The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence (fun to read txt) 📖

sort of languor in her grandmother’s rocking chair, rocking slowly, languidly, backward and forward, as Ursula talked to him.

“You are not poor, are you?” she said.

“Poor in money? I have about a hundred and fifty a year of my own⁠—so I am poor or rich, as you like. I am poor enough, in fact.”

“But you will earn money?”

“I shall have my pay⁠—I have my pay now. I’ve got my commission. That is another hundred and fifty.”

“You will have more, though?”

“I shan’t have more than £200 a year for ten years to come. I shall always be poor, if I have to live on my pay.”

“Do you mind it?”

“Being poor? Not now⁠—not very much. I may later. People⁠—the officers, are good to me. Colonel Hepburn has a sort of fancy for me⁠—he is a rich man, I suppose.”

A chill went over Ursula. Was he going to sell himself in some way?

“Is Colonel Hepburn married?”

“Yes⁠—with two daughters.”

But she was too proud at once to care whether Colonel Hepburn’s daughter wanted to marry him or not.

There came a silence. Gudrun entered, and Skrebensky still rocked languidly on the chair.

“You look very lazy,” said Gudrun.

“I am lazy,” he answered.

“You look really floppy,” she said.

“I am floppy,” he answered.

“Can’t you stop?” asked Gudrun.

“No⁠—it’s the perpetuum mobile.”

“You look as if you hadn’t a bone in your body.”

“That’s how I like to feel.”

“I don’t admire your taste.”

“That’s my misfortune.”

And he rocked on.

Gudrun seated herself behind him, and as he rocked back, she caught his hair between her finger and thumb, so that it tugged him as he swung forward again. He took no notice. There was only the sound of the rockers on the floor. In silence, like a crab, Gudrun caught a strand of his hair each time he rocked back. Ursula flushed, and sat in some pain. She saw the irritation gathering on his brow.

At last he leapt up, suddenly, like a steel spring going off, and stood on the hearthrug.

“Damn it, why can’t I rock?” he asked petulantly, fiercely.

Ursula loved him for his sudden, steel-like start out of the languor. He stood on the hearthrug fuming, his eyes gleaming with anger.

Gudrun laughed in her deep, mellow fashion.

“Men don’t rock themselves,” she said.

“Girls don’t pull men’s hair,” he said.

Gudrun laughed again.

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 dogcart. 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 forever 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 dogcart. 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 reechoed 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.

And she found the immemorial gloom full of bits of falling plaster, and dust of floating plaster, smelling of old lime, having scaffolding and rubbish heaped about, dust cloths over the altar.

“Let us sit down a minute,” she said.

They sat unnoticed in the back pew, in the gloom, and she watched the dirty, disorderly work of bricklayers and plasterers. Workmen in heavy boots walking grinding down the aisles, calling out in a vulgar accent:

“Hi, mate, has them corner mouldin’s come?”

There were shouts of coarse answer from the roof of the church. The place echoed desolate.

Skrebensky sat close to her. Everything seemed wonderful, if dreadful to her, the world tumbling into ruins, and she and he clambering unhurt, lawless over