‘All right, are you?’ called Birkin.
‘Quite!’ said Gudrun. ‘Good-night!’
‘Good-night,’ they called.
‘Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,’ called Birkin.
‘Thank you very much,’ called Gudrun, in the strange, twanging voice of lonely chagrin that was very puzzling to him. She turned away to her cottage gate, and they drove on. But immediately she stood to watch them, as the car ran vague into the distance. And as she went up the path to her strange house, her heart was full of incomprehensible bitterness.
In her parlour was a long-case clock, and inserted into its dial was a ruddy, round, slant-eyed, joyous-painted face, that wagged over with the most ridiculous ogle when the clock ticked, and back again with the same absurd glad-eye at the next tick. All the time the absurd smooth, brown-ruddy face gave her an obtrusive ‘glad-eye.’ She stood for minutes, watching it, till a sort of maddened disgust overcame her, and she laughed at herself hollowly. And still it rocked, and gave her the glad-eye from one side, then from the other, from one side, then from the other. Ah, how unhappy she was! In the midst of her most active happiness, ah, how unhappy she was! She glanced at the table. Gooseberry jam, and the same home-made cake with too much soda in it! Still, gooseberry jam was good, and one so rarely got it.
All the evening she wanted to go to the Mill. But she coldly refused to allow herself. She went the next afternoon instead. She was happy to find Ursula alone. It was a lovely, intimate secluded atmosphere. They talked endlessly and delightedly. ‘Aren’t you FEARFULLY happy here?’ said Gudrun to her sister glancing at her own bright eyes in the mirror. She always envied, almost with resentment, the strange positive fullness that subsisted in the atmosphere around Ursula and Birkin.
How really beautifully this room is done,’ she said aloud. ‘This hard plaited matting—what a lovely colour it is, the colour of cool light!’
And it seemed to her perfect.
‘Ursula,’ she said at length, in a voice of question and detachment, ‘did you know that Gerald Crich had suggested our going away all together at Christmas?’
‘Yes, he’s spoken to Rupert.’
A deep flush dyed Gudrun’s cheek. She was silent a moment, as if taken aback, and not knowing what to say.
‘But don’t you thing,’ she said at last, ‘it is AMAZINGLY COOL!’
Ursula laughed.
‘I like him for it,’ she said.
Gudrun was silent. It was evident that, whilst she was almost mortified by Gerald’s taking the liberty of making such a suggestion to Birkin, yet the idea itself attracted her strongly.
‘There’s rather lovely simplicity about Gerald, I think,’ said Ursula, ‘so defiant, somehow! Oh, I think he’s VERY lovable.’
Gudrun did not reply for some moments. She had still to get over the feeling of insult at the liberty taken with her freedom.
‘What did Rupert say—do you know?’ she asked.
‘He said it would be most awfully jolly,’ said Ursula.
Again Gudrun looked down, and was silent.
‘Don’t you think it would?’ said Ursula, tentatively. She was never quite sure how many defences Gudrun was having round herself.
Gudrun raised her face with difficulty and held it averted.
‘I think it MIGHT be awfully jolly, as you say,’ she replied. ‘But don’t you think it was an unpardonable liberty to take—to talk of such things to Rupert—who after all—you see what I mean, Ursula—they might have been two men arranging an outing with some little TYPE they’d picked up. Oh, I think it’s unforgivable, quite!’ She used the French word ‘TYPE.’
Her eyes flashed, her soft face was flushed and sullen. Ursula looked on, rather frightened, frightened most of all because she thought Gudrun seemed rather common, really like a little TYPE. But she had not the courage quite to think this—not right out.
‘Oh no,’ she cried, stammering. ‘Oh no—not at all like that—oh no! No, I think it’s rather beautiful, the friendship between Rupert and Gerald. They just are simple—they say anything to each other, like brothers.’
Gudrun flushed deeper. She could not BEAR it that Gerald gave her away—even to Birkin.
‘But do you think even brothers have any right to exchange confidences of that sort?’ she asked, with deep anger.
‘Oh yes,’ said Ursula. ‘There’s never anything said that isn’t perfectly straightforward. No, the thing that’s amazed me most in Gerald—how perfectly simple and direct he can be! And you know, it takes rather a big man. Most of them MUST be indirect, they are such cowards.’
But Gudrun was still silent with anger. She wanted the absolute secrecy kept, with regard to her movements.
‘Won’t you go?’ said Ursula. ‘Do, we might all be so happy! There is something I LOVE about Gerald—he’s MUCH more lovable than I thought him. He’s free, Gudrun, he really is.’
Gudrun’s mouth was still closed, sullen and ugly. She opened it at length.
‘Do you know where he proposes to go?’ she asked.
‘Yes—to the Tyrol, where he used to go when he was in Germany—a lovely place where students go, small and
