"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 for ever 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 dog-cart. 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
re-echoed 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?"