The Rainbow

As Ursula passed from girlhood towards womanhood, gradually

the cloud of self-responsibility gathered upon her. She became

aware of herself, that she was a separate entity in the midst of

an unseparated obscurity, that she must go somewhere, she must

become something. And she was afraid, troubled. Why, oh why must

one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing

responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the

nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of

herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a

direction! But whither? How take even one step? And yet, how

stand still? This was torment indeed, to inherit the

responsibility of one's own life.

The religion which had been another world for her, a glorious

sort of play-world, where she lived, climbing the tree with the

short-statured man, walking shakily on the sea like the

disciple, breaking the bread into five thousand portions, like

the Lord, giving a great picnic to five thousand people, now

fell away from reality, and became a tale, a myth, an illusion,

which, however much one might assert it to be true an historical

fact, one knew was not true--at least, for this

present--day life of ours. There could, within the limits

of this life we know, be no Feeding of the Five Thousand. And

the girl had come to the point where she held that that which

one cannot experience in daily life is not true for oneself.

So, the old duality of life, wherein there had been a weekday

world of people and trains and duties and reports, and besides

that a Sunday world of absolute truth and living mystery, of

walking upon the waters and being blinded by the face of the

Lord, of following the pillar of cloud across the desert and

watching the bush that crackled yet did not burn away, this old,

unquestioned duality suddenly was found to be broken apart. The

weekday world had triumphed over the Sunday world. The Sunday

world was not real, or at least, not actual. And one lived by

action.

Only the weekday world mattered. She herself, Ursula

Brangwen, must know how to take the weekday life. Her body must

be a weekday body, held in the world's estimate. Her soul must

have a weekday value, known according to the world's

knowledge.

Well, then, there was a weekday life to live, of action and

deeds. And so there was a necessity to choose one's action and

one's deeds. One was responsible to the world for what one

did.

Nay, one was more than responsible to the world. One was

responsible to oneself. There was some puzzling, tormenting

residue of the Sunday world within her, some persistent Sunday

self, which insisted upon a relationship with the now shed-away

vision world. How could one keep up a relationship with that

which one denied? Her task was now to learn the week-day

life.