'How strange they are!' said Ursula.
'Children of men,' he said. 'They remind me of Jesus: "The meek shall
inherit the earth."' 'But they aren't the meek,' said Ursula.
'Yes, I don't know why, but they are,' he replied.
They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the
town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses.
'And are they going to inherit the earth?' she said.
'Yes--they.' 'Then what are we going to do?' she asked. 'We're not like them--are
we? We're not the meek?' 'No. We've got to live in the chinks they leave us.' 'How horrible!' cried Ursula. 'I don't want to live in chinks.' 'Don't worry,' he said. 'They are the children of men, they like
market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks.' 'All the world,' she said.
'Ah no--but some room.' The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey
masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular.
They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of
sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of
the world.
'I don't mind it even then,' said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness
of it all. 'It doesn't concern me.' 'No more it does,' he replied, holding her hand. 'One needn't see. One
goes one's way. In my world it is sunny and spacious--' 'It is, my love, isn't it?' she cried, hugging near to him on the top
of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them.
'And we will wander about on the face of the earth,' he said, 'and
we'll look at the world beyond just this bit.' There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat
thinking.
'I don't want to inherit the earth,' she said. 'I don't want to inherit
anything.' He closed his hand over hers.
'Neither do I. I want to be disinherited.' She clasped his fingers closely.
'We won't care about ANYTHING,' she said.
He sat still, and laughed.
'And we'll be married, and have done with them,' she added.
Again he laughed.
'It's one way of getting rid of everything,' she said, 'to get
married.' 'And one way of accepting the whole world,' he added.
'A whole other world, yes,' she said happily.
'Perhaps there's Gerald--and Gudrun--' he said.
'If there is there is, you see,' she said. 'It's no good our worrying.
We can't really alter them, can we?' 'No,' he said. 'One has no right to try--not with the best intentions
in the world.' 'Do you try to force them?' she asked.