Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
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 the 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
carousal, 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 for ever 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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