The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence (novels for beginners .txt) 📕

mother and father sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was speaking for him.

“Everything’s nothing,” laughed her uncle.

She disliked him at that moment.

“She doesn’t practice what she preaches,” said her father, stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. “She has courage for mighty little.”

But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. His face was irregular, almost ugly, flattish, with a rather thick nose. But his eyes were pellucid, strangely clear, his brown hair was soft and thick as silk, he had a slight moustache. His skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Beside him, her Uncle Tom looked full-blown, her father seemed uncouth. Yet he reminded her of her father, only he was finer, and he seemed to be shining. And his face was almost ugly.

He seemed simply acquiescent in the fact of his own being, as if he were beyond any change or question. He was himself. There was a sense of fatality about him that fascinated her. He made no effort to prove himself to other people. Let it be accepted for what it was, his own being. In its isolation it made no excuse or explanation for itself.

So he seemed perfectly, even fatally established, he did not ask to be rendered before he could exist, before he could have relationship with another person.

This attracted Ursula very much. She was so used to unsure people who took on a new being with every new influence. Her Uncle Tom was always more or less what the other person would have him. In consequence, one never knew the real Uncle Tom, only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux with a more or less consistent appearance.

But, let Skrebensky do what he would, betray himself entirely, he betrayed himself always upon his own responsibility. He permitted no question about himself. He was irrevocable in his isolation.

So Ursula thought him wonderful, he was so finely constituted, and so distinct, self-contained, self-supporting. This, she said to herself, was a gentleman, he had a nature like fate, the nature of an aristocrat.

She laid hold of him at once for her dreams. Here was one such as those Sons of God who saw the daughters of men, that they were fair. He was no son of Adam. Adam was servile. Had not Adam been driven cringing out of his native place, had not the human race been a beggar ever since, seeking its own being? But Anton Skrebensky could not beg. He was in possession of himself, of that, and no more. Other people could not really give him anything nor take anything from him. His soul stood alone.

She knew that her mother and father acknowledged him. The house was changed. There had been a visit paid to the house. Once three angels stood in Abraham’s doorway, and greeted him, and stayed and ate with him, leaving his household enriched forever when they went.

The next day she went down to the Marsh according to invitation. The two men were not come home. Then, looking through the window, she saw the dogcart drive up, and Skrebensky leapt down. She saw him draw himself together, jump, laugh to her uncle, who was driving, then come towards her to the house. He was so spontaneous and revealed in his movements. He was isolated within his own clear, fine atmosphere, and as still as if fated.

His resting in his own fate gave him an appearance of indolence, almost of languor: he made no exuberant movement. When he sat down, he seemed to go loose, languid.

“We are a little late,” he said.

“Where have you been?”

“We went to Derby to see a friend of my father’s.”

“Who?”

It was an adventure to her to put direct questions and get plain answers. She knew she might do it with this man.

“Why, he is a clergyman too⁠—he is my guardian⁠—one of them.”

Ursula knew that Skrebensky was an orphan.

“Where is really your home now?” she asked.

“My home?⁠—I wonder. I am very fond of my colonel⁠—Colonel Hepburn: then there are my aunts: but my real home, I suppose, is the army.”

“Do you like being on your own?”

His clear, greenish-grey eyes rested on her a moment, and, as he considered, he did not see her.

“I suppose so,” he said. “You see my father⁠—well, he was never acclimatized here. He wanted⁠—I don’t know what he wanted⁠—but it was a strain. And my mother⁠—I always knew she was too good to me. I could feel her being too good to me⁠—my mother! Then I went away to school so early. And I must say, the outside world was always more naturally a home to me than the vicarage⁠—I don’t know why.”

“Do you feel like a bird blown out of its own latitude?” she asked, using a phrase she had met.

“No, no. I find everything very much as I like it.”

He seemed more and more to give her a sense of the vast world, a sense of distances and large masses of humanity. It drew her as a scent draws a bee from afar. But also it hurt her.

It was summer, and she wore cotton frocks. The third time he saw her she had on a dress with fine blue-and-white stripes, with a white collar, and a large white hat. It suited her golden, warm complexion.

“I like you best in that dress,” he said, standing with his head slightly on one side, and appreciating her in a perceiving, critical fashion.

She was thrilled with a new life. For the first time she was in love with a vision of herself: she saw as it were a fine little reflection of herself in his eyes. And she must act up to this: she must be beautiful. Her thoughts turned swiftly to clothes, her passion was to make a beautiful appearance. Her family looked on in amazement at the sudden transformation of Ursula. She became elegant, really elegant, in figured cotton frocks she made for herself, and hats she bent to her fancy. An inspiration was upon her.

He sat with a