'Imagine that we passed our days here!' said Ursula.
'I know,' cried Gudrun. 'It is too appalling. What must we be like, if
we are the contents of THIS!' 'Vile!' said Ursula. 'It really is.' And she recognised half-burnt covers of 'Vogue'--half-burnt
representations of women in gowns--lying under the grate.
They went to the drawing-room. Another piece of shut-in air; without
weight or substance, only a sense of intolerable papery imprisonment in
nothingness. The kitchen did look more substantial, because of the
red-tiled floor and the stove, but it was cold and horrid.
The two girls tramped hollowly up the bare stairs. Every sound reechoed
under their hearts. They tramped down the bare corridor. Against the
wall of Ursula's bedroom were her things--a trunk, a work-basket, some
books, loose coats, a hat-box, standing desolate in the universal
emptiness of the dusk.
'A cheerful sight, aren't they?' said Ursula, looking down at her
forsaken possessions.
'Very cheerful,' said Gudrun.
The two girls set to, carrying everything down to the front door. Again
and again they made the hollow, re-echoing transit. The whole place
seemed to resound about them with a noise of hollow, empty futility. In
the distance the empty, invisible rooms sent forth a vibration almost
of obscenity. They almost fled with the last articles, into the
out-of-door.
But it was cold. They were waiting for Birkin, who was coming with the
car. They went indoors again, and upstairs to their parents' front
bedroom, whose windows looked down on the road, and across the country
at the black-barred sunset, black and red barred, without light.
They sat down in the window-seat, to wait. Both girls were looking over
the room. It was void, with a meaninglessness that was almost dreadful.
'Really,' said Ursula, 'this room COULDN'T be sacred, could it?' Gudrun looked over it with slow eyes.
'Impossible,' she replied.
'When I think of their lives--father's and mother's, their love, and
their marriage, and all of us children, and our bringing-up--would you
have such a life, Prune?' 'I wouldn't, Ursula.' 'It all seems so NOTHING--their two lives--there's no meaning in it.
Really, if they had NOT met, and NOT married, and not lived
together--it wouldn't have mattered, would it?' 'Of course--you can't tell,' said Gudrun.
'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 Glckstritter. A man
with a position in the social world--well, it is just impossible,
impossible!' 'What a lovely word--a Glckstritter!' said Ursula. 'So much nicer than
a soldier of fortune.' 'Yes, isn't it?' said Gudrun. 'I'd tilt the world with a Glcksritter.
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.