“No. But if I thought my life was going to be like it—Prune,” she caught Gudrun’s arm, “I should run.”
Gudrun was silent for a few moments.
“As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary life—one cannot contemplate it,” replied Gudrun. “With you, Ursula, it is quite different. You will be out of it all, with Birkin. He’s a special case. But with the ordinary man, who has his life fixed in one place, marriage is just impossible. There may be, and there are, thousands of women who want it, and could conceive of nothing else. But the very thought of it sends me mad. One must be free, above all, one must be free. One may forfeit everything else, but one must be free—one must not become 7, Pinchbeck Street—or Somerset Drive—or Shortlands. No man will be sufficient to make that good—no man! To marry, one must have a free lance, or nothing, a comrade-in-arms, a Glücksritter. A man with a position in the social world—well, it is just impossible, impossible!”
“What a lovely word—a Glücksritter!” said Ursula. “So much nicer than a soldier of fortune.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Gudrun. “I’d tilt the world with a Glücksritter. But a home, an establishment! Ursula, what would it mean?—think!”
“I know,” said Ursula. “We’ve had one home—that’s enough for me.”
“Quite enough,” said Gudrun.
“The little grey home in the west,” quoted Ursula ironically.
“Doesn’t it sound grey, too,” said Gudrun grimly.
They were interrupted by the sound of the car. There was Birkin. Ursula was surprised that she felt so lit up, that she became suddenly so free from the problems of grey homes in the west.
They heard his heels click on the hall pavement below.
“Hello!” he called, his voice echoing alive through the house. Ursula smiled to herself. He was frightened of the place too.
“Hello! Here we are,” she called downstairs. And they heard him quickly running up.
“This is a ghostly situation,” he said.
“These houses don’t have ghosts—they’ve never had any personality, and only a place with personality can have a ghost,” said Gudrun.
“I suppose so. Are you both weeping over the past?”
“We are,” said Gudrun, grimly.
Ursula laughed.
“Not weeping that it’s gone, but weeping that it ever was,” she said.
“Oh,” he replied, relieved.
He sat down for a moment. There was something in his presence, Ursula thought, lambent and alive. It made even the impertinent structure of this null house disappear.
“Gudrun says she could not bear to be married and put into a house,” said Ursula meaningful—they knew this referred to Gerald.
He was silent for some moments.
“Well,” he said, “if you know beforehand you couldn’t stand it, you’re safe.”
“Quite!” said Gudrun.
“Why does every woman think her aim in life is to have a hubby and a little grey home in the west? Why is this the goal of life? Why should it be?” said Ursula.
“Il faut avoir le respect de ses bêtises,” said Birkin.
“But you needn’t have the respect for the bêtise before you’ve committed it,” laughed Ursula.
“Ah then, des bêtises du papa?”
“Et de la maman,” added Gudrun satirically.
“Et des voisins,” said Ursula.
They all laughed, and rose. It was getting dark. They carried the things to the car. Gudrun locked the door of the empty house. Birkin had lighted the lamps of the automobile. It all seemed very happy, as if they were setting out.
“Do you mind stopping at Coulsons. I have to leave the key there,” said Gudrun.
“Right,” said Birkin, and they moved off.
They stopped in the main street. The shops were just lighted, the last miners were passing home along the causeways, half-visible shadows in their grey pit-dirt, moving through the blue air. But their feet rang harshly in manifold sound, along the pavement.
How pleased Gudrun was to come out of the shop, and enter the car, and be borne swiftly away into the downhill of palpable dusk, with Ursula and Birkin! What an adventure life seemed at this moment! How deeply, how suddenly she envied Ursula! Life for her was so quick, and an open door—so reckless as if not only this world, but the world that was gone and the world to come were nothing to her. Ah, if she could be just like that, it would be perfect.
For always, except in her moments of excitement, she felt a want within herself. She was unsure. She had felt that now, at last, in Gerald’s strong and violent love, she was living fully and finally. But when she compared herself with Ursula, already her soul was jealous, unsatisfied. She was not satisfied—she was never to be satisfied.
What was she short of now? It was marriage—it was the wonderful stability of marriage. She did want it, let her say what she might. She had been lying. The old idea of marriage was right even now—marriage and the home. Yet her mouth gave a little grimace at the words. She thought of Gerald and Shortlands—marriage and the home! Ah well, let it rest! He meant a great deal to her—but—! Perhaps it was not in her to marry. She was one of life’s outcasts, one of the drifting lives that have no root. No, no it could not be so. She suddenly conjured up a rosy room, with herself in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in evening dress who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed her. This picture she entitled “Home.” It would have done for the Royal Academy.
“Come with us to tea—do,” said Ursula, as they ran nearer to the cottage of Willey Green.
“Thanks awfully—but I must go in—” said Gudrun. She wanted very much to go on with Ursula and Birkin.
That seemed like life indeed to her. Yet a certain perversity would not let her.
“Do come—yes, it would be so nice,” pleaded Ursula.
“I’m awfully sorry—I should love to—but I can’t—really—”
She descended from the car in trembling haste.
“Can’t you really!” came Ursula’s regretful voice.
“No, really I can’t,” responded Gudrun’s pathetic,
