‘Don’t you like study?’ asked Skrebensky, turning to her, putting the question from his own case.
‘I like some things,’ said Ursula. ‘I like Latin and French—and grammar.’
He watched her, and all his being seemed attentive to her, then he shook his head.
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘They say all the brains of the army are in the Engineers. I think that’s why I joined them—to get the credit of other people’s brains.’
He said this quizzically and with chagrin. And she became alert to him. It interested her. Whether he had brains or not, he was interesting. His directness attracted her, his independent motion. She was aware of the movement of his life over against her.
‘I don’t think brains matter,’ she said.
‘What does matter then?’ came her Uncle Tom’s intimate, caressing, half-jeering voice.
She turned to him.
‘It matters whether people have courage or not,’ she said.
‘Courage for what?’ asked her uncle.
‘For everything.’
Tom Brangwen gave a sharp little laugh. The mother and father sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was speaking for him.
‘Everything’s nothing,’ laughed her uncle.
She disliked him at that moment.
‘She doesn’t practise what she preaches,’ said her father, stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. ‘She has courage for mighty little.’
But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. His face was irregular, almost ugly, flattish, with a rather thick nose. But his eyes were pellucid, strangely clear, his brown hair was soft and thick as silk, he had a slight moustache. His skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Beside him, her Uncle Tom looked full-blown, her father seemed uncouth. Yet he reminded her of her father, only he was finer, and he seemed to be shining. And his face was almost ugly.
He seemed simply acquiescent in the fact of his own being, as if he were beyond any change or question. He was himself. There was a sense of fatality about him that fascinated her. He made no effort to prove himself to other people. Let it be accepted for what it was, his own being. In its isolation it made no excuse or explanation for itself.
So he seemed perfectly, even fatally established, he did not ask to be rendered before he could exist, before he could have relationship with another person.
This attracted Ursula very much. She was so used to unsure people who took on a new being with every new influence. Her Uncle Tom was always more or less what the other person would have him. In consequence, one never knew the real Uncle Tom, only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux with a more or less consistent appearance.
But let Skrebensky do what he would, betray himself entirely, he betrayed himself always upon his own responsibility. He permitted no question about himself. He was irrevocable in his isolation.
So Ursula thought him wonderful, he was so finely constituted, and so distinct, self-contained, self-supporting. This, she said to herself, was a gentleman, he had a nature like fate, the nature of an aristocrat.
She laid hold of him at once for her dreams. Here was one such as those Sons of God who saw the daughters of men, that they were fair. He was no son of Adam. Adam was servile. Had not Adam been driven cringing* out of his native place, had not the human race been a beggar ever since, seeking its own being? But Anton Skrebensky could not beg. He was in possession of himself, of that, and no more. Other people could not really give him anything nor take anything from him. His soul stood alone.
She knew that her mother and father acknowledged him. The house was changed. There had been a visit paid to the house. Once three angels stood in Abraham’s doorway, and greeted him, and stayed and ate with him, leaving his household enriched for ever when they went.*
The next day she went down to the Marsh according to invitation. The two men were not come home. Then, looking through the window, she saw the dogcart drive up, and Skrebensky leapt down. She saw him draw himself together, jump, laugh to her uncle, who was driving, then come towards her to the house. He was so spontaneous and revealed in his movements. He was isolated within his own clear, fine atmosphere, and as still as if fated.
His resting in his own fate gave him an appearance of indolence, almost of languor: he made no exuberant movement. When he sat down, he seemed to go loose, languid.
‘We are a little late,’ he said.
‘Where have you been?’
‘We went to Derby to see a friend of my father’s.’
‘Who?’
It was an adventure to her to put direct questions and get plain answers. She knew she might do it with this man.
‘Why, he is a clergyman too—he is my guardian—one of them.’
Ursula knew that Skrebensky was an orphan.
‘Where is really your home now?’ she asked.
‘My home?—I wonder. I am very fond of my colonel—Colonel Hepburn: then there are my aunts: but my real home, I suppose, is the army.’
‘Do you like being on your own?’
His clear, greenish-grey eyes rested on her a moment, and, as he considered, he did not see her.
‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘You see my father—well, he was never acclimatised here. He wanted—I don’t know what he wanted—but it was a strain. And my mother—I always knew she was too good to me. I could feel her being too good to me—my mother! Then I went away to school so early. And I must say, the outside world was always more naturally a home to me than the vicarage—I don’t know why.’
‘Do you feel like a bird blown out of its own latitude?’ she asked, using a phrase she had met.
‘No, no. I find everything very much as I like it.’
He seemed more and more to give her a sense of the vast world, a sense of distances and large masses of humanity. It drew her as a scent draws a bee from afar. But also it hurt her.
It was summer, and she wore cotton frocks. The third time he saw her she had on a dress with fine blue-and-white stripes, with a white collar, and a large white hat. It suited her golden, warm complexion.
‘I like you best in that dress,’ he said, standing with his head slightly on one side, and appreciating her in a perceiving, critical fashion.
She was thrilled with a new life. For the first time she was in love with a vision of herself: she saw as it were a fine little reflection of herself in his eyes. And she must act up to this: she must be beautiful. Her thoughts turned swiftly to clothes, her passion was to make a beautiful appearance. Her family looked on in amazement at the sudden transformation of Ursula. She became elegant, really elegant, in figured cotton frocks she made for herself, and hats she bent to her fancy. An inspiration was upon her.
He sat with a sort of languor in her grandmother’s rocking-chair, rocking slowly, languidly, backward and forward, as Ursula talked to him.
‘You are not poor, are you?’ she said.
‘Poor in money? I have about a hundred and fifty a year of my own—so I am poor or rich, as you like. I am poor enough, in fact.’
‘But you will earn money?’
‘I shall have my pay—I have my pay now. I’ve got my commission. That is another hundred and fifty.’
‘You will have more, though?’
‘I shan’t have more than £200 a year for ten years to come. I shall always be poor, if I have to live on my pay.’
‘Do you mind it?’
‘Being poor? Not now—not very much. I may later. People—the officers, are good to me. Colonel Hepburn has a sort of fancy for me—he is a rich man, I suppose.’
A chill went over Ursula. Was he going to sell himself in some way?
‘Is Colonel Hepburn married?’
‘Yes—with two daughters.’
But she was too proud at once to care whether Colonel Hepburn’s daughter wanted to marry him or not.
There came a silence. Gudrun entered, and Skrebensky still rocked languidly on the chair.
‘You lo
ok very lazy,’ said Gudrun.
‘I am lazy,’ he answered.
‘You look really floppy,’ she said.
‘I am floppy,’ he answered.
‘Can’t you stop?’ asked Gudrun.
‘No—it’s the perpetuum mobile.’*
‘You look as if you hadn’t a bone in your body.’
‘That’s how I like to feel.’
‘I don’t admire your taste.’
‘That’s my misfortune.’
And he rocked on.
Gudrun seated herself behind him, and as he rocked back, she caught his hair between her finger and thumb, so that it tugged him as he swung forward again. He took no notice. There was only the sound of the rockers on the floor. In silence, like a crab, Gudrun caught a strand of his hair each time he rocked back. Ursula flushed, and sat in some pain. She saw the irritation gathering on his brow.
At last he leapt up, suddenly, like a steel spring going off, and stood on the hearthrug.
‘Damn it, why can’t I rock?’ he asked petulantly, fiercely.
Ursula loved him for his sudden, steel-like start out of the languor. He stood on the hearthrug fuming, his eyes gleaming with anger.
Gudrun laughed in her deep, mellow fashion.
‘Men don’t rock themselves,’ she said.
‘Girls don’t pull men’s hair,’ he said.
Gudrun laughed again.
Ursula sat amused, but waiting. And he knew Ursula was waiting for him. It roused his blood. He had to go to her, to follow her call.
Once he drove her to Derby in the dog-cart. He belonged to the horsey set of the sappers.* They had lunch in an inn, and went through the market, pleased with everything. He bought her a copy of ‘Wuthering Heights’* from a bookstall. Then they found a little fair in progress and she said,
‘My father used to take me in the swingboats.’
‘Did you like it?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it was fine,’ she said.
‘Would you like to go now?’
‘Love it,’ she said, though she was afraid. But the prospect of doing an unusual, exciting thing was attractive to her.
He went straight to the stand, paid the money, and helped her to mount. He seemed to ignore everything, but just what he was doing. Other people were mere objects of indifference to him. She would have liked to hang back, but she was more ashamed to retreat from him than to expose herself to the crowd or to dare the swingboat. His eyes laughed, and standing before her with his sharp, sudden figure, he set the boat swinging. She was not afraid, she was thrilled. His colour flushed, his eyes shone with a roused light, and she looked up at him, her face like a flower in the sun, so bright and attractive. So they rushed through the bright air, up at the sky as if flung from a catapult, then falling terribly back. She loved it. The motion seemed to fan their blood to fire, they laughed, feeling like flames.
After the swingboats, they went on the roundabouts to calm down, he twisting astride on his jerky wooden steed towards her, and always seeming at his ease, enjoying himself. A zest of antagonism to the convention made him fully himself. As they sat on the whirling carousel, with the music grinding out, she was aware of the people on the earth outside, and it seemed that he and she were riding carelessly over the faces of the crowd, riding forever buoyantly, proudly, gallantly over the upturned faces of the crowd, moving on a high level, spurning the common mass.
When they must descend and walk away, she was unhappy, feeling like a giant suddenly cut down to ordinary level, at the mercy of the mob.
They left the fair, to return for the dog-cart. Passing the large church,* Ursula must look in. But the whole interior was filled with scaffolding, fallen stone and rubbish were heaped on the floor, bits of plaster crunched underfoot, and the place re-echoed to the calling of secular voices and to blows of the hammer.
She had come to plunge in the utter gloom and peace for a moment, bringing all her yearning, that had returned on her uncontrolled after the reckless riding over the face of the crowd, in the fair. After pride, she wanted comfort, solace, for pride and scorn seemed to hurt her most of all.
And she found the immemorial gloom full of bits of falling plaster, and dust of floating plaster, smelling of old lime, having scaffolding and rubbish heaped about, dust cloths over the altar.
‘Let us sit down a minute,’ she said.
They sat unnoticed in the back pew, in the gloom, and she watched the dirty, disorderly work of bricklayers and plasterers. Workmen in heavy boots walked grinding down the aisles, calling out in a vulgar accent:
‘Hi, mate, has them corner mouldin’s come?’
There were shouts of coarse answer from the roof of the church. The place echoed desolate.
Skrebensky sat close to her. Everything seemed wonderful, if dreadful, to her, the world tumbling into ruins, and she and he clambering unhurt, lawless over the face of it all. He sat close to her, touching her, and she was aware of his influence upon her. But she was glad. It excited her to feel the press of him upon her, as if his being were urging her to something.
As they drove home, he sat near to her. And when he swayed to the cart, he swayed in a voluptuous, lingering way, against her, lingering as he swung away to recover balance. Without speaking, he took her hand across, under the wrap, and with his unseeing face lifted to the road, his soul intent, he began with his one hand to unfasten the buttons of her glove, to push back her glove from her hand, carefully laying bare her hand. And the close-working, instinctive subtlety of his fingers upon her hand sent the young girl mad with voluptuous delight. His hand was so wonderful, intent as a living creature skilfully pushing and manipulating in the dark underworld, removing her glove and laying bare her palm, her fingers. Then his hand closed over hers, so firm, so close, as if the flesh knitted to one thing his hand and hers. Meanwhile his face watched the road and the ears of the horse, he drove with steady attention through the villages, and she sat beside him, rapt, glowing, blinded with a new light. Neither of them spoke. In outward attention they were entirely separate. But between them was the compact of his flesh with hers, in the hand-clasp.
Then, in a strange voice, affecting nonchalance and superficiality he said to her:
‘Sitting in the church there reminded me of Ingram.’
‘Who is Ingram?’ she asked.
She also affected calm superficiality. But she knew that something forbidden was coming.
‘He is one of the other men with me down at Chatham—a subaltern—but a year older than I am.’
‘And why did the church remind you of him?’
‘Well, he had a girl in Rochester, and they always sat in a particular corner in the cathedral for their love-making.’
‘How nice!’ she cried, impulsively.
They misunderstood each other.
‘It had its disadvantages though. The verger made a row about it.’
‘What a shame! Why shouldn’t they sit in a cathedral?’
‘I suppose they all think it a profanity—except you and Ingram and the girl.’
‘I don’t think it a profanity—I think it’s right, to make love in a cathedral.’
She said this almost defiantly, in despite of her own soul.
He was silent.
‘And was she nice?’
‘Who? Emily? Yes, she was rather nice. She was a milliner, and she wouldn’t be seen in the streets with Ingram. It was rather sad, really, because the verger spied on them, and got to know their names and then made a regular row. It was a common tale afterwards.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She went to London, into a big shop. Ingram still goes up to see her.’
‘Does he love her?’
‘It’s a year and a half he’s been with her now.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Emily? Little, shy-violet sort of girl with nice eyebrows.’
Ursula meditated this. It seemed like real romance of the outer world.
‘Do all the m
en have lovers?’ she asked, amazed at her own temerity. But her hand was still fastened with his, and his face still had the same unchanging fixity of outward calm.
‘They’re always mentioning some amazing fine woman or other, and getting drunk to talk about her. Most of them dash up to London the moment they are free.’
‘What for?’
‘To some amazing fine woman or other.’
‘What sort of woman?’
‘Various. Her name changes pretty frequently, as a rule. One of the fellows is a perfect maniac. He keeps a suit-case always ready, and the instant he is at liberty, he bolts with it to the station, and changes in the train. No matter who is in the carriage, off he whips his tunic, and performs at least the top half of his toilet.’
Ursula quivered and wondered.
‘Why is he in such a hurry?’ she asked.
Her throat was becoming hard and difficult.
‘He’s got a woman in his mind, I suppose.’
She was chilled, hardened. And yet this world of passions and lawlessness was fascinating to her. It seemed to her a splendid recklessness. Her adventure in life was beginning. It seemed very splendid.
That evening she stayed at the Marsh till after dark, and Skrebensky escorted her home. For she could not go away from him. And she was waiting, waiting for something more.
In the warm of the early night, with the shadows new about them, she felt in another, harder, more beautiful, less personal world. Now a new state should come to pass.
He walked near to her, and with the same silent, intent approach put his arm around her waist, and softly, very softly, drew her to him, till his arm was hard and pressed in upon her; she seemed to be carried along, floating, her feet scarce touching the ground, borne upon the firm, moving surface of his body, upon whose side she seemed to lie, in a delicious swoon of motion. And whilst she swooned, his face bent nearer to her, her head was leaned on his shoulder, she felt his warm breath on her face. Then softly, oh softly, so softly that she seemed to faint away, his lips touched her cheek, and she drifted through strands of heat and darkness.
Still she waited, in her swoon and her drifting, waited, like the Sleeping Beauty in the story.* She waited, and again his face was bent to hers, his lips came warm to her face, their footsteps lingered and ceased, they stood still under the trees, whilst his lips waited on her face, waited like a butterfly that does not move on a flower. She pressed her breast a little nearer to him, he moved, put both his arms round her, and drew her close.