The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence [books for new readers .txt] 📗

door clicked loudly as she came after him, but the organ rolled more loudly still. He was unaware. He was practicing the anthem. She saw his small, jet-black head and alert face between the candle-flames, his slim body sagged on the music-stool. His face was so luminous and fixed, the movements of his limbs seemed strange, apart from him. The sound of the organ seemed to belong to the very stone of the pillars, like sap running in them.

Then there was a close of music and silence.

“Father!” she said.

He looked round as if at an apparition. Ursula stood shadowily within the candlelight.

“What now?” he said, not coming to earth.

It was difficult to speak to him.

“I’ve got a situation,” she said, forcing herself to speak.

“You’ve got what?” he answered, unwilling to come out of his mood of organ-playing. He closed the music before him.

“I’ve got a situation to go to.”

Then he turned to her, still abstracted, unwilling.

“Oh, where’s that?” he said.

“At Kingston-on-Thames. I must go on Thursday for an interview with the Committee.”

“You must go on Thursday?”

“Yes.”

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

“Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, Cossethay, Derbyshire.

“Dear Madam, You are requested to call at the above offices on Thursday next, the 10th, at 11:30 a.m., for an interview with the committee, referring to your application for the post of assistant mistress at the Wellingborough Green Schools.”

It was very difficult for Brangwen to take in this remote and official information, glowing as he was within the quiet of his church and his anthem music.

“Well, you needn’t bother me with it now, need you?” he said impatiently, giving her back the letter.

“I’ve got to go on Thursday,” she said.

He sat motionless. Then he reached more music, and there was a rushing sound of air, then a long, emphatic trumpet-note of the organ, as he laid his hands on the keys. Ursula turned and went away.

He tried to give himself again to the organ. But he could not. He could not get back. All the time a sort of string was tugging, tugging him elsewhere, miserably.

So that when he came into the house after choir-practice his face was dark and his heart black. He said nothing however, until all the younger children were in bed. Ursula, however, knew what was brewing.

At length he asked:

“Where’s that letter?”

She gave it to him. He sat looking at it. “You are requested to call at the above offices on Thursday next⁠—” It was a cold, official notice to Ursula herself and had nothing to do with him. So! She existed now as a separate social individual. It was for her to answer this note, without regard to him. He had even no right to interfere. His heart was hard and angry.

“You had to do it behind our backs, had you?” he said, with a sneer. And her heart leapt with hot pain. She knew she was free⁠—she had broken away from him. He was beaten.

“You said, ‘let her try,’ ” she retorted, almost apologizing to him.

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

“Education Office, Kingston-on-Thames”⁠—and then the typewritten “Miss Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, Cossethay.” It was all so complete and so final. He could not but feel the new position Ursula held, as recipient of that letter. It was an iron in his soul.

“Well,” he said at length, “you’re not going.”

Ursula started and could find no words to clamour her revolt.

“If you think you’re going dancin’ off to th’ other side of London, you’re mistaken.”

“Why not?” she cried, at once hard fixed in her will to go.

“That’s why not,” he said.

And there was silence till Mrs. Brangwen came downstairs.

“Look here, Anna,” he said, handing her the letter.

She put back her head, seeing a typewritten letter, anticipating trouble from the outside world. There was the curious, sliding motion of her eyes, as if she shut off her sentient, maternal self, and a kind of hard trance, meaningless, took its place. Thus, meaningless, she glanced over the letter, careful not to take it in. She apprehended the contents with her callous, superficial mind. Her feeling self was shut down.

“What post is it?” she asked.

“She wants to go and be a teacher in Kingston-on-Thames, at fifty pounds a year.”

“Oh, indeed.”

The mother spoke as if it were a hostile fact concerning some stranger. She would have let her go, out of callousness. Mrs. Brangwen would begin to grow up again only with her youngest child. Her eldest girl was in the way now.

“She’s not going all that distance,” said the father.

“I have to go where they want me,” cried Ursula. “And it’s a good place to go to.”

“What do you know about the place?” said her father harshly.

“And it doesn’t matter whether they want you or not, if your father says you are not to go,” said the mother calmly.

How Ursula hated her!

“You said I was to try,” the girl cried. “Now I’ve got a place and I’m going to go.”

“You’re not going all that distance,” said her father.

“Why don’t you get a place at Ilkeston, where you can live at home?” asked Gudrun, who hated conflicts, who could not understand Ursula’s uneasy way, yet who must stand by her sister.

“There aren’t any places in Ilkeston,” cried Ursula. “And I’d rather go right away.”

“If you’d asked about it, a place could have been got for you in Ilkeston. But you had to play Miss High-an’-mighty, and go your own way,” said her father.

“I’ve no doubt you’d rather go right away,” said her mother, very caustic. “And I’ve no doubt you’d find other people didn’t put up with you for very long either. You’ve too much opinion of yourself for your good.”

Between the girl and her mother was a feeling of pure hatred. There came a stubborn silence. Ursula knew she must break it.

“Well, they’ve written to me, and I s’ll have to go,” she said.

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

“Uncle Tom will give it me,” she