The Rainbow

"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?"