliery

and its clouds of steam for a moment visionary in dim

brilliance, away in the chaos of rain. Then the veils closed

again. She was glad of the rain's privacy and intimacy.

Making on towards the wood, she saw the pale gleam of Willey

Water through the cloud below, she walked the open space where

hawthorn trees streamed like hair on the wind and round bushes

were presences slowing through the atmosphere. It was very

splendid, free and chaotic.

Yet she hurried to the wood for shelter. There, the vast

booming overhead vibrated down and encircled her, tree-trunks

spanned the circle of tremendous sound, myriads of tree-trunks,

enormous and streaked black with water, thrust like stanchions

upright between the roaring overhead and the sweeping of the

circle underfoot. She glided between the tree-trunks, afraid of

them. They might turn and shut her in as she went through their

martialled silence.

So she flitted along, keeping an illusion that she was

unnoticed. She felt like a bird that has flown in through the

window of a hall where vast warriors sit at the board. Between

their grave, booming ranks she was hastening, assuming she was

unnoticed, till she emerged, with beating heart, through the far

window and out into the open, upon the vivid green, marshy

meadow.

She turned under the shelter of the common, seeing the great

veils of rain swinging with slow, floating waves across the

landscape. She was very wet and a long way from home, far

enveloped in the rain and the waving landscape. She must beat

her way back through all this fluctuation, back to stability and

security.

A solitary thing, she took the track straight across the

wilderness, going back. The path was a narrow groove in the turf

between high, sere, tussocky grass; it was scarcely more than a

rabbit run. So she moved swiftly along, watching her footing,

going like a bird on the wind, with no thought, contained in

motion. But her heart had a small, living seed of fear, as she

went through the wash of hollow space.

Suddenly she knew there was something else. Some horses were

looming in the rain, not near yet. But they were going to be

near. She continued her path, inevitably. They were horses in

the lee of a clump of trees beyond, above her. She pursued her

way with bent head. She did not want to lift her face to them.

She did not want to know they were there. She went on in the

wild track.

She knew the heaviness on her heart. It was the weight of the

horses. But she would circumvent them. She would bear the weight

steadily, and so escape. She would go straight on, and on, and

be gone by.

Suddenly the weight deepened and her heart grew tense to bear

it. Her breathing was laboured. But this weight also she could

bear. She knew without looking that the horses were moving

nearer. What were they? She felt the thud of their heavy hoofs

on the ground. What was it that was drawing near her, what

weight oppressing her heart? She did not know, she did not

look.

Yet now her way was cut off. They were blocking her back. She

knew they had gathered on a log bridge over the sedgy dike, a

dark, heavy, powerfully heavy knot. Yet her feet went on and on.

They would burst before her. They would burst before her. Her

feet went on and on. And tense, and more tense became her nerves

and her veins, they ran hot, they ran white hot, they must fuse

and she must die.

But the horses had burst before her. In a sort of lightning

of knowledge their movement travelled through her, the quiver

and strain and thrust of their powerful flanks, as they burst

before her and drew on, beyond.

She knew they had not gone, she knew they awaited her still.

But she went on over the log bridge that their hoofs had churned

and drummed, she went on, knowing things about them. She was

aware of their breasts gripped, clenched narrow in a hold that

never relaxed, she was aware of their red nostrils flaming with

long endurance, and of their haunches, so rounded, so massive,

pressing, pressing, pressing to burst the grip upon their

breasts, pressing for ever till they went mad, running against

the walls of time, and never bursting free. Their great haunches

were smoothed and darkened with rain. But the darkness and

wetness of rain could not put out the hard, urgent, massive fire

that was locked within these flanks, never, never.

She went on, drawing near. She was aware of the great flash

of hoofs, a bluish, iridescent flash surrounding a hollow of

darkness. Large, large seemed the bluish, incandescent flash of

the hoof-iron, large as a halo of lightning round the knotted

darkness of the flanks. Like circles of lightning came the flash

of hoofs from out of the powerful flanks.

They were awaiting her again. They had gathered under an oak

tree, knotting their awful, blind, triumphing flanks together,

and waiting, waiting. They were waiting for her approach. As if

from a far distance she was drawing near, towards the line of

twiggy oak trees where they made their intense darkness,

gathered on a single bank.

She must draw near. But they broke away, they cantered round,

making a wide circle to avoid noticing her, and cantered back

into the open hillside behind her.

They were behind her. The way was open before her, to the

gate in the high hedge in the near distance, so she could pass

into the smaller, cultivated field, and so out to the high-road

and the ordered world of man. Her way was clear. She lulled her

heart. Yet her heart was couched with fear, couched with fear

all along.

Suddenly she hesitated as if seized by lightning. She seemed

to fall, yet found herself faltering forward with small steps.

The thunder of horses galloping down the path behind her shook

her, the weight came down upon her, down, to the moment of

extinction. She could not look round, so the horses thundered

upon her.

Cruelly, they swerved and crashed by on her left hand. She

saw the fierce flanks crinkled and as yet inadequate, the great

hoofs flashing bright as yet only brandished about her, and one