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.
`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 btises,' said Birkin.
`But you needn't have the respect for the betise before you've committed it,' laughed Ursula.
`Ah then, des betises 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.
