Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
So the weeks passed on, trance-like and pregnant. The pear tree at
Cossethay burst into bloom against the cottage-end, like a wave burst
into foam. Then gradually the bluebells came, blue as water standing
thin in the level places under the trees and bushes, flowing in more
and more, till there was a flood of azure, and pale-green leaves
burning, and tiny birds with fiery little song and flight. Then swiftly
the flood sank and was gone, and it was summer.
There was to be no going to the seaside for a holiday. The holiday was
the removal from Cossethay.
They were going to live near Willey Green, which place was most central
for Brangwen. It was an old, quiet village on the edge of the thronged
colliery-district. So that it served, in its quaintness of odd old
cottages lingering in their sunny gardens, as a sort of bower or
pleasaunce to the sprawling colliery-townlet of Beldover, a pleasant
walk-round for the colliers on Sunday morning, before the public-houses
opened.
In Willey Green stood the Grammar School where Brangwen was occupied
for two days during the week, and where experiments in education were
being carried on.
Ursula wanted to live in Willey Green on the remoter side, towards
Southwell, and Sherwood Forest. There it was so lovely and romantic.
But out into the world meant out into the world. Will Brangwen must
become modern.
He bought, with his wife’s money, a fairly large house in the new,
red-brick part of Beldover. It was a villa built by the widow of the
late colliery manager, and stood in a quiet, new little side-street
near the large church.
Ursula was rather sad. Instead of having arrived at distinction they
had come to new red-brick suburbia in a grimy, small town.
Mrs. Brangwen was happy. The rooms were splendidly large—a splendid
dining-room, drawing-room and kitchen, besides a very pleasant study
downstairs. Everything was admirably appointed. The widow had settled
herself in lavishly. She was a native of Beldover, and had intended to
reign almost queen. Her bathroom was white and silver, her stairs were
of oak, her chimney-pieces were massive and oaken, with bulging,
columnar supports.
“Good and substantial,” was the keynote. But Ursula resented the stout,
inflated prosperity implied everywhere. She made her father promise to
chisel down the bulging oaken chimney-pieces, chisel them flat. That
sort of important paunch was very distasteful to her. Her father was
himself long and loosely built. What had he to do with so much “good
and substantial” importance?
They bought a fair amount also of the widow’s furniture. It was in
common good taste—the great Wilton carpet, the large round table, the
Chesterfield covered with glossy chintz in roses and birds. It was all
really very sunny and nice, with large windows, and a view right across
the shallow valley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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