The Rainbow

The house by the yew trees was in connection with the great

human endeavour at last. It gained a new vigour thereby.

To Ursula, a child of eight, the increase in magic was

considerable. She heard all the talk, she saw the parish room

fitted up as a workshop. The parish room was a high, stone,

barn-like, ecclesiastical building standing away by itself in

the Brangwens' second garden, across the lane. She was always

attracted by its age and its stranded obsoleteness. Now she

watched preparations made, she sat on the flight of stone steps

that came down from the porch to the garden, and heard her

father and the vicar talking and planning and working. Then an

inspector came, a very strange man, and stayed talking with her

father all one evening. Everything was settled, and twelve boys

enrolled their names. It was very exciting.

But to Ursula, everything her father did was magic. Whether

he came from Ilkeston with news of the town, whether he went

across to the church with his music or his tools on a sunny

evening, whether he sat in his white surplice at the organ on

Sundays, leading the singing with his strong tenor voice, or

whether he were in the workshop with the boys, he was always a

centre of magic and fascination to her, his voice, sounding out

in command, cheerful, laconic, had always a twang in it that

sent a thrill over her blood, and hypnotized her. She seemed to

run in the shadow of some dark, potent secret of which she would

not, of whose existence even she dared not become conscious, it

cast such a spell over her, and so darkened her mind.