Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
She walked this Monday morning on the verge of misery. For she did want
to do what was right. And she didn’t want to do what the gospels said.
She didn’t want to be poor—really poor. The thought was a horror to
her: to live like the Wherrys, so ugly, to be at the mercy of
everybody.
“Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.”
One could not do it in real life. How dreary and hopeless it made her!
Nor could one turn the other cheek. Theresa slapped Ursula on the face.
Ursula, in a mood of Christian humility, silently presented the other
side of her face. Which Theresa, in exasperation at the challenge, also
hit. Whereupon Ursula, with boiling heart, went meekly away.
But anger, and deep, writhing shame tortured her, so she was not easy
till she had again quarrelled with Theresa and had almost shaken her
sister’s head off.
“That’ll teach _you,”_ she said, grimly.
And she went away, unchristian but clean.
There was something unclean and degrading about this humble side of
Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted to the other extreme.
“I hate the Wherrys, and I wish they were dead. Why does my father
leave us in the lurch like this, making us be poor and insignificant?
Why is he not more? If we had a father as he ought to be, he would be
Earl William Brangwen, and I should be the Lady Ursula? What right have
_I_ to be poor? crawling along the lane like vermin? If I had my rights
I should be seated on horseback in a green riding-habit, and my groom
would be behind me. And I should stop at the gates of the cottages, and
enquire of the cottage woman who came out with a child in her arms, how
did her husband, who had hurt his foot. And I would pat the flaxen head
of the child, stooping from my horse, and I would give her a shilling
from my purse, and order nourishing food to be sent from the hall to
the cottage.”
So she rode in her pride. And sometimes, she dashed into flames to
rescue a forgotten child; or she dived into the canal locks and
supported a boy who was seized with cramp; or she swept up a toddling
infant from the feet of a runaway horse: always imaginatively, of
course.
But in the end there returned the poignant yearning from the Sunday
world. As she went down in the morning from Cossethay and saw Ilkeston
smoking blue and tender upon its hill, then her heart surged with
far-off words:
“Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem—how often would I have gathered thy children
together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would
not—”
The passion rose in her for Christ, for the gathering under the wings
of security and warmth. But how did it apply to the weekday world? What
could it mean, but that Christ should clasp her to his breast, as a
mother clasps her child? And oh, for Christ, for him who could hold her
to his breast and lose her there. Oh, for the breast of man, where she
should have refuge and bliss for ever! All her senses quivered with
passionate yearning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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