 8. As she grew older, five, six, seven, the connection between her and her father was even stronger. But it was always straining to break. She was always relapsing on her own violent will into her own separate world of herself. This made him grind his teeth with bitterness, for he still wanted her. But she could harden herself into her own self's universe, impregnable. He was very fond of swimming, and in warm weather would take her down to the canal, to a silent place, or to a big pond or reservoir, to bathe. He would take her on his back as he went swimming, and she clung close, feeling his strong movement under her, so strong as if it would uphold all the world. Then he taught her to swim. She was a fearless little thing when he dared her. And he had a curious craving to frighten her, to see what she would do with him. He said, would she ride on his back whilst she jumped off the canal bridge down into the water beneath? She would. He loved to feel the naked child clinging onto his shoulders. There was a curious fight between their two wills. He mounted the parapet of the canal bridge. The water was a long way down, but the child had a deliberate will set upon his. She held herself fixed to him. He leapt and down they went. The crash of the water, as they went under, struck through the child's small body with a sort of unconsciousness. But she remained fixed. And when they came up again, and when they went to the bank, and when they sat on the grass side by side, he laughed and said it was fine. And the dark, dilated eyes of the child looked at him, wonderingly, darkly, wandering from the shock, yet reserved and unfathomable. So he laughed, almost with a sob. In a moment she was clinging safely on his back again, and he was swimming in deep water. She was used to his nakedness, and to her mother's nakedness, ever since she was born. They were clinging to each other and making up to each other for the strange blow that had been struck at them. Yet still, on other days, he would leap again with her from the bridge, daringly, almost wickedly. Till at length, as he leapt once, she dropped forward onto his head and nearly broke his neck, so that they fell into the water in a heap, and fought for a few moments with death. He saved her, and sat on the bank, quivering, but his eyes were full of the blackness of death. It was as if death had cut between their two lives and separated them. Still they were not separate. There was this curious taunting intimacy between them. When the fare came, she wanted to go in the swing-boats. He took her, and standing up in the boat, holding on to the irons, began to drive higher, perilously higher. The child clung fast on her seat. Do you want to go any higher, he said to her? And she laughed with her mouth, her eyes wide and dilated. They were rushing through the air. Yes, she said, feeling as if she would turn into vapor, lose hold of everything and melt away. The boat swung far up, then down like a stone, only to be caught sickeningly up again. Any higher, he called, looking at her over his shoulder, his face evil and beautiful to her. She laughed with white lips. He sent the swing-boat sweeping through the air in a great semi-circle, till it jerked and swayed at the high horizontal. The child clung on, pale, her eyes fixed on him. People below were calling. The jerk at the top had almost shaken them both out. He had done what he could, and he was attracting censure. He sat down and let the swing-boat swing itself out. People in the crowd cried shame on him as he came out of the swing-boat. He laughed. The child clung to his hand, pale and mute. In a while she was violently sick. He gave her lemonade, and she gulped a little. Don't tell your mother you've been sick, he said. There was no need to ask that. When she got home the child crept away under the parlor's sofa like a sick little animal, and was a long time before she crawled out. But Anna got to know of this escapade, and was passionately angry and contemptuous of him. His golden brown eyes glittered. He had a strange, cruel little smile, and as the child watched him, for the first time in her life a disillusion came over her, something cold and isolating. She went over to her mother. Her soul was dead towards him. It made her sick. Still she forgot, and continued to love him, but ever more coldly. He was at this time, when he was about twenty-eight years old, strange and violent in his being sensual. He acquired some power over Anna, over everybody he came into contact with. After a long bout of hostility, Anna at last closed with him. She had now four children, all girls. For seven years she had been absorbed in wifehood and motherhood. For years he had gone on beside her, never really encroaching upon her. Then gradually another self seemed to assert its being within him. He was still silent and separate. But she could feel him all the while coming near upon her, as if his breast and his body were threatening her, and he was always coming closer. Gradually he became indifferent of responsibility. He would do what pleased him and know more. He began to go away from home. He went to Nottingham on Saturdays, always alone, to the football match and to the music hall, and all the time he was watching in readiness. He never cared to drink, but with his hard golden brown eyes so keen seeing with their tiny black pupils he watched all the people, everything that happened, and he waited. In the empire one evening he sat next to two girls. He was aware of the one beside him. She was rather small, common, with a fresh complexion and an upper lip that lifted from her teeth so that when she was not conscious her mouth was slightly open, and her lips pressed outwards in a kind of blind appeal. She was strongly aware of the man next to her so that all her body was still, very still. Her face watched the stage. Her arms went down into her lap, very self-conscious and still. A gleam lit up in him. Should he begin with her? Should he begin with her to live the other, the unadmitted life of his desire? Why not? He had always been so good. Say for his wife he was a virgin, and why when all women were different? Why when he would only live once? He wanted the other life. His own life was barren, not enough. He wanted the other. Her open mouth, showing the small, irregular white teeth, appealed to him. It was open and ready. It was so vulnerable. Why should he not go in and enjoy what was there? The slim arm that went down so still and motionless to the lap, it was pretty. She would be small. He would be able almost to hold her in his two hands. She would be small, almost like a child and pretty. Her childishness wedded him keenly. She would be helpless between his hands. That was the best turn we've had, he said to her, leaning over as he clapped his hands. He felt strong and unshakable in himself, set over against all the world. His soul was keen and watchful, glittering with a kind of amusement. He was perfectly self-contained. He was himself the absolute. The rest of the world was the object that should contribute to his being. The girl started, turned round. Her eyes lit up with an almost painful flash of a smile. The color came deeply in her cheeks. Yes, it was, she said, quite meaninglessly, and she covered her rather prominent teeth with her lips. Then she sat looking straight before her, seeing nothing, only conscious of the color burning in her cheeks. It pricked him with a pleasant sensation. His veins and his nerves attended to her. She was so young and palpitating. It's not such a good program as last week, he said. Again she half turned her face to him, and her clear bright eyes, bright like shallow water, filled with light, frightened, yet involuntarily lighting and shaking with response. Oh, isn't it? I wasn't able to come last week. He noted the common accent. It pleased him. He knew what class she came of. Probably she was a warehouse lass. He was glad she was a common girl. He proceeded to tell her about the last week's program. She answered at random, very confusedly. The color burnt in her cheek, yet she always answered him. The girl on the other side sat remotely, obviously silent. He ignored her. All his address was for his own girl, with her bright, shallow eyes and her vulnerably open mouth. The talk went on, meaningless and random on her part, quite deliberate and purposive on his. It was a pleasure to him to make this conversation, an activity pleasant as a fine game of chance and skill. He was very quiet and pleasant-humored, but so full of strength. She fluttered beside his steady pressure of warmth and his surety. He saw the performance drawing to a close. His senses were alert and willful. He would press his advantages. He followed her and her plain friend down the stairs to the street. It was raining. It's a nasty night, he said. Shall you come and have a drink of something? A cup of coffee? It's early yet. Oh, I don't think so, she said, looking away into the night. I wish you would, he said, putting himself as it were at her mercy. There was a moment's pause. Come to Rowland's? He said. No, not there. To Carson's, then. There was a silence. The other girl hung on. The man was the center of positive force. Will your friend come as well? There was another moment of silence while the other girl felt her ground. No thanks, she said, I've promised to meet a friend. Another time, then, he said. Oh, thanks, she replied, very awkward. Good night, he said. See you later, said his girl, to her friend. Where, said the friend? You know, Gertie, replied his girl. All right, Jenny. The friend was gone into the darkness. He turned with his girl to the tea-shop. They talked all the time. He made his sentences in sheer, almost muscular pleasure of exercising himself with her. He was looking at her all the time, perceiving her, appreciating her, finding her out, gratifying himself with her. He could see distinct attractions in her. Her eyebrows, with their particular curve, gave him keen aesthetic pleasure. Later on he would see her bright, pollucid eyes, like shallow water, and know those. And there remained the open, exposed mouth, red and vulnerable, that he reserved as yet. And all the while his eyes were on the girl, estimating and handling with pleasure her young softness. About the girl herself, who or what she was, he cared nothing. He was quite unaware that she was anybody. She was just the sensual object of his attention. Shall we go, then, he said? She rose in silence as if acting without a mind, merely physically. He seemed to hold her in his will, outside it was still raining. Let's have a walk, he said. I don't mind the rain, do you? No, I don't mind it, she said. He was alert in every sense and fiber, and yet quite sure and steady and lit up as if transfused. He had a free sensation of walking in his own darkness, not in anybody else's world at all. He was purely a world to himself. He had nothing to do with any general consciousness, just his own senses were supreme. All the rest was external, insignificant, leaving him alone with this girl whom he wanted to absorb, whose properties he wanted to absorb into his own senses. He did not care about her, except that he wanted to overcome her resistance, to have her in his power, fully and exhaustively, to enjoy her. They turned into the dark streets. He held her umbrella over her and put his arm round her. She walked as if she were unaware, but gradually as he walked he drew her a little closer, into the movement of his side and hip. She fitted in there very well. It was a real good fit to walk with her like this. It made him exquisitely aware of his own muscular self, and his hand that grasped her side felt one curve of her, and it seemed like a new creation to him, a reality, an absolute, an existing tangible beauty of the absolute. It was like a star. Everything in him was absorbed in the sensual delight of this one small firm curve in her body that his hand and his whole being had lighted upon. He led her into the park where it was almost dark. He noticed a corner between two walls under a great overhanging bush of ivy. Let us stand here a minute, he said. He put down the umbrella and followed her into the corner, retreating out of the rain. He needed no eyes to see. All he wanted was to know through touch. She was like a piece of palpable darkness. He found her in the darkness, put his arms round her and his hands upon her. She was silent and inscrutable, but he did not want to know anything about her. He only wanted to discover her, and through her clothing what absolute beauty he touched. Take your hat off, he said. Silently, obediently, she shook off her hat and gave herself to his arms again. He liked her. He liked the feel of her. He wanted to know her more closely. He let his fingers subtly seek out her cheek and neck. What amazing beauty and pleasure in the dark. His fingers had often touched Anna on the face and neck like that. What matter? It was one man who touched Anna, another who now touched this girl. He liked best his new self. He was given over altogether to the sensuous knowledge of this woman, and every moment he seemed to be touching absolute beauty, something beyond knowledge. Very close, marveling, and exceedingly joyful in their discoveries, his hands pressed upon her so subtly, so seekingly, so finely and desirously searching her out that she too was almost swooning in the absolute of sensual knowledge. In utter sensual delight she clenched her knees, her thighs, her loins together. It was an added beauty to him. But he was patiently working for her relaxation, patiently his whole being fixed in the smile of latent gratification, his whole body electric with a subtle powerful reducing force upon her. So he came at length to kiss her, and she was almost betrayed by his insidious kiss. Her open mouth was too helpless and unguarded. He knew this, and his first kiss was very gentle and soft and assuring, so assuring, so that her soft defenseless mouth became assured, even bold, seeking upon his mouth. And he answered her gradually, gradually his soft kiss sinking in softly, softly, but ever more heavily, more heavily yet, till it was too heavy for her to meet. And she began to sink under it. She was sinking, sinking. His smile of latent gratification was becoming more tense. He was sure of her. He let the whole force of his will sink upon her to sweep her away. But it was too great a shock for her. With a sudden horrible movement she ruptured the state that contained them both. Don't, don't! It was a rather horrible cry that seemed to come out of her, not to belong to her. It was some strange agony of terror crying out the words. There was something vibrating and beside herself in the noise, his nerves ripped like silk. What's the matter, he said, as if calmly? What's the matter? She came back to him but trembling, reservedly this time. Her cry had given him gratification, but he knew he had been too sudden for her. He was now careful. For a while he merely sheltered her. Also there had broken a flaw into his perfect will. He wanted to persist, to begin again, to lead up to the point where he had let himself go on her and then manage more carefully, successfully. So far she had won and the battle was not over yet. But another voice woken him and prompted him to let her go. Let her go in contempt. He sheltered her and soothed her and caressed her and kissed her. And again began to come nearer, nearer. He gathered himself together. Even if he did not take her, he would make her relax. He would fuse away her resistance. So softly, softly with infinite caressiveness he kissed her and the whole of his being seemed to fondle her, till at the verge, swooning at the breaking point, there came from her a beaten, inarticulate, moaning cry, Don't, oh, don't! His veins fused with extreme voluptuousness. For a moment he almost lost control of himself and continued automatically. But there was a moment of inaction, of cold suspension. He was not going to take her. He drew her to him and soothed her and caressed her, but the pure zest had gone. She struggled to herself and realized she was not going to take her. And then, at the very last moment when his fondling had come near again, his hot living desire despising her against his cold sensual desire, she broke violently away from him. Don't, she cried, harsh now with hatred, and she flung her hand across and hit him violently. Keep off of me! His blood stood still for a moment. Then the smile came again within him, steady, cruel. Why, what's the matter, he said, with suave irony? Nobody's going to hurt you. I know what you want, she said. I know what I want, he said. What's the odds? Well, you're not going to have it off me, aren't I? Well, then I'm not. It's no use crying about it, is it? No it isn't, said the girl, rather disconcerted by his irony. But there's no need to have a row about it, where he can kiss goodnight just the same, can't we? Still she was silent in the darkness. Or do you want your hat and umbrella to go home this minute? Still she was silent. He watched her dark figure as she stood there on the edge of the faint darkness, and he waited. Come and say goodnight nicely if we're going to say it, he said. Still she did not stir. He put his hand out and drew her into the darkness again. It's warmer in here, he said, a lot cozier. His will had not yet relaxed from her. The moment of hatred exhilarated him. I'm going now, she muttered, as he closed his hand over her. See how well you fit your place, he said, as he drew her to her previous position, close upon him. What do you want to leave it for? And gradually the intoxication invaded him again. The zest came back. After all, why should he not take her? But she did not yield to him entirely. Are you a married man, she asked at length. What if I am, he said. She did not answer. I don't ask you whether you're married or not, he said. You know jolly well I'm not, she answered hotly. Oh, if she could only break away from him, if only she need not yield to him. At length her will became cold against him. She had escaped, but she hated him for her escape more than for her danger. Did he despise her so coldly? And she was in torture of adherence to him still. Will I see you next week, Saturday, he said, as they returned to the town? She did not answer. Come to the empire with me, you and Gertie, he said. I should look well going with a married man, she said. I'm no less of a man for being married, am I, he said. Oh, it's a different matter altogether with a married man, she said. In a ready-made speech that showed her chagrin. How's that? He asked. But she would not enlighten him. But she promised, without promising, to be at the meeting place next Saturday evening. So he left her. He did not know her name. He caught a train and went home. It was the last train, he was very late. He was not home till midnight, but he was quite indifferent. He had no real relation with his home, not this man which he now was. Anna was sitting up for him. She saw the queer, absolved look on his face, a sort of latent, almost sinister smile as if he were absolved from his good ties. Where have you been, she asked, puzzled, interested, to the empire, who with? By myself, I came home with Tom Cooper. She looked at him and wondered what he had been doing. She was indifferent as to whether he lied or not. You have come home very strange, she said, and there was an appreciative inflection in the speech. He was not affected. As for his humble good self, he was absolved from it. He sat down and ate heartily. He was not tired. He seemed to take no notice of her. For Anna the moment was critical. She kept herself aloof and watched him. He talked to her, but with a little indifference, since she was scarcely aware of her. So then she did not affect him. Here was a new turn of affairs. He was rather attractive, nevertheless. She liked him better than the ordinary, mute, half effaced, half subdued man she usually knew him to be. So he was blossoming out into his real self. It peaked her. Very good. Let him blossom. She liked a new turn of affairs. He was a strange man come home to her. Dancing at him, she saw she could not reduce him to what he had been before. In an instant she gave it up, yet not without a pang of rage which would insist on their old beloved love, their old accustomed intimacy and her old established supremacy. She almost rose up to fight for them and looking at him and remembering his father she was wary. This was the new turn of affairs. Very good. If she had not influenced him in the old way she would be level with him in the new. Her old defiant hostility came up. Very good. She too was out on her own adventure. Her voice, her manner changed. She was ready for the game. Something was liberated in her. She liked him. She liked the strange man come home to her. He was very welcome indeed. She was very glad to welcome a stranger. She had been bored by the old husband. To his latent, cruel smile she replied with brilliant challenge. He expected her to keep the moral fortress, not she. It was much too dull a part. She challenged him back with a sort of radiance, very bright and free opposite to him. He looked at her and his eyes glinted. She too was out in the field. His senses pricked up and keenly attended to her. She laughed, perfectly indifferent and loose as he was. He came towards her. She neither rejected him nor responded to him. In a kind of radiance, superb in her inscrutability, she laughed before him. She too could throw everything overboard. Love, intimacy, responsibility. What were her four children to her now? What did it matter that this man was the father of her four children? He was the sensual male seeking his pleasure. She was the female ready to take hers, but in her own way. A man could turn into a freelance, so then could a woman. She adhered as little as he to the moral world. All that had gone before was nothing to her. She was another woman, under the instance of a strange man. He was a stranger to her, seeking his own ends. Very good. She wanted to see what the stranger would do now, what he was. She laughed and kept him at arm's length, whilst apparently ignoring him. She watched him undress as if he were a stranger. Indeed, he was a stranger to her. And she roused him profoundly, violently, even before he touched her. The little creature in Nottingham had but been leading up to this. They abandoned in one motion the moral position. Each was seeking gratification, pure and simple. Strange his wife was to him. It was as if he were a perfect stranger, as if she were infinitely and essentially strange to him. The other half of the world, the dark half of the moon. She waited for his touch, as if he were a marauder who had come in, infinitely unknown and desirable to her. And he began to discover her. He had an inkling of the vastness of the unknown sensual store of delights she was. With a passion of voluptuousness that made him dwell on each tiny beauty in a kind of frenzy of enjoyment he lit upon her. Her beauty, the beauties, the separate, several beauties of her body. He was quite ousted from himself and sensually transported by that which he discovered in her. He was another man, reveling over her. There was no tenderness, no love between them any more. Only the maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the sensual beauties of her body. And she was a store, a store of absolute beauties that drove him to contemplate. There was such a feast to enjoy, and he with only one man's capacity. He lived in a passion of sensual discovery with her for some time. It was a duel. No love, no words, no kisses even. Only the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute through touch. He wanted to touch her to discover her, maddeningly he wanted to know her, yet he must not hurry or he missed everything. He must enjoy one beauty at a time, and the multitudinous beauties of her body, the many little rapturous places, sent him mad with delight and with desire to be able to know more, to have strength to know more, for all was there. He would say during the daytime, tonight I shall know the little hollow under her ankle for the blue vein crosses, and the thought of it and the desire for it made a thick darkness of anticipation. He would go all the day waiting for the night to come, when he could give himself to the enjoyment of some luxurious, absolute beauty in her. The thought of the hidden resources of her, the undiscovered beauties and ecstatic places of delight in her body, waiting, only waiting for him to discover them, sent him slightly insane. He was obsessed. If he did not discover and make known to himself these delights, they might be lost forever. He wished he had a hundred men's energies with which to enjoy her. He wished he were a cat to lick her with a rough, grating, lascivious tongue. He wanted to wallow in her, bury himself in her flesh, cover himself over with her flesh. And she, separate with a strange, dangerous glistening look in her eyes, received all his activities upon her, as if they were expected by her, and provoked him when he was quiet to more, till sometimes he was ready to perish for sheer inability to be satisfied of her, inability to have had enough of her. Their children became mere offspring to them, they lived in the darkness and death of their own sensual activities. Sometimes he felt he was going mad with a sense of absolute beauty, perceived by him in her through his senses. There was something too much for him, and in everything was the same almost sinister, terrifying beauty. But in the revelations of her body, through contact with his body, was the ultimate beauty, to know which was almost death in itself, and yet for the knowledge of which he would have undergone endless torture. He would have forfeited anything, anything, rather than forgo his right even to the instep of her foot, and the place from which the toes radiated out, the little miraculous white plain from which ran the little hillocks of the toes, and the folded dimpling hollows between the toes. He felt he would have died rather than forfeit this. This was what their love had become, a sensuality, violent and extreme as death. They had no conscious intimacy, no tenderness of love. It was all the lust and the infinite maddening intoxication of the sense, a passion of death. He had always, all his life, had a secret dread of absolute beauty. It had always been like a fetish to him, something to fear, really, for it was immoral and against mankind. So he had turned to the Gothic form which always asserted the broken desire of mankind in its pointed arches, escaping the rolling absolute beauty of the round arch. But now he had given way, and with infinite sensual violence gave himself to the realization of this supreme immoral absolute beauty in the body of woman. It seemed to him that it came to being in the body of woman, under his touch, under his touch, even under his sight. It was there, but when he neither saw nor touched the perfect place, it was not perfect, it was not there, and he must make it exist. But still the thing terrified him, awful and threatening it was, dangerous to a degree, even whilst he gave himself to it. It was pure darkness also. All the shameful things of the body revealed themselves to him now with the sort of sinister tropical beauty. All the shameful natural and unnatural acts of sensual voluptuousness, which he and the woman partook of together, created together, they had their heavy beauty and their delight. Shame what was it? It was part of extreme delight. It was that part of the delight of which man is usually afraid. Why afraid? The secret shameful things are most terribly beautiful. They accepted shame, and were one with it in their most unlicensed pleasures. It was incorporated. It was a bud that blossomed into beauty and heavy fundamental gratification. Their outward life went on much the same, but the inward life was revolutionized. The children became less important, the parents were absorbed in their own living. And gradually, Brangwin began to find himself free to attend to the outside life as well. His intimate life was so violently active that it set another man in him free, and this new man turned with interest to public life, to see what part he could take in it. This would give him scope for new activity, activity of a kind for which he was now created and released. He wanted to be unanimous with the whole of purpose of mankind. At this time, education was in the forefront as a subject of interest. There was a talk of new Swedish methods of handwork instruction, and so on. Brangwin embraced sincerely the idea of handworking schools. For the first time, he began to take real interest in a public affair. He had at length from his profound sensual activity developed a real purpose of self. There was talk of night schools and of handicraft classes. He wanted to start a woodwork class in Kasate to teach carpentry and joinery and wood carving to the village boys two nights a week. This seemed to him a supremely desirable thing to be doing. His pay would be very little, and when he had it, he spent it all on extra wood and tools, but he was very happy and keen in his new public spirit. He started his night classes in woodwork when he was 30 years old. By this time he had five children, the last a boy. But boy or girl mattered very little to him. He had a natural blood affection for his children, and he liked them as they turned up, boys or girls. Only he was fondest of Ursula. Somehow she seemed to be at the back of his new night school venture. The house by the yew trees was in connection with the great human endeavor at last. It gained a new vigor thereby. To Ursula, a child of eight, the increase in magic was considerable. She heard all the talk. She saw the parish room fitted up as a workshop. The parish room was a high stone, barn-like, ecclesiastical building, standing away by itself in the Brangwyn's second garden across the lane. She was always attracted by its age and its stranded absoluteness. Now she watched preparations made. She sat on the flight of stone steps that came down from the porch to the garden and heard her father in the vicar talking and planning and working. Then an inspector came, a very strange man, and stayed talking with her father all one evening. Everything was settled, and 12 boys enrolled their names. It was very exciting. But to Ursula, everything her father did was magic, whether he came from Elkston with news of the town, whether he went across to the church with his music or his tools on a sunny evening, whether he sat in his white surplus at the organ on Sundays, leading the singing with his strong tenor voice, or whether he were in the workshop with the boys, he was always a center of magic and fascination to her. His voice, sounding out in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a twang in it that sent a thrill over her blood and hypnotized her. She seemed to run in the shadow of some dark, potent secret of which she would not, of whose existence even she dared not, become conscious. It cast such a spell over her, and so darkened her mind. CHAPTER IX PART I OF THE RAINBOW This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE RAINBOW by D. H. Lawrence. CHAPTER IX THE MARCH AND THE FLOOD PART I There was always regular connection between the U. College and the Marsh, yet the two households remained separate, distinct. After Anna's marriage, the Marsh became the home of the two boys, Tom and Fred. Tom was a rather short, good-looking youth, with crisp black hair and long black eyelashes and soft dark-possessed eyes. He had a quick intelligence. From the high school he went to London to study. He had an instinct for attracting people of character and energy. He gave place entirely to the other person, and at the same time kept himself independent. He scarcely existed except through other people. When he was alone, he was unresolved. When he was with another man, he seemed to add himself to the other, make the other bigger than life-size, so that a few people loved him and attained a sort of fulfillment in him. He carefully chose these few. He had a subtle, quick, critical intelligence, a mind that was like a scale or balance. There was something of a woman in all this. In London he had been the favorite pupil of an engineer, a clever man who became well known at the time when Tom Brangwen had just finished his studies. Through this master the youth kept acquaintance with various individual, outstanding characters. He never asserted himself. He seemed to be there to estimate and establish the rest. He was like a presence that makes us aware of our own being, so that he was, while still young, connected with some of the most energetic scientific and mathematical people in London. They took him as an equal. Quiet and perceptive and impersonal as he was, he kept his place and learned how to value others in just degree. He was there like a judgment. Besides he was very good-looking, of medium stature, but beautifully proportioned, dark with fine coloring, always perfectly healthy. His father allowed him a liberal pocket money, besides which he had a sort of post as assistant to his chief. Then from time to time the young man appeared at the marsh, curiously attractive, well-dressed, reserved, having by nature a subtle refined manner, and he set the change in the farm. Fred the younger brother was a Brangwen, large-boned, blue-eyed English. He was his father's very son. The two men, father and son, were supremely at ease with one another. Fred was succeeding to the farm. Between the elder brother and the younger existed an almost-passionate love. Tom watched over Fred with a woman's poignant attention and selfless care. Fred looked up to Tom as to something miraculous, that which he himself would aspire to be, where he great also. So that after Anna's departure the marsh began to take on a new tone. The boys were gentlemen. Tom had a rare nature and had risen high. Fred was sensitive and fond of reading. He pondered Ruskin and then the agnostic writings. Like all the Brangwens he was very much a thing to himself, though fond of people and indulgent to them, having an exaggerated respect for them. There was a rather uneasy friendship between him and one of the young hearties at the hall. The two households were different, yet the young men met on shy terms of equality. It was young Tom Brangwen with his dark lashes and beautiful coloring, his soft inscrutable nature, his strange repose and his informed air added to his position in London, who seemed to emphasize the superior foreign element in the marsh. When he appeared perfectly dressed as of soft and affable and yet quite removed from everybody, he created an uneasiness in people. He was reserved in the minds of the cassette and inilks and acquaintances to a different remote world. He and his mother had a kind of affinity. The affection between them was of a mute distant character but radical. His father was always uneasy and slightly deferential to his eldest son. Tom also formed the link that kept the marsh in real connection with the Scrivenskis, now quite important people in their own district. So a change in tone came over the marsh. Tom Brangwen the father, as he grew older, seemed to mature into a gentleman farmer, his figure lent itself, burly and handsome. His face remained fresh and his blue eyes as full of light. His thick hair and beard had turned gradually to a silky whiteness. It was his custom to laugh a great deal in his acquiescent willful manner. Things had puzzled him very much, so he had taken the line of easy good-humored acceptance. He was not responsible for the frame of things, yet he was afraid of the unknown in life. He was fairly well off. His wife was there with him, a different being from himself, yet somewhere vitally connected with him. Who was he to understand where and how? His two sons were gentlemen. They were men distinct from himself. They had separate beings of their own, yet they were connected with himself. It was all adventurous and puzzling. Yet one remained vital within one's own existence, whatever the offshoots. So handsome and puzzled he laughed and stuck to himself as the only thing he could stick to. His youngness and the wonder remained almost the same in him. He became indolent. He developed a luxuriant ease. Fred did most of the farm work. The father saw it as the more important transactions. He drove a good mare, and sometimes he rode his cop. He drank in the hotels and the inns with better-class farmers and proprietors. He had well-to-do acquaintances among men, but one class suited him no better than another. His wife, as ever, had no acquaintances. Her hair was threaded now with gray. Her face grew older in form without changing in expression. She seemed the same as when she had come to the marsh twenty-five years ago, save that her health was more fragile. She seemed always to haunt the marsh rather than to live there. She was never part of the life. Something she represented was alien there. She remained a stranger within the gates in some ways fixed and impervious, in some ways curiously refining. She caused the separateness and individuality of all the marsh inmates, the friability of the household. When young Tom Brangwen was twenty-three years old, there was some breach between him and his chief, which was never explained, and he went away to Italy, then to America. He came home for a while, then went to Germany, always the same good-looking, carefully dressed, attractive young man in perfect health, yet somehow outside of everything. In his dark eyes was a deep misery, which he wore with the same ease and pleasantness as he wore his close-sitting clothes. To Ursula he was a romantic, alluring figure. He had a grace of bringing beautiful presents, a box of expensive sweets such as Casate had never seen, or he gave her a hairbrush and a long, slim mirror of mother of pearl, all pale and glimmering and exquisite. Or he sent her a little necklace of rough stones, amethyst and opal, and brilliance and garnet. He spoke other languages easily and fluently. His nature was curiously gracious and insinuating. With all that he was undefinably an outsider. He belonged to nowhere, to no society. Anna Brangwen had left her intimacy with her father undeveloped since the time of her marriage. At her marriage it had been abandoned. He and she had drawn a reserve between them. Anna went more to her mother. Then suddenly the father died. It happened one springtime when Ursula was about eight years old. He, Tom Brangwen, drove off on a Saturday morning to the market in Nottingham, saying he might not be back till late, as there was a special show and then a meeting he had to attend. His family understood that he would enjoy himself. The season had been rainy and dreary. In the evening it was pouring with rain. Fred Brangwen, unsettled, uneasy, did not go out as was his want. He smoked and read and fidgeted, hearing always the trickling of water outside. This wet black night seemed to cut him off and make him unsettled, aware of himself, aware that he wanted something else, aware that he was scarcely living. There seemed to him to be no root to his life, no place for him to get satisfied in. He dreamed of going abroad, but his instinct knew that change of place would not solve his problem. He wanted change, deep vital change of living, and he did not know how to get it. Tillie, an old woman now, came in saying that the laborers who had been suppering up said the yard and everywhere was just a slew of water. He heard an indifference. But he hated a desolate, raw wetness in the world. He would leave the marsh. His mother was in bed. At last he shut his book, his mind was blank. He walked upstairs intoxicated with depression and anger, and intoxicated with depression and anger locked himself into sleep. Tillie set slippers before the kitchen fire, and she also went to bed, leaving the door unlocked. Then the farm was in darkness in the rain. At eleven o'clock it was still raining. Tom Brangwen stood in the yard of the angel, nodding him, and buttoned his coat. Oh, well, he said cheerfully, it's rained on me before. Put her in, Jack Madad. Put her in. Thart a rare old cock, Jackie Boy, well, belly on thee, as does credit to thy drink, if not to thy corn. Go up, lass, let's get off to the old homestead. Oh, my heart, what a wetness in the night! There will be no volcanoes after this. Hey, Jack, my beautiful young slenderfeller, which of us is Noah? It seems as though the water works as bursted. Ducks in aquatic fall will be king of the castle at this rate. Dove and olive branch and all. Stand up, then, gale. Stand up. We're not stopping here all night, even if you thought we was. I'm dashed if the jumping rain wouldn't make anybody think they was drunk. Hey, Jack, does rainwater wash the scents in, or does it wash it out? Then he laughed to himself at the joke. He was always ashamed when he had to drive after he had been drinking, always apologetic to the horse. His apologetic frame made him facetious. He was aware of his inability to walk quite straight. Nevertheless, his will kept stiff and attentive in all his fuddleness. He mounted and bowled off through the gates of the in-yard. The mare went well. He sat fixed, the rain beating on his face. His heavy body rode motionless in a kind of sleep. One center of attention was kept fitfully burning. The rest was dark. He concentrated his last attention on the fact of driving along the road he knew so well. He knew it so well he watched for it attentively with an effort of will. He talked aloud to himself, sententious in his anxiety as if he were perfectly sober whilst the mare bowled along and the rain beat on him. He watched the rain before the gig lamps, the faint gleaming of the shadowy horse's body, the passing of the dark hedges. It's not a fit night to turn a dog out, said to himself aloud. Tie time as it did a bit of clearing up. I'll be damned if it isn't. There was a lot of use putting those ten loads of cinders on the road. They'll be washed to kingdom come if it doesn't alter. Well it's our Fred's look out, if they are. These top soya as far as those things go. I don't see why I should concern myself. They can wash to kingdom coming back again for what I care. I suppose they would be washed back again some day, that's how things are. The rain tumbles down just to mount up in clouds again, so they say. There's no more water on the earth than there was in the year not. That's the story, my boy, if you understand it. There's no more today than there was a thousand years ago. Nor no less either. I can't wear water out. No, my boy, it'll give you the go-by. Try to wear it out, and it takes its hook into vapor. It has its fingers at its nose to you. It turns into cloud and falleth as rain on the just and unjust. I wonder if I'm the just or the unjust. He started awake as the trap lurched deep into a rut, and he wakened to the point in his journey. He had traveled some distance since he was last conscious. But at length he reached the gate and stumbled heavily down, reeling, gripping fast to the trap. He descended into several inches of water. Be damned, he said angrily, be damned to the miserable slop. And he led the horse washing through the gate. He was quite drunk now, moving blindly, in habit, everywhere there was water underfoot. The raised causeway of the house and the farmstead was dry, however, but there was a curious roar in the night which seemed to be made in the darkness of his own intoxication. Reeling blinded, almost without consciousness, he carried his parcels and the rug and cushions into the house, dropped them, and went out to put up the horse. Now he was at home, he was a sleep-walker, waiting only for the moment of activity to stop. Very deliberately and carefully he led the horse down the slope to the cart shed. She shied and back. Why, what's the mess? He hiccuped, plotting steadily on. And he was again in a wash of water. The horse splashed up water as he went. It was thickly dark, save for the gig lamps, and they lit on a rippling surface of water. Well, that's a knockout, he said, as he came to the cart shed and was waiting in six inches of water. But everything seemed to him amusing. He laughed to think of six inches of water being in the cart shed. He backed in the mare. She was restive. He laughed at the fun of untackling the mare with a lot of water washing round his feet. He laughed because it upset her. What's the mess? What's the mess? A drop of water won't hurt you. As soon as he had undone the traces she walked quickly away. He hung up the shafts and took the gig lamp. As he came out of the familiar jumble of shafts and wheels in the shed, the water in little waves came washing strongly against his legs. He staggered and almost fell. Well, what the deuce, he said, staring round at the running water in the black watery night. He went to meet the running flood, sinking deeper and deeper. His soul was full of great astonishment. He had to go and look where it came from, though the ground was going from under his feet. He went on, down towards the pond, shakily. He rather enjoyed it. He was knee-deep and the water was pulling heavily. He stumbled, reeled sickeningly. Fear took hold of him. Gripping tightly to the lamp he reeled and looked round. The water was carrying his feet away. He was dizzy. He did not know which way to turn. The water was whirling, whirling. The whole black night was swooping in rings. He swayed, uncertainly, at the center of all the attack, reeling in dismay. In his soul he knew he would fall. As he staggered something in the water struck his legs and he fell. Instantly he was in the turmoil of suffocation. He fought in a black horror of suffocation, fighting, wrestling, but always born down, born inevitably down. Still he wrestled and fought to get himself free in the unutterable struggle of suffocation, but he always fell again deeper. Everything struck his head. A great wonder of anguish went over him. Then the blackness covered him entirely. In the utter darkness the unconscious, drowning body was rolled along, the waters pouring, washing, filling in the place. The cattle woke up and rose to their feet. The dog began to yelp, and the unconscious, drowning body was washed along in the black, swirling darkness passively. Mrs. Brangwen woke up and listened. With preternaturally sharp senses she heard the movement of all the darkness that swirled outside. For a moment she lay still. Then she went to the window. She heard the sharp rain and the deep running of water. She knew her husband was outside. Fred, she called, Fred! Away in the night was a hoarse, brutal roar of a mass of water rushing downwards. She went downstairs. She could not understand the multiplied running of water. Stepping down the step into the kitchen, she put her foot into water. The kitchen was flooded. Where did it come from? She could not understand. Water was running in out of the scullery. She paddled through barefoot to see. Water was bubbling fiercely under the outer door. She was afraid. Then something washed against her, something twined under her foot. It was the riding whip. On the table were the rug and the cushion and the parcel from the gig. He had come home. Tom! She called, afraid of her own voice. She opened the door. Water ran in with a horrid sound. Everywhere was moving water, a sound of waters. Tom! She cried. Standing in her nightdress with the candle, calling into the darkness and the flood out of the doorway, Tom! Tom! And she listened. Fred appeared behind her in trousers and shirt. Where is he? he asked. He looked at the flood, then at his mother. She seemed small and uncanny, elvish in her nightdress. Go upstairs, he said. He'll be in the stable. Tom! Tom! cried the elderly woman with a long unnatural penetrating call that chilled her son to the marrow. He quickly pulled on his boots and his coat. Go upstairs, mother, he said. I'll go and see where he is. Tom! Tom! rang out the shrill unearthly cry of the small woman. There was only the noise of water and the mooing of uneasy cattle and the long yelping of the dog, clamoring in the darkness. Fred Brangwen splashed out into the flood with a lantern. His mother stood on a chair in the doorway watching him go. It was all water, water, running, flashing under the lantern. Tom! Tom! Tom! came her long unnatural cry ringing over the night. It made her son feel cold in his soul. And the unconscious drowning body of the father rolled on below the house, driven by the black water towards the high road. Tilly appeared, a skirt over her nightdress. She saw her mistress clinging on the top of a chair in the open doorway, a candle burning on the table. God's sake! cried the old serving woman. The cuts burst. That embankment broke down. Whatever are we going to do? Mrs. Brangwen watched her son in the lantern go along the upper causeway to the stable. Then she saw the dark figure of a horse. Then her son hung the lamp in the stable and the light shone out faintly on him as he untackled the mare. The mother saw the soft, blazed face of the horse thrust forward into the stable door. The stables were still above the flood, but the water flowed strongly into the house. It's getting higher, said Tilly. Hasn't Master come in? Mrs. Brangwen did not hear. Isn't he there? She called in her far-reaching, terrifying voice. No! came the short answer out of the night. Go and look for him! His mother's voice nearly drove the youth mad. He put the halter on the horse and shut the stable door. He came splashing back through the water, the lantern swinging. The unconscious, drowning body was pushed past the house in the deepest current. Fred Brangwen came to his mother. I'll go to the cart, shed, he said. Tom! Tom! rang out the strong, inhuman cry. Fred Brangwen's blood froze. His heart was very angry. He gripped his veins in a frenzy. Why was she yelling like this? He could not bear the sight of her perched on a chair in her white nightdress in the doorway, elvish and horrible. He's taken the mare out of the trap, so he's all right, he said, growling, pretending to be normal. But as he descended to the cart, shed, he sank into a foot of water. He heard the rushing in the distance. He knew the canal had broken down. The water was running deeper. The trap was there, all right, but no signs of his father. The young man waited down to the pond. The water rose above his knees. It swirled and forced him. He drew back. Is he there? came the maddening cry of the mother. No! was the sharp answer. Tom! Tom! came the piercing, free, unearthly call. It seemed high and supernatural, almost pure. But the flood ran when hated it, nearly drove him mad, so awfully it sang out, almost like a song. The water was flowing fuller into the house. You'd better go up to Bebe's and bring him and Arthur down, and tell Mrs. Bebe to fetch Wilkinson, said Fred de Tilly. He forced his mother to go upstairs. I know your father is drowned, she said in a curious dismay. The flood rose through the night till it washed the kettle off the hob in the kitchen. Mrs. Brangwyn sat alone at a window upstairs. She called no more. The men were busy with the pigs and the cattle. They were coming with a boat for her. Towards morning the rain ceased, the stars came out over the noise and the terrifying clucking and trickling of the water. Then there was a pallor in the east. The light began to come. In the ruddy light of the dawn she saw the waters spreading out, moving sluggishly. The buildings rising out of a waste of water. Birds began to sing drowsily, and as if slightly hoarse with the dawn. It grew brighter. Up the second field was the great raw gap in the canal embankment. Mrs. Brangwyn went from window to window, watching the flood. Somebody had brought a little boat. The light grew stronger. The red gleam was gone off the flood waters. Day took place. Mrs. Brangwyn went from the front of the house to the back, looking out, intent and un-relaxing on the pallid morning of spring. She saw a glimpse of her husband's buff coat in the floods as the water rolled the body against the garden hedge. She called to the men in the boat. She was glad he was found. They dragged him out of the hedge. They could not lift him into the boat. Fred Brangwyn jumped into the water up to his waist, and half carried the body of his father through the flood to the road. Hay and twigs and dirt were in the beard and hair. The youth pushed through the water, crying loudly without tears like a stricken animal. The mother at the window cried, making no trouble. The doctor came, but the body was dead. They carried it up to Cosset Hay to Anna's house. Chapter 9 Part 1 Chapter 9, Part 2 of the Rainbow This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence. Chapter 9, Part 2 When Anna Brangwyn heard the news, she pressed back her head and rolled her eyes as if something were reaching forward to bite at her throat. She pressed back her head. Her mind was driven back to sleep. Since she had married and become a mother, the girl she had been was forgotten. Now the shock threatened to break in upon her and sweep away all her intervening life, make her as a girl of eighteen again, loving her father. So she pressed back, away from the shock. She clung to her present life. It was when they brought him to her house, dead and in his wet clothes, his wet, sodden clothes, fully dressed as he came from market, yet all sodden and inert that the shock really broke into her, and she was terrified. A big, soaked, inert heap he was who had been to her the image of power and strong life. Almost in horror, she began to take the wet things from him. To pull off him the incongruous market clothes of a well-to-do farmer. The children were sent away to the vicarage. The dead body lay on the parlor floor. Anna quickly began to undress him, laid his fob and seals in a wet heap on the table. Her husband and the woman helped her. They cleared and washed the body and laid it on the bed. There, it looked still and grand. He was perfectly calm in death, and now he was laid in line, inviolable, unapproachable. To Anna he was the majesty of the inaccessible male, the majesty of death. It made her still and awestrucken, almost glad. Lydia Brangwin, the mother, also came and saw the impressive, inviolable body of the dead man. She went pale, seeing death. He was beyond change or knowledge, absolute, laid in line with the infinite. What had she to do with him? He was a majestic abstraction, made visible now for a moment, inviolate, absolute. And who could lay claim to him? Who could speak of him? Of the him who was revealed in the stripped moment of transit from life into death. Neither the living nor the dead could claim him. He was both the one and the other, inviolable, inaccessibly himself. I shared life with you. I belong in my own way to eternity, said Lydia Brangwin, her heart cold, knowing her own singleness. I did not know you in life. You are beyond me, supreme now in death, said Anna Brangwin, awestrucken, almost glad. It was the sons who could not bear it. Thread Brangwin went about with a set blanched face and shut hands, his heart full of hatred and rage for what had been done to his father. Bleeding also with desire to have his father again, to see him, to hear him again, he could not bear it. Tom Brangwin only arrived on the day of the funeral. He was quiet and controlled as ever. He kissed his mother, who was still dark-faced, inscrutable. He shook hands with his brother without looking at him. He saw the great coffin with its black handles. He even read the name-plate, Tom Brangwin of the Marsh Farm, born blank, died blank. The good-looking still face of the young man crinkled up for a moment in a terrible grimace, then resumed its stillness. The coffin was carried round to the church, the funeral bell tanged at intervals. The mourners carried their wreaths of white flowers. The mother, the Polish woman, went with dark abstract face on her son's arm. He was good-looking as ever, his face perfectly motionless and somehow pleasant. Fred walked with Anna. She strange and winsome, he with a face like wood, stiff, unyielding. Only afterwards Ursula, flitting between the current bushes down the garden, saw her uncle Tom standing in his black clothes, erect and fashionable, but his fists lifted and his face distorted. His lips curled back from his teeth in a horrible grin like an animal which grimaces with torment, whilst his body panted quick like a panting dog. He was facing the open distance, panting and holding still, then panting rapidly again, but his face never changing from its almost bestial look of torture. The teeth, all showing, the nose wrinkled up, the eyes unseeing, fixed. Terrified Ursula slipped away, and when her uncle Tom was in the house again, grave and very quiet, so that he seemed almost to affect gravity, to pretend grief, she watched his still, handsome face, imagining it again in its distortion. But she saw the nose was rather thick, rather Russian, under its transparent skin. She remembered the teeth under the carefully cut mustache were small and sharp and spaced. She could see him in all his elegant demeanor, bestial, almost corrupt, and she was frightened. She never forgot to look for the bestial frightening side of him after this. He said good-bye to his mother and went away at once. Ursula almost shrank from his kiss now. She wanted it nevertheless, and the little revulsion as well. At the funeral and after the funeral, Will Brangwin was madly in love with his wife. The death had shaken him, but death and all seemed to gather in him into a mad, overwhelming passion for his wife. She seemed so strange and winsome, he was almost beside himself with desire for her. And she took him. She seemed ready for him. She wanted him. The grandmother stayed a while at the U-Cottage till the marsh was restored. Then she returned to her own rooms, quiet and, it seemed, wanting nothing. Fred threw himself into the work of restoring the farm. That his father was killed there seemed to make it only the more intimate and the more inevitably his own place. There was a saying that the Brangwins always died a violent death. To them all, except perhaps Tom, it seemed almost natural. Yet Fred went about obstinate, his heart fixed. He could never forgive the unknown, this murder of his father. After the death of the father, the marsh was very quiet. Mrs. Brangwin was unsettled. She could not sit all the evening peacefully as she could before. And during the day she was always rising to her feet and hesitating, as if she must go somewhere and were not quite sure with her. She was seen loitering about the garden in her little woolen jacket. She was often driven out in the gig, sitting beside her son and watching the countryside or the streets of the town with a childish, candid, uncanny face, as if it all were strange to her. The children, Ursula and Goodwin and Theresa, went by the garden gate on their way to school. The grandmother would have them call in each time they passed. She would have them come to the marsh for dinner. She wanted children about her. Of her sons she was almost afraid. She could see the somber passion and desire and dissatisfaction in them, and she wanted not to see it any more. Even Fred, with his blue eyes and his heavy jaw, troubled her. There was no peace. He wanted something. He wanted love, passion, and he could not find them. But why must he trouble her? Why must he come to her with his seething and suffering and dissatisfactions? She was too old. Tom was more restrained, reserved. He kept his body very still, but he troubled her even more. She could not but see the black depths of disintegration in his eyes, the sudden glance upon her, as if she could save him, as if he would reveal himself. And how could age save youth? Youth must go to youth. Always the storm. Could she not lie in peace these years in the quiet apart from life? No. This swell must heave upon her and break against the barriers. Always she must be embroiled in the seething, rage, and passion, endless, endless, going on forever. And she wanted to draw away. She wanted at last her own innocence and peace. She did not want her sons to force upon her any more the old brutal story of desire and offerings and deep, deep hidden rage of unsatisfied men against women. She wanted to be beyond it all, to know the peace and innocence of age. She had never been a woman to work much, so that now she would stand often at the garden gate, watching the scant world go by. And the sight of children pleased her, made her happy. She had usually an apple or a few sweets in her pocket. She liked children to smile at her. She never went to her husband's grave. She spoke of him simply as if he were alive. First the tears would run down her face in helpless sadness. Then she recovered and was herself again, happy. On wet days she stayed in bed. Her bedroom was her city of refuge, where she could lie down and muse and muse. Sometimes Fred would read to her, but that did not mean much. She had so many dreams to dream over, such an unsifted store she wanted time. Her chief friend at this period was Ursula. Her little girl and the musing fragile woman of sixty seemed to understand the same language. At Cassete all was activity and passion. Everything moved upon poles of passion. Then there were four children younger than Ursula, a throng of babies all the time, many lives beating against each other. So that for the eldest child the peace of the grandmother's bedroom was exquisite. Here Ursula came as to a hushed, paradisal land. Here her own existence became simple and exquisite to her as if she were a flower. Always on Saturdays she came down to the marsh and always clutching a little offering, either a little mat made of strips of colored woven paper, or a tiny basket made in the kindergarten lesson, or a little crayon drawing of a bird. When she appeared in the doorway, tilly, ancient, but still in authority, would crane her skinny neck to see who it was. Oh, it's you is it, she said. I thought we should be seeing you. My word, that's a Bobby Dazlin posy you've brought. It was curious how tilly preserved the spirit of Tom Brangwen who was dead in the marsh. Ursula always connected her with her grandfather. This day the child had brought a tight little nosegay of pinks, white ones with a rim of pink ones. She was very proud of it and very shy because of her pride. Her grandmothers in her bed. Wipe your shoes well if you're going up and don't go bursting in honor like a skyrocket. My word, but that's a fine posy. Did you do it all by yourself and all? Tilly stealthily ushered her into the bedroom. The child entered with a strange dragging hesitation characteristic of her when she was moved. Her grandmother was sitting up in bed wearing a little gray woolen jacket. The child hesitated in silence near the bed clutching the nosegay in front of her. Her childish eyes were shining. The grandmother's gray eyes shone with a similar light. How pretty, she said, how pretty you have made them, what a darling little bunch! Ursula glowing thrust them into her grandmother's hand saying, I made them you. That is how the peasants tied them at home, said the grandmother, pushing the pinks with her fingers and smelling them. Just such tight little bunches, and they make wreaths for their hair. They weave the stalks, then they go round with wreaths in their hair and wearing their best aprons. Ursula immediately imagined herself in this story land. Did you used to have a wreath in your hair, grandmother? When I was a little girl I had golden hair, something like katies. Then I used to have a wreath of little blue flowers, oh so blue, that come when the snow is gone. Audrey the coachman used to bring me the very first. They talked, and then Tilly brought the tea tray, set for two. Ursula had a special green and gold cup kept for herself at the marsh. There was thin bread and butter and crest for tea. It was all special and wonderful. She ate very daintily with little fastidious bites. Why do you have two wedding rings, grandmother? Must you? I asked the child, noticing her grandmother's ivory-colored hand with blue veins above the tray. If I had two husbands' child, Ursula pondered a moment. Then you must wear both rings together? Yes. Which was my grandfather's ring? The woman hesitated. This grandfather whom you knew? This was his ring, the red one. The yellow one was your other grandfather's whom you never knew. Ursula looked, interestingly, at the two rings on the proffered finger. Where did he buy it, you? She asked. This one? In Warsaw, I think. You didn't know my own grandfather then? Not this grandfather. Ursula pondered this fascinating intelligence. Did he have white whiskers as well? No, his beard was dark. You have his brows, I think. Ursula ceased and became self-conscious. She at once identified herself with her Polish grandfather. And did he have brown eyes? Yes, dark eyes. He was a clever man, as quick as a lion. He was never still. Lydia still resented Lenski. When she thought of him, she was always younger than he. She was always twenty or twenty-five and under his domination. He incorporated her in his ideas as if she were not a person herself, as if she were just his aid camp, or part of his baggage, or one among his surgical appliances. She still resented it, and he was always only thirty. He had died when he was thirty-four. She did not feel sorry for him. He was older than she, yet she still ached in the thought of those days. Did you like my first grandfather best, asked Ursula? I liked them both, said the grandmother. And thinking, she became again Lenski's girl bride. He was of good family, of better family even than her own, for she was half German. She was a young girl in a house of insecure fortune, and he, an intellectual, a clever surgeon and physician, had loved her, how she had looked up to him. She remembered her first transports when he talked to her, the important young man with a severe black beard. He had seemed so wonderful, such an authority. After her own lax household, his gravity and confident heart authority seemed almost godlike to her, for she had never known it in her life. All her surroundings had been loose, lax, disordered, a welter. Miss Lydia, will you marry me? He had said to her in German, in his grave, yet tremulous voice. She had been afraid of his dark eyes upon her. They did not see her. They were fixed upon her. And he was hard, confident. She thrilled with the excitement of it, and accepted. During the courtship his kisses were a wonder to her. She always thought about them and wondered over them. She never wanted to kiss him back. In her idea the man kissed, and the woman examined in her soul the kisses she had received. She had never quite recovered from her prostration of the first days or nights of marriage. He had taken her to Vienna, and she was utterly alone with him, utterly alone in another world, everything, everything foreign, even he foreign to her. Then came the real marriage. Passion came to her, and she became his slave. He was her lord, her lord. She was the girl bride, the slave. She kissed his feet. She had thought it an honor to touch his body, to unfasten his boots. For two years she had gone on as his slave, crouching at his feet, embracing his knees. When he had come he had followed his ideas. She was there for him just to keep him in condition. She was to him one of the baser or material conditions necessary for his welfare in prosecuting his ideas of nationalism, of liberty, of science. But gradually at twenty-three, twenty-four, she began to realize that she too might consider these ideas. By his acceptance of herself subordination he exhausted the feeling in her. There were those of his associates who would discuss the ideas with her, though he did not wish to do so himself. She had ventured into the minds of other men. His then was not the only male mind. She did not exist then, just as his attribute. She began to perceive the attention of other men. An excitement came over her. She remembered now the men who had paid her court when she was married in Warsaw. Then the rebellion broke out, and she was inspired too. She would go as a nurse at her husband's side. He worked like a lion. He wore his life out, and she followed him helplessly. But she disbelieved in him. He was so separate, he ignored so much. He counted too much on himself. His work, his ideas, did nothing else matter? Then the children were dead, and for her everything became remote. He became remote. She saw him. She saw him go white when he heard the news. Then frown as if he thought, why have they died now when I have no time to grieve? He has no time to grieve, she had said, in her remote awful soul. He has no time. It is so important what he does. He is then so self-important, this half-frenzied man, nothing matters, but this work of rebellion. He has not time to grieve, nor to think of his children. He had not time even to beget them, really. She had let him go on alone, but in the chaos she had worked by his side again, and out of the chaos she had fled with him to London. He was a broken, cold man. He had no affection for her, nor for anyone. He had failed in his work, so everything had failed. He stiffened and died. She could not subscribe. He had failed, everything had failed, yet behind the failure was the unyielding passion of life. The individual effort might fail, but not the human joy. She belonged to the human joy. He died and went his way, but not before there was another child. And this little Ursula was his grandchild. She was glad of it, for she still honoured him, though he had been mistaken. She, Lydia Brangwen, was sorry for him now. He was dead. He had scarcely lived. He had never known her. He had lain with her, but he had never known her. He had never received what she could give him. He had gone away from her empty, so he had never lived. So he had died and passed away, yet there had been strength and power in him. She could scarcely forgive him that he had never lived. If it were not for Anna and for this little Ursula who had his brows, there would be no more left of him than of a broken vessel thrown away and just remembered. Tom Brangwen had served her. He had come to her and taken from her. He had died and gone his way into death, but he had made himself immortal in his knowledge with her. So she had her place here in life and in immortality, for he had taken his knowledge of her into death so that she had her place in death. In my father's house are many mansions. She loved both her husbands. To one she had been a naked little girl bride running to serve him. The others she loved out of fulfillment because he was good and had given her being because he had served her honorably and become her man, one with her. She was established in this stretch of life. She had come to herself. During her first marriage she had not existed except through him. He was the substance and she the shadow running at his feet. She was very glad she had come to her own self. She was grateful to Brangwen. She reached out to him in gratitude into death. In her heart she felt a vague tenderness and pity for her first husband who had been her lord. He was so wrong when he died. She could not bear it that he had never lived, never really become himself, and he had been her lord. Strange it all had been. Why had he been her lord? He seemed now so far off so without bearing on her. Which did you, grandmother? Like best. I liked them both. I married the first when I was quite a girl. Then I loved your grandfather when I was a woman. There was a difference. They were silent for a time. Did you cry when my first grandfather died, the child asked? Lydia Brangwen rocked herself on the bed thinking aloud. When we came to England he hardly ever spoke. He was too much concerned to take any notice of anybody. He grew thinner and thinner till his cheeks were hollow and his mouth stuck out. He wasn't handsome anymore. I knew he couldn't bear being beaten. I thought everything was lost in the world, only I had your mother, a baby. It was no use my dying. He looked at me with his black eyes almost as if he hated me when he was ill and said it only wanted this, it only wanted that I should leave you and a young child to starve in this London. I told him we should not starve, but I was young and foolish and frightened which he knew. He was bitter and he never gave way. He lay beating his brains to see what he could do. I don't know what you will do, he said. I am no good. I am a failure from beginning to end. I cannot even provide for my wife and child. But you see it was not for him to provide for us. My life went on though his stopped and I married your grandfather. I ought to have known. I ought to have been able to say to him don't be so bitter, don't die because this has failed. You are not the beginning and the end. But I was too young. He had never let me become myself. I thought he was truly the beginning and the end. So I let him take all upon himself. Yet all did not depend on him. Life must go on and I must marry your grandfather and have your uncle Tom and your uncle Fred. We cannot take so much upon ourselves. The child's heart beat fast as she listened to these things. She could not understand, but she seemed to feel far off things. It gave her a deep joyous thrill to know she hailed from far off, from Poland, and that dark-bearded impressive man. Strange her antecedents were, and she felt fate on either side of her terrible. Almost every day Ursula saw her grandmother, and every time they talked together. So the grandmother's sayings and stories told in the complete hush of the marsh bedroom accumulated with mystic significance and became a sort of Bible to the child. And Ursula asked her deepest childish questions of her grandmother. Was somebody love me, grandmother? Many people love you, child. We all love you. But when I am grown up, will somebody love me? Yes, some man will love you, child, because it's your nature, and I hope it will be somebody who will love you for what you are and not for what he wants of you. But we have a right to what we want. Ursula was frightened hearing these things. Her heart sank. She felt she had no ground under her feet. She clung to her grandmother. Here was peace and security. Here, from her grandmother's peaceful room, the door opened onto the greater space, the past which was so big that all it contained seemed tiny—loves and births and deaths, tiny units and features within a vast horizon. That was a great relief to know the tiny importance of the individual within the great past. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 Part 1 of the Rainbow. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence. Chapter 10 The Widening Circle. Part 1 It was very burdensome to Ursula that she was the eldest of the family. By the time she was eleven, she had to take to school Gudrun and Theresa and Catherine. The boy William, always called Billy, so that he should not be confused with his father, was a lovable rather delicate child of three, so he stayed at home as yet. There was another baby girl called Cassandra. The children went for a time to the little church school just near the marsh. It was the only place within reach, and being so small, Mrs. Brangwyn felt safe in sending her children there, though the village boys did nickname Ursula, Ertler, and Gudrun, Gudrunner, and Theresa Teapot. Gudrun and Ursula were comates. The second child with her long, sleepy body and her endless chain of fancies would have nothing to do with realities. She was not for them. She was for her own fancies. Ursula was the one for realities, so Gudrun left all such to her elder sister and trusted in her implicitly, indifferently. Ursula had a great tenderness for her comate sister. It was no good trying to make Gudrun responsible. She floated along like a fish in the sea, perfect within the medium of her own difference in being. Other existence did not trouble her. Only she believed in Ursula and trusted to Ursula. The eldest child was very much fretted by her responsibility for the other young ones, especially Theresa, a sturdy, bold-eyed thing, had a faculty for warfare. Our Ursula, Billy Pillins, has lugged my hair. What did you say to him? I said nothing. Then the brand-win girls were in for a feud with the Pillins's or Philips's. You won't pull my hair again, Billy Pillins, said Theresa, walking with her sisters and looking superbly at the freckled red-haired boy. Why, shan't I, retorted Billy Pillins. You won't, because you dursant, said the tiresome Theresa. You come here, then, Cheapot, and see if I dursna. Up March, Cheapot and immediately Billy Pillins lugged her black, snakey locks. In a rage she flew at him. Immediately, in rust Ursula and Goodwin and little Katie, in clashed the other Philips's, Clemen Walter and Eddie Anthony, then there was a fray. The brand-win girls were well grown and stronger than many boys, but for Pinafore's and long hair they would have carried easy victories. They went home, however, with hair lugged and Pinafore's torn. It was a joy to the Philips's boys to rip the Pinafore's of the brand-win girls. Then there was an outcry. Mrs. Brand-win would not have it. No, she would not. All her inate dignity and standoffishness rose up. Then there was the vicar lecturing the school. It was a sad thing that the boys of Cacete could not behave more like gentlemen to the girls of Cacete. Indeed what kind of boy was it that should set upon a girl and kick her and beat her and tear her Pinafore? That boy deserves severe castigation and the name of Coward, for no boy who was not a Coward, et cetera, et cetera. Meanwhile, much hangdog fury in the Philips's hearts, much virtue in the brand-win girls, particularly in Theresa's, and the feud continued with periods of extraordinary amity when Ursula was Clem Philips's sweetheart and Goodwin was Walter's and Theresa was Billy's. And even the tiny Katie had to be Eddie Antony's sweetheart. There was the closest union. At every possible moment, the little gang of brand-wins and Philips's flew together, yet neither Ursula nor Goodwin would have any real intimacy with the Philips boys. It was a sort of fiction to them, this alliance and this dubbing of sweethearts. Again, Mrs. Brand-win rose up. Ursula, I will not have you raking the roads with lads. So I tell you, now stop it and the rest will stop it. How Ursula hated always to represent the little brand-win club. She could never be herself. No, she was always Ursula Goodwin, Theresa Catherine, and later even Billy was added on to her. Moreover, she did not want the Philips's either. She was out of taste with them. However, the brand-win-Pillens coalition readily broke down, owing to the unfair superiority of the brand-wins. The brand-wins were rich. They had free access to the marsh farm. The school teachers were almost respectful to the girls. The vicar spoke to them on equal terms. The brand-win girls presumed they tossed their heads. You're not everybody, Ertler, brand-win ugly mugs, had Clem Philips's face going very red. I'm better than you for all that, retorted Ertler. You think you are a face like that, ugly mug, Ertler, brand-win? He began to jeer, trying to set all the others in cry against her. Then there was hostility again. How she hated their jeering, she became cold against the Philips's. Ursula was very proud in her family. The brand-win girls had all a curious blind dignity, even a kind of nobility in their bearing. By some result of greed and upbringing they seemed to rush along their own lives without caring that they existed to other people. Never from the start did it occur to Ursula that other people might hold a low opinion of her. She thought that whosoever knew her knew she was enough and accepted her as such. She thought it was a world of people like herself. She suffered bitterly if she were forced to have a low opinion of any person, and she never forgave that person. This was maddening to many little people. All their lives the brand-wins were meeting folk who tried to pull them down to make them seem little. Curiously, the mother was aware of what would happen and was always ready to give her children the advantage of the move. When Ursula was twelve and the common school and the companionship of the village children, niggardly and begrudging, was beginning to affect her, Anna sent her with Gudrun to the grammar school in Nottingham. This was a great release for Ursula. She had a passionate craving to escape from the belittling circumstances of life, the little jealousies, the little differences, the little meannesses. It was a torture to her that the Philipses were poorer and meaner than herself, that they used mean little reservations, took petty little advantages. She wanted to be with her equals, but not by diminishing herself. She did want Clem Phillips to be her equal, but by some puzzling painful fate or other, when he was really there with her he produced in her a tight feeling in the head. She wanted to beat her forehead to escape. Then she found that the way to escape was easy. One departed from the whole circumstance. One went away to the grammar school and left the little school, the meager teachers, the Philipses whom she had tried to love, but who had made her fail, and whom she could not forgive. She had an instinctive fear of petty people, as a deer is afraid of dogs. Because she was blind she could not calculate nor estimate people. She must think that everybody was just like herself. She measured by the standard of her own people, her father and mother, her grandmother, her uncles, her beloved father so utterly simple in his demeanor, yet with his strong dark soul fixed like a root in unexpressed depths that fascinated and terrified her. Her mother, so strangely free of all money and convention and fear, entirely indifferent to the world, standing by herself without connection. Her grandmother, who had come from so far and was centered in so wide and horizon, people must come up to these standards before they could be Ursula's people. So even as a girl of twelve she was glad to burst the narrow boundary of Cassate where only limited people lived. Outside was all vastness and a throng of real proud people whom she would love. Going to school by train she must leave home at a quarter to eight in the morning, and she did not arrive again till half past five at evening. Of this she was glad, for the house was small and overfull. It was a storm of movement, once there had been no escape. She hated so much being in charge. The house was a storm of movement. The children were healthy and turbulent. The mother only wanted their animal well-being. To Ursula, as she grew a little older, it became a nightmare. When she saw later a Ruben's picture with storms of naked babies and found this was called fecundity, she shuddered, and the world became abhorrent to her. She knew as a child what it was to live amidst storms of babies in the heat and swelter of fecundity, and as a child she was against her mother, passionately against her mother, she craved for some spirituality and statelyness. In bad weather home was a bedlam. Children dashed in and out of the rain, to the puddles under the dismal yew trees, across the wet flagstones of the kitchen, whilst the cleaning woman grumbled and scolded. Children were swarming on the sofa. Children were kicking the piano in the parlor to make it sound like a beehive. Children were rolling on the hearth rug, legs in air, pulling a book in two between them. Children, fiendish, ubiquitous, were stealing upstairs to find out where our Ursula was, whispering at bedroom doors, hanging on the latch, calling mysteriously, Ursula, Ursula, to the girl who had locked herself in to read, and it was hopeless. The locked door excited their sense of mystery. She had to open to dispel the lure. These children hung on to her with round-eyed excited questions. The mother flourished amid all this. Better have them noisy than ill, she said. But the growing girls, in turn, suffered bitterly. Ursula was just coming to the stage when Anderson and Grimm were being left behind for the idols of the king and romantic love stories. Elaine, the fairy-lane, the lovable Elaine, the lily-maid of Astelot, high in her chamber, in a tower to the east, guarded the sacred shield of Launcelot. How she loved it. How she leaned in her bedroom window with her black, rough hair on her shoulders, and her warm face all wrapped and gazed across at the churchyard in the little church, which was a churched castle, when Launcelot would ride just now, would wave to her as he rode by, his scarlet cloak passing behind the dark yew trees in between the open space, while she would remain the lonely-maid high up and isolated in the tower, polishing the terrible shield, weaving at a covering with a true device, and waiting, waiting, always remote and high. At which point there would be a faint scuffle on the stairs, a light-pitched whispering outside the door and a creaking of the latch. Then Billy, excited, whispering, it's locked, it's locked. Then the knocking, kicking at the door with childish knees and the urgent childish Ursula, our Ursula, Ursula, hey, our Ursula, no reply. Ursula, hey, our Ursula, the name was shouted now, still no answer. Mother, she won't answer, came the yell, she's dead. Go away, I'm not dead, what do you want? Came the angry voice of the girl. Open the door, our Ursula, came the complaining cry. It was all over, she must open the door. She heard the screech of the bucket downstairs, dragged across the flagstones, as the woman washed the kitchen floor. And the children were prowling in the bedroom, asking, what were you doing? What did you lock the door for? Then she discovered the key of the parish room, and she took herself there and sat on some sacks with her books. There began another dream. She was the only daughter of the old lord. She was gifted with magic. Day followed day of rapt silence, while she wandered ghosts like in the hushed ancient mansion, or flitted along the sleeping terraces. Here a grave grief attacked her, that her hair was dark. She must have fair hair and a white skin. She was rather bitter about her black mane. Never mind she would die it when she grew up, or bleach it in the sun till it was bleached fair, meanwhile she wore a fair white quaff of pure Venetian lace. She flitted silently along the terraces, where jeweled lizards basked upon the stone, and did not move when her shadow fell upon them. In the utter stillness she heard the tinkle of the fountain, and smelled the roses whose blossoms hung rich and motionless. So she drifted, drifted on the wistful feet of beauty, past the water and the swans, to the noble park, where underneath a great oak, a doe, all dappled, lay with her fore, fine feet together, her fawn nestling sun-colored beside her. Oh, and this doe was her familiar. It would talk to her, because she was a magician. It would tell her stories as if the sunshine spoke. Then one day she left the door of the parish room unlocked, careless and unheeding as she always was. The children found their way in. Katie cut her finger and howled. Billy hacked notches in the fine chisels, and did much damage. There was a great commotion. The crossness of the mother was soon finished. Ursula locked up the room again, and considered all was over. Then her father came in with the notched tools. His forehead nodded. Who the deuce opened the door? He cried in anger. It was Ursula who opened the door, said her mother. He had her duster in his hand. He turned and flapped the cloth hard across the girl's face. The cloth stung. For a moment the girl was as if stunned. Then she remained motionless, her face closed and stubborn, but her heart was blazing. In spite of herself the tears surged higher. In spite of her they surged higher. In spite of her her face broke. She made a curious, gulping grimace, and the tears were falling, so she went away desolate. But her blazing heart was fierce and unyielding. He watched her go, and a pleasurable pain filled him. A sense of triumph and easy power followed immediately by a cute pity. I'm sure that was unnecessary to hit the girl across the face, said the mother coldly. A flip with the duster won't hurt her, he said. Nor will it do her any good. For days, for weeks Ursula's heart burned from this rebuff. She felt so cruelly vulnerable. Did he not know how vulnerable she was, how exposed and wincy? She of all people knew, and he wanted to do this to her. He wanted to hurt her right through her closest sensitiveness. He wanted to treat her with shame, to maim her with insult. Her heart burnt in isolation like a watchfire lighted. She did not forget. She did not forget she never forgot. When she returned to her love for her father, the seed of mistrust and defiance burned unquenched, though covered up far from sight. She no longer belonged to him unquestioned. Slowly, slowly, the fire of mistrust and defiance burned in her, burned away her connection with him. She ran a good deal alone, having a passion for all moving, active things. She loved the little brooks. Wherever she found a little running water, she was happy. It seemed to make her run and sing in spirit along with it. She could sit for hours by a brook or stream on the roots of the alders and watch the water hasten dancing over the stones or among the twigs of a fallen branch. Sometimes little fish vanished before they had become real, like hallucinations. Sometimes wag tails ran by the water's brink. Sometimes other little birds came to drink. She saw a kingfisher darting blue, and then she was very happy. The kingfisher was the key to the magic world. He was witness of the border of enchantment. But she must move out of the intricately woven illusion of her life, the illusion of a father whose life was an odyssey in an outer world, the illusion of her grandmother, a reality so shadowy and far off that they became as mystic symbols, peasant girls with wreaths of blue flowers in their hair, the sledges and the depths of winter, the dark-bearded young grandfather, marriage and war and death, then the multitude of illusions concerning herself, how she was truly a princess of Poland, how in England she was under a spell, she was not really this Ursula Brangwin, then the mirage of her reading. Out of the multicolored illusion of this her life she must move on to the grammar school in Nottingham. She was shy and she suffered, for one thing she bit her nails and had a cruel consciousness in her fingertips, a shame, an exposure. Out of all proportion this shame haunted her. She spent hours of torture conjuring how she might keep her gloves on, if she might say her hands were scalded, if she might seem to forget to take off her gloves. For she was going to inherit her own estate when she went to the high school. There each girl was a lady, there she was going to walk among free souls, her co-mates and her equals, and all petty things would be put away, if only she did not bite her nails, if only she had not this blemish, she wanted so much to be perfect, without spot or blemish, living a high noble life. It was a grief to her that her father made such a poor introduction. He was brief as ever, like a boy saying his errand, and his clothes looked ill-fitting and casual, whereas Ursula would have liked robes and a ceremonial of introduction to this her new estate. She made a new illusion of school. Miss Gray, the headmistress, had a certain silvery school mistressy beauty of character. The school itself had been a gentleman's house. Dark somber lawns separated it from the dark select avenue, but its rooms were large and of good appearance, and from the back one looked over lawns and shrubbery over the trees and the grassy slope of the arboretum to the town which heaped the hollow with its riffs and couplers and its shadows. So Ursula seated herself upon the hill of learning, looking down on the smoke and confusion of the manufacturing and grossed activity of the town. She was happy. Up here in the grammar school she fancied the air was finer beyond the factory smoke. She wanted to learn Latin and Greek and French and mathematics. She trembled like a postulant when she wrote the Greek alphabet for the first time. She was upon another hill slope whose summit she had not scaled. There was always the marvelous eagerness in her heart to climb and to see beyond. A Latin verb was virgin soil to her. She sniffed a new odor in it. It meant something though she did not know what it meant. But she gathered it up. It was significant. When she knew that x squared minus y squared equals x plus y times x minus y, then she felt that she had grasped something, that she was liberated into an intoxicating air rare and unconditioned. And she was very glad as she wrote her French exercise, Régé d'en la peine, Amon pétifère. In all these things there was the sound of a bugle to her heart exhilarating, summoning her to perfect places. She never forgot her brown, Longman's first French grammar, nor her Via Latina, with its red edges, nor her little gray algebra book. There was always a magic in them. At learning she was quick, intelligent, instinctive, but she was not thorough. If a thing did not come to her instinctively, she could not learn it. And then her mad rage of loathing for all lessons, her bitter contempt of all teachers and schoolmistresses, her recoil to a fierce animal arrogance made her detestable. She was a free, unabatable animal, she declared in her revolts. There was no law for her nor any rule. She existed for herself alone. Men ensued a long struggle with everybody in which she broke down at last when she had run the full length of her resistance, and sobbed her heart out, desolate. And afterwards, in a chastened, washed-out, bodyless state, she received the understanding that would not come before, and went her way sadder and wiser. Ursula and Gudrun went to school together. Gudrun was a shy, quiet wild creature, a thin slip of a thing hanging back from notice or twisting past to disappear into her own world again. She seemed to avoid all contact instinctively and pursued her own intent way, pursuing half-formed fancies that had no relation to anyone else. She was not clever at all. She thought Ursula clever enough for two. Ursula understood. So why should she, Gudrun, bother herself? The younger girl lived her religious, responsible life in her sister by proxy. For herself she was indifferent and intent as a wild animal, and as irresponsible. When she found herself at the bottom of the class, she laughed lazily and was content, saying she was safe now. She did not mind her father's chagrin nor her mother's tinge of mortification. What do I pay for you to go to Nottingham for, her father asked, exasperated? Well, Dad, you know you needn't pay for me, she replied nonchalant. I'm ready to stop at home. She was happy at home. Ursula was not. Slim and unwilling abroad, Gudrun was easy in her own house as a wild thing in its lair, whereas Ursula, attentive and keen abroad, at home was reluctant, uneasy, unwilling to be herself or unable. Nevertheless Sunday remained the maximum day of the week for both. Ursula turned passionately to it, to the sense of eternal security it gave. She suffered anguish of fears during the weekdays, for she felt strong powers that would not recognize her. There was upon her always a fear and a dislike of authority. She felt she could always do as she wanted if she managed to avoid a battle with authority and the authorized powers. But if she gave herself away she would be lost, destroyed. There was always the menace against her. The strange sense of cruelty and ugliness always imminent, ready to seize hold upon her, this feeling of the grudging power of the mob lying in wait for her, who was the exception, formed one of the deepest influences of her life. Wherever she was, at school, among friends, in the street, in the train, she instinctively abated herself, made herself smaller, feigned to be less than she was, for fear that her undiscovered self should be seen, pounced upon, attacked by brutish resentment of the commonplace, the average self. She was fairly safe at school now. She knew how to take her place there, and how much of herself to reserve. But she was free only on Sundays. When she was but a girl of fourteen, she began to feel a resentment growing against her in her own home. She knew she was the disturbing influence there. But as yet, on Sundays, she was free, really free, free to be herself without fear or misgiving. End of Chapter 10, Part 1.