Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
The house was full of ferment. Ursula was wild with excitement. At last
her father was going to be something, socially. So long, he had been a
social cypher, without form or standing. Now he was going to be Art and
Handwork Instructor for the County of Nottingham. That was really a
status. It was a position. He would be a specialist in his way. And he
was an uncommon man. Ursula felt they were all getting a foothold at
last. He was coming to his own. Who else that she knew could turn out
from his own fingers the beautiful things her father could produce? She
felt he was certain of this new job.
They would move. They would leave this cottage at Cossethay which had
grown too small for them; they would leave Cossethay, where the
children had all been born, and where they were always kept to the same
measure. For the people who had known them as children along with the
other village boys and girls would never, could never understand that
they should grow up different. They had held “Urtler Brangwen” one of
themselves, and had given her her place in her native village, as in a
family. And the bond was strong. But now, when she was growing to
something beyond what Cossethay would allow or understand, the bond
between her and her old associates was becoming a bondage.
“’Ello, Urs’ler, ’ow are yer goin’ on?” they said when they met her.
And it demanded of her in the old voice the old response. And something
in her must respond and belong to people who knew her. But something
else denied bitterly. What was true of her ten years ago was not true
now. And something else which she was, and must be, they could neither
see nor allow. They felt it there nevertheless, something beyond them,
and they were injured. They said she was proud and conceited, that she
was too big for her shoes nowadays. They said, she needn’t pretend,
because they knew what she was. They had known her since she was born.
They quoted this and that about her. And she was ashamed because she
did feel different from the people she had lived amongst. It hurt her
that she could not be at her ease with them any more. And yet—and
yet—one’s kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to
let it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it
goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it. So Cossethay hampered
her, and she wanted to go away, to be free to fly her kite as high as
she liked. She wanted to go away, to be free to stand straight up to
her own height.
So that when she knew that her father had the new post, and that the
family would move, she felt like skipping on the face of the earth, and
making psalms of joy. The old, bound shell of Cossethay was to be cast
off, and she was to dance away into the blue air. She wanted to dance
and sing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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