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, chagrined words out
of the dusk.
'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.