At last, however, it was finished. She had sealed the three long envelopes. In the afternoon she went down to Ilkeston to post them. She said nothing of it at all to her parents. As she stamped her long letters and put them into the box at the main post-office she felt as if already she was out of the reach of her father and mother, as if she had connected herself with the outer, greater world of activity, the man-made world.
As she returned home, she dreamed again in her own fashion her old, gorgeous dreams. One of her applications was to Gillingham, in Kent, one to Kingston-on-Thames, and one to Swanwick in Derbyshire.
Gillingham was such a lovely name,* and Kent was the Garden of England. So that, in Gillingham, an old, old village by the hopfields, where the sun shone softly, she came out of school in the afternoon into the shadow of the plane-trees by the gate, and turned down the sleepy road towards the cottage where cornflowers poked their blue heads through the old wooden fence, and phlox stood built up of blossom beside the path.
A delicate, silver-haired lady rose with delicate, ivory hands uplifted as Ursula entered the room, and,
‘Oh, my dear, what do you think!’
‘What is it, Mrs Wetherall?’
Frederick had come home. Nay, his manly step was heard on the stair, she saw his strong boots, his blue trousers, his uniformed figure, and then his face, clean and keen as an eagle’s, and his eyes lit up with the glamour of strange seas, ah, strange seas that had woven through his soul, as he descended into the kitchen.
This dream, with its amplifications, lasted her a mile of walking. Then she went to Kingston-on-Thames.
Kingston-on-Thames was an old historic place just south of London. There lived the well-born dignified souls who belonged to the metropolis, but who loved peace. There she met a wonderful family of girls living in a large old Queen Anne house, whose lawns sloped to the river, and in an atmosphere of stately peace she found herself among her soul’s intimates. They loved her as sisters, they shared with her all noble thoughts.
She was happy again. In her musings she spread her poor, clipped wings, and flew into the pure empyrean.
Day followed day. She did not speak to her parents. Then came the return of her testimonials from Gillingham. She was not wanted, neither at Swanwick. The bitterness of rejection followed the sweets of hope. Her bright feathers were in the dust again.
Then, suddenly, after a fortnight, came an intimation from Kingston-on-Thames. She was to appear at the Education Office of that town on the following Thursday, for an interview with the Committee. Her heart stood still. She knew she would make the Committee accept her. Now she was afraid, now that her removal was imminent. Her heart quivered with fear and reluctance. But underneath her purpose was fixed.
She passed shadowily through the day, unwilling to tell her news to her mother, waiting for her father. Suspense and fear were strong upon her. She dreaded going to Kingston. Her easy dreams disappeared from the grasp of reality.
And yet, as the afternoon wore away, the sweetness of the dream returned again. Kingston-on-Thames—there was such sound of dignity to her. The shadow of history and the glamour of stately progress enveloped her. The palaces would be old and darkened, the place of kings obscured. Yet it was a place of kings for her—Richard and Henry and Wolsey and Queen Elizabeth. She divined great lawns with noble trees, and terraces whose steps the water washed softly, where the swans sometimes came to earth. Still she must see the stately, gorgeous barge of the Queen float down, the crimson carpet put upon the landing stairs, the gentlemen in their purple-velvet cloaks, bare-headed, standing in the sunshine grouped on either side waiting.
‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.’*
Evening came, her father returned home, sanguine and alert and detached as ever. He was less real than her fancies. She waited whilst he ate his tea. He took big mouthfuls, big bites, and ate unconsciously with the same abandon an animal gives to its food.
Immediately after tea he went over to the church. It was choir-practice, and he wanted to try the tunes on his organ.
The latch of the big door clicked loudly as she came after him, but the organ rolled more loudly still. He was unaware. He was practising 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 shad-owily within the candle-light.
‘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 blank. 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 apologising to him.
He did not hear. He sat looking at the letter.
‘Education Office, Kingston-on-Thames’—and then the type-written ‘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 dancing 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 type-written 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 said.
Again there was silence. This time she was triumphant.
Then at length her father lifted his head. His face was abstracted, he seemed to be abstracting himself, to make a pure statement.
‘Well, you’re not going all that distance away,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask Mr Burt about a place here. I’m not going to have you by yourself at the other side of London.’
‘But I’ve got to go to Kingston,’ said Ursula. ‘They’ve sent forme.’
‘They’ll do without you,’ he said.
There was a trembling silence when she was on the point of tears.
‘Well,’ she said, low and tense, ‘you can put me off this, but I’m going to have a place. I’m not going to stop at home.’
‘Nobody wants you to stop at home,’ he suddenly shouted, going livid with rage.
She said no more. Her nature had gone hard and smiling in its own arrogance, in its own antagonistic indifference to the rest of them. This was the state in which he wanted to kill her. She went singing into the parlour.
‘C’est la mère Michel qui a perdu son chat,
Qui cri par la fenêtre qu’est-ce qui le lui rendra—’*
During the next days Ursula went about bright and hard, singing to herself, making love to the children, but her soul hard and cold with regard to her parents. Nothing more was said. The hardness and brightness lasted for four days. Then it began to break up. So at evening she said to her father,
‘Have you spoken about a place for me?’
‘I spoke to Mr Burt.’
‘What did he say?’
‘There’s a committee meeting to-morrow. He’ll tell me on Friday.’
So she waited till Friday. Kingston-on-Thames had been an exciting dream. Here she could feel the hard, raw reality. So she knew that this would come to pass. Because nothing was ever fulfilled, she found, except in the hard limited reality. She did not want to be a teacher in Ilkeston, because she knew Ilkeston, and hated it. But she wanted to be free, so she must take her freedom where she could.
On Friday her father said there was a place vacant in Brinsley Street school.* This could most probably be secured for her, at once, without the trouble of application.
Her heart halted. Brinsley Street was a school in a poor quarter, and she had had a taste of the common children of Ilkeston. They had shouted after her and thrown stones. Still, as a teacher, she would be in authority. And it was all unknown. She was excited. The very forest of dry, sterile brick had some fascination for her. It was so hard and ugly, so relentlessly ugly, it would purge her of some of her floating sentimentality.
She dreamed how she would make the little, ugly children love her. She would be so personal. Teachers were always so hard and impersonal. There was no vivid relationship. She would make everything personal and vivid, she would give herself, she would give, give, give all her great stores of wealth to her children, she would make them so happy, and they would prefer her to any teacher on the face of the earth.
At Christmas she would choose such fascinating Christmas cards for them, and she would give them such a happy party in one of the class-rooms.
The head-master, Mr Harby,* was a short, thick-set, rather common man, she thought. But she would hold before him the light of grace and refinement, he would have her in such high esteem before long. She would be the gleaming sun of the school, the children would blossom like little weeds, the teachers like tall, hard plants would burst into rare flower.
The Monday morning came. It was the end of September, and a drizzle of fine rain like veils round her, making her seem intimate, a world to herself. She walked forward to the new land. The old was blotted out. The veil would be rent that hid the new world. She was gripped hard with suspense as she went down the hill in the rain, carrying her dinner-bag.
Through the thin rain she saw the town, a black, extensive mount. She must enter in upon it. She felt at once a feeling of repugnance and of excited fulfilment. But she shrank.
She waited at the terminus for the tram. Here it was beginning. Before her was the station to Nottingham, whence Theresa had gone to school half an hour before; behind her was the little church school she had attended when she was a child, when her grandmother was alive. Her grandmother had been dead two years now. There was a strange woman at the Marsh, with her Uncle Fred, and a small baby. Behind her was Cossethay, and blackberries were ripe on the hedges.
As she waited at the tram-terminus she reverted swiftly to her childhood; her teasing grandfather, with his fair beard and blue eyes, and his big, monumental body; he had got drowned: her grandmother, whom Ursula would sometimes say she had loved more than anyone else in the world: the little church school, the Phillips boys; one was a soldier in the Life Guards now, one was a collier. With a passion she clung to the past.
But as she dreamed of it, she heard the tram-car grinding round a bend, rumbling dully, she saw it draw into sight, and hum nearer. It sidled round the loop at the terminus, and came to a standstill, looming above her. Some shadowy grey people stepped from the far end, the conductor was walking in the puddles, swinging round the pole.*
She mounted into the wet, comfortless tram, whose floor was dark with wet, whose windows were all steamed, and she sat in suspense. It had begun, her new existence.
One other passenger mounted—a sort of charwoman with a drab, wet coat. Ursula could not bear the waiting of the tram. The bell clanged, there was a lurch forward. The car moved cautiously down the wet street. She was being carried forward, into her new exi
stence. Her heart burned with pain and suspense, as if something were cutting her living tissue.
Often, oh often the tram seemed to stop, and wet, cloaked people mounted and sat mute and grey in stiff rows opposite her, their umbrellas between their knees. The windows of the tram grew more steamy, opaque. She was shut in with these unliving, spectral people. Even yet it did not occur to her that she was one of them. The conductor came down issuing tickets. Each little ring of his clipper sent a pang of dread through her. But her ticket surely was different from the rest.
They were all going to work; she also was going to work. Her ticket was the same. She sat trying to fit in with them. But fear was at her bowels, she felt an unknown, terrible grip upon her.
At Bath Street she must dismount and change trams. She looked uphill. It seemed to lead to freedom. She remembered the many Saturday afternoons she had walked up to the shops. How free and careless she had been!
Ah, her tram was sliding gingerly downhill. She dreaded every yard of her conveyance. The car halted, she mounted hastily.
She kept turning her head as the car ran on, because she was uncertain of the street. At last, her heart a flame of suspense, trembling, she rose. The conductor rang the bell brusquely.
She was walking down a small, mean, wet street, empty of people. The school squatted low within its railed, asphalt yard, that shone black with rain. The building was grimy, and horrible, dry plants were shadowily looking through the windows.
She entered the arched doorway of the porch. The whole place seemed to have a threatening expression, imitating the church’s architecture, for the purpose of domineering, like a gesture of vulgar authority. She saw that one pair of feet had paddled across the flagstone floor of the porch. The place was silent, deserted, like an empty prison waiting the return of tramping feet.
Ursula went forward to the teachers’ room that burrowed in a gloomy hole. She knocked timidly.
‘Come in!’ called a surprised man’s voice, as from a prison cell. She entered the dark little room that never got any sun. The gas was lighted naked and raw. At the table a thin man in shirt-sleeves was rubbing a paper on a jelly-tray.* He looked up at Ursula with his narrow, sharp face, said ‘Good morning,’ then turned away again, and stripped the paper off the tray, glancing at the violet-coloured writing transferred, before he dropped the curled sheet aside among a heap.